Short takes: Shoeshine, or glimpses of street-corner life in Dar

Shivji’s talents were already amply on display when he burst on the scene with his first film, Shoeshine (24 mins), screened to an open-air audience at the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) in July 2013. The short, which received the “People’s Choice Award” at ZIFF that year, can be described in many ways. Above all, though, it is a love letter to the ordinary urban landscapes of Dar es Salaam and the everyday lives that unfold through encounters captured in a series of beautifully realized, if fragmentary, social exchanges. A young boy, Tambwe, wheels a battered suitcase (marked Shoe Shine in vibrant red script) to the sidewalk in front of a hoteli, a tea room or café, immediately familiar to anyone who has ever spent time in downtown Dar. The boy proceeds to set up shop on the sidewalk, waiting for customers. Inside, the irascible café owner, brilliantly played by Iqbal Hussein, shrieks into the phone at someone at the Ushirika wa Umeme, or electricity company, about frequent (and prolonged) power outages. Power has been cut for three days, and he is eating his losses. When he hears the routine response of many a Tanzanian bureaucrat to those complaining—“Subira,” or “be patient,”—he completely loses it, “Subira!” he spits back, “Take this patience of yours and stick it up your ass!” as he slams down the phone. He yells back to the cook for tea, and then surreptitiously tops up the cup with a good hit of booze to settle his nerves. Issa, the cook, comes out to the sidewalk, and greets the shoeshine boy, and brings him a hot cup of chai. Tambwe sips the chai, as a couple of mafundi, or repairmen, arrive on a bicycle balancing a long extension ladder, setting up at the electric pole across the street. A creepy ice-cream vendor with a mobile bicycle-freezer tries to seduce a nanny at the shoeshine stand with sweet words and treats, only to respond with vehement harassment when he’s ultimately rejected (“Whatever!” he curses at her, “You aren’t even pretty. I would rather have a longer Ramadhan than have you! Get out of here!”).

A big car pulls up driven by a fat minister of parliament (MP) in lizardskin shoes, John Weni, who is the very emblem of a self-important bwana mkubwa (big man). The café owner obsequiously sucks up to “Mheshimiwa” (“The Honorable”), offers him free chai and maandazi (doughnuts), and then offers a bribe in hopes that the MP can use his influence to get his electricity service restored. Slurping his tea, the MP catches a glimpse of Tambwe out the window and curses the shoeshine boy out, loudly trumpeting his own rags-to-riches success, his alleged popularity, and his many and weighty responsibilities. His self-regard isn’t matched by much attention from other patrons in the café, but he parades around, thanking them for their votes and vowing, “I will fill your stomachs!”—Jean-François Bayart’s “politics of the belly” on full display (1993). Confronted by indifference or worse, the MP skulks out, grabbing his lizardskin shoes from Tambwe in a huff, and departs.

Meanwhile, at the shoeshine stand, a lively debate is being conducted over small cups of coffee by two university students about politics and corruption. Kaisa is filled with all the certainty of activist youth, denouncing the system with righteous conviction: “We cannot continue with this same elitist system,” she declares. “How do you think a peasant will survive? Mark my words, one day we will change everything. How long will we continue being oppressed [wanyonge]? Until when? Huh? You are in this state because of people just like Weni [the fat MP]. They don’t care about you at all. They take theirs early and leave.” Aruni, the other student, rolls his eyes, telling her she needs to just breathe in and breathe out, and stop being so negative and cynical. They depart, and across the street, we suddenly hear a sharp buzz and see sparks where the mafundi were working on the electricity pole earlier. Tambwe rises up in wonder at the sight, starts to cross the street, and there’s an enormous overload—and we see Tambwe getting blown back by the blast, and the screen fades to whiteout.

The rest of the film is a surreal dream sequence, concocted from a mishmash of images and sounds that Tambwe has seen and heard that day. The shoeshine boy startles awake when a bucket of water is splashed on him, looking up into the anxious face of Issa, peering down at him from above. He was knocked unconscious by the blast, and the old cook gently helps him to his feet and guides him to the bench. “You were out for a good ten minutes. Those electricity people do more harm than good,” he quietly remarks, as the café owner screams and tussles with them across the street. “Look at them! Ah, Tambwe,” Issa exclaims, coming to himself, “You haven’t eaten the whole day!” He looks at him with concern and asks what he would like. Tambwe regards him thoughtfully and asks, “are there any maandazi (doughnuts) left?” And we leave them sitting together on the bench, reflecting, staring out across the street. The film ends with a different politics of the belly, in contrast to political elites: ordinary acts of care and concern, as the cook seeks to feed Tambwe, unhesitatingly offering sustenance and sympathy without regard for cost.

Corruption, political malfeasance, infrastructural breakdowns, sexism and public harassment, and the self-aggrandizement and obliviousness of the wealthy and powerful—all of these issues and more emerge in Shoeshine. And yet Shivji is never heavy-handed in his approach; pointed critiques always emerge leavened by his engagement with ordinary lives, the wit and sharp rhythm of Kiswahili dialogue, warm humor, and his ability to evoke the poetry of urban spaces. Issa’s small acts of kindness, his solicitousness toward Tambwe, shine through; characters poke fun at each other or play or tease; they call the powerful to account, at least with sharp commentary behind their backs, and they display a resilience and capacity to endure, making do as best they can.

At the junction: Social spaces, street hawking, and ruthlessness in neoliberal Dar

In later films such as T-Junction (2017), Shivji began to pursue his directorial agenda on a broader canvas. As with Shoeshine, T-Junction centers on what we could call contemporary urban dynamics in the disarray of neoliberal capitalism following Nyerere, but without the high seriousness that implies. Philosophically, Shivji is a subtle advocate for the dignity and vitality of ujamaa, infusing his stories with a luminescent humanism, a wry sense of humor, genuine affection for his characters (even the repellent ones), and an abiding belief in the power of community and social connection. On the website for his production house, Kijiweni, Shivji writes, “we create a platform for all kinds of stories that do justice to a culture of resistance and resilience. To tell our tales from the continent; those that are either unheard of, only whispered about and/or are told from ‘a single story’” (Kijiweni Productions 2024). T-Junction centers on a vibrant community of characters in a specific urban setting—those hustling in the informal sector at the junction of two streets. In terms of both politics and economic life, these are watu wadogo (little people) who are getting increasingly squeezed out, marginalized, and dispossessed in a changing Dar es Salaam—and whose resilience is marked by the solidarity they show for each other, their pluck, cajoling and teasing, fast repartee, small acts of empathy and imagination, and an eye for each other’s foibles and follies—as well as the hopes they share for something better, something more, small steps forward, in the face of forces trying to stamp them out.

Fatima is a serious and reserved young woman who has just lost her South Asian father. Her mother, of African descent, was once his servant, and he leaves an ambiguous legacy behind—he was both distant and a heavy drinker. Fatima’s family and her community are altogether tenuous, very much in doubt. Going to the hospital for a malaria test as well as to obtain a copy of her father’s death certificate (the only thing, her mother tells her, “that would prove he was ever alive”), Fatima is repeatedly turned away—“jaribu kesho,” or “kesho asubuhi,” she is told, “try tomorrow,” or “tomorrow morning”—condemned to the perpetual run-around of Tanzanian bureaucratic denials and delays. Stuck in purgatory, waiting in line, she encounters Maria, wounded and recovering at the hospital, in a wheelchair and her head wrapped in bandages—but with a sharp tongue and an eye for social detail (“this hospital has its own soap opera”). Fatima is the dutiful daughter, obedient, quiet, respectful; a vivid contrast to Maria, who is mischievous, crafty, very spirited—kali kidogo, a bit fierce or rebellious. Waiting for treatment, or results, or wheeling her through the grounds, Fatima asks Maria how she came to be there, and Maria begins to spin her stories: of Chine, a stuttering news vendor who she falls deeply and unexpectedly in love with; Iddi, a bicycle repairman; Arbogast, Manga, and Shaaban, who sells mangoes but eats too many of his own stock to make any profit; and Issa, rumored once to have been a drunk, but now a fiercely observant Muslim, mostly silent and a presence at the local mosque. Many of these characters come together at Mama Maria Shaaban’s, a mama ntilie (“Mama, put it on my plate”), or sidewalk food hawker, and their lives are caught up in everyday strategies for making a living and making life at the urban edges. Their community is very much on the edge—threatened not only by capitalist redevelopment and urban restructuring in the capital, but also the forces of municipal surveillance and regulation, represented by Commando and his men—security forces who sweep the streets, destroy stalls, confiscate goods, and beat hawkers, ruthlessly, without pity. Ultimately, these pitiless raids end up taking a life that shatters the community and destroys in the name of order and “cleaning up” the streets.

Over the grave at the burial, Maria says, “we will always be under people’s feet. Alive or dead, that is just how things are,” but this grim sense of enduring subordination is hardly the last lesson of the film. In both films, there are characters who dictate, who yell and threaten, who speak in the language of commandment—barking, ordering, directing, as with Commando or the café owner or MP Weni. They use and regard others as only instruments of their own desires. But this discursive register is always crosscut by the solidarity and sympathy of those who engage with each other in everyday language, observing, telling stories, asking questions, teasing and joking. They may be beat down, but at least they know how to name their condition, to laugh about it or lash out; they’re flawed or failed in all sorts of ways, but they have a spirit and a style and a way of picking each other up when it really matters, or communing together in grief and mourning. This regard for each other, the respect or empathy it implies, is ultimately transcendent. At the end of T-Junction, Fatima finds Maria, who had fled from the hospital, at the ocean. “Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be free?” Maria asks. Earlier, Maria had approvingly described her T-Junction companions, “Hawa ni watu wangu” (“These are my people”); in the end, walking into the waves, unwinding her head bandage and casting it aside, she vows that they will always remain with her: “Hawataniacha” (“They will never leave me”).

“The struggles that have put us where we are today”: Transgressive romance and revolution in colonial Zanzibar

Given the contemporary urban focus of these earlier films, Vuta N’Kuvute (Tug of War, 2021) might first seem to represent something of a departure for Shivji. The picture is based on the Kiswahili novel by Shafi Adam Shafi published in 1999, a literary romance exploring the roots of the Zanzibar revolution in the 1950s, written well after the revolution had already been abandoned in all but name. With the film, Shivji shifts from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar, and from the present to a historical romance—something of an anachronism on the surface. And yet in both thematic and stylistic terms we can see strong continuities with his earlier films.

Vuta N’Kuvute tells the tale of Yasmin and Denge, two unlikely lovers whose paths cross in colonial Zanzibar of the 1950s. Due to her gender, status, and the patriarchal attitudes of her South Asian family, Yasmin grew up with little control over her destiny, taken out of school just after puberty and married off to a wealthy Indian businessman, three times her age. She lives in secluded privilege in a large stone house in Mji Mkongwe (Old City), where she is secluded and shut off from others, imprisoned in a loveless marriage. In the luxurious decor of an upstairs room, we see her dancing alone with real joy to a Hindi film song, met by cheers and applause from onlookers out in the street; controlling and jealous, her husband orders her to stop her “childish games,” and smacks her. She immediately strikes back, knocking his glasses to the floor, and flees the house and her empty marriage. With nowhere else to go, she ends up sleeping on the baraza (veranda) of her childhood friend, Mwajuma, in Ng’ambo, the “other side” of Zanzibar associated with those of African descent, former slaves, and the lower classes. As Mwajuma observes, “Last week, we would have barely greeted each other. Today I find you sleeping on my baraza. Those are the times we are living in.” Reconnecting with Mwajuma, Yasmin encounters Denge, a Zanzibari of African descent who grew up poor in a rural village in the north, but who managed to study abroad, first in Egypt and then in Russia, returning to Zanzibar as a committed revolutionary, joining the party to spark anti-colonial liberation.

Of course, the outlines of their love story can’t convey the evocative beauty of the film. Shivji excels in his capacity to evoke a specific milieu, shooting on location to great effect. Making inspired use of sites in urban Zanzibar, he presents us with mesmerizing tableaux, evoking the everyday rhythms, sights, and sounds of life in Zanzibar’s neighborhoods. He is a painterly director: the walls of old structures in Mji Mkongwe, or the interior walls of a prison, are etched with the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock, an intricate interplay of lines and light. So too with the interior of Mwajuma’s humble house in Ng’ambo, whose walls show all the signs of age, fading colors, pockmarks and stains, charcoal smoke and the scent of incense. These scenes are overwhelmingly familiar to anyone who has dwelled in uswahilini (popular Swahili neighborhoods), and Shivji beautifully renders these everyday milieux, endowing them with a rich patina and colorful palette. After a dance, Yasmin and Denge encounter each other in the street. They sit on a baraza, with an ornate Arab carved door framing the shot. It is a beautiful tableau—the rough and pockmarked texture of the walls to the left and right, with a green and purple light glowing in the interior of the building. To the right, there’s a soft amber electric light playing against the red of her shawl and his undershirt. He looks off in the distance, and she looks down—the awkwardness of new lovers, not knowing where to look, playing with her shawl, unsure what to say. Shivji is also a master of the close-up shot, framing the faces of his gifted actors, as their expressions shift across a landscape of emotions, radiating intensity, reserve, shyness, and passion. He has throughout a gorgeous sense of color and light—red flows through the film at critical moments, from a floating scarf in the wind, to Yasmin’s dress, and anti-colonial pamphlets raining down on the streets, tossed in the air by activists running from askari (colonial police) in their red fezzes. The film also makes great use of Tanzanian music, from hot jazz to Cuban-inspired marimba and, of course, taarab, sung with haunting beauty by Siti Amina, especially the classic Siti binti Saad ballad “Kijiti” featuring at an especially critical (and moving) juncture (for more on Siti binti Saad, see Laura Fair 2001, a US historian who also appears in the film as a colonial dowager at the English Club).

Shivji’s script is infused with all the verve and energy of everyday Kiswahili, the quick give-and-take you hear between friends, debates on streetcorners or in the markets, teasing, sardonic commentary, sharp observations, or incisive critiques. From landscape to language, everyday Swahili worlds are offered up through a specific lens—and thereby elevated through Shivji’s magic into the stuff of art. Many reviews of the film highlight its originality in recovering a neglected episode in Zanzibari history, forgetting that it is a filmic reconstruction of a more recent literary narrative that framed the past in specific ideological terms. In an interview, Shivji emphasized he sought in Tug of War to “reflect on the struggles that have put us where we are right now. But the struggle hasn’t ended. We are not in a better place. Populist and right wing ideologies have gained space and we need to bring back resistance ideas to counter mainstream ideologies. I wanted to make a film that is very contemporary” (Khan 2021). In this sense, while Tug of War might seem retro in its evocation of anti-colonial romance, it actually serves as a meditation on the continuing challenges of liberation—to love freely, to cross cultural boundaries, to move beyond racial or ethnic divides, to transcend the strictures of family or clan, and to imagine and enact a world of social solidarities beyond the competitive inequalities bequeathed to us by capitalism. Denge is described as a “troublemaker” and seen as a threat; the security apparatus treats him as a freethinker and political activist spreading new and dangerous ideas. When his friend, Chande, advises him to lay low, he responds, “Chande, do you do everything you are told? Be a revolutionary!” Branded by the security forces as a “communist,” he fully embraces the label. “These colonialists and their dogs, to them everyone is a communist. If you demand your rights, you’re a communist. If you speak the truth, you’re a communist. If you refuse to be dominated, you’re a communist. Whatever you do that doesn’t benefit them makes you a communist.” Soon after they first met, Yasmin had asked Denge why he engaged in political activism: “Why are you spreading those leaflets?” and he replied, “To liberate myself,” and then posed a pointed question to her: “Why, you, Yasmin, are you free?”—a provocation at least as relevant for Tanzanians now, or even more so, than it might have been in the 1950s. Of course, Yasmin shares with her lover a rebellious streak—a willingness to cross lines and follow her own heart and mind. “You know,” she later tells him, “you asked if I am free. I was taught that our destiny is written in the Qu’ran”; she was born to a family and a destiny as a woman that she was bound to accept, and yet she abandoned her husband and moved in with her African shoga (close female friend), on the other side, in Ng’ambo. Denge wants to change and shake up his social world, and she asks, “Change it how? With big words and red leaflets? Maybe your destiny isn’t written. But for the rest of us, it has been. Whether we like it or not. I fled from my family, and now I have nothing.” But Denge responds: “I was born with nothing. Mambo and I are from a small village in the North. I came to the city in search of a life. My mind is free, and that is all I have.” And perhaps that is more than enough: what they have is each other—and a shared spirit to go beyond limits, to test boundaries, to reject what is given or expected, and to move together toward an uncertain future, claiming the freedom to reimagine the world and their relationship to it. Surely the capacities of youth to come together, to question established boundaries, and to rise up to assert their rights to struggle for a more just society is all the more relevant today—especially as the Tanzanian state has increasingly sought in the wake of the 2025 election to repress political opposition, prevent free elections, attack civil society and the press, and even resort to outright violence, attacking demonstrations and killing protesters in the streets, all while denying responsibility and placing blame on the usual outside agitators. We may be a long way from the days of colonial rule and the political order envisioned by Nyerere, but the question of how we engage our destinies, what it might mean to be free, what the sources of a better society and more just existence might look like, or how to resist and revolt continue to haunt us, in Tanzania just as in the United States.