Tanzania's Early Swahili Cinema Cultures: Steven Kanumba's Social Narration in Bongowood Digital Filmmaking

This chapter is about the role of Swahili in mainstreaming indigenous cinema in the United Republic of Tanzania. It is not analytical, it is historiographic theorisation from the colonial backdrop where cinema was a merchandise for profiteering by Indians in Tanganyika and Zanzibar, to its use as a medium for cultural, social, economic, political, and ideological objectives; the chapter makes a case for recognition of the role of the Swahili language in correcting the skewed involvement of indigenous African populations in the film business. It argues that although Swahili as a language has existed in Tanganyika and Zanzibar for centuries, it was never a mainstream language for filmmaking, either in the celluloid or the early digital eras. Instead, it remained marginalised in the filmmaking and consumption circuits even after the founding of the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964, only gaining prominence within the film industry in the early 1990s. Notably, this was led by a generation of post-independence Tanzanians born in the 1980s. While new political, infrastructural, and regulatory frameworks, different from those of the socialist or cold war eras, had been effected, the role of this younger generation of indigenous entertainment industry players is discussed as pivotal in mainstreaming the Swahili language in what became Bongowood. The chapter singles out one of the leading figures who popularised Swahili in cinema, Steven Charles Kanumba, and his legacy of Swahili social narratology.