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6 “Anti-mini Militants Meet Modern Misses”: Urban Style, Gender, and the Politics of “National Culture” in 1960s Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Andrew M. Ivaska Here in town clothes make the man. —J. A. K. Leslie, A Survey of Dar es Salaam (1963)1 On Thursday, October 3, 1968, residents of Dar es Salaam awoke to front-page newspaper headlines announcing a bold new declaration by the Youth League of Tanzania’s ruling party, TANU. As the Standard put it, “TANU Youths Ban ‘Minis’: Sijaona Announces ‘Operation Vijana.’”2 Announced by the general council of the TANU Youth League (TYL), this act prohibited the use of a range of items—miniskirts , wigs, skin-lightening creams, tight pants or dresses, and short shorts—as “indecent,” “decadent,” and antithetical to Tanzania’s “national culture.” The ban was to take effect on New Year’s Day, 1969, and would be enforced by members of the male-dominated TYL. The ambiguity of the “operation’s” code-name, vijana (which means “youth,” but frequently connotes young men), lent it a striking economy. For not only did it name “youth” as both the targets and the enforcers of the campaign, but it also hinted at what would be the gendered nature of the ban’s enforcement—an all-male affair primarily directed against female “offenders.”3 Although they were just one set of a raft of resolutions announced at the conclusion of the three-day-long TYL general council meeting, it was these “Cultural Resolutions” that grabbed the intense attention of the press. Nor did this attention prove ®eeting, as Operation Vijana dominated public debate during the three months between its announcement and its launch. Even as Dar es Salaam’s newspaper editors weighed in on the issue, their of¤ces were ®ooded with letters and poems from readers articulating a range of positions on the ban. From October 1968 through January 1969, the opinion pages of Ngurumo, the Standard, Uhuru, and the Nationalist, the country’s four leading dailies, produced a complex, multilayered debate that was extraordinary in its scope and intensity. Debating Operation Vijana meant debating issues ranging from national culture, authenticity, gen- der roles, and sex to concepts such as heshima (respectability), uhuni (indecency, immorality, vagrancy), youth, and the modern. All told, between October 3, 1968, and February 1, 1969,over 150 letters,16 poems,and 19 editorials—not to mention over 50 news items—concerning Operation Vijana appeared in Tanzania’s press. Engagement with Operation Vijana was not, however, con¤ned to the press. Within four days of the TYL’s announcement, Tanzania’s Field Force Unit, or riot police, was called to the Kariakoo bus station (one of Dar es Salaam’s main transport nodes) to control “gangs of [male] youths”who were “harassing all girls wearingmini -skirtsortightdresses.”4 These young men—some of whom were witnessed boarding buses and pulling “indecently dressed” young women off for beatings— were eventually dispersed with tear gas.5 Denying that TYL members took part in this violence, which came months before the ban was to take effect, a TYL spokesperson said he was not surprised “if the youth found the deadline too far away for them.”6 As the deadline approached, after weeks that saw several attacks on “indecently dressed” women reported, posters appeared about the capital depicting models of proper and improper dress for women and men. The TYL, which had organized the canvassing, also held a press conference at which top leaders of the league displayed more examples—stylized sketches this time, rather than photos— of “decent” and “indecent” apparel.7 On New Year’s Day, 1969, “Operation Vijana” was launched in Dar, with ¤ve hundred male Youth League members selected as the enforcers of the ban. Out¤tted with walkie-talkies to communicate with TYL headquarters and thirty centers of operation across the capital,the cadres patrolled streets and of¤ces on the lookout for offenders.8 By the second week of January the campaign was being heralded as a success by TYL leaders and supporters, but this “success” appears to have been, at best, short-lived. Within the year, “indecent dress” was back on the streets of Dar es Salaam, provoking at least two more campaigns to ban it (in its ever-mutating forms) in the early 1970s.9 This essay begins by situating debates over Operation Vijana within a bundle of intersecting historical contexts that I suggest are important to understanding the campaign. Keeping these historical contexts in mind...

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