The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar

In early 1964 the two countries were both brand new. Tanganyika, on the mainland, had been independent from Britain since 9 December 1961, under Julius Nyerere. Zanzibar, the islands of Unguja and Pemba, became independent on 10 December 1963 as a monarchy under its sultan.

A month later the sultan was gone. In the Zanzibar Revolution of 12 January 1964, fighters of the Afro-Shirazi Party overthrew him, and Abeid Karume became president of the new People's Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba. That story is told on The Zanzibar Revolution.

The new government leaned to the left, and it worried Western diplomats. A news report of April 1964 said they feared Zanzibar would become the "Cuba of Africa": its foreign minister, Abdulrahman Babu, had ordered an American space-tracking station off the island and was reported to have received Soviet arms. On the mainland, Nyerere had just survived a mutiny of his own army in January, put down with British help.

The two presidents negotiated in secret. Pius Msekwa, then clerk of Tanganyika's parliament, later recalled that they agreed to keep the talks quiet until they had signed, for fear that opponents would wreck them. When Nyerere flew to Zanzibar, the ruling party's newspaper described the trip as a friendly visit. Babu was out of the country.

On 22 April 1964, at Zanzibar, Nyerere and Karume signed the Articles of Union. Their opening words give the reason: the two governments were "mindful of the long association of the peoples of these lands and of their ties of kinship and amity" and wished to further "the unity of African peoples".

Tanganyika's parliament passed the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar Act on 25 April, under a certificate of urgency, and the union took effect the next day, 26 April 1964. On 27 April the two leaders exchanged the instruments of ratification at Karimjee Hall in Dar es Salaam.

The two republics became one sovereign state, the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Nyerere became its president. There were to be two vice-presidents, one of them living in Zanzibar, who would also be the head of Zanzibar's own government under the title of President of Zanzibar: Karume took that post as First Vice-President. Rashidi Kawawa, from the mainland, became Second Vice-President.

The heart of the deal was a split of powers. A short list of Union matters went to the union's parliament and government. Everything else stayed with Zanzibar's own government for Zanzibar, while the union government ran it for the mainland. There was no separate government for Tanganyika, which is why Tanzania has two governments, not three.

Tanganyika's constitution, amended, served as the interim constitution. The Articles asked for a commission to propose a permanent constitution and a constituent assembly to adopt it within a year. The permanent constitution came in 1977.

The best-known image of the union is a handful of earth. Two young people from the mainland, Sifael Shuma and Elisael Mrema, and two from Zanzibar, Hadija Abbas and a young man named Hassan, carried soil from each country in calabashes. Nyerere mixed the two in a single pot. The mixed soil was taken to State House in Dar es Salaam, where mango seedlings from both sides were planted together in one hole. Accounts differ on the date: some put the ceremony on Union Day 1964, others on the first anniversary in 1965.

The name came from a newspaper competition. It was won by Mohammed Iqbal Dar, a student from Tanga at Mzumbe Secondary School, who joined TANganyika and ZANzibar. On 29 October 1964 the country became the United Republic of Tanzania.

The list of Union matters has grown from 11 to 22. Currency and banking were added in 1965; industrial licensing and statistics, higher education, and civil aviation when the East African Community was founded in 1967; oil and natural gas in 1968; the National Examinations Council with the permanent constitution of 1977; the Court of Appeal in 1979; and the registration of political parties in 1992. Changing the list now needs a two-thirds majority of members of parliament from the mainland and two thirds of those from Zanzibar.

Karume was assassinated in 1972. In 1977 the two ruling parties, TANU on the mainland and the Afro-Shirazi Party in Zanzibar, merged as Chama cha Mapinduzi.

How many governments the union should have has been asked more than once. Zanzibar's president Aboud Jumbe, who favoured three governments (one each for Zanzibar, the mainland and the union), lost his posts on 29 January 1984, and Ali Hassan Mwinyi succeeded him. In 2013 the Constitutional Review Commission chaired by Joseph Warioba proposed three governments and a shorter list of Union matters. The Constituent Assembly kept two governments in the draft constitution it passed in October 2014, and the referendum on it, set for 30 April 2015, was postponed. In July 2026 President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced a roadmap towards a new constitution.

Union Day, 26 April, is a public holiday, and the union's 60th anniversary was marked in 2024. Tanzania remains one country with two governments: the Government of the United Republic and the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. How they share power, and the offices of president and vice-president, is explained on Who runs Tanzania.

For visitors the union is easy to see and easy to miss. Zanzibar keeps its own president, its own House of Representatives and its own tourism authorities, and it has its own insurance rule for visitors, set out on the visa page. Immigration and the passport are Union matters, so one Tanzanian visa covers the mainland and the islands alike.