Reinterpreting revolutionary Zanzibar in the media today: The case of Dira newspaper

For years, the official narrative of the Zanzibari nation imposed a specific conception of identity and citizenship built on a racial understanding of the Isles' history and the silencing of collective memories of violence perpetrated by the 1964–1972 regime. The democratization process of the mid-1990s allowed for the emergence of a critical public sphere which contributed to the public circulation of alternative national imaginaries and the resurfacing of clandestine collective memories. This paper explores the role of the press in the production and circulation of alternative narratives of the 1964 Revolution and its aftermath by focusing on a newspaper called Dira. It shows how issues raised by the newspaper's memory entrepreneurs engage with collective representations of belonging and the nation in Zanzibar.