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Historical Memory and Intercultural Tolerance: Students’ Attitudes to the Colonialism-Born Minorities in Tanzania and Zambia
The evidence shows that the Tanzanian and Zambian university students representing the African by origin overwhelming majority of the countries' population are generally tolerant towards their compatriots of the non-African (European and South Asian) origins. However, the evidence also gives reason to argue that the level of tolerance among the Zambian students is higher than among Tanzanian. The examination of a number of factors that supposedly could lead to the Zambian educated youth's higher level of tolerance has shown that the most significant among them are those related to the two nations' history since the pre-colonial time, the memory of it, and the use and abuse of this memory by the post-colonial states. From the historical point of view the greatest essential difference between the two cases lies in the existence since pre-colonial time of the Swahili culture and language and of the minimal number of expansionist centralized polities on the contemporary state's territory as the background for autochthonous peoples' unity in Tanzania and lack of such a background in pre-colonial Zambia.