Abstract

In Zambia and Tanzania, a generation of railwaymen is retiring. They are the workers who constructed the TAZARA railway, who labored alongside their Chinese counterparts in the 1970s to build a link from the landlocked Zambian Copperbelt to the Indian Ocean. In their youth they formed a cohort of “new industrial men,” who shared not only the promise of East African socialist nation-building but also the expectation of providing for families into their old age. As they now retire in the era of economic liberalism, they express feelings of loss and alienation as the state has failed to recognize their contributions. In the face of layoffs and pension payment delays, TAZARA workers mobilize individual and collective memories of railway building to seek both recognition and material security.