This is an explorative paper investigating the legitimacy of the Tanzanian post-independence regime from the struggle of independence to the current multiparty democracy era. The paper uncovers the dynamics of legitimacy of this particular African state. These dynamics when put in context can highlight in general the issues of political legitimacy of African regimes before, and in the current era of multi-party democracy and liberal open economic systems that many states in Africa adopted toward the end of the 20th century.
