Amil Shivji’s film Vuta N’kuvute (Tug of War), an adaptation of Mzee Shafi Adam Shafi’s classic 1999 Swahili novel, brings to the audience the hidden face of many revolutionary movements as we understand them today.
It is the face that creates space, the face that houses, and the safe space. It is the face where all the crap gets entrusted to, leaving the space very attractive for rats to come in.
Set in mid-20th century Zanzibar during a tumultuous period under British colonial rule, Shivji reveals what often remains hidden to those who set foot in Zanzibar today.
He shows an almost Arab-dominated lookalike society that conceals British claws within the interior architecture of class and ethnic divisions. These divisions echo, in unsettling ways, structures seen elsewhere that once plagued the island extensively.
The kind of architecture that made oppression the norm left behind a confusion of anger, especially among the residents of Ng’ambo, the Waswahili. Everyone felt its weight, yet few could clearly name where that anger should land.
The main characters, Denge and Yasmin, navigate both internal and external conflicts that lead to deeply meaningful character development.
Their journeys showcase the brilliance of both Mzee Shafi and Shivji: a careful look at a country’s critical moment through the lives of ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives whilst holding onto extraordinary dreams.
Whilst Denge dreams of a free Zanzibar for all, Yasmin’s dream is simply to be free. Together, their intertwined thirsts for freedom push the story arc towards a point of both fulfilment and astonishment for the viewers.
The unsung safe spaces
At the heart of all the conflicts—main and peripheral—that propel this story into the epic that it becomes, sits a key figure. She exists as space, as a holder, as the one to whom all bring their crap.
Mwajuma, a friend to both Yasmin and Denge, embodies a woman whose home becomes the meeting place for everyone to bring their crap or to leave it behind.
She is understanding without demanding explanation, and accommodating without asking for anything in return. She opens her home and leaves it open for all to come in, and so, inevitably, do the rats.
Mwajuma took me back to my early days of research on Li’ti Kidanka in Singida, where I came across a story of a house that once sheltered Mwalimu Julius Nyerere during the struggle for independence in Tanganyika.
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People from Singida Mjini spoke of a woman and her group of women who hid Mwalimu in a baibui, helping him move as a woman dressed in it. They did this for many reasons tied to his safety during what they described as a high-risk period.
Among these reasons was a lack of trust in the then paramount chief of Singida Mjini, who was seen as pro-colonial.
Watching Mwajuma in Vuta N’kuvute brought me back to that story I had once ignored, and left me wondering: how many Mwajumas have existed in history, never mentioned, because they dealt with what seemed like the non-important—the crap and the rats?
Mwajuma received Yasmin without questions, immediately jumping into housing her. Yasmin, an Indian girl from a background far better than Mwajuma—so it looks—is a slave of her circumstances, trapped within the rigid expectations of a conservative community.
Bearing the silent burdens
Her own mother is disgusted by Yasmin’s attempt to dare to try freedom. Mwajuma, who at first seems to have been shunned by Yasmin—once her childhood friend—reveals something history has only recently begun to unearth more clearly.
The oppressed black woman chooses grace towards those who belong to classes that look down on her, becoming the backbone and protector whenever these same people seek refuge.
Whilst Yasmin spends her time feeling sorry for herself, Mwajuma boldly gathers the broken pieces as though it were nothing. But what about Mwajuma? She is also Denge’s safest place, where he goes to rest and to be himself.
She becomes the space where he entrusts the most sacred parts of what he stands for—the literature he hopes will awaken his people and bring light to the cause he fights for.
She feeds him and offers her home as a meeting ground where the ‘men at work’ gather to discuss their ‘difficult’ ideas. She herself remains, in their eyes, clueless to these ideas, yet she absorbs the consequences of them.
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She faces the scary and intimidating visits from colonial police, the heartbreaking loss of Mambo, and the heart-wrenching arrest and imprisonment of Denge. But who picks Mwajuma’s broken pieces?
Perhaps the rats Mwajuma complains about—the pamphlets Denge leaves behind, meant to educate the local Swahili population—are not merely physical.
Historical class distinctions
Perhaps they are metaphorical, stretching beyond what she threatens—to set them all on fire. The fragments of Yasmin’s broken heart, after being rejected by her family, become one kind of rat.
The fear that comes with being associated with Denge, a wanted man, becomes another rat, whilst the looming presence of colonial authority, always watching, always ready to strike, is another still.
But rats are rodents—unwanted, meant to be exterminated. And so Mwajuma’s fate, both in the film and in history, remains what it is: present but invisible, necessary yet unworthy of recognition. Because who wants to hear about the stench of exterminating rats in a house filled with crap?
Shivji captures Mwajuma’s presence—both within this story and across history—in its raw, unsettling truth. Mwajuma shares in everything: the thrill, the fear, the grief of losing those who will later be remembered as martyrs of the revolution.
She stays behind to worry about those whom history will celebrate as heroes, and nurtures back to strength those who will one day be recognised for their contributions.
Like the woman in Singida who dressed Mwalimu in a baibui to protect him, or like Mama Daisy, who cooked for and housed Mwalimu and his delegations during TANU movements, these figures live within Mwajuma. Yet she does what is considered unimportant.
She keeps the crap—the very materials that could cost her freedom or her life—and deals with the rats that follow.
Unearthing the unspoken
Shivji’s film brings forth not only what is rarely spoken about in Tanzanian history—the layered presence of the British in Zanzibar—but also the Mwajumas of every critical moment in revolutionary struggle.
He places before us the many faces of women: those who cooked for ‘revolutionary men’, those who hid them, those who watched over them, and those who nurtured them back to life. These are the very men we celebrate, sing about, and take pride in.
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In this epic story of love, betrayal, and revolution, Shivji materialises the faces of unpaid labour carried by women throughout history—the crap they are given, and the rats that inevitably follow.
Through mid-20th century Swahili dress—kanga patterns, fabric textures—Shivji subtly exposes class distinctions within Zanzibar down to language. British ‘pureness’ is maintained through linguistic distance despite their reliance on a predominantly Swahili-speaking population.
Shivji uses these understated choices to reveal layers of racism and segregation that once plagued the island. The film’s classic texture is enriched by the sounds and lyrics of Siti binti Saad and others, echoing the long-standing connections between the Swahili coast and mainland Tanganyika.
This connection is seen not only in resistance against foreign oppression but also in moments of shared joy.
Scenes evoking early Swahili jazz, travelling between mainland and island, ground the film in a living, breathing cultural memory. Perhaps the real work of unearthing the Mwajumas of history lies not only in Shivji’s bold intervention, but in what must follow.
It lies in the willingness of others to take this further, to dig deeper, and to bring forward the unforgotten, the sidelined, the unspoken Mwajumas of our histories.
It is about creating a kimbunga—a storm strong enough to uproot what has dominated the surface so that the strength that carried everything can be revealed. Like the kimbunga evoked by Haji Gora Haji in the poem Kimbunga that Yasmin recites near the end of the film:
Kimbunga mji wa Siyu, Kilichowahi kufika Si kwa yule wala huyu, ilikuwa patashika Kimeing’oa mibuyu, minazi kunusurika Nyoyo zilifadhaika.
Halima Geuya is a Tanzanian creative writer and researcher. She is available at halimageuya@gmail.com. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.
