Paper short abstract:

Zambian students are more tolerant first of all because of the existence since precolonial time of the Swahili culture in Tanzania and lack of such a background for national unity in Zambia. Besides, the memory of this is consciously used and abused by governments for the sake of nation-building.

Paper long abstract:

The evidence shows that Tanzanian and Zambian university students representing the African by origin overwhelming majority of the countries' population are largely tolerant towards their compatriots of the European and South Asian origins whose presence in these states is a legacy of the colonial past. However, the evidence also gives reason to argue that, on the one hand, in both countries the perception of Europeans is better than of Indians and, on the other hand, the level of tolerance among Zambian students is higher than among Tanzanian. The aim of the paper is to find out why it is so; most attention is paid to the second, previously undiscovered (as to the papergiver's knowledge) phenomenon. The papergiver examines a number of factors that supposedly could lead to the Zambian educated youth's higher level of tolerance and arrive at the conclusion that the most significant among them is the existence since pre-colonial time of the Swahili culture and language at 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 till colonial period in Zambia. The ways the memory of these facts, as well as its use, abuse, exploitation, and dissection in the two states governments' ideologies and practices shapes the difference in estimation of the colonial past by the students and, through it, their vision of the present-day nations and the inclusion in, or exclusion from, them of the colonialism-born non-African minorities, are discussed.