Reel Pleasures. Laura Fair
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time to get tickets for upcoming shows or seek advice on which film to see. Black marketers had many friends, and if they had unsold tickets, they gifted them to those who would otherwise not be able to go. It was like the film Robin Hood, observed one black marketer: “We took only from the wealthy, redistributing cash and tickets to those of us who were poor.”27
Being a black marketer was a skilled job, and like projectionists, these men often learned their trade by watching others or working as an assistant to a professional in their youth. Kasanga began learning the trade when he was in the fifth grade. His school was next to the Cameo in Dar es Salaam, and at the time, the government was in the midst of one of many short-lived, futile efforts to curb the black market. Under the new rules, each patron was limited to purchasing ten tickets, so one of the black marketers enlisted some schoolboys, including Kasanga, to purchase tickets on his behalf. Since the boys were tipped generously for their efforts, Kasanga made a habit of helping the man out and learned from him when, where, and how to buy and sell. When he finished seventh grade, the highest level of schooling completed by most Tanzanians in those days, he took up the trade in earnest, buying and selling tickets on his own. For the next thirty years, that was his principal form of employment.
Black marketers needed to know more than just what seats to buy and how many tickets to hold; they also needed to know about films and stars and how to read trailers and film posters if they were to accurately gauge what they should buy or how much they could charge. Like most everyone in the industry, these men adored film and had been avid connoisseurs since they were children. But black marketers realized there was often a difference between their personal preferences in film and the tastes of the urban crowd. “You had to be skilled and knowledgeable to appreciate which ones would make for good business,” said Taday. “Just because it was a hit in America did not mean it would be a hit in this town. You had to know what people liked.” Dar es Salaam was the best market in the nation by far, and a serious black marketer there might hold two hundred tickets for various films at different theaters each week. Each show was a gamble, but skill allowed a man to hedge his bets. “Sometimes you would lose your money,” said Kasanga, “and on those days we would eat cassava [a cheap starch] without any fish. But other times you would win. Losing and winning was all part of the job. The most important thing was not to lose your capital. So long as you kept your capital safe it was all ok.”28 Typically, he added, he had most of his tickets sold before the day of the show. If not, on show day he went down to the theater, where people would fight to get their hands the few remaining tickets. Khamis preferred the presales to the frantic scrambles in the final minutes before the show; he recalled having to buy a new shirt after the debut of The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin (Patel, 1980) because the crowd outside the Avalon was so frantic for tickets that people tugged at him until his shirt was in tatters.29 Few men in Dar es Salaam had the honor of being fought over, and it was a testament to his knowledge and skill that he had tickets to such a popular show.
Anything the censors attacked or tried to ban also became an instant hit with the urban crowd and was likely to be a sure winner for black marketers. In 1949, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (Clowes, 1948) was banned by some but not all local censor boards in Tanganyika, resulting in specially organized bus excursions from one town to the next for fans anxious to see the banned gangster film.30 In the early 1970s, The Shoes of the Fisherman (Anderson, 1968), starring Anthony Quinn and Laurence Olivier, was banned, allegedly because the Chinese, who were then building the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) railroad in Tanzania, objected to the film’s portrayal of their regime. But somehow, Shabir, the manager of the Empress, was able to convince the censors to allow the movie to be screened for a charity show. He recollected, “Once the film had been banned, but not for the charity show, people went crazy to get tickets. The normal price of a ticket was ten or fifteen shillings, but the black-marketeers were selling them for one thousand shillings instead. Can you imagine? This was the early 1970s, one thousand shillings was a lot of money! Our eyes bugged out of our heads.”31 The charity did well with its sold-out show, but the black marketers did better yet.
James Bond films were also huge hits with the audience—and maligned by the censors, who found them to be crass Cold War propaganda. From Russia with Love (Young, 1963) was banned on the mainland and in the isles in 1964, but it was later released as From 007 with Love after extensive pressure from exhibitors and James Bond fans caused the censors to relent. Black marketers also scored, for nothing boosted a film’s popularity with urban crowds like the censors’ wrath. The following year when Goldfinger (Hamilton, 1964) was released, all the tickets were sold within hours, but before the film was screened, the censorship board banned it. Dar es Salaam was in an uproar. For more than two weeks, letters to the editor in the national press were filled with scathing attacks on the censors, making letters complaining about the black market for tickets seem pale in comparison.32
Black marketers operated independent of cinema owners and managers, but they shared many elements of the capitalist ethos that permeated the industry at large. For one, they strove to be the best at what they did and competed—in a good-natured way—against others in the business for the right to be recognized for their success. They also helped each other out in a bind. If someone lost all his capital, others would chip in to help him get started again. If another hit the jackpot, he shared with his fellow black marketers and other friends to celebrate the success. “If one of us won big we would all shout, ‘Hey, today he is going to slaughter a goat and feed us all!’” said Khamis, and rather often the man actually did.33 If a man was ill and could not get to the theater on the day tickets went on sale, others bought up tickets for him. If police came around and tried to interfere with sales, they all pitched in to offer a sufficient bribe or a few tickets to make the police go away. And on the rare occasion when a man landed in jail for dealing in black market sales, the others pooled their resources to bail him out and make sure his case never made it to court. Just how many men earned their livings selling black market cinema tickets during the colonial era is unclear, but published estimates put the figure at twenty to thirty. By the 1970s, according to men in the trade, there were six or seven known dealers in Zanzibar and nearly fifty in Dar es Salaam.34
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