Google celebrates Tanzania Mainland Independence Day
What you need to know:
- The Google brand name itself has been accorded a background of green with golden yellow on its right and left edges, which two of the four colours in the Tanzanian flag
Dar es Salaam. Google Tanzania has changed its Doodle to celebrate Tanzania Mainland’s Independence Day, December 9. The Doodle, which traditionally displays Google’s logo, has been altered to feature an animated Tanzanian flag waving continuously. The Google brand name itself has been accorded a background of green with golden yellow on its right and left edges. Yellow and green are two of the four colours in the Tanzanian flag.
Generally, Tanzania’s national flag features a diagonal black stripe outlined by slimmer bands of golden yellow on both sides. These stripes are bundled by one green triangle on the upper portion and one blue triangle on the lower portion of the rectangular flag.
The Tanzanian Independence Day’s Google doodle is exclusively visible to users in Tanzania. Tanzania Mainland gained independence as Tanganyika on December 9, 1961.
What is a Google Doodle?
A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures. The first Google Doodle appeared in 1998 and was meant to honour the Burning Man event in Black Rock City, US.
The fact that Google explained on its page that its Doodle celebrates the independence of Tanzania raised debate among some of the users.
One social media user whose comment was later removed from the support.google.com website said the Doodle’s display of Tanzania Independence Day was incorrect.
“History has to be referred to correctly. Today on Doodle, we are displaying Independence Day for Tanzania, which is not correct. Today is Independence Day for Tanganyika, not Tanzania. History has to be referred to correctly,” he posted.
The post is, obviously, part of the raging social media debate in the past couple of weeks about the real identity of the country whose independence is being celebrated today. While others claim today is the Independence Day for Tanganyika, others claim it is the Independence Day for the Tanzania Mainland since Tanganyika no longer exists. Official government statements indicate that today is Independence Day for Tanzania Mainland. The current debate definitely highlights the ongoing identity crisis of mainlanders, some of whom urge the return of the Tanganyika government that was transformed into the Union government on April 26, 1964. This is part of the long-drawn debate on the union structure, which gained momentum during the constitution-making process that was suspended in 2014.
Political scientist John Jingu, who also doubles as the permanent secretary in the ministry of health, argues in one of his writings that the structure of the union “will be a determining factor of the final outcome of the envisaged constitution.”
