Tanzania: Union and Ujamaa (1961-1976) (continued)

The 1961-1964 Development Plan had been undertaken on the recommendation of the World Bank. The focus was on state projects to improve education, develop communications infrastructure and facilitate agricultural expansion. Trade and industry were to be left to private enterprise in the expectation that an economic laissez-faire policy would attract much needed capital investment (Chachage 2003).

In the immediate post-independence period there was a massive outflow of capital, both financial and human, as the greater part of the settler population immigrated. Independence had raised expectations, so these blows were coupled with demands for massive salary and wage increases and Africanisation based promotions. These demands were backed by waves of strike action (Chachage 2003).

TANU, for its part, had adopted a course of socialist development focused on the upliftment of the rural poor through the development of farming cooperatives; the capital for investment in agricultural development was to be generated by holding down wage increases for the urban working class. A series of legislative measures were rapidly implemented to place the trade union movement firmly under government control and to head off any further industrial action (Chachage 2003).

The agrarian-socialist development path adopted by TANU, called "Ujamaa" found its articulation in the Arusha Declaration of 1967. The key principles that were to underpin the policies and actions of the state were self-reliance, with a move away from dependence on foreign aid and even the discouragement of foreign investment, and African socialism. Here self-reliance meant the labour intensive development of agriculture, rather than capital intensive industrialisation. African socialism meant that development was to be directed top down by the centralised one-party state through a model that emphasized unity and consensus rather than dissent and debate. Financial enterprises, agricultural plantations, processing and marketing concerns and foreign trading firms were all nationalised (PBS Foundation Undated, Chachage 2003, Columbia Encyclopedia 2004).

At the centre of the Ujamaa programme was the drawing together of scattered rural communities into villages that would be sufficiently large to attain agricultural economies of scale and could act as centres for administration and the provision of state services such as education and healthcare. These villages were to form the locus of agrarian socialist development that could replace the failing agricultural cooperatives. The centralization of state power undertaken hitherto had replaced the rural people as decision makers in the cooperatives with bureaucrats; the result was a rising tide of graft, great economic inefficiency and the dissolution of democratic structures (Chachage 2003).

The intention was to cure this malaise by reviving democracy at grass roots level in the villages. This would decentralise decision making and lead to greater transparency with a corresponding reduction in graft. It was believed that each village could become a largely economically independent self-reliant production unit. The quest was for innovative use of traditional technologies with minimal capital investment. For this reason the emphasis was placed on overcoming illiteracy and the development of educational capacity (Temwende 2004, 2, Chachage 2003, History World undated).

The peasants, as it turned out, were not easily persuaded to move and the state found that the implementation of the programme required ever higher levels of coercion. These in turn provoked the usual forms of resistance characteristic of the disempowered; disengagement, tokenism of effort and sabotage. By 1976 about 80% of the population had been consolidated into 7 300 villages (PBS Foundation Undated).

Karume, who had survived two previous attempts to kill him, was assassinated in 1972; Talbot (2000) suggests that Babu may have been behind the slaying. Aboud Jumbe succeeded Karume to the Zanzibari presidency and set about reorganising the administration of Zanzibar, solidifying the grip of the ASP over the government (PBS Foundation Undated).

References

CHACHAGE, CSL 2003 "Globalization and Democratic Governance in Tanzania", Development Policy Management Forum, [www] http://www.dpmf.org/Publications/Occassional%20Papers/occasionalpaper10.pdf [PDF document, opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).

COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA 2004, Sixth Edition, "Tanzania", [www] http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101273670 [opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).

HISTORY WORLD UNDATED "History of Tanzania", [www] http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad23 [opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).

PBS FOUNDATION UNDATED "Tanzania Overview", [www] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/countries/tz/tz_overview.html [opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).

TALBOT, A 2000 "Nyerere's legacy of poverty and repression in Zanzibar" World Socialist Web Site, International Committee of the Fourth International, [www] http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov2000/zanz-n15.shtml [opens new window] (accessed 11 Mar 2010).

TEMWENDE, OK 2004 "Tanzania: A Political and Historical Overview", Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), [www] http://tanzania.fes-international.de/doc/bot-historical-overview.pdf [opens new window] (accessed 23 Feb 2010).