Towards Socialism in Tanzania 9781487577902

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BISMARCK MWANSASU has taught at the University of Dar es Salaam and at Kivukoni College, Dar es Salaam, and is currently a regional development director in Moshi, Tanzania. He is co-editor with A.H. Rweyemamu of Planning in Tanzania: Background to Decentralization.

is a professor in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Toronto and author of The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945-68: Nyerere and the Emergence of a Socialist Strategy.

CRANFORD PRATT

Although Tanzania lacks many of the economic, social, and political resources often considered fundamental to socialist development, under Julius Nyerere's leadership the country has pursued a socialist strategy of development with remarkable persistence and energy. This volume, written from a wide range of perspectives by both Tanzanian and nonTanzanian scholars, assesses the success of the national effort. Specific topics include the role of the public sector, the efforts to promote a socialist pattern of agricultural development, and the role of the party. The viability of Nyerere's approach is a matter of continuing debate. Marxist scholars have become increasingly critical of Tanzania's ideology as well as its strategy. Non-Marxists, while acknowledging Tanzania's many special problems, continue to support the aims and strategies outlined in the Arusha Declaration. This book, which includes vigorous statements from both interpretive schools, provides unique access to the fundamental issues of debate on Tanzania's future. The volume concludes with an extended interim assessment of Tanzania's transition to socialism written from a democratic socialist perspective.

EDITED BY BISMARCK U. MWANSASU AND CRANFORD PRATT

Towards Socialism in Tanzania

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo

«) University of Toronto Press 1979

Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in paperback 1981 Reprinted in 2018

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Towards socialism in Tanzania. Includes index. 1. Socialism in Tanzania - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Tanzania - Politics and government - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Tanzania - Economic policy - Addresses, essays, lectures. 1. Mwansasu, B.U. 11 . Pratt, Cranford. HX448.5.A6T68 335' .009678 78-10350 ISBN 0-8020-2330-4 ISBN 978-0-8020-6433-2 (paper)

The photographs on pages 1, 17, 93, 167, and on the cover have been provided by the Tanzanian Information Services.

Contents

Preface vii Part 1 Introduction Tanzania's strategy for the transition to socialism 3 BISMARCK U. MWANSASU AND CRANFORD PRATT

Part 11 The role of government and its agencies Tanzanian political economy goals, strategies, and results, 1967-74: notes towards an interim assessment

19

REGINALD HERBOLD GREEN

Contradictions in the transition to socialism: the case of the National Development Corporation

46

IAN PARKER

Monetary institutions and class struggle in Tanzania JOHN LOXLEY

72

vi Contents Part m Socialism and rural development The debate on rural socialism in Tanzania

95

JONATHAN BARKER

Tanzania: from ujamaa to villagization

125

JANNIK BOESEN

After villagization - what?

145

ADOLPHO MASCARENHAS

Part 1v The politics of the transition to socialism The changing role of the Tanganyika African National Union BISMARCK U. MWANSASU

Tanzania's transition to socialism: reflections of a democratic socialist 193 CRANFORD PRATT

Contributors 237 Index 239

169

Preface

There has long been widespread international recognition that what is happening in Tanzania is of special interest. Some of the reasons for this are comparatively superficial. They relate to the attractiveness of the personality of Julius Nyerere, the president of Tanzania, his ability to articulate the objectives of his government in ways universally understood and very widely persuasive, and his willingness over the years to give time to explaining to the non-African world the aspirations of his people. Interest has also been generated by the moral integrity exhibited by Tanzania's foreign policy. The country has accepted damaging estrangements in its relations with major sources of foreign aid rather than yield to pressures to change its foreign policies on issues in which it feels basic principles are at stake. It has been the most consistent and the most effective of the African supporters of the liberation movements in southern Africa, while always being ready to pursue a peaceful transition to black majority rule if ever it appears that such a transition is possible. Tanzania as well has been one of the first of the poor countries of this world to realize that much can be learned from the social and development policies of the People's Republic of China and has also welcomed extensive capital and technical assistance from China. Nevertheless, it is Tanzania's commitment to socialism and the strategy by which it is striving to achieve a successful transition to socialism which are perhaps the most important reasons for the sustained international interest. The Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) committed itself to a socialist transformation of Tanzanian society in January 1967 when its national executive committee endorsed the now-famous Arusha Declaration. Since that date Tanzania has been pursuing - and continuously refining - a strategy by which it hopes to achieve this transition peacefully and with the full support of the whole society.

viii Preface

It is fair to say that for a number of years after 1967 most of the commentaries on Tanzanian socialism remained focused on the objectives being pursued and on the persuasive articulation by Nyerere of the major policies that were required. Only more slowly did detailed studies appear on the actual experience as these policies were implemented. There is by now quite a number of such studies, many of them emanating from social scientists at the University of Dar es Salaam. 1 More slowly again to emerge were any analyses and assessments of the strategy itself. 2 As these appeared they tended to carry the mark of the commitments of their individual authors, not at all a reprehensible feature or entirely an avoidable one, but nevertheless a feature to be aware of as this literature is read. To some commentators the record of performance to date is marked by sufficient success and demonstrates an integrity and seriousness of purpose such that, whatever the problems, Tanzania can surely be judged still to be in transition to a democratic and socialist transformation of its society. However, there are others who are critical of the various measures taken since 1967, feeling that they do not constitute a coherent strategy, nor one that is likely to achieve socialism. Others again have concentrated in particular on the role of the emerging 1 Amongst the most important of these are the following: Election Studies Committee, University of Dar es Salaam, Socialism and Participation: Tanzania's 1970 National Elections (Dar es Salaam 1974); Samuel Mushi, 'Revolution by Evolution: The Tanzanian Road to Socialism,' unpubiished PHD thesis, Yale University, 1974; Lionel Cliffe et al., eds., Rural Cooperation in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam 1975); J.F. Rweyemamu et al., eds., Towards Socialist Planning, Tanzanian Studies no 1 (Dar es Salaam 1972); C.K. Omari, Strategy for Rural Development (Nairobi 1976); and Lionel Cliffe and John Saul, eds., Socialism in Tanzania, I and II (Dar es Salaam 1972 and 1973). The African Review, a quarterly journal published by the East African Literature Bureau, has published a number of important studies, as has the Review of African Political Economy (London). The cyclostyled research papers of the Economic Research Bureau and the Bureau of Resource Allocation, Land Usage, and Planning of the University of Dar es Salaam are very rich sources of detailed research papers on various aspects of Tanzanian development. 2 Assessments of the overall strategy are included in the following: Mushi, 'Revolution by Evolution'; Cranford Pratt, The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945-68: Nyerere and the Emergence of a Socialist Strategy (Cambridge 1976); Justinian Rweyemamu, Underdevelopment and Industrialization in Tanzania (Nairobi 1973); John Saul, 'African Socialism in One Country : Tanzania,' in Giovanni Arrighi and John Saul, eds., Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York 1973); Issa Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania (London and Dar es Salaam 1975), and his earlier The Silent Class Struggle (Dar es Salaam 1973); and Reginald Green, 'Political Independence and the National Economy,' in C. Allen and R.W. Johnson, eds., African Perspectives (Cambridge 1970).

ix Preface political and bureaucratic elites and exhibit varying degrees of scepticism about the possibility that these elites can be the instruments of a socialist strategy. In April 1976 a group of some forty scholars gathered for three days in Toronto to discuss Tanzania's transition to socialism. We are grateful to the African Studies Committee of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto for sponsoring this conference. The participants included five Tanzanian scholars, a substantial number of Canadians who had worked in Tanzania, either at the university or in one or other of the government departments or agencies concerned with development, and a smaller number of American, British, and Scandinavian scholars who also had had extensive experience in Tanzania. Discussion on many of the papers continued after the conference. Some of them were then extensively revised and one paper, by one of the editors of this volume, was written de novo under the stimulus of the conference. The quality and usefulness of these papers has led us to prepare a selection of them for publication in this volume. We have added a first chapter that we hope will serve as an overall introduction to the papers that follow, in which we present an overview of the strategy for the transition to socialism that Tanzania has followed, and provide some indication of the debate that has taken place within the literature on that strategy. Each of Chapters 2 to 9 is written by a scholar with quite special claims to expertise relating to his particular themes. Each contributor writes from his own perspective. They include representative scholars of the major socialist tendencies that can be discerned in the contemporary literature on Tanzanian socialism. We have made no effort to select our contributors in order to give this volume a unified ideological viewpoint or to edit their contributions to that end. Readers will not find here the development of a single interpretation of Tanzanian socialism. They will find, however, effective expressions of a number of different interpretations, and they will experience the vigour and quality of the discussions in progress. We hope as a result that they will learn much that will aid them to acquire themselves greater insights not only into Tanzanian socialism but as well into the special difficulties that face any poor society determined to develop as an egalitarian, closely communal, and free society. Finally we wish to thank the Canada Council, the Canadian African Studies Association, the Department of External Affairs, the Ford Foundation, and the University of Toronto for their assistance to the confer-

x Preface ence on Tanzanian socialism. It is a long list for such a modest endeavour. Knowing that it is often harder for large organizations to consider small grants than substantial ones we are all the more grateful for their help. B.M. C.P.

Dar es Salaam and Toronto 2 July 1977

PARTI

Introductio n

BISMARCK U. MWANSASU AND CRANFORD PRATT

Tanzania's strategy for the transition to socialism

An active debate on Tanzanian socialism has been joined in the scholarly literature on Tanzania. It has developed with increasing intensity since the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) committed itself seriously to socialism in January 1967 when it endorsed a statement that has become known as the Arusha Declaration. This debate is not primarily over questions of fact; the activity of scholars has extended very much beyond an effort to present a detailed chronology of what is actually happening in Tanzania. A great deal of the interest arose because of the comparative uniqueness of the way in which Tanzania is seeking to accomplish a socialist transformation of its society, for the Tanzanian leadership hopes to achieve that transformation without coercion and with the co-operation of the whole society. Many search for clear indicators as to whether or not the Tanzanian leadership is in fact succeeding in these efforts and there is much speculation both about the relevance to Tanzania of socialist analyses developed in regard to other societies and about the lessons for other countries that can be learned from the Tanzanian experience. These are hardly the sort of issues on which agreement is easily reached. There are, moreover, features of Tanzania's transition to socialism that are bound to generate debate. The initial definition of socialist objectives in 1967 and the first major policy initiatives towards these objectives came very much from President Nyerere. In such a situation it is small wonder that there should be some scepticism that a transition to socialism so initiated could succeed. Another reason for controversy is that there has been little support in Tanzania, least of all from Nyerere, for the common Marxist proposition that a successful transition to socialism requires that a dominant role

4 Strategy for the transition to socialism be played by a vanguard party of an ideological elite. TANU has remained an open mass party and Nyerere has always been ideologically committed to democratic participation. This divergence of the Tanzanian strategy from the Marxist model provides another focus for sharp disagreement amongst the commentators on Tanzanian socialism. The ideological differences that divide and redivide these commentators are a further and separate cause of the debates within the literature on Tanzania. So influential are the ideological convictions of some writers that a few have felt themselves able on doctrinaire and a priori grounds to dismiss the whole socialist endeavour in Tanzania as being not 'really' socialist. Those who have been involved in African studies for a long time will be reminded by the writing of these doctrinaire socialists of how the research of some behavioural social scientists was marred by the rigidity of the theoretical apparatus that the less flexible of these scholars insisted on imposing upon African experience. The same can now be said of a too easy or too rigid transposition of the theoretical apparatus of other intellectual traditions, including in this particular instance that of the several different traditions of socialist analysis. This has led us to the view that the most useful introduction to this volume would be a straightforward exposition of the Tanzanian strategy for the transition to socialism and of the reasons that appear to explain why this strategy is pursued. We must first establish the legitimacy of the meaning attached to the word 'socialism' by the Tanzanian leadership and, by extension, ourselves in this introduction. Charles Taylor, a leading Canadian political scientist and socialist, has suggested that it would be wisest simply to define socialism as the public ownership of the means of production. 1 Such a simple definition has its advantages. It would mean, for example, that 'socialism' would not become merely a discriminating word of praise to be used by sensitive individuals about social and economic systems of which they approve. It would involve a recognition that socialist economies can combine with unattractive social structures and with oppressive political institutions. Such a recognition would be a good thing. It is better, we think, to face directly that there are authoritarian and bureaucratic options within the socialist tradition rather than to turn aside from a recognition that these options exist by claiming, whenever they appear, that they are not 'really' socialist. Nevertheless, in the Tanzanian context, and surely more widely as well, additional content must be given to a definition of socialism if it is to be brought into line with popular usage. There are some who would

5 Bismarck U. Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt define socialism in such a way as to exclude both the Tanzanian experience since 1967 and Nyerere's writings on socialism as irrelevant to 'real' or 'true' socialism. For example, David Williams, in an article on law and socialism in Tanzania, writes: 'class analysis and the economic basis and ideological superstructure analysis derived from Marx must be applied to the Tanzanian scene before one can argue whether or not the law is socialist. No law or policy is socialist unless the socialist, or at least a national democratic, class alliance is in control of the state.' Issa Shivji is equally categorical that there can be no socialism unless the state is under the leadership of 'the correct ideology and [the policy) implemented by a party of politically committed, ideologically sound and trained cadres.' 2 There are also writers who come close to arguing that Tanzania cannot be in transition towards socialism because there is missing from the Tanzanian scene one or another of the features that these writers and the tradition within which they write have already decided are essential prerequisites. For some the essential prerequisite is the abandonment of the market as a central mechanism in the economy, for others the destruction of the bourgeois state, for still others the introduction of rule by the proletariat, and for others, again, the creation of the dictatorship of the proletariat or, in the absence of any substantial proletariat, rule by what Shivji recurrently calls the proletariat ideology. In our view it is not clarifying to structure a discussion of Tanzania's transition to socialism in this way. Words do not have essential meanings; their meaning is embedded in the usage they receive. Too often an argument that a word like 'socialism' or a phrase like 'the transition to socialism' really means something else, involves what is called a persuasive definition - that is, an effort to attach to a word or phrase that generates a wide and positive popular r_esponse a meaning that would bring it into line with an ideological position, in order thereby to attach to this allegedly essential meaning of the word the positive emotional responses generated by the word in popular usage. It is important that words open to this sort of abuse should be used, in any serious discussion, in ways that are consistent and in ways that reflect a widely accepted usage of the words in question. With that as a guide, the choice for anyone writing about socialism in Tanzania is really between two alternative definitions of socialism, each representing a rather different socialist tradition and each therefore intellectually legitimate but useful in quite different ways. One definition would focus upon the class that is in a dominant position in the state,

6 Strategy for the transition to socialism arguing that the state is in transition to socialism only if that class is the proletariat and if that proletariat has come to see that its interests and the interests of the whole society require a continuing pursuit of the class struggle. The other definition would focus on the policies of the state rather than the class prominent within it. The state would have a society in transition to socialism if that society were deliberately reshaping itself along more egalitarian and more participatory lines and were promoting co-operative and non-acquisitive motivations amongst men and women in their economic and other interrelationships. We prefer the second of these two definitions. We are close to the tradition out of which it emerged; it is consistent with one of the major popular usages of the word and it is by far the closer of the two definitions to the meaning the word receives in Tanzania. However, as we have just suggested, the alternative definition is linguistically and intellectually legitimate and several contributions to this volume in fact attach to socialism a meaning far closer to that alternative definition than to our own. The existence of this basic disagreement about the meaning of socialism inevitably complicates any discussion of 'the transition to socialism' in Tanzania and arguments which result frequently reflect that basic disagreement far more than they do any disagreement about the Tanzanian experience. Tanzania is now a single-party state, though with significant democratic features built into the structure of the Tanganyika African National Union. 3 Tanzania is also a republic with an executive president. Nevertheless, the governmental structures inherited from the British have not been dismantled. The government continues to be divided into functional ministries, each headed by a political minister. Most ministers are elected members of the National Assembly and together they constitute the cabinet which, under the chairmanship of the prime minister, formulates government policy. The civil service retains many of the essential features of the inherited system: for example, the Treasury is still by far the most powerful ministry and the Ministry of Manpower Development is still responsible for a wide range of staffing matters throughout the civil service. Some politicization of this structure has occurred: civil servants have been encouraged to join TANU; there is now a territorial network of politically appointed regional and area commissioners; and there is some movement of senior persons from the bureaucratic hierarchy into political posts. But the machinery of government remains

7 Bismarck U. Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt very similar in its basic organizational forms to that of other governments that have followed the Westminster model. As is well known, in January 1967 TANU committed itself in its Arusha Declaration to the socialist transformation of its society. Since that date this commitment has been a central determinant of government policies in Tanzania. Nevertheless, it can hardly be denied that Tanzania is an unlikely country in which a transition to socialism could take place. It is poor; its per capita annual income does not exceed 1200 Tanzanian shillings ($150). Its people are predominantly rural; in 1967 only 610,000 of its total population of nearly 11.5 million lived in towns of a population of ten thousand or over. Many Tanzanians are only tenuously involved in the money economy and subsistence farming is still the basis of existence for a majority of the population. There is but little landlessness in the rural areas and the rural stratification that has emerged has generated severe class tension in only a few districts. Neither is there an urban class basis for a strong socialist movement; for example, there were only 383,000 workers in non-agricultural employment in 1974. Many of these workers are firstgeneration urban dwellers who are not easily organized into solid and enduring organizations. African participation in the middle and senior ranks of the civil service was still very low in 1961. In that year only 26 per cent of these posts were held by citizens. The proportion thereafter dramatically increased until in 1971 over 94 per cent of the twelve thousand persons in senior and middle grade positions were citizens. African participation in the modern economy in jobs requiring managerial, entrepreneurial, or technological skills was very slight indeed in 1961 and has improved but slowly. This comparative weakness of the African middle class no doubt eased the popular acceptance in Tanzania of the Arusha Declaration for a stronger modern bourgeoisie could have been expected to organize against it. However, this weakness of the salary-earning middle class has also meant that socialist initiatives have been much harder to accomplish successfully because experienced high-level Tanzanian personnel has been in such short supply. This shortage has also meant that Tanzania has often had no choice but to negotiate with foreign corporations and national and international aid agencies for the skills and technology it needs for its own economic development. The transition to socialism will be difficult for a further reason. Tanzania cannot expect the transition to be facilitated by rapid economic development; there are few known natural endowments and there does not

8 Strategy for the transition to socialism appear to be much likelihood that any major new resource will be discovered to transform the economy. The economic growth that has occurred has taken place largely within the patterns of trade set in colonial times. Tanzania's main economic activity beyond subsistence farming involves the production for export of a small number of tropical agricultural products, cotton, coffee, sisal, and cashew nuts being the most important. Since independence the government has tried to promote import-substitution industries and the partial processing of some of the major exports. However, even by 1974 the industrial output was contributing only 10 percent of the gross domestic product. The political obstacles to any significant advance towards a more egalitarian and more participatory society have also been very great in Tanzania. It is widely agreed that the commitment to socialism in 1967 and the particulars of the strategy followed in the years immediately thereafter were very largely the consequence of the developing thought of President Nyerere. There were few socialists in Tanzania. TANU was an open mass party with but little unifying ideology and was, as an institution, weak and ineffective. There was no radicalized peasantry, only a very weak proletariat, and hardly any radical intellectuals. TANU had won independence for Tanzania swiftly and with comparative ease. There had been no radicalizing experience of guerilla warfare or even a deep estrangement from either Western capitalism or from Britain and other major Western powers. Moreover, TANU in 1961 inherited a government system in which the middle and senior ranks of the bureaucracy received salaries set at British levels. Once these posts had been Africanized there thus emerged an African bureaucracy which was very well rewarded in comparison to the living standards of most Tanzanians. Despite the fact that this commitment to socialism in 1967 has been very much a product of Nyerere himself, the middle and senior ranks of both the government and the party did not rally in any solid and organized way against it. There were some rumblings of discontent but little open opposition, and no covert, organized efforts to confound it. A number of diverse factors explain this. Africa had witnessed in 1966 a series of coups against the civilian regimes which had come to power in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Everywhere the popular reaction to these coups suggested a profound disillusionment with the displaced civilian political leadership. The first rulers of independent African states had advanced their own narrow selfish interests for far too long. They had been authoritarian; they had been unresponsive to popular needs; and they had been venal. Their countries acclaimed their departure. Tendencies in

9 Bismarck U. Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt this sort of direction were still slight in Tanzania but they had begun to appear. Nyerere's pressure upon the Tanzanian leadership to draw closer to the people, to shed its capitalist aspirations, to accept living standards more appropriate to a country as poor as Tanzania, to commit itself to the building of a socialist society struck deep responsive chords within the Tanzanian masses. The widespread popularity of the Arusha Declaration amongst Tanzanian workers and peasants no doubt helps to explain the absence of any strong counter-revolutionary tendencies within the middle and upper ranks of the bureaucracy and the party. But it is not the whole explanation. Nyerere had in fact correctly judged that these men and women were not estranged from national objectives. They might dislike the restrictions placed upon their earning opportunities but they also accepted the justice of these restrictions. They were in almost every case 'first-generation' members of the middle class and they were well integrated still in the peasant society from which they came. Moreover, they were Tanzanian nationalists; they had rallied to support Nyerere during the crises that had occurred in 1965 and 1966 in Tanzania's relations with Britain over Rhodesia and with West Germany when the government of the federal republic sought to insist that Tanzania should refuse to permit an East German consulate to be established in Dar es Salaam. Finally, they saw the ease with which middle-class civilian regimes had been swept aside in a number of West African countries where the middle class was vastly stronger than it was in Tanzania. For all these reasons they stayed with Nyerere and supported his policies. Although Tanzania in 1967 was a society without many of the features that might be expected in a society embarking on a transition to socialism, it was nevertheless also a society in which there was a general disposition to be receptive to these initiatives, and there were no powerful classes committed in opposition to them. Nyerere's objective was to move this whole society under its existing leadership towards a more communal, more egalitarian, and more participatory society. From the beginning Nyerere and TANU categorically rejected the idea that most of the existing leadership, as it was not socialist, would have to be replaced or severely restrained. They also rejected the idea that the party would need to become a vanguard party, consisting of an ideological elite, which would move Tanzania rapidly towards socialism on behalf of the masses who might at first not recognize that these changes reflected their true interests. This whole approach had few supporters in Tanzania.

10 Strategy for the transition to socialism It is centrally important to recognize the variety of considerations that explain why the idea of the vanguard party never won favour in Tanzania. One reason, certainly, is that the idea is alien to TANu's own image of itself, indeed its awareness of itself, as a mass movement, representative of the whole nation. This national and representative quality was the key to its strength during the political struggle for independence. It remains important to the continuing integration of the Tanzanian society. Moreover, many of the men and women in middle- and senior- rank positions of responsibility within the party were bound to see the idea of a vanguard party as a threat to themselves, for it was clear that the young and radical proponents of the concept were anxious to cleanse the party of the less ideologically sound members in order to replace them with specially trained people. One of the few advocates of a vanguard party, Nyelwa Kisenge, for example, suggested that there should be different grades within the cadres of the new TANU, with access to these grades being dependent upon educational attainment and ideological soundness.4 Another consideration explaining the rejection of the concept of the vanguard party was the judgement that TANU in 1967 did not in fact have the option to become a vanguard party. It was a large and amorphous national movement. There did not exist an ideological vanguard within it that could begin to control and reshape the party. The advocates of a vanguard party were few in number and of little political force. Indeed, the most persuasive amongst them were expatriate lecturers at the university. Implicit to their position was the immediate strategy that if Nyerere could be convinced of their viewpoint then his popularity could be exploited to sustain popular support for TANU throughout the period in which the few reliable socialists in Tanzania would undertake the training of cadres of ideologically sound men and women who could then constitute the core of a transformed TANU. Nyerere rejected this whole approach: 'Where are the leaders of full-scale socialism? We cannot go full speed in socialism. It would make us adventurers and opportunists not revolutionaries.' Such was Nyerere's judgement when the issue was raised at the first annual TANU conference following the Arusha Declaration. 5 The details of the strategy by which Nyerere and TANU in 1967 hoped to move Tanzania towards socialism are now well known. 6 The main features in the initial years were:

11 Bismarck U. Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt 1 An important emphasis on achieving greater equality during the transition to socialism. Severe income differentials generate economic aspirations that cannot in fact be met except for a tiny minority; the existence of such inequalities creates animosities that undermine the unity of the society and destroy its harmony. 2 Greater popular participation in decision-making. This participation was judged to be necessary in order to check abuses of power. Nyerere could not conceive of a people being coerced into socialism. Socialism would come as the people embraced socialist values. Tanzania is a single-party state but TANU was seen as a representative mass institution, not as an ideological vanguard. In ideal terms, TANU would speak for the people not because its leaders had a grasp of an ideology that embodies the true interests of the people but because it was in fact a widely representative structure. 3 Greater self-reliance. This objective was at first inadequately identified. It was intended to check a tendency within the Tanzanian government to feel that no development effort was possible save with foreign technical and capital assistance. It was not a call to xenophobia or a rejection of foreign aid. However, it was an assertion that Tanzanians had to look primarily to their own efforts if their poverty was to be lessened. 4 A socialist environment. In the transition to socialism a social and economic environment had to be created that would be likely to generate socialist values and to discourage an aggressive upsurge of possessive individualism. 5 Continued economic development. Although never articulated as a specific feature of the strategy, it was implicit within it that there would need to be sustained economic development so that the masses would experience perceptible improvement in their living standards. It was recognized that if this was not achieved continued mass support for TANU during the transition to socialism would be very unlikely. This objective was thus a direct corollary of the commitment to democratic participation as a feature of the transition to socialism. Within the first several years after 1967 the direct policy implications of this overall strategy were quickly articulated over a broad range of economic, social, and political matters. These policies can be presented under these headings:

12 Strategy for the transition to socialism 1 Economic measures. In February 1967, almost immediately after the pronouncement of the Arusha Declaration, the government of Tanzania, in the course of one week, nationalized all the private banks, the major food processors, and eight major foreign export trading companies and announced its intention of securing majority control of six major manufacturing companies and of the sisal industry. Although this gave the government full control of the commanding heights of the economy, there have been important further nationalization measures. In 1970, for example, a presidential directive stated that all import and wholesale trade should come under the control of the State Trading Corporation within a year. As a result the corporation, which had controlled 20 per cent of Tanzanian imports and 10 per cent of exports in 1969, was by the end of 1970 directly importing 75 per cent of Tanzania's imports. In the same year the government nationalized all residential and commercial accommodation valued at more than 100,000 shillings and not occupied by its owner. The decision was also taken that development planning could not be left to teams of foreign economists who would spend only one or two years in Tanzania. The effort then began to build up an effective group of Tanzanian economists and administrators who would be able increasingly to impose upon the institutions of the government the discipline of sustained socialist planning. At the same time the long struggle began to develop the appropriate network of public institutions through which to manage the economy effectively. Prominent amongst the economic institutions that have become important are the National Development Corporation, the main agency through which the government has played a direct role in the manufacturing sector, the National Bank of Commerce, which is the state-owned successor to the foreign banks nationalized in 1967, and the State Trading Corporation, which has had major responsibilities in regard to importing and wholesale trading. 2 The promotion of equality. Adherence to a strict leadership code was required of all senior party and government officials. No leader was to hold shares in a private company, to be a director of a private company, to receive more than one salary, to rent housing accommodation to others, or to employ others to work for him. Incomes of senior and middle rank civil servants were cut by from 5 to 20 per cent. Many of the perquisites of high office such as highly subsidized housing were abolished or lessened and a major effort was made to bring the salary levels in the newly nationalized sector into line with those in the public ser-

13 Bismarck U. Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt vice. Finally, much greater emphasis was given to policies that would lessen the existing sharp inequalities in the distribution of public services among the regions of Tanzania.7 3 Education for socialism. Formal political instruction was extended to many senior functionaries of both the party and the government in an effort to make them aware of and sympathetic towards the basic commitment to socialism that the party had determined upon in 1967. Gradually, under Nyerere's probing, the Ministry of Education began a broad process of revision to the whole public school system, hoping thereby to eliminate elitist components of the heritage left by the British and to develop curricula and life styles at the schools more appropriate to a socialist society. 4 Rural transformation . The best known and most dramatic component of Tanzania's socialist strategy was the emphasis on the transformation of the countryside through the development of ujamaa vijijini (socialist villages). Throughout most of Tanzania the typical form of peasant cultivation had always been that of the individual peasant, living and working on his separate holding. Nyerere saw this as a barrier to social and political development. As long as the peasants remained isolated in this way and distant one from each other, Nyerere argued that it would be harder to reach them with schools, with political education, and with the other agencies of development and socialist mobilization. The scattered pattern of rural living was also seen as a barrier to economic development. Nyerere was convinced that much modern farming technology could not be introduced on small peasant holdings - at least, it would be much harder to introduce it there than it would be under arrangements that, in one way or another, consolidated into larger blocks of land the holdings of numbers of peasants. Finally, individual peasant farming was seen as a barrier to the spread of socialism, as being likely to inculcate personal acquisitiveness, to undermine communalism, and to generate rural inequality. For all these reasons, Nyerere identified as a goal of the greatest importance, that the peasants must be persuaded to leave their scattered holdings, to move into villages, and, increasingly, to farm communally rather than individually. 5 Greater participation . Initiatives to promote wider citizen participation were numerous in the early years after 1967. Elections were introduced into the party along lines similar to the national parliamentary elections.

14 Strategy for the transition to socialism A major decentralization of government was introduced in 1971 in order, in part, to facilitate greater local participation in the planning of local development projects and in their implementation. National elections under the 1965 constitution, which provided an important measure of democratic participation within the framework of a single-party system, were held in 1970 and in 1975, each time reinforcing the popular commitment to these elections and thereby entrenching them ever more firmly into the emerging political culture of Tanzania. 6 The creation of a socialist environment. Many of the measures already identified had as part of their rationale the creation of a social environment in which a greater sense of communal responsibility would naturally emerge. This is true of the ujamaa villages, the actions to limit income inequalities, the measures to increase citizen participation, the introduction of the leadership code, and the efforts to transform the environment of the schools. It is true also of other initiatives not yet mentioned, such as the efforts, beginning in 1969, to introduce workers' councils at industrial work places and the robust call in the party declaration, Mwongozo, for the abandonment of authoritarian-styled relationships between manager and employee in public and private enterprises. Underlying all of these and similar initiatives has been the desire to create an overall environment in which individual aggressive acquisitiveness would be checked and co-operative activities and socialist values encouraged. This introduction is intended merely to set the stage for the more detailed studies that follow. However, even this setting of the stage requires more than an identification of the components of the strategy by which TANU hoped in the late 1960s to promote a socialist transformation of its society. This strategy was followed at a time when much seemed to conspire against its success. The terms of trade shifted markedly against Tanzania as indeed they did against many Third World countries. The soaring price of petrol and, with petrol, of chemical fertilizers, was a further and major burden on the Tanzanian economy. Then, in 1973-75, Tanzania experienced two successive years of severe drought and was in consequence forced to import grains at a vastly higher level than ever before. Each of these factors was exogenous, each was unrelated in its origin to Tanzanian socialism; yet each was damaging in its consequences to that socialism, particularly as Tanzania was attempting to promote it along participatory and democratic lines. Tanzania today is undeniably a

15 Bismarck U. Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt somewhat beleaguered society. Its economy is hard pressed, its political and bureaucratic leadership over-extended. The shifting terms of trade, the price of petrol, and the drought make it difficult to assess the progress that Tanzania is making in its effort to build a democratic and socialist society. It is difficult to decide to what extent the problems presently facing Tanzania can be attributed to this trio of exogenous factors and to what extent they must also be regarded as a consequence of the socialist strategy being pursued by Tanzania. Many commentators, including President Nyerere, acknowledge that the economic difficulties being encountered are not merely the results of outside factors. Important policy errors, deep-rooted cultural attitudes that are widespread amongst both the masses and the bureaucracy, grave shortages of skills and of capital, and the authoritarian inclination of many TANU officials have each made the transition to socialism in Tanzania more difficult. Yet the Tanzanian dream of a society that is free, harmonious, equal, and developing is a compelling one and the Tanzanian effort to make a reality of that dream is surely of the widest interest.

NOTES

1 Taylor, 'Socialism and Weltanschauung,' in Leszek Kolakowski and Stuart Hampshire, eds., The Socialist Idea: A Reappraisal (New York 1974), p. 47 2 Williams, 'Law and Socialist Rural Development,' East African Law Review, v1, 3 (1975), p. 210; Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania (London and Dar es Salaam 1975), p. 109 3 T ANU merged with the Afro-Shirazi Party of Zanzibar in 1977 to form a new single party for the whole of Tanzania, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (cCM). As the period covered by the contributions to this volume entirely precedes the creation of the ccM, all of the contributors refer throughout to TANU rather than to the new party. 4 Kisenge, 'The Party in Tanzania,' Maji-Maji, Dar es Salaam, no 4, Sept. 1971 5 Majadiliano ya Mkutano Mkuu wa TANU, Dar es Salaam, 27 Feb. to 3 March 1967, col. 106 6 See footnote 2 in the Preface for a list of some of the best-known expositions of this strategy. 7 A fuller discussion of the egalitarian thrust of Tanzanian policy is provided by Reginald Green in Chapter 2 below.

REGINALD HERBOLD GREEN

Tanzanian political economy goals, strategies, and results, 1967-74: notes towards an interim assessment

Our own reality - however fine and attractive the reality of others may be - can only be transformed by detailed knowledge of it, by our own efforts, by our own sacrifices ... AMILCAR CABRAL

A man who has inherited a tumbledown cottage has to live in even worse conditions while he is rebuilding it and making a decent house for himself. In the same way Tanzania has to accept the existence of problems which are created by the very fact of trying to convert the colonialist and semi-capitalist economy we inherited into a nationalist and socialist economy. JULIUS NYERERE

The dominant mode of investment and production in Tanzania is now socialist. About 80 per cent of large- and medium-scale economic activity is in the public sector, which generates about 44 per cent of monetary gross domestic product (GDP) . On the order of 80 per cent of monetary fixed investment is in the public sector or by contractors working for it. 1 The private, directly productive sector is in most cases controlled by public sector marketing and credit institutions even more than by government regulations. This is especially true of private agriculture and commerce, which account for about 43 per cent of monetary GDP or almost four-fifths of the private cash sector.2 A substantial public sector is, of course, only the beginning of a transition to socialism. This essay seeks to provide an overview of the major ways in which Tanzania is seeking to

20 Political economy goals, strategies, and results achieve a socialist transformation of its political economy. This overview is quite explicitly in terms of Tanzanian objectives.3 It makes no attempt to postulate alternative objectives and its criticisms relate to inconsistencies or weaknesses in pursuing Tanzanian goals. 4 The basic goals of Tanzania's political economy are articulated through the party (TANu). 5 Their more detailed application and implementation have centred on the public sector (including the parastatals). For present purposes these goals can be grouped into four clusters: 6 (a) transition to a participatory, decentralized socialism; (b) overcoming absolute poverty and achieving greater equality in individual purchasing power and in access to public services; (c) restructuring the national economy to achieve a more balanced structure of production and use, greater national economic integration, and a higher degree of economic autonomy in relation to the international economic system; (d) growth of productive force levels and allocation patterns adequate to provide a real resource infrastructure for sustained progress in respect of the preceding goal clusters. The first of these four goals will be the subject of detailed discussion by other contributors to this volume. This paper will therefore concentrate in turn on each of th~ other three, seeking to identify the ways in which these goals are in fact being pursued and to assess the progress made. As a prelude to this endeavour, some sense of the general economic and political strategy of the Tanzanian leadership is needed, particularly at the operational level. The key feature of that strategy in practice is that TANU and the government concentrate attention on what they identify as immediate contradictions or obstacles. This strategic approach is necessarily sequential; priority attention cannot be given to all problems at once. Moreover, which problems pose basic contradictions at any particular time depends on external factors, on general internal developments, and, especially, on which contradictions have already been tackled. For example, issues of parastatal organization and responsibility and of worker participation could not sensibly have been given priority attention until the public, directly productive sector was dominant; the issue of moving the capital to Dodoma only came to be a central issue after a more general dynamic of decentralization had been initiated; universal villagization, which became a central objective of rural development policy late in 1973, was not a plausible short-term goal until the government was able, at least minimally, to make some provision in rural areas for education, health, pure water, and agriculture and until decision-taking had been decentralized sufficiently that villages could both affect and benefit from decisions about these local needs.

21 Reginald Herbold Green Flowing from this concentration on the resolution of immediate contradictions, there are two distinguishable approaches to change: structural, involving radical alteration of policies and/or institutions, and incremental, involving the consolidation of policies already begun within existing institutional and policy frameworks. The former are usually associated with the first stages of tackling a major problem and the second with following through on structural changes or with the interim handling of an area not seen as ripe for structural change. The two approaches are complementary: incremental change is necessary to reap the benefits of structural change and to rectify initial errors of detail as well as to provide temporary stopgaps for problems whose basic resolution must be postponed; structural change is needed to alter frameworks, to raise levels of potential, and to renew the possibilities open for consolidating changes. A specific example may make the distinction clearer. The various- not particularly effective - measures to control and tax private landlords prior to 1971 represent stopgap incremental measures; the Acquisition of Buildings Act in 1971, by which the government nationalized all accommodation of a value of 100,000 shillings or more that was not owner-occupied, was a structural change; the 1972 Housing Bank Act and the 1974 Workers and Peasants Housing Fund Act were rather large incremental changes seeking to move from the base created by the abolition of landlordism to a more positive assault on the housing problem. TANU (or more recently ccM) has normally been the institution that has decided which are the immediate contradictions that must be tackled. The implementation of these decisions, including the formulation of legislation and the creation of institutions, policies, and programmes, involves a far higher technical input, which the party is unable to provide. TANU does not view itself as a parallel government. It takes the political decisions (not all, of course, at a strategic level), mandating their articulation and implementation to the government, and monitoring their results. The scarcity of technical manpower and the desire to keep TANU politically alert, creative, and responsive, rather than to allow it to become a parallel bureaucracy much more technically and much less politically oriented in style and thought than it now is, militate in favour of this de facto division of labour. This division persists even though, at times, it has led to political decisions which were far less clear than might have been the case had there been a prior technical input and which were far harder to interpret and to articulate because there was no effective official participation when the political decisions were taken.

22 Political economy goals, strategies, and results A further feature of the Tanzanian economic and political strategy is the belief that concentration of effort and the creation of a new situation are often critical to securing broad breakthroughs. Bureaucracies normally administer what exists and make marginal changes within it much more readily than they devise major changes. In this, the Tanzanian bureaucracy is no exception. On the other hand, once major changes are ordered, some civil servants, managers, and planners are quite able to devise responsive and creative ways to promote these changes because they accept the new guidelines as changing the terms of reference within which they operate. For example, until the 1969 presidential New Year's Eve speech, adult education was treated as a secondary element associated with standard formal education or as special, rather artifactual, adult literacy projects. The 1970-74 buildup to 75,000 teachers and 3,400,000 class enrolments (on a front far broader than pure literacy and far more mass-oriented than the old urban extramural programmes) would not have taken place without the political decision to demand mass results. Because of the way in which most strategic programmes begin, they often require modification in operation. In itself this need not involve high costs or long delays - the initial decision in 1967 to nationalize over a hundred grain mills was rapidly dropped once it was realized that 90 per cent of these were of minute size. Indeed 'beginning big' may be the only way to learn. For example, the weaknesses of the initial management agreements used in implementing nationalization were not likely to have been identified by any pre-operational technical study. Nevertheless enthusiastic, 'simplified,' and ill-prepared major changes - for instance, of the 1974 villagization campaign in some regions - have been costly, economically and socio-politically. Costs of this kind are more likely under the Tanzanian strategic approach; they must be weighed against the failure to overcome inertia and to achieve any serious dynamic of development which is likely with pure incrementalism. Tanzania's leadership-and especially the president - have believed that a key requirement of development is to secure an adequate pace of change in approximately the right direction. They have known that such a pace of change is very difficult to achieve. This means that periods of overall consolidation - as opposed to consolidation in particular fields - have been notable by their near-total absence since I 966; slowing down is seen as more dangerous than maintaining levels of strain on institutions and personnel which are recognized as dangerously high. The importance attached to an overall momentum has meant, as well, a

23 Reginald Herbold Green considerable willingness to alter direction marginally or, if a policy is seriously off course, even drastically, but much greater reluctance to suspend action altogether on any major front and virtually no willingness to contemplate either a standard economic retrenchment programme or even a temporary reversal away from major goals. The 1974 strategic decisions to raise low wages and producer prices sharply, pass on cost increases, maintain real investment levels, step up educational development, seek a way out of the food-fuel crisis by production increases, and seek foreign finance to cover the inevitable interim deficits were squarely in this pattern. The risks and costs of retrenchment, which would lead to the loss of the development dynamic built up since 1967, were seen as at least as high as the risks and costs which these decisions might bring. It was stated above that this paper would concentrate upon the policies that have been developed to pursue three clusters of socialist objectives: the overcoming of absolute poverty and the achievement of greater equality; the restructuring of the economy; and the promotion of productive capabilities and allocation patterns necessary for the sustained progress of socialist development. Each of these will now be examined in turn. OVERCOMING POVERTY AND PROMOTING EQUALITY

Overcoming absolute poverty and achieving greater equality in individual purchasing power and in access to public services can be viewed in terms of three basic components: (a) measures designed to increase the living standards and quality of life of low income workers and peasants with special attention to ujamaa villages and to villagization more generally; (b) income distribution measures including wages and salaries and prices policies, taxation, and access to public services; and (c) reduction of opportunities for exploitation and for the conspicuous display of inequality. 1 Reducing and removing severe poverty - both materially and in broader human terms - has been a real, operative goal (as well as a slogan) in Tanzania from the founding of TANU. Articulation of a set of measures appropriate to this goal, however, dates largely from the year 1967. The measures fall into two parts relating to what President Nyerere has described as the citizen's two purses-his personal consuming power and his access to publicly provided services. Ujamaa villages and villagization combine these two strands. Other instruments normally operate on

24 Political economy goals, strategies, and results one or the other of these strands with a progressive fiscal policy as the underlying link. Urban minimum wages were raised by about 250 per cent in money terms and about 100 per cent in real purchasing power between 1961 and the middle of 1974. In 1974 they were 340 shillings a month - the highest in East Africa. Over the period 1965-73 urban employment rose about 6 to 7 per cent a year (parallel to urban population growth) so that the purchasing power gain is evidence that urban poverty was less severe in 1974 than in 1961. Indeed the very rapid increases in demand for meat, sugar, wheat flour, low cost shoes, roofing sheet, beer, tea, cigarettes, and textiles over the period 1969-74 is in itself clear evidence that lower income groups were gaining greater ability to consume. Rural minimum wages rose by about the same percentages, but from a lower base justified by the greater ability of rural workers to grow food or to buy it at rural prices. However, rural minimum wages really apply only to plantation and construction workers. They are not directly relevant to the broad peasant base of the rural sector which today includes about ten million people as contrasted with perhaps three million wage earners and their dependants (including plantation workers) and one million non-agricultural self-employed and their families. Accurate data are not available but it is likely that average peasant incomes were at best static over 1961-66 and rose relatively more slowly than real wages over 1966-74. Adjusting for food and housing costs, it appears that about 30 per cent of peasants in 1974 had consuming power equal to or greater than that of the minimum wage earner, another 30 per cent had consuming power that was between two-thirds the minimum wage and the minimum wage itself, and the remaining 40 per cent had less than two-thirds of the consuming power of the minimum wage earner. This significant gap was widened further by poorer access to education, health, water, and transport and by the fact that some 85 per cent of the peasants lived in tiny hamlets or isolated homesteads, a factor which severely limited the community life aspects of welfare. Alternative estimates for 1969 show a broadly similar ratio of minimum wage to peasant consumption power. They suggest a pre-tax differential of 5 or 6 to 1 between the average wage/salary earner and the average peasant income. A related study suggests that over 1967-73 the rural/urban terms of trade changed relatively little, a conclusion that is borne out by urban food price indices.

25 Reginald Herbold Green The use of higher grower prices to raise real rural income has not proved practicable because it would usually entail massive subsidies (or surplus losses) and/or inflationary pressures. Grower price setting has tended to be ad hoc and not flexibly related to any coherent set of national and rural sector aims. The year 1974 did see a set of increases clearly based on peasant income protection7 but with that year's drought its effectiveness was limited in the areas most affected, even when backed by sharp increases in free food distribution. Provision of advice, physical help, and credit have been the main lines of peasant income-boosting measures. However, until the creation of the Rural Development Bank in 1971, very little credit went to food-crop growers or to really poor peasants. Equally, until the 1969-70 full-scale launching of the ujamaa programme, extension services and other aids to rural productivity were de facto concentrated on farms of an above average size, usually growing an export crop, with little attention to small food-crop growers who sold any marginal surpluses above their own consumption and who were particularly subject to recurrent drought problems. Government concern to increase access to public services was increasingly concentrated on achieving universal provision of a whole range of basic services: primary education, adult education (not simply literacy), preventive and simple curative medical facilities, pure water, access to transport, and decent housing. The latter was somewhat special in that the occupier was expected to pay rent or use loan funds to build. Nevertheless by 1974 the thrust of the low cost National Housing Corporation houses, the site and service schemes, the regional training units, and the Workers and Peasants Housing Development Fund was clearly towards treating low income housing as a priority, albeit one in which capital and credit had to be recovered directly from the user. 8 The other mass services were - by 1974 - all free. Piped urban water, in contrast, was seen as an amenity and the charges for it were heavy in order to subsidize free, urban, kiosk-water in low income areas. In 1974 TANU demanded the achievement of universal primary education within three years. With primary school enrolment in 1973 barely over 50 per cent of the age group, a 100 per cent target by 1977 was highly ambitious. However, there were immediate results. Sharp increases in enrolment and a new in-service teacher training programme have begun to facilitate expansion. In 1976-77 the enrolment in the initial year of primary school had virtually doubled the 1971-72 enrolment. If, therefore, the 1977-78 goal is taken to mean 100 per cent enrolment in

26 Political economy goals, strategies, and results the first grade in that year with 100 per cent enrolment to be achieved for grade v1 by 1983-84, the goal may indeed nearly be met. The 1970-74 emphasis on adult education did not achieve its 1975 target of 100 per cent literacy. However, the adult education budget quadrupled to over 70 million shillings in the Ministry of Education alone, enrolment grew at least tenfold to about 5 million in 1975-76, and literacy by 1976 was at least 60 per cent as compared to some 25 per cent in 1967. Official estimates of over 80 per cent literacy for Tanzanians above the age of six are almost certainly overly optimistic but radical change has been achieved, with the literacy rate being raised from an approximate 20 per cent in 1961 to about 60 to 65 per cent in 1976-77. Problems, of course, do remain. Neither the development of life-oriented and work-oriented education appropriate to the Tanzanian context nor the retraining of teachers to present it is an easy task, but some notable successes have been achieved. For example, the 'Man Is Health' mass education campaign led to demonstrable changes in health habits and in particular to a massive increase in the construction and use of pit latrines.9 Another objective of major importance, which was also specified in 1974, was the provision throughout the rural area of a supply of pure water by the early 1990s. The decision underlines its importance, the target date its daunting cost. The plan is somewhat behind the 1970-90 schedule but the programme's size has grown rapidly and by 1973 for the first time the probable number of new recipients of pure water (300,000-350,000) equalled or exceeded the growth of population. 10 Reorienting health to mass rural needs did not gain momentum until 1971 even though it was mentioned in the 1969-74 plan. By 1974 the targets for rural health centres, paraprofessional personnel for villages, and increased preventive programmes had become central. The health budget had risen sharply and the major hospital share in it had fallen from 80 to 50 per cent. In practice, access to low level curative facilities was fairly good - the typical rural Tanzanian used the health service at least annually and the wage worker several times. However, the allocation of drugs and manpower between the apex consultancy and city hospitals and the mass urban and rural clinics and health centres was still very heavily skewed towards the former, albeit less so than in most poor countries and less also than in Tanzania in 1971. Ujamaa villages and villagization have four sets of goals: socialism and participation, communalism, effective access to services, and enhanced production. Resource allocation is directly relevant to achieving the latter two and to creating incentives for local efforts to attain the first two.

27 Reginald Herbold Green As of 1974 resource provision and rural response was much more effective in respect of basic services - primary and adult education, pure water, curative and preventive health - and of communication than in respect of production. Production gains and losses in basic food and industrial crops probably about cross-cancelled. Real advances were evident only in those new secondary crops, and in the dairying and workshops which had been introduced from the start in a communal framework. There was also progress in village participation in the creation of small-scale infrastructure including roads, water supply, irrigation, and - less frequently - storage, housing, and afforestation. Major resource allocations were made to ujamaa over 1970-74. In 1973-74 education, health, water, extension, credit, seed, fertilizer, public works, and related goods and services supplied to ujamaa villages probably totalled 350 million shillings. Because the items were scattered in ministerial, regional, and parastatal recurrent and capital budgets the degree to which ujamaa was backed by resource allocations, and the rural infrastructure and human capacity (knowledge, health) of the villages built up, is often grossly underestimated. 11 2 Achieving a more equal income distribution has been a basic goal in Tanzania. Somewhat peculiarly it has never been planned in a comprehensive way. Nevertheless, because of the very great concern for this objective by decision takers - especially by the president and two successive ministers of finance - it has been embodied in a broad array of institutions and measures. Indeed by 1974, taking together wages and salaries policy, price control, the recurrent budget, agricultural (grower) prices, and the Workers and Peasants Development Fund, Tanzania had been particularly effective in achieving greater equality in incomes, in personal consuming power, and in access to public services. The rapid progress towards a socialist mode of production helped to make the wages and salaries policy effective. Only very small-scale employers could avoid paying the minimum wage. Wage and salary policy was used - almost uniquely in sub-Saharan Africa - to achieve a massive narrowing of the ratio of pre-tax top public sector salaries to the minimum wage. In 1961 the ratio was 70 to 1, 33 to 1 in 1966, 15 to 1 in 1974. Differentials by skill, experience, responsibility, and (decreasingly) historic accident remained rather wide but these, like the extreme ratios, were being deliberately narrowed - not without complaint in some cases from still relatively low paid workers who have sought to defend differentials by challenging others' increases as well as asking more for themselves.

28 Political economy goals, strategies, and results Until 1974 the public sector salary scale had been frozen since 1966 following reductions in 1966 and 1961. The official policy was for the top to 'stand still' until the gap was significantly narrowed. Until 1971 rapid promotion and low price increases (2 to 3 per cent annual average) meant that individual salary earners usually had modest increases in their real consuming power despite the fixed scales and an increasingly progressive tax structure. Despite the growing gap between their incomes and those of their counterparts in Kenya, Zambia, and (more contentiously) the East African Community, the vast majority of the public sector salariat, as I observed its members, accepted this policy and its results as a fair contribution to egalitarianism and national development. However, after 1971 serious tensions began to arise. 'Standing still' came to mean sinking swiftly in terms of purchasing power. Promotion slowed as many cadres became almost totally 'citizenized.' World inflation swept into Tanzania, pushing the cost of living climb to something more like a 10 per cent annual average. While many civil servants and managers maintained high morale and complained more of hard times than of public policy, others, ironically especially recent university graduates who had earlier asserted their radical socialism, were far more vehement and attacked the egalitarian policy itself. When data demonstrated that the purchasing power of the income of many senior salary earners had fallen by 20 to 25 per cent between 1971 and 1974 and that it was likely to fall another 20 to 25 per cent the party and government appear to have agreed that some general increases were justified. However, the decision was merely to limit the fall in private purchasing power, not to maintain it in full. The 197 4 salary increases (15 per cent at the bottom, 6 per cent at the top) were thus a moderate incremental adjustment, not a structural shift away from egalitarianism. The minimum wage was increased from 240 to 340 shillings a month. A lower salary recipient's wage rose from 1000 to 1150 shillings and a very senior official's from 3750 to 4050 shillings. After income tax the net increases were respectively 100, 120, and 100 shillings per month. Relative differentials have thus continued to be reduced. The wage and salary policy was paralleled by an increasingly progressive tax system. By 1974, income tax began just above the minimum wage level and rose rapidly to marginal rates of 95 per cent though with a 75 per cent average income tax ceiling on earned income. Indirect taxes were not levied (for practical as well as income distribution reasons) on unprocessed foods or maize meal and rates were differentiated to bear

29 Reginald Herbold Green Table 1 The incidence of taxation in Tanzania, 1969

Annual income (in shillings)

Urban 0-999 1000-1999 2000-3999 4000-7999 8000-24,999 25,000 and above

Individual Other taxes income tax (as percentage of income)

Total taxes

A.

1.7 7.1 15.7 28.9

Rural (including 40 per cent non-cash income) 0-999 1000-1999 2000-3999 4000-7999 2.0 8000-24,999 12.9 25,000 and above 21.4

16.3 18.7 23.0 23.5 27.8 20.8

16.3 18.7 24.7 30.6 43.1 49.6

9.5 10.6 12.0 13.2 12.7 26.2

9.5 10.6 12.0 15.2 25.7 47.5

23.6 11.7 14.2

39.9 12.9 18.8

B.

c. Total

Urban Rural Combined

16.5 1.2 4.5

Source: adapted from Yukon Huang, 'Distribution of the Tax Burden in Tanzania,' Economic Journal (March 1976)

more heavily on amenities (such as beer, soft drinks, cigarettes) and luxuries (imported consumer durables and spirits). Treasury calculations suggested that indirect taxes were progressive up to an income of about 30,000 shillings beyond which point the income tax ensured continued progressivity. The maximum spread of post-tax purchasing power in the public sector, adjusting for both direct and indirect taxes, was about 9 to 1 in mid-1974, down from SO to 1 in 1961 and 25 to 1 in 1966. Two independent studies seeking to allocate tax incidence and to adjust income to include self-consumed production have concluded that the fiscal system was redistributed significantly both in terms of income and from urban to rural areas. Table 1 shows the incidence for 1969.

30 Political economy goals, strategies, and results A further part of wage and salary control was the control of fringe benefits, which were significantly curtailed. For example, charges for public housing provided for civil servants were related to income, with rents set at 7½ per cent of income for low salary levels, 10 per cent at middle levels, and 12½ per cent at high income levels. Salary earners still received more benefits than minimum wage earners - in leave, housing, transport, medical attention - both absolutely and relative to their incomes. However, the proliferation and escalation of such benefits was halted. No doubt, as socialist values spread and as inflation hits the lower wage earners, the fringe benefits that remain will be more severely resented. However, the objective fact is that their monetary significance has declined. Prices policies were radically reorganized and strengthened in 1973. The Price Commission was reasonably successful in holding margins constant, cutting exorbitant ones, and delaying increases in cases in which profits seemed excessive. With rapid world inflation and high cost food imports, the commission has not been able to prevent rapid price rises but has probably made them slower and more orderly. It also halted the 1971-73 pattern of widening wholesale and retail margins. The commission was required to pay attention to cash flows and to the generation of surpluses for investment. It had especially to concern itself with manufacturers and importers or wholesalers with heavy stockholding, storage, and distribution investment needs. Neither broad state subsidies nor slashing investible surplus (which comes to nearly the same thing as the cost of investment finance would then largely fall on the budget) were seen as appropriate ways to hold prices down. The combination of major price increases in late April 1974 with wage and salary boosts a few weeks later illustrates both the desire to avoid using price control to undermine enterprise viability and the rising degree of coordination among income policy instruments. 12 Progress in egalitarianism is not seen in Tanzania as something which can be switched on and off. In 1973 there was a major confrontation between Parliament seeking to protect elite interests from further tax erosion and TANU's national executive, led by the president, over the first national Income Tax Bill. The actual impact of the provisions of the bill on the elite would in fact have been slight but the issue was seen as one of principle. Parliament, faced by the president with the choice of reversing itself or fighting an election on the issue of egalitarianism, backed down. Similarly, as was noted, in 1974 the sharp price rises forced by world inflation and drought were almost fully compensated for in mini-

31 Reginald Herbold Green mum and low wage increases but far less than covered by the 6 per cent (pre-tax) higher wage and salary boosts. 3 Opportunities for exploitation have been reduced primarily by a progressive expansion of the directly productive public sector, by salary controls, and by a leadership code that prohibits private business activity by public servants. These policies have been effective. However, smallscale exploiters, especially in retail trade, low income landlordism, small-scale employment, and rural elites, have been less effectively curbed. Ujamaa and development villages and participation at district and regional levels should undermine local elite manipulation of marketing, agricultural input supply, and land allocation. However, while progress has been real it has also been slow. Large numbers of individually small acts of exploitation are hard to control and large numbers of efficient small-scale public sector units are hard to develop. However, it is these 'petty' exploitations that are most directly felt and seen as exploitation by poor workers and peasants. The diagnosis of the leadership, which is surely correct, is that this exploitation can be checked only as political consciousness increases. In 1971 the government introduced stringent controls on the purchase of private passenger cars. These controls were occasioned by popular reaction to the conspicuous display of inequality which the private use of cars was seen to be. These controls are consistent with Tanzania's egalitarian objectives and the desire to achieve Tanzanian - not imported - standards of behaviour and consumption. Equally, they should increase the pressure for serious attention to public transport development. Two other areas which raise parallel issues are the private health and education sectors. Because both sectors were small and appeared to supplement overburdened public services, they were regulated to seek to ensure value for money but otherwise were not radically constrained until the decision in 1976 to begin phasing out the commercial private health sector. The potential problem of a self-perpetuating salaried elite has attracted little attention because the late start and rapid growth of African opportunities in this field have guaranteed that most salaried Tanzanians have come from low income worker or peasant families. With the passage of time and the appointment of more and more citizens to high level positions, the danger may become an immediate contradiction in the 1980s. It is in this context that a parallel private educational sector (including tutors) poses the most serious problems. 13

32 Political economy goals, strategies, and results RESTRUCTURING OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

The restructuring of the national economy can be examined under three components: (a) attaining greater national economic integration through widening and deepening economic linkages within Tanzania; (b) achieving a greater basic balance between what is produced and what is used; and (c) building patterns of international economic relationships characterized by greater equality between Tanzania and the foreign party, by greater Tanzanian freedom of choice, and by more room for Tanzania to defend its own interests. 1 National economic integration is critical to raising production and to ensuring that the forward and backward linkage effects of particular activities are captured in Tanzania and not dissipated abroad. This has been recognized and is being pursued at every level of economic activity. For example, as part of the decentralization programme, the effort is being made to encourage peasants with only marginal cash incomes to grow food crops for sale within Tanzania. In addition the government is seeking ways to bring smaller towns and villages into non-agricultural production. Smallscale production in urban areas is increasingly linked to government support and to parastatal marketing units. However, at the village level more has been said than done and successes are largely individual special cases; they are not part of any general trend. The evaluation of micro-level projects has become more oriented to linkages. The tentative steps towards an industrial strategy taken in 1974 during the intra-government discussions on the next five-year plan have provided a framework into which the work at the project level can fit. During the period 1972-75 most new projects were concentrated on consumer goods with low import content (textiles, sugar), pre-export processing (sisal twine, leather, cashew nut processing), paper, and metal products (bicycles, scrap smelting, light engineering, basic iron and steel). They therefore fit into this strategy of enhancing internal linkages and reducing external dependence. Since 1969 a majority of major new plants have been sited outside Dar es Salaam but the distribution of large-scale production units is still highly uneven and only slowly becoming less so. 2 A basic balance of goods produced with goods used - as opposed to the colonial/peripheral economy pattern of cash production dominated by exports and cash purchases dominated by imports 14 - has been pursued

33 Reginald Herbold Green somewhat haphazardly since 1961 and with increasing articulation and clarity since 1969. In the case of basic consumer goods and of construction materials, the policy has progressed quite far and has interacted with national economic integration. By 1974 about 75 per cent of the broad-market consumer manufactured goods consumed within the country were produced in Tanzania in contrast to perhaps 25 per cent in 1961, with a direct import content of under 15 per cent of ex-factory value. In respect of both integration and balance, the political will has tended to outrun the analytical capacity. The result has been a melange of policies and projects broadly in the right direction but inadequately integrated with each other and with some glaring micro-errors. So long as the general thrust appeared to be correct and the analytical basis for a more systematic approach was lacking, these areas were not seen to pose immediate contradictions. The emergence of somewhat clearer Tanzanian-based analysis, greater exposure to the Chinese approaches, and the clear need to expand production rapidly to escape from the 1973-74 crisis, have focused more attention on economic structures and linkages. This has had a clear impact on the overall planning goals for 1976-81 and on the tests applied in planning particular policies and projects. It is worth underlining that from 1967 onward Tanzania has not only pursued an inward economic strategy but has had no serious advocates of a development strategy that would rely on the export sector as its leading sector. Attention was still paid to exports, as rapid inwardoriented development required higher levels of imports, even if they were a falling share of GDP. More exports were therefore critically important if Tanzania was to avoid excessive dependence on external investment or aid. Export development to meet planned foreign exchange requirements remains an area in which Tanzania lacks a systematic approach and has a poor performance record. A critical area relating both to national economic integration and to national economic autonomy is high and middle level manpower development planning. The basic thrust has been to secure Tanzanian ability to fill top level posts and to build up middle level cadres. Failure to do the former would entail continued foreign operational control of the economy, whoever formally owned particular tangible assets, and failure to achieve the latter would entail either a slow pace of change or the unbearable political and financial costs of importing expatriates in large numbers. This aspect of Tanzanian development planning - despite errors of detail - has been a major success. Citizen high level manpower rose from

34 Political economy goals, strategies, and results a total of 500 in 1961 to 5000 in 1971, to about 8000 in 1974, and to nearly 12,000 in 1977. The number of expatriates in government rose absolutely from 4500 in 1961 to 5000 in 1971 but fell to 3500/ 4000 in 1977 and will be perhaps 1000/2000 in 1981. Technological manpower has posed special problems but, even so, by 1974, 99 per cent of all posts existing in 1961 could have been held by Tanzanians. Middle level manpower development and the articulation of paraprofessional cadres to serve small-scale and especially village needs have progressed more slowly. This is partly because the requirements are less homogeneous and less clearly delineated and partly because fewer relevant training programmes exist abroad which can be imported and adapted. Further, such programmes are less prestigious. The Institute of Development Management at Msumbe is a glaring example of attempts to substitute duplicative high level programmes for much more critical and unique middle level ones. However, the Co-operative College, the National Vocational Training Programme, and several aspects of the Adult Education, Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Agriculture training programmes demonstrate that a broadening base is being built up, is being allocated more resources, and is gaining increased prestige. Institutions devoted to the acquisition and adaptation of knowledge have been developed less rapidly because the building of staff training institutions was perceived as a higher priority. Tanzania began to experiment with local institutions and local consultancy teams from 1970 onward, in an effort to develop a local competence in applying administrative, organizational, and commercial theories and practices to the solution of Tanzanian problems. The transition to national institutions with specialized expatriate inputs, replacing the foreign consultant team or firm, is clearly in progress. In technology the possibility of a greater degree of self-reliance in the short term has (for very evident objective reasons) been slower to develop. Bits and pieces of research in agriculture, medicine, engineering, and industry do exist but there is still no co-ordinated planning regarding the copying and adaptation of processes and innovations developed elsewhere, regarding applied research, or regarding limited innovation and the selective tackling of more basic research. A 1971 National Research Council effort proved premature and a technology consulting parastatal was not created until 1976. 3 International economic equality and greater national autonomy has been pursued by the acquisition of assets and the manpower to operate them,

35 Reginald Herbold Green by building up bargaining capacity, by a diversification of external economic relationships, and by insisting that more satisfactory relationships could and would be achieved even at the cost of temporary losses. The acquisition of assets and the buildup of Tanzanian capabilities are a pre-condition for fully credible negotiations on behalf of national interests. Tanzania has a clear strategic preference for negotiation not confrontation - 'argue don't shout' to cite the title of a presidential memorandum. But firm, informed negotiation is not easy from a base of little data and less experience and while still relying upon technical cadres that are largely expatriates. It is not surprising that mistakes have been made. What is more significant is the growing awareness of the need to relate negotiating tactics to goals and the need to give a high priority to the development of negotiating capacity. Tanzania has demonstrated an ability to learn from both relatively successful and relatively unsuccessful experience. The same errors are not constantly repeated. Tanzania has sought to diversify its trading and investing partners and its sources of capital assistance in an effort to broaden its freedom to manoevre and to make its bargaining credible. Evidence of actual alternatives strengthens the Tanzanian hand in negotiations about trade or about technical or management contracts, in discussions about resource transfers, and in resisting foreign political and economic pressures. Export markets, import sources, technical and investment partners, and sources of resource transfers have now become highly diversified. This contrasts markedly with Tanzanian dependence on Britain in 1961 (or even 1965). By 1974 significant capital assistance came to Tanzania from China, Sweden, the World Bank Group, the Netherlands, Canada, Federal Germany, the United States, Norway, Denmark, and, in some years, Italy. Technical assistance also came from many of these sources and, in addition, United Nations agencies were also of substantial help. New private management and joint venture involvement in the public sector was directed to Japanese, Italian, Indian, Pakistani, American, and German sources more than to British and most former British private investment passed into public enterprise hands with little or no residual British management involvement. A clear preference has emerged for dealing with 'middle level powers' or, perhaps more basically, for dealing with countries (and their firms and individuals) who do not act with the self-centred attitude of assertive, interventionist superiority Tanzania associates with 'great powers.' China is not an exception to this preference - it has never acted as a

36 Political economy goals, strategies, and results 'great power' in respect of Tanzania. China has been an exception to the general pattern of diversification so far as resource flows are concerned because of the special and very large requirements of the Tanzania-Zambia Railroad. That situation is not seen as permanent. TanzanianChinese economic relations will remain close but the 1970-73 pattern in which over 50 per cent of net resource transfers to Tanzania came from China is most unlikely to continue. Tanzania has a hardly surprising preference for dealing with countries it believes sympathetic to its basic goals - China, the Scandinavian countries, and to a slightly lesser degree Canada and the Netherlands are examples. However, this cannot be read as a preference for any socialist partner over any social democratic or capitalist partner. A socialist mode of production is not Tanzania's only goal and, in respect of other goals, the Soviet Union and the CMEA members have not had particularly good records. Moreover Tanzania has not found it easy to negotiate valuable trade or aid programmes with them. In part, this may reflect neo-Western institutional and negotiating patterns on Tanzania's side, but the contrast with Tanzanian-Chinese economic relations suggests that the main causes are more basic and relate to trade and international policies of the European socialist countries.15 This has led Tanzania to a mixed strategy in respect of multinational resource transfers. As alternatives to concentrated dependence on the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Federal Germany, and Japan, the World Bank (rnRo) and the United Nations Development Programme are enthusiastically welcomed despite a resentment of their tendency to act as platonic guardians and despite distinct, particular disagreements with the IBRo's procedures and UNor's slowness and erratic competence record. Tanzania's relative success in pursuing a more independent international economic policy really rests on the political attitudes which the Tanzanians have brought to these negotiations. They see as vital, progress towards greater autonomy and equality in Tanzania's international economic relationships. If they cannot be attained in particular cases then no deal is possible, vide the breaks in aid relationships at varying times with Federal Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and (de facto) the Soviet Union, as well as the numerous 'unsuccessful' negotiations with companies. Trade and resource transfers are acceptable if Tanzania gains on the micro-deal and if no major barriers are created to progress towards national goals. Bargaining is possible within that frame but not outside it.

37 Reginald Herbold Green Progress towards greater economic autonomy is tempered by one further consideration. Mass support is critical to the success of Tanzania's socialist strategy. However effective might be the political mobilization of the masses, the continuance of that support is dependent in the long run on the ability of the party to deliver a persistently increasing flow of basic benefits to workers and peasants. Diversification and the restructuring of the economy have therefore been subject to the requirement that they must not cause massive short-run dislocations. It is no accident that an inability of the State Trading Corporation to operate its new purchasing and management structures well enough to get basic goods to shops in 1971-72 and the mishandling by the National Milling Corporation of grain purchases led to immediate and drastic short-term corrective measures and to far-reaching reforms of the institutions therri~elves. These failings of the STC and the NMC were likely to thwart the whole socialist momentum of policy by making it appear to workers and peasants that socialism was leading to incompetence and deprivation. This approach can work. Nationalization, the appointment of citizens to top positions, and the separation of private business from public sector posts have prevented the emergence of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie with interests attuned to maintaining a dependent economic system. National goals have been clearly enough articulated to provide an alternative frame of reference for Tanzania's negotiations. Neither process is complete - the argument that Tanzania is as coherently nationally-oriented and as little influenced by foreign standards as China or Sweden is a gross overestimate but so is the claim that no basic differences exist in these respects between Tanzania and Kenya or Nigeria. A MORE AUTONOMOUS NATIONAL ECONOMY

The growth of productive capabilities and allocation patterns adequate to achieve progress towards the elimination of severe poverty, the achievement of greater equality, and the development of a more autonomous and self-reliant national economy is the final component of the Tanzanian strategy to be discussed in this paper. Tanzania's leadership has realized the distinction between growth and development and between purely material development and national development at least since the 1966 reappraisal of the first five years of independence. Growth, allocations, and efficiency are central, not peripheral, issues. To cite President Nyerere: 'The purpose of society is man; but in order to serve man there must be a social organisation of economic activities which is conducive

38 Political economy goals, strategies, and results to the greater production of things useful for the material and spiritual welfare of man. This means it may well be a function of society to organise and sustain efficient economic organisation and production techniques even when these are in themselves unpleasant or restrictive.' 16 The level of pr.oductive forces, as measured in constant price gross domestic product, was on a 5 per cent annual growth trend over the period 1964-73. The 1973-74 drought and the disastrous shift in the terms of trade over 1973-76, which cut the real value of GDP by a tenth, could have caused a sharp fall in the trend if bridging external assistance had not been secured. The increased emphasis on key production targets and the direct and indirect payoff of recent policies relating to income distribution, institutional human investment, and physical infrastructure should cause a gradual rise to a 6 to 8 per cent trend. The years 1975-77 saw a return to a 5 per cent growth trend (about 4.5, 5.5, and 6 per cent in the three years) but as this includes a recovery element it does not demonstrate any achievement of a breakthrough. Equally, the increases of between 6 to 8 per cent in food output for 1975, 1976, and 1977 do not yet demonstrate a breakthrough in rural productivity because each of these three years had average or better weather. The serious dimensions of the 1974-76 crisis, however, should not be downplayed. Per capita GDP was rising about 2½ per cent a year over 1967-73 but up to one per cent a year was lost through terms of trade shifts. With both domestic savings and public service spending rising faster than GDP, the margin for higher personal consumption was and is very narrow. The exogenous causes of economic difficulties in the period 1974-76 hit the personal consumption levels of ordinary citizens and thereby threatened an essential component of Tanzania's strategy to achieve a peaceful transition to socialism with majority support. In agriculture the growth of production was barely acceptable and quite inadequate to cope with the very considerable variations in weather. Over 1964-72 the average annual rate of growth of food production was between 2½ and 4 per cent, though none of the estimates that have so far been made are terribly reliable. The 'best guess' growth rate is about 3 per cent a year - barely above population growth. That of industrial and export crops was little, if any, better. This led to serious problems which have yet to be solved : (a) basic food supplies cannot be sustained for two consecutive years of bad weather without the crippling use of foreign resources and/or unduly heavy dependence on aid; (b) dietary improvement is limited by production or import capacity especially in relation to dairy products, meat,

39 Reginald Herbold Green sugar, and wheat; and (c) export earnings are not adequately buoyant to support a rising proportion of import requirements even in the context of a domestic market-oriented strategy and a steady cutting away of amenity and luxury imports (down to under 5 per cent of the total by 1974). The need for better performance is clearly seen; the institutional mechanisms (including ujamaa and villagization) are identified and under construction. The technical inputs on the one hand and the development of participation on the other are not proceeding equally well. Even the return to the 1961-72 trend, while it has overcome the immediate crisis, leaves a major constraint on both sustained growth and national development unless and until the higher 1975-77 growth can be sustained over a period that includes years of bad weather. The egalitarian fiscal policy has been paralleled by overall increases in the ratio of tax and tax-like revenue to GDP. From perhaps 15 per cent of monetary GDP in 1961 these revenues rose to about 20 per cent in 1966 and to 32½ to 35 per cent in 1974. Domestic savings were pushed up to somewhat over 20 per cent of monetary GDP (about 17½ per cent of total GDP) in the early 1970s. 'Pushed up' is an accurate representation as about one-third of the savings in 1973 derived from operating surpluses of parastatals, over a tenth from taxation and the state provident schemes, and about a fifth from private savings mobilized through the public sector financial institutions. Another eighth represented owneroccupied housing and increases in herds or non-monetized farm improvements. The privately controlled share was thus between a fourth and a fifth and was subject to significant regulatory mechanisms. The basic fiscal and financial mechanisms for mobilizing potential surpluses for public sector services and investment exist and function with relative efficiency despite a variety of weaknesses in detail. However, in 1974-75 savings fell significantly. This relates to lower private savings and to a smaller government surplus because of the increased food imports necessitated by the drought. At a more basic level, however, it also reflects the shift in the terms of trade. Domestic savings cannot be realized in actual investment if foreign exchange is not available for import content. Thus a negative shift in the terms of trade forces down achieved savings as well as actual investment. The period 1975-77 saw a recovery in savings paralleling but less marked than that in GDP growth and food production. As cited in the previous sections, allocation of the surpluses once collected is in accordance with national goals. The mechanisms of allocation

40 Political economy goals, strategies, and results and the issues and trade-offs to be resolved are more complex than those of collection. As a result more serious weaknesses and inconsistencies have arisen. These have tended to be tackled only when sustained over several years and at levels which really threaten massive resource misallocations. Often, as well, it has taken a particularly provocative specific issue to generate what quickly becomes a major policy review. For example, the leadership's refusal to fund more investment in health facilities for the urban elite in 1971 contributed to bringing personnel and policy changes which have redirected that ministry's programme towards mass-oriented, rural programmes. Another example was the response to the breakdown in control over regional expenditures which occurred in 1972-74. The breakdown was a consequence of inadequate base-data on local government activities and an unwisely imported reporting system as well as of the initial costs of decentralization. By the end of 1974 it came to be regarded as a major area for correction. The data collection and reporting systems were already in the process of radical overhaul and simplification by Tanzanian personnel and a reassessment of the necessary costs (especially in respect of personnel) for service provision was being attempted. Efficiency is of major concern to Tanzania's leadership. President Nyerere has denounced the equation of socialism with inefficiency. The austere fiscal policy, the steady emphasis that the parastatal sector as the core of the productive sector must (taken as a whole) generate large and rising investible surpluses, the willingness to move or to sack unsuccessful managers and bureaucrats and drastically to reorganize unsatisfactory institutions, all underline this. Three major problems arise in promoting efficiency. First, those who are inefficient tend to blame their weaknesses on the transition to socialism, thus confusing genuine transitional costs with avoidable waste and errors. This has been particularly true in respect of the most conservative managers. Second, the colonial heritage includes hierarchical relationships not well designed for efficiency. Third, efficiency is definable only in relation to a set of goals; when these are not complementary, efficiency cannot be evaluated without taking into account gains and losses in respect of each goal and often as well without looking at a set of institutions and policies together. The force of this point can easily be illustrated. Tanzania has not been efficient in raising exports: to the extent this has reduced its capacity to mobilize surplus and has increased its dependence on foreign funds, it is a relevant inefficiency; to the extent it was the price of reorienting the production structure towards domestic

41 Reginald Herbold Green use, it is not. Similarly the priority which should be given to producing cigarettes or beer cannot be evaluated without reference to the total pattern of domestic consumer goods production and the income distribution of demand for different products as well as to the fact that beer and cigarettes in Tanzania are so highly taxed as to be rather more surplus mobilization mechanisms than goods. Inefficiencies have arisen where goals have conflicted, external circumstances have changed, and/or data was inadequate. For example, over 1970-74 meat policy involved attempts to raise grower prices but also to hold down urban meat prices. Relatively little effective action was taken to improve cattle rearing, disease control, and marketing. As a result demand rose sharply while supply did not, leading to absolute domestic shortages and a loss of exports. The meat packing company was pushed to the verge of bankruptcy, with the result that its (then) expatriate management inevitably concentrated on achieving a price increase and sought to explain away its very real weaknesses in procurement and processing. Further, the domestic price debate obscured the existence of real conflicts of interest with the (then) foreign partner over the development to be promoted for the livestock industry, for market orientation, for plant location, and for overseas selling. The meat case also illustrates how progress is sometimes made towards identifying and resolving conflicts. In 1974 the packing company was fully nationalized. A new management was brought in to allow the coherent planning of production processing and marketing. Meat prices were then adjusted to levels which would make it possible for the processing unit to break even, a decision previously blocked by the absence of a coherent picture of the sector and by the self-interest of a foreign partner with obviously divergent interests. Both inherent conflicts and levels of inefficiency can be greatly overemphasized. In my judgement the quality and range of government and parastatal performance in independent Tanzania in 1974 was markedly above that of 1966 and markedly above that of colonial government and business.17 The institutions which have had better material and financial records than their private predecessors (for example, the National Bank of Commerce or the Tanzania Sisal Corporation) have tended also to have far-above-average performances in fulfilling other national goals, such as citizenization, decentralization, innovation in new lines of activity, quality of service, and greater participation. Institutions involved in serious problems relating to their finances or their output (for instance, the former State Trading Corporation in 1971-72 and the National

42 Political economy goals, strategies, and results Milling Corporation in 1973-74) have tended also to fail badly on several of these other tests as well. Production, effective allocation, and efficiency are seen as important components in the infrastructure of development in Tanzania. They are not viewed as sufficient for development nor as overriding all other goals. Neither Rostow nor Stalin is a prophet with much honour in Dar es Salaam. The record of overall and of micro-economic management is - and is seen by many Tanzanians to be - one which leaves much room for improvement. It should be noted, however, that without the least exaggeration the 1966-74 record compares relatively well (especially at systemic level where it is clearly better) with those of the United Kingdom and Italy. In my judgement Tanzania's very real technological and institutional limitations are not symptomatic of any general public sector inefficiency or inability to direct resources consistent with national goals. AN EVALUATION

Any evaluation of Tanzanian goals, attainments, and limitations since 1967 must be considered in the light of four facts: 1 Tanzania's leadership is neither monolithic nor rigid in its views and practices. The evolution of policy and strategy demonstrates the latter and the variations of emphasis in the statements and actions of different leaders and writers illustrate the former. 2 The progress achieved by 1977 is important but less so than the direction of change over 1967-77 and the ability of Tanzanians to identify and to concentrate upon surmounting new and critical obstacles and challenges. 3 Many of Tanzania's problems are problems of success not of failure. For example, the need to replan production targets for the mass consumer goods industries flows from the success of Tanzanian egalitarian policies and its efforts to reduce absolute poverty; participation/decentralization problems would not arise in an elitist/centralizing polity. 4 Tanzania's record of progress towards its goals, and of overall efficiency in achieving that progress, needs no special apologies or rationalizations. Broad changes have been achieved; low short-run dislocation losses have been rapidly counterbalanced by longer-term gains. Strategic structural changes have been frequent. Institutional, technical, and personnel capacity has risen rapidly, though the growth of the demands placed upon this capacity sometimes obscures this rise and the improved total performance.

43 Reginald Herbold Green Any useful evaluation concentrates on areas in which new changes are seen as necessary to consolidate gains, to bolster weaknesses, and to correct errors. Therefore, many evaluations tend to appear less positive than the writer's underlying assessment. Precisely because Tanzania is, in Myrdal's terminology, a relatively 'hard' state with coherent goals, specific shortcomings and distances still to travel are more readily identifiable and the discussion of possible policy changes is particularly relevant. Tanzania's leadership would not wish ·it to be otherwise. To quote President Nyerere: 'Mistakes are mistakes. Exploitation is exploitation regardless of who is indulging in it ... A party that adheres to truth and justice must give its members freedom to correct mistakes and remove exploitations. Members who do not use that freedom for fear of being hated, unpopular or losing their positions are harbouring a great enemy of justice and truth.' 18

NOTES

1 Tanzania, Economic Surveys (Dar es Salaam 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977) 2 See Reginald Green, 'Relevance, Efficiency, Romanticism and Confusion in Tanzanian Planning and Management,' African Review, v, 2 (1975) 3 Analysis of strategy, policy, and performance in the terms of the decision takers' determining and implementing them is a logical first step even if the author disagrees with the goals and - therefore - the strategy. Criticism of performance or policy should be either in terms of the goals its authors intended or of explicitly stated alternative goals of the author. Unfortunately, much social science analysis - including much about Tanzanian - does not make clear whether the author is analysing in terms of his own goals or of Tanzanian ones and, if his own, what these are and how they diverge from Tanzanian decision takers' goals. 4 This is for two reasons. First, the author is in broad agreement with the goals of the Tanzanian party. Second, he was economic adviser to the Tanzanian Treasury over 1966-7 4 and - while quite able to reflect and to criticize - is hardly in a position to propound an alternative strategy. The bulk of the study is based on first-hand observation and experience as a Tanzanian civil servant. While the data used are not confidential many of the specific documents including them are. Therefore, detailed citations are less frequent than is normal in political economic analysis. 5 See Chapter 8 in this volume by 8 .U. Mwansasu. T ANU merged with the (Zanzibar) Afro-Shirazi Party in 1977 to form Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Revolution-

44 Political economy goals, strategies, and results

6

7 8

9

10

11

12 13

14

15

ary Party). References in this paper to TANU relate to the 1967-76 period-in the future tense 'the party' means ccM. Cf. J.K. Nyerere, 'The Process of Liberation,' Ibadan University lecture, Dar es Salaam, Nov. 1976, and The Arusha Declaration Ten Years After, report on tenth anniversary of Arusha Declaration, Feb. 1977 (Dar es Salaam 1977) See Reginald Green, 'Tanzanian Transition to Socialism,' in LL. Horowitz, ed., Equity Income Policy (New York 1977) 1976 data suggested some success in broadening access to loans for both urban and village dwellers but a rather limited success in building workplace or neighbourhood borrowing and supervision institutions. See Budd Hall, 'Structure of Adult Education and Rural Development in Tanzania,' Institute of Development Studies (Sussex), discussion paper no 87, 1975 The cumulative total in 1976 was estimated at four million (Nyerere, Arusha Declaration Ten Years After) but is somewhat doubtful for two reasons: (a) villagization increased the users of some facilities dramatically; (b) inadequate funding (and import licensing) of maintenance in the period 1974-77 drastically reduced operational facilities below their potential level. The 1977-78 budget and accompanying statements took account of the latter by very sharply raising rural water maintenance and rural road upkeep allocations and stressing the importance of spending them to catch up on the backlog. However, the scatter of responsibilities has - even after decentralization and the strengthening of regional commissioners and government terms - led to duplication, gaps, and co-ordination problems. For more detailed analysis, see Green, 'Relevance, Efficiency' and 'Tanzanian Transition.' In 1977 the central body for private education for citizens, TAPA (Tanganyika African Parents' Association), was almost dropped as a party-affiliated organization. Its use of funds to create secondary schools for elite children (until 1976 often with co-op funds derived from poor peasants who had no effective access to the schools) and disinclination to pursue post-primary, village-oriented technical school experiments were under severe criticism. However, at the last moment TAPA's status was restored and the proposal to phase out private education postponed. Justinian Rweyemamu, Underdevelopment and Industrialization in Tanzania (Nairobi 1973), and Green, 'Political Independence and the National Economy,' in C. Allen and R.W. Johnson, eds., African Perspectives (Cambridge 1970) This was more than hinted in President Nyerere's speech during Marshal Podgorny's 1977 visit.

45 Reginald Herbold Green 16 Julius Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (London and Dar es Salaam 1968), p. 5 17 See Green, 'Relevance, Efficiency,' and the Economic Survey data on parastatals. 18 Freedom and Socialism, p. 136

IAN PARKER

Contradictions in the transition to socialism: the case of the National Development Corporation

The principle of using different methods to resolve different contradictions is one which Marxist-Leninists must strictly observe. The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what could have been done well. MAO TSE-TUNG

'On Contradiction'

This attempt to create a new religion out of socialism is absurd. It is not scientific, and it is almost certainly not Marxist - for however combatant and quarrelsome a socialist Marx was, he never claimed to be an infallible divinity! Marx was a great thinker ... But he was not God. JULIUS NYERERE

Freedom and Socialism

Thank God, I at least am not a Marxist! KARL MARX

We shall pass on to the misfortunes of our 'Left' Communists in the sphere of home policy. It is difficult to read the following phrases in the theses on the present situation without smiling. ' ... The systematic use of the remaining means of production is conceivable only if a most determined policy of socialisation is pursued' ... 'not to capitulate to the bourgeoisie and its petty-bourgeois intellectualist servitors, but to rout the bourgeoisie and to put down sabotage completely .. .'

47 Ian Parker Dear 'Left Communists,' how determined they are, but how little thinking they display. What do they mean by pursuing 'a most determined policy of socialisation'? One may or may not be determined on the question of nationalisation or confiscation, but the whole point is that even the greatest possible 'determination' in the world is not enough to pass from nationalisation and confiscation to socialisation. The misfortune of our 'Lefts' is that by their naive, childish combination of the words 'most determined policy of socialisation' they reveal their utter failure to understand the crux of the question, the crux of the 'present' situation. The misfortune of our 'Lefts' is that they have missed the very essence of the 'present situation,' the transition from confiscation (the carrying out of which requires above all determination in a politician) to socialisation (the carrying out of which requires a different quality in the revolutionary). Yesterday, the main task of the moment was, as determinedly as possible, to nationalise, confiscate, beat down and crush the bourgeoisie, and put down sabotage. Today, only a blind man could fail to see that we have nationalised, confiscated, beaten down and put down more than we have had time to count. The difference between socialisation and simple confiscation is that confiscation can be carried out by 'determination' alone, without the ability to calculate and distribute properly, whereas socialisation cannot be brought about without this ability ... ' ... To put down sabotage completely .. .' What a task they have found! Our saboteurs are quite sufficiently 'put down.' What we lack is something quite different. We lack the proper calculation of which saboteurs to set to work and where to place them. We lack the organisation of our own forces that is needed for, say, one Bolshevik leader or controller to be able to supervise a hundred saboteurs who are now coming into our service. v .I. LENIN '"Left-Wing" Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality'

In beginning with these four texts I am not suggesting any crude equivalence between the situations in China, Tanzania, nineteenth-century England, and Russia in 1918. Indeed, the tenor of each of these passages should argue against that interpretation. Nor do I fully accept all of these positions. I trust, however, that their relevance to a consideration of the contradictions inherent in the transition to socialism in Tanzania will be readily apparent. A CONTEXT FOR DISCUSSION OF THE NDC

At the outset it is worthwhile to recall two facts: Tanzania is not a socialist country, but rather it is, at least officially, and many would argue in

48 Contradictions in the transition to socialism reality, still moving towards socialism; and (strictly speaking) 'there is no model to copy.' 1 Comparisons of Tanzania with immediately postrevolutionary Russia, with China, with Albania, with Cuba, with Chile under Allende, or with contemporary Mozambique, Angola, and Vietnam, may be instructive, but they are not definitive, in understanding and implementing the process of transition to socialism in Tanzania. In all of the above cases there are significant differences from the historical situation in Tanzania, and any vulgar or unscientific effort of transposition or translation is as doomed to failure as is a refusal to absorb the relevant lessons from previous and current struggles that have emerged in the transition to socialism. The contradictions currently faced by Tanzania, viewed abstractly, do, however, correspond to those confronted historically by other 'socialist' states in the period of transition. When I speak of 'contradictions,' I refer not simply to 'problem-areas' (although the term has recently been so debased), but rather to the principal conflicts and antagonisms which over time imply or necessitate structural change in a political-economic system and hence represent strategic points for theoretical analysis and practical action. The principal internal contradictions are five in number: 1 First, there is the contradiction between those who own or control property and the means of production and those who are alienated from the means of production. The historical predominance of peasant smallholder production among the vast majority of Tanzania's peoples, the general absence of articulated 'feudal' structures such as characterized much of medieval Europe, regions of West Africa, or pre-revolutionary China, and the relatively low level of development of industrial and wage-labour activity or of direct international capitalist penetration prior to the achievement of independence in 1961, however, all imply that this primary contradiction is still not as articulated in Tanzania as in many so-called 'socialist' countries. 2 Another contradiction is that between the town, where levels of information and organizational potential are high, and country, where information has historically been fragmented, diffused, and dispersed, and organizational possibilities have been limited. 3 A third contradiction is that between industry and agriculture, and by extension between workers and peasants, as is indicated by the practical importance of debates regarding trends in the terms of trade between industry and agriculture.

49 Ian Parker 4 There is also a contradiction between so-called 'mental' labour and socalled 'manual' labour, since the development of the division of labour, particularly with the extension of capitalist relations of production, tends to generate monopolies of knowledge with an inherently coercive aspect, which produce and reinforce social or class divisions and can be reproduced through the production and educational systems. 5 A final contradiction, which is a more articulated aspect of the preceding one, is that between' conception' and' execution' in the organization of processes of production, in all spheres of the economy. 2 This contradiction has manifested itself in issues such as the extent to which rural development is to be 'from the top down' or 'from the bottom up' (the terms in which the issue is posed indicating in themselves an aspect of the contradiction); the character and extent of workers' participation in management; the nature and locus of decisions on the allocation of the social surplus; and, more generally, the issue of whether development is to be 'for the peasants and workers' or 'by the peasants and workers.' Such contradictions are never wholly resolved in the process of transition to socialism, and even in a socialist economy they necessitate continual rethinking, debate, and active (if not necessarily violent) struggle. There are also a number of external contradictions which Tanzania faces, but, of these, three are of particular importance: 1 First, there is the contradiction between the demand for control of the development process and Tanzania's economic openness and dependence on the world market. The effects of global inflation, as reflected in the prices of imported food and means of production, and as accentuated by domestic drought, have in recent years intensified this particular contradiction. 2 Secondly, there is the contradiction between the demand for industrial development and the necessity in some cases for reliance on foreign corporations, whose interests are not Tanzania's interests and whose monopolies of knowledge are not readily penetrable. 3 Thirdly, there is the contradiction generated by the demand for rapid development and the demand for the rapid localization of decision-making in strategic positions, which has been manifested in a continued dependence on expatriates to provide certain technical and managerial skills. A final contradiction, which embodies a number of the preceding ones, is that between the demand for technical competence (by which I mean not simply abstract knowledge but rather the capacity to combine

50 Contradictions in the transition to socialism such knowledge in practice with a concrete understanding of how best to do what is to be done) and the demand for critical political consciousness. This contradiction is present in all spheres of the Tanzanian political economy, but is central to the operations of the parastatals, and for that matter of the state itself, since a so-called 'technically competent,' but politically unconscious, decision is in fact a technocratic and incompetent decision, while a so-called 'politically conscious,' but technically unworkable, decision is in fact a politically unconscious decision. To treat 'political' and 'technical' moments of a decision as dichotomous or separable, rather than as simultaneous, integral, and mutually determining aspects of that decision, is to give way either to 'left-wing infantilism,' or to 'technocratic reaction,' or possibly both. The parastal organizations, such as the National Development Corporation, have frequently (on occasion, not wholly unjustifiably) been identified by their critics with the forces of 'technocratic reaction.' Yet this image in itself is overly simplified, and, used as a slogan rather than as a focus for critical analysis of the contradictions that parastatals such as the Noc have historically confronted and embodied, provides little guidance regarding the concrete strategies necessary to ensure that the parastatal sector contributes to the development of socialism in Tanzania. I therefore propose to conduct a case study of the National Development Corporation, particularly during the period from 1965 to 1971, as a way of indicating the nature of the contradictions confronting and embodied in the state and the parastatal sector, and the elements necessary in their resolution. THE CHANGING OPERATIONAL STATUS OF THE NOC

The 'parastatal' sector has been an integral element of Tanzania's development strategy since well before the adoption by T ANU of the Arusha Declaration, which committed Tanzania to a socialist development path. The parastatals, which have virtually always been 100 per cent stateowned or state-controlled, have, generally speaking, been organized with the purpose of developing and operating economic ventures within their designated spheres in accordance with state objectives. The National Development Corporation, as one of the first such organizations, is a logical choice as an exemplar of the contradictions encountered by the parastatal sector as a whole in bringing about socialist development in Tanzania.

51 Ian Parker The role assigned by the government to the NOC as an agency of Tanzanian industrial development in the period up to the end of 1971 was not constant, but passed through perceptibly distinct phases, reflecting the development of forces in the domestic and international economies, the increasing articulation of objectives and overall development strategy by the party and the government, and the internal development of the NOC itself. 3 In the first phase, from 1965 to 1967, the Noc' s function was seen essentially as that of investment promotion, that of providing equity and loan capital in so far as was necessary to attract foreign investors to Tanzania. In this phase, its perceived role was similar to that of many other 'investment-promotion' agencies established in other parts of Africa and elsewhere under colonial administrations. The implicit assumption underlying this definition of the Noe's role was that the most effective method of ensuring rapid and successful industrial development is to encourage and attract foreign and domestic private capital investment and accumulation, with the state basically responding to externally determined initiatives and priorities and providing additional incentives (in the form of participation and loan capital) where the existing commercial incentives are apparently insufficient to attract such investment. Following the nationalization measures and investment guidelines contained in the Arusha Declaration of January 1967, the Noe's scale of activity increased and its role was clarified and broadened. As the principal government industrial investor, the NOC, rather than having the more or less passive role of acting as a 'catalyst' for private investment, was intended to assume responsibility for initiating and controlling largescale industrial investment within the economy. This function involved monitoring and controlling nationalized industries, in line with government objectives; and establishing new industries as NOC subsidiaries that were wholly Noc-owned or in which NOC - typically - held a majority interest. In this second phase, the Noe's function was viewed as involving to a much greater extent the design of projects (and, increasingly, of projects that were to be interrelated components of an articulated industrial strategy), rather than solely the approval, in 'investment-banker' fashion, of projects that had been designed by others. Corresponding to the demands of this phase, the technical-economic staff of the Development Division Oater the Research and Development Department), for example, expanded from about 8 or 10 to about 25 or 30 people between

52 Contradictions in the transition to socialism the end of 1967 and the end of 1970, and other departments expanded accordingly. As early as 1968, however, there was a growing concern in government about the apparent growth of the Noe's relative autonomy, and the corresponding loss of effective government control over its operations. The NOC was apparently developing into an amorphous conglomerate, which dealt with a range of ministries (depending on the sector with which any particular project was most closely identified), as well as the central ministries (Treasury and Devplan), on virtually all projects. The central ministries did not have sufficient capacity to monitor effectively each NOC project on an individual basis, whereas the individual sectoral ministries had no direct oversight responsibilities with respect to those projects that apparently fell under their jurisdiction. As a result, there was a genuine structural basis (even apart from other factors, some of which will be considered below) for a concern on the part of government that its control over the general direction of industrial development was weakening, and that the continued expansion of the NOC would produce excessive demands on NOC capacity for effective control of its subsidiary companies. Consequently, the government initiated a third phase in the development of the NOC, which began explicitly on 1 July 1969 with the transfer of a number of NOC subsidiaries to other parastatals. The Tanzania Tourist Corporation (rrc) took over Noe's hotel projects and investments and the National Agricultural and Food Corporation (NAFco) took over Noe's agricultural projects and investments. This process was continued with the formation of the Tanzania Wood Industries Corporation during 1970-71 and subsequently the Tanzania Mining Corporation. In this sectoral rationalization, ministries were given greater oversight responsibilities over the newly created parastatal organizations, although significant costs of restructuring were incurred in the short run in the course of this rationalization process. The third phase, of sectoral rationalization, enabled a concentration of resources by the NOC on a narrower and more well-defined range of new and continuing projects, while the movement of personnel engaged in particular projects from NOC to the new corporations reduced the potential for informational loss inherent in the rationalization process. By mid-1971 the scope of Noc' s activities had been substantially restricted, relative to the situation that existed prior to July 1969, and the monopoly of operational knowledge held by the NOC had correspondingly been reduced, while sectoral ministries had assumed greater oversight responsi-

53 Ian Parker bilities with regard to parastatals whose activities were principally defined by their sector of operations. In all three phases the NOC was intended to operate separately from the immediate, day-to-day control of the government bureaucracy. Indeed, a certain degree of relative autonomy was essential to the performance by the NOC of its activities in industrial project formulation, feasibility research, project implementation, and supervision of operating enterprises. Yet there is a mythological aspect to the notion (not uncommon within the government, the university, and elsewhere) that there existed an 'Noc investment policy' wholly independent of government policy. 'Noc policy' was in large measure determined by government policy, even during the period from 1968 to 1971 when the relative autonomy of the NOC was supposed to have been at its apex. At the technical level, there was a systematic attempt within the NOC to develop projects suggested in the second five-year plan, in so far as such projects were found after investigation to satisfy the seven governmentestablished criteria for project approval: commercial profitability, effect on government revenues, impact on investible surplus, balance of payments effect, overall national benefit (measured in shadow prices), employment in relation to capital expenditure, and potential linkage effects. At the political-economic level, the government by 1970 had a number of means of ensuring control over NOC investment policy: it allocated the funds it provided to the NOC in relation to specific projects; it had a majority of the directors on the NOC board, and appointed all of them; it had, via the board of directors, to approve all new investments; projects were discussed with the ministries concerned before they went to the NOC board; management and consultancy agreements had to be approved by the Ministry of Development Planning, the Bank of Tanzania, and the economic committee of the cabinet; all contracts involving foreign exchange were subject to the approval of the Bank of Tanzania; and all projects required an industrial licence. Moreover, the budgetary and foreign exchange pressures of early 1971, coinciding with the articulation of the government's budget planning and control system (which applied also to parastatal agencies like the Noc) further increased direct government control over NOC finances, investment strategy, and operations. Hence, while there were problems of co-ordination and control of NOC activities by the government (some of which are analysed below), in the main, NOC operations were an accurate reflection of Tanzania's evolving industrial development strategy. Consequently, in analysing contradic-

54 Contradictions in the transition to socialism tory aspects of NOC activities, it is necessary to keep in mind that many of these contradictions were inherent in the overall strategy of socialist industrialization, and not attributable to a systematic disregard for government priorities and directives by the NOC. The complexity of the issues involved may be suggested by specific aspects of three projects undertaken by NOC: the Tanga fertilizer plant; Ubungo Farm Implements; and the ujamaa village cashew-processing project.

The Tanga fertilizer plant The desire to produce fertilizer, a basic input into the agricultural sector, domestically is not unique to Tanzania, nor are some of the underlying problems associated with the Tanga project. While the project was immense in Tanzanian terms, by world standards the capacity of the plant was close to the minimum economic scale, depended heavily on strategic raw material imports, and relied on the possibility of exports to the rest of East Africa for its viability in the early years of operation, since the demand within Tanzanian agriculture for purchased fertilizer inputs initially fell considerably short of plant capacity output. The basic feasibility study, the equipment, and the construction and operating management were all provided by a single 'partner-supplier.' These aspects of the fertilizer project, with their implications for its viability and riskiness, are sufficiently obvious not to require underlining. Yet certain less familiar aspects of the establishment of the fertilizer plant illuminate perhaps even more clearly the nature of the contradictions experienced by the NOC as an agency of socialist industrialization. The plant is a classic case of 'error' identified with the Noc. The plant was originally intended to be built in Dar es Salaam, a location that made considerable economic sense, if a fertilizer plant was to be built (although it developed that the proposed Dar es Salaam site involved potential problems of safety, because of its proximity to the oil refinery). It was proposed by Noe's 'partner-supplier' that the plant receive its imported inputs from the ships by a pipeline system which subsequently was found to have serious technical flaws, although these flaws only became fully apparent in retrospect. For several reasons, including a decision to put the proposed site to an alternative use and the overall policy of decentralization of industry, the location of the proposed plant was shifted on the initiative of the government to Tanga, a port in the north of Tanzania.

55 Ian Parker It was realized only in the process of implementing the project in Tanga that the shift in location had rendered both the proposed method of input supply (which, as has already been suggested, displayed shortcomings) and existing alternative methods impossible. The only feasible solution appeared to be a costly (multi-million dollar) jetty, which was a last-minute operation and an expensive addition to the overall capital cost of the project, although in principle it does have the potential to augment the capacity of the port at Tanga. There are at least four lessons to be learned from this phase in the establishment of the Tanga fertilizer plant. The first is that 'political' decisions were a significant factor in the shift of plant location to Tanga, which, in retrospect, almost certainly increased the initial capital costs and the eventual fertilizer distribution costs relative to what they could have been in the original Dar es Salaam location. Secondly, the scarcity of effective technical expertise was a significant factor in the last-minute character of the construction of the jetty. This point, however, should not be misconstrued: a large proportion of Noe's research on technical and economic aspects of the fertilizer project was conducted by expatriate NDC personnel (who were, however, not themselves specialists in fertilizer technology and economics); and Noe's foreign 'partners' (who were presumably specialists in the field) made substantial technical errors in the conception and implementation of the project. This fact should suggest that one of the functions of apparent 'monopolies of knowledge' is to conceal significant areas of ignorance, and that the simplistic equation of the non-Tanzanian origin of a concept with its technical viability, independently of its political appropriateness, has historically involved significant costs and dangers. A third lesson emerging from consideration of the fertilizer project is that co-ordination between the government and its parastatal agencies (such as the NDC) has historically been less than perfect, and that the appropriate degree and character of the relative autonomy of such state agencies remains a critical issue. The final lesson is a somewhat more general one. The Tanga fertilizer plant was a case of 'learning by doing' 4 with a vengeance. 'Learning by doing' has been referred to frequently as a 'good thing.' In the long run, on average, 'learning by doing' in the general sense is not only a 'good thing' but an absolutely necessary thing. What is often forgotten, however, is that in the short run 'learning by doing' is often a synonym for costly errors. In practice, we often learn more from failures than from

56 Contradictions in the transition to socialism successes (on the 'We'll-never-do-that-again' principle), but this consideration should not conceal the fact that 'learning by doing' - particularly at the scale of project typically undertaken by the NOC - is often a painful and, on occasion, a disruptive process.

Ubungo Farm Implements (UFJ) This was a project developed with the aid of Chinese technical assistance to produce hoes (jembes), ploughs, and machetes (pangas). It was decided upon by the government on political and economic grounds, over a competing proposal from Chillington of England, who already had a plant in Uganda and had previously marketed a wide range of jembe types in Tanzania, based on soil and climatic variations and corresponding, historically determined, demand patterns for jembes. UFJ was to produce one type of jembe, the 'standard' type. Noc was instructed by the government to take over the development, implementation, and operation of the project. I am not concerned here with the problem of introducing a standard UFJ jembe among peasants who had utilized a wide range of jembe types (not withstanding the fact that jembes are one of the basic means of production for the mass of Tanzanian peasants), nor with the internal plant layout of UFJ, which displayed some technical inefficiencies. What is of particular relevance is the fact that the annual production plan proposed by the Chinese technical assistance personnel bore little relation to the actual pattern of demand in Tanzania. Proposed plough production was two to three times annual requirements, panga production was excessive, and annual jembe production was woefully inadequate to meet national requirements. The difficulty that arose was to obtain accurate technical coefficients from the Chinese technical personnel, in order to develop alternative and more satisfactory output levels and cost-structures. After an extended period of negotiations, buttressed by extensive regional analysis of market conditions, the production plan was adjusted, but the case suggests that difficulties arising from the possession by technical 'partners' of monopolies of knowledge were not exclusive to ventures entered into with Western capitalist partners. Since the scale of the plant was that of a sub-national or regional factory by Chinese standards, strict attention to demand requirements was important, but secondary; in Tanzania, where the single plant could more than supply total annual requirements of some products, attention to domestic demand was crucial. The ideological commitment to socialism of the Chinese technical personnel guaranteed neither the technical appropriateness

57 Ian Parker of their initial design to Tanzanian conditions nor a capacity for quick and sensitive adaptation of that design to these conditions.

The ujamaa village cashew-processing project

A significant proportion of the Tanzanian cashew crop was historically exported prior to decortication, in unshelled form, much of it to India, where the nuts were shelled by labour-intensive hand-processing operations. The first attempts to process the cashew nuts further before export were in relatively capital-intensive factories at Dar es Salaam and later Mtwara, both of which encountered serious technical and financial problems. While the government and the NDC were under considerable pressure from 'partners' and equipment suppliers to maintain and expand these operations, NDC personnel investigated the Indian hand-processing operations and found that by virtually every criterion of government investment policy, including not only contribution to the social surplus but also provision of employment and of additional industrial opportunities for ujamaa villages, their economic performance appeared superior to the mechanized projects. The NDC therefore proposed that a small number of cashew hand-processing operations be set up by the NDC, in partnership with ujamaa villages, as a basis for a possible wider extension of such small-scale industries if the initial industries proved successful. Several aspects of the hand-processing project in its early stages, up to 1971, are noteworthy. First, despite the apparently manifest advantages of the cashew hand-processing project over the mechanized alternative, the NDC had to overcome considerable government resistance before the implementation of the project began. At least part of this resistance was related to pressure on the government by the promoters and machinery suppliers of the mechanized projects, and by government aid agencies from the countries whose nationals were involved in the mechanized projects. This example of Noe's attempting to dissuade the government from proceeding with an unviable project was not an isolated phenomenon. Secondly, the ujamaa village cashew project, by its very nature, was a complex and difficult undertaking, which placed heavy demands on the time and energy of scarce NDC technical-economic personnel. The project(s) involved negotiations with the individual ujamaa villages themselves, with government ministries, with regional and district authorities, with the Marketing Board, and, on a continuing basis, with the

58 Contradictions in the transition to socialism mechanized-project promoters. The labour-intensive character of the project was reflected in intensive demands on NOC labour in its implementation and early operational phases. A third and related aspect of the ujamaa village cashew project is that it demanded quite different sets of skills on the part of NOC personnel from many of the other projects the NOC was involved in over the same period. There was a much greater need to establish the preconditions for basic accounting, technical, administrative, and legal capacities than in the more capital-intensive projects, where relatively sophisticated technical and administrative skills were required from the outset of operations. Political and organizational skills were therefore immediately far more significant for NOC personnel in the implementation process than were narrowly technical-economic administrative skills. The increase after 1971 in the relative autonomy of the National Small Industries Corporation, which up to 1971 had been a relatively minor subsidiary of the NOC, as well as the increased emphasis on district development corporations and the overall strategy of decentralization itself, in part reflected a recognition of this qualitative difference between the types of large-scale project that could only be undertaken at a national level by institutions such as the NOC and the wide range of smaller-scale projects that could be undertaken to better advantage at a smaller than national level, in the manufacturing and other sectors. The above discussion should suggest that a simplistic identification of the NOC with 'the forces of "technocratic reaction,"' or a moralistic attribution of blame to the NOC for all 'failures' associated (correctly or incorrectly) with Noc projects, is no more likely to be fruitful than apologetics for a number of decisions or judgements by NOC management which in retrospect can be seen to have involved technical or political errors. What is of much greater importance, both theoretically and practically, is the identification of the principal contradictions of the Noe's role in Tanzanian socialist industrialization, and of the principal prerequisites for a successful resolution of those contradictions. THE NOC AND SOCIALIST DEVELOPMENT : 1965 -71

There were a number of constant factors that informed Tanzania's industrialization strategy in the period up to the end of 1971, and continue to exert an influence on the activities of the NOC and its sister parastatals. They derive directly from the principal internal and external contradic-

59 Ian Parker tions of the Tanzanian political economy discussed above, and from the strategies adopted by the state in relation to these contradictions. Industrial policy is only one aspect of overall social and economic policy, and, in relation to the present structure of the economy, industry has not been the government's most important priority. The lesser emphasis on industry during the period from independence at least up to 1971, and (it could be argued) subsequently, was part of a fundamentally sound strategy on the part of the party and the state to deal with the contradictions between town and country and between industry and agriculture. This strategy involved in spatial terms a relative centralization of the rural economic base, as manifested first in the ujamaa village policy and more recently in the villagization programme, and a relative decentralization of the urban economic base, from dominant centres, in particular Dar es Salaam, but including the northern Tanga-MoshiArusha axis, to a set of reasonably evenly distributed 'growth centres' throughout the country. This latter policy was manifested not only in the designation of these centres in the second five-year plan but also in the policy of decentralization of functions from the central government to the regions and in the longer-run decision to shift the national capital from Dar es Salaam on the coast to Dodoma near the centre of Tanzania. 5 This overall strategy, which had in its broad outlines coalesced by 1969-70, generated numerous specific contradictions for the NOC, reflecting general contradictions in the industrialization strategy. For instance, the NOC confronted simultaneously the tasks of generating a surplus for reinvestment and promoting a regional redistribution of industry in the face of a colonially biased and self-reinforcing set of communication and market links which implied for the majority of projects the short-run optimality of a location in Dar es Salaam, Tanga, Moshi, or Arusha. The incompatibility of the objectives of surplus-generation and regional industrial balance was not addressed at a fundamental level by the state. In a number of projects, less than optimal decisions from the standpoint of surplus-generation were intentionally made on locational grounds. The former criterion, however, tended (almost certainly correctly) to predominate in locational decisions by the NOC and the government regarding new large-scale investments. Thus the contradictory aspects of the goals of maximal surplus-generation and regional industrial balance were (if anything) accentuated during the 1965-71 period. This observation should not be overemphasized. Given the minimal development of Tanzania's industrial base in 1961 at the achievement of independence, regional industrial linkages within the economy were

60 Contradictions in the transition to socialism often of second-order importance, and, on a regional basis, smaller-scale projects than the NOC was intended to engage in have frequently been of more significance than the limited number of larger-scale Noc-type ventures. Moreover, NOC ventures established on regional criteria alone would at best have marginally improved regional balance for the foreseeable future, and in the short run, in relation to strong immediate pressures on the social surplus, the concentration on surplus-generation in retrospect seems warranted. As the economy becomes more spatially and sectorally integrated, however, the importance of the contradiction will increase (notwithstanding the significance of present railwayrelated developments in the south) and it is likely to become correspondingly more difficult to resolve. Of far more fundamental importance, in relation to the explicitly 'socialist' objectives of Tanzania's industrialization strategy, were the contradictions inherent in the policies of developing a socialist large-scale industrial base in partnership with foreign capitalist partners; and of placing heavy reliance in the formulation, evaluation, implementation, and oversight of industrial plans and projects on short-term (six-month to three-year contract) foreign technical/economic personnel from technically more advanced countries. Both of these policies had their own internal logic. None the less, each policy has also had its associated costs. Relying on foreign partners for investible funds and 'technical know-how' implied for the NOC and for similar parastatals the possibility of a short-run increase in the rate of aggregate investment, while at the same time it frequently necessitated co-ordination with partners whose interests were, in so far as possible, limited to the maximization of their own profits from the NOC ventures. Moreover, inasmuch as royalty, technical, and managerial fees of such partners were not based exclusively on the gross or net profits of any particular venture, foreign 'partners' had no direct incentive to maximize the generation of surplus by internal cost-reductions, which might be reflected in real price reductions and therefore reduced royalties, rather than in increased profits and increased dividend returns. Thirdly, if state initiatives (such as the demand to train Tanzanians to take over technical and managerial posts, or the presidential decree of 1970 on workers' participation in management by the medium of workers' councils) appeared - from the standpoint of the partner - to jeopardize the viability of the operation, to reduce short-run overall returns to the 'partner,' to threaten the monopoly of technical and managerial expertise of the

61 Ian Parker 'partner,' or to require an additional commitment of time, resources, or energy by the 'partner' with no clear compensating advantage, the NDC could generally anticipate resistance from 'partners' in implementing such directives, if those 'partners' were private capitalist firms. Finally, to the extent that some NDC enterprises were established with 'partners' whose principal immediate interest was in selling plant and machinery rather than establishing a viable industry in Tanzania, the 'equity contribution' of 'partners' was frequently in large measure accounted for by a corresponding inflation of the price of the machinery and plant supplied by and through the 'partners,' above and beyond the normal rate of profit on the sale of the equipment. At the same time, since all necessary profits on the transaction had been made on the initial sale of equipment, the 'partners' felt free to unload inexperienced and/or incompetent foreign personnel on the NDC enterprises, at inflated salaries relative to their capabilities, in order to maintain their claim to any forthcoming royalties or dividends while providing 'experience in the field' for their own technical and managerial trainees. The state, including the NDC and the other parastatals, required not only political commitment but also a considerable degree of technical expertise and experience to develop effective means of combatting the resistance of foreign capitalist 'partners' to socialist initiatives. The legacy of colonialist educational policy and the heavy commitment towards rapidly Tanzanianizing the educational sector, however, implied the necessity of utilizing short-term foreign technical/economic specialists in NDC and in government agencies concerned with industrialization, in major decision-making roles at the 'technical' (and hence at the political) level. This policy, however, also involved contradictions. Certain results of the policy were manifestly apparent: colonial-style housing arrangements were perpetuated; meetings at which even one expatriate was present would typically be conducted in English rather than in Swahili, despite the loss of efficiency in information transmission thus entailed in many contexts; the short terms of service of most expatriates reduced not only the applied technical competence but also the effective political consciousness of most expatriates employed in Tanzania, not to mention the inevitable loss to the country of accumulated information incidental to the departure of most of such personnel within a period of two to three years after their arrival; and colonial attitudes persisted, not solely because of overt or latent racism exhibited by a proportion of the foreign technical personnel but also because the frequency

62 Contradictions in the transition to socialism of situations in which such non-Tanzanians assumed positions of de jure or de facto authority reproduced the contradictory attitudes of respect/ resentment or deference/hatred characteristic of a colonial situation. Both the policy of relying on foreign firms for capital and 'expertise' and the policy of relying on foreign technical personnel within the NOC and the government have sharpened the contradiction between technical competence and political consciousness outlined above. The perpetuation of externally controlled monopolies of knowledge and the reproduction of essentially capitalist relations of production are likely consequences of both of these policies. In concrete terms, the dependence on foreign (predominantly capitalist) firms with monopolies of specialized knowledge of particular industries and with capitalist priorities and presuppositions might well be expected to entail a compromise of socialist objectives, in relation to the demands of such firms. Similarly, reliance on foreign technical personnel predominantly drawn from capitalist countries implies potential dangers for the formulation of adequate strategies of socialist industrialization. CONTRADICTIONS IN THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM

The dangers inherent in both of these policies, and. other related phenomena, have led a number of serious socialist students of Tanzania's development to argue that Tanzania at present effectively corresponds to the 'dependency'/'underdevelopment' configuration which, in one form or another, characterizes many Latin American countries today, with the 'state bureaucracy' cast in the role of 'comprador bourgeoisie,' effectively blocking the transition to socialism in order to further its own interests. 6 A related but distinct formulation would lay greater weight on the longer-term structural implications of depending on foreign capitalist (and frequently transnational) corporations as the major source of technical and managerial expertise in socialist industrialization. In this formulation, the signing of expensive management, technical, and royalty agreements, for example, involves not only heavy short-run foreign exchange outflows but also the reproduction or extension of capitalist relations of production, with the specific interests of individual members of the state bureaucracy, regardless of whether or not they constitute a distinct 'class,' playing a less significant role.7 The basic theoretical and practical political-economic issue in these terms is whether the principal contradictions of Tanzania's post-independence development were 'internal' or 'external' in character (in terms

63 Ian Parker of the categorization developed above) : more simply, whether the state bureaucracy was in the main a consolidated class acting in its own selfinterest and as an agent of global neo-colonialist interests, or whether the state bureaucracy was principally acting in the long-run interests of Tanzanian workers and peasants, in the face of major 'external' contradictions. Full discussion of this issue is necessarily beyond the scope of the present chapter. A sketch of certain basic considerations, however, is essential to its conclusion. The first consideration is that class relations and the relative importance of different contradictions in any system are not given for all time, but change over time and space in relation to 'internal' and 'external' political-economic developments. The second is that in their development 'internal' contradictions and 'external' contradictions are not separable or dichotomous, but are dialectically related, and developments in each sphere can alter the relative overall importance of struggle in the internal and external spheres. 8 The third is that in so far as any politicaleconomic system is not classless, internal class antagonisms will be involved in the process of transition towards socialism. The relevant practical question is therefore not whether such internal conflicts exist - for they will necessarily exist in the transition period - but rather whether or not effective control of the state has been achieved by a consolidated local bourgeois class or by a bureaucracy which is, intentionally or unintentionally, basically an instrument of international capitalist penetration. The factors outlined immediately below suggest that while such a development remains a genuine possibility, it is still the case that the principal contradictions of the Tanzanian political economy are not those posed by silent (or articulated) internal class struggle. The remainder of the study outlines the types of control necessary in socialist industrialization, and problems that have arisen in each sphere. Yet five points are important in establishing a general context for that more detailed discussion. The first is the obvious remark that members of the bureaucracy have not yet, as a 'class', been highly successful in advancing their own direct interests, at least in material terms. Secondly, the limited development of productive forces and the extremely low proportion of the population which had received any education (much less 'higher' education, particularly technical education) at the time of Tanzania's independence, both imply the objective necessity of an extended period in which 'technical knowledge' will be unevenly distributed within Tanzania. The unequal distribution of technical knowledge in

64 Contradictions in the transition to socialism

itself does not therefore constitute an argument against present educational policy, despite certain limitations and potential dangers inherent in the present disposition of educated cadres within the bureaucracy, and in the relationship between the bureaucracy and the masses. Thirdly, there is a serious danger of underestimating the relative power of international capital, which is manifested not solely in the monopolies of knowledge of individual foreign capitalist corporations but also in the macro-economic power of institutions such as the IMF and the IBRD. The need for technically, as well as politically, viable industrial enterprises is due not solely to the imperatives of internal accumulation but also to the necessity of maintaining freedom for strategic adjustment, in a period when there has been an attempt in Tanzania simultaneously to reduce the degree of dependence on the world market and to import technical knowledge in the form of training and equipment, in the face of serious pressures on foreign exchange reserves. These pressures have been intensified since 1971 by domestic drought, by the approximately fourfold increase in world petroleum and grain prices, and by the general global inflation that has occurred since 1971. These developments underline the importance of a fourth point, which has been insufficiently emphasized by many socialist students of Tanzania, suggesting that there may be a 'utopian' aspect to some critiques of the recent policies of the party and the state. A retardation of the rate of development, given the general level of cultural development and the lack of a general socialist consciousness, poses a serious threat to the development of socialism in Tanzania, regardless of whether the source of this retardation is internal or external in character. The increase in external insecurity since 1971 has implied the necessity of a short-run centralization of authority (notwithstanding the long-run strategy of decentralization), as exemplified in the method of implementation of the villagization strategy; and of a conservation of foreign exchange reserves, as exemplified in a relatively greater emphasis on technical than on political aspects of investment decisions. From the perspective of analyses that focus exclusively on internal developments rather than on developments in the global political economy, some recent state initiatives might support the view that a 'reactionary bureaucracy' has consolidated its control over the state apparatus. From a global perspective, however, it is equally consistent with recent developments to argue that it has been necessary to 'take one step backward in order to take two steps forward.'

65 Ian Parker This proposition leads directly to the fifth and final point. One of the weaknesses of many 'left-socialist' critiques of Tanzania's strategy is that they appear to pay insufficient attention to the lessons that may be drawn from previous historical struggles to establish socialism. Notwithstanding the obvious differences between the experience of immediately post-revolutionary Russia and China and the situation of Tanzania following the Arusha Declaration, one basic lesson from both of those revolutions is that genuine socialization cannot occur at a rate exceeding that enabled by the capacities of the self-conscious progressive forces and the elements over which they exercise effective control. In particular, any serious socialist analysis of Tanzanian industrialization proposing to draw on Russian and Chinese post-revolutionary experience (not as 'models,' but for insight) could be expected to reflect upon aspects of their development such as the following: Lenin's critique of '"LeftWing" Childishness,' cited above; Lenin's remarks on the reasons for the necessity of the New Economic Policy, of the revolutionary adaptation of 'Taylorism,' and of increasing the social capacity for accounting and control as a basis for Russian socialist industrialization; and the strategy adopted by the Chinese Communist party with respect to Shanghai industrialists in the period after 1949.9 This apparent neglect, and the general absence of historical perspective, in some 'socialist' critiques of Tanzania's industrialization somewhat vitiates their conclusions, although the aspects they emphasize are undoubtedly of importance. I want therefore in concluding to suggest that analysis of and effective action to overcome the contradictions outlined above will require a clear distinction between four types of effective control necessary in the process of socialist industrialization: (1) control by the NOC of its foreign 'partners'; (2) control by the government of the NOC; (3) control by workers of NOC enterprises; and (4) control by the mass of workers and peasants of the overall industrialization strategy. 1 The need for control by the NOC of its foreign 'partners' is an obvious aspect of successful socialist industrialization. Of particular importance in this sphere are the establishment and enforcement of agreed training programmes and schedules for the appointment of Tanzanians to technical-managerial posts; the establishment of effective means of worker participation in management; and the development of sufficient expertise and experience to penetrate and overcome monopolies of knowledge held by foreign firms.

66 Contradictions in the transition to socialism Difficulties were encountered by the NOC in all of these spheres, in part because no unambiguous governmental directives and penaltystructures were initially established for the implementation of these policies. Both technical and political factors underlay this policy gap. For example, the impossibility of determining accurately on the basis of past Tanzanian experience the normal length of time within which a wide variety of skill requirements associated with particular positions or functions could be achieved meant that agreement by the NOC with partners on training programmes involved the political factor raised by the 'partner's' effective monopoly of knowledge of the particular industry in which the 'partner' was specialized. Cases were uncovered, for instance, in which foreign 'partners' asserted that a period of eight to ten years was necessary to gain sufficient expertise to occupy a particular position, while the 'partner's' expatriate employee actually filling the position at the time when the assertion was made had had at most three to four years' experience in the position, or even in the industry. Given the target rate of growth of industry set by the government, however, there did exist a case for an increase in the number of technically trained personnel assigned to NOC corporations, even at the cost, for example, of a reduction in the rate of nationalization of the educational system. Exact calculation is extremely difficult in evaluating this sort of trade-off, because of the strict incommensurability of these activities, but it appears plausible that the potential dangers inherent in a slightly stronger marginal expatriate position in the educational system were (and are) less serious than the perpetuation of foreign (principally capitalist) technical and managerial hegemony in the industrial sphere. This was particularly the case in view of the cost differential between low cost foreign teachers, many of whom were ideologically receptive and available through relatively neutral foreign aid sources, and high cost technical personnel, many of whom were hired at not less than the going rates in the Western world and were frequently less than sympathetic to Tanzania's socialist industrial objectives. Three qualifications should be mentioned, however, in concluding this discussion of the control by the NOC of foreign 'partners.' First, the NOC, at headquarters and on occasion at the company level, was allocated expatriate technicians who were, in terms of training and/or practical experience, often significantly more technically qualified in formal terms than available Tanzanian personnel, and were available often at no cost except that of housing. In many of these cases, despite the factors noted above,

67 Ian Parker such expatriates could be said - regardless of their personal political positions - to have contributed to the process of industrialization. Secondly, given the state decision to proceed on certain projects, it should be acknowledged that the senior foreign managerial and technical personnel on some projects had had between seven and fifteen or more years of experience before achieving a post involving demands equivalent to those of the project in question, so that the prospect of successfully Tanzanianizing such posts in the very short run, even after allowing for the absolute explicit and implicit costs of foreign management, was relatively small. Thirdly, the costs of training (not only those costs directly related to salary but also those associated with errors that might be expected of any trainee in any firm, as part of the educational process) need to be accounted for in explicit fashion. This observation obviously does not represent an argument for the retardation of the industrial Tanzanianization process; in fact, the tenor of the above remarks should have warranted precisely the opposite conclusion. What is important, however, given the potentially high returns of Tanzanianization, is an accurate prior estimate of the explicit and implicit costs of such a policy, so that the errors to be normally expected of new managerial and technical cadres in the learning period are not translated into an irrational distrust of the Tanzanianization process. One final point: the Tanzanianization and effective control by the NDC of its companies is obviously not in itself a guarantee that industrialization will proceed in a socialist direction. That depends on a wide range of factors, not the least of which is the establishment of effective modes of control in the other three spheres. 2 The issue of effective control by the government of the NOC has already been considered throughout much of the preceding discussion. Effective socialist planning requires regular and accurate current information on all activities of the socialized sectors of the system. There was and is a clear need for the NOC to be accountable to the government for its actions. By the start of 1971 it was apparent that there was neither a fully effective division of labour between the government and the NOC nor an effective accountability structure. For this reason, the reduction in the rate of new NOC investment in 1971, in relation to national fiscal and foreign exchange pressures, while in some respects it adversely affected the prospects for successful socialist industrialization, none the less provided a period in which there was the possibility of consolidating and regularizing the reporting and accountability systems.

68 Contradictions in the transition to socialism 3 and 4 There has been a failure on the part of some commentators to distinguish sufficiently carefully between the final two types of control mentioned above: control by the workers of individual NOC enterprises and control by the mass of workers and peasants of the large-scale industrialization strategy. Following the Presidential Directive no 1 of 1970 on workers' councils, such councils were established in NOC companies and in NOC headquarters, and since that time worker participation in management has increased and taken new forms. In the early stages, however, the relative lack of effectiveness in implementing the councils in a way that gave workers a genuine say in NOC company decisions (with the partial exception of those projects undertaken with Chinese technical assistance) led to scepticism about Noe's commitment to the policy of workers' control of NOC operations and strategy. Several factors need to be emphasized, however, in assessing the implications of the early experience with workers' councils. In the initial phases of implementing the policy, the NOC encountered manifest or latent resistance from the 'partners' or expatriate managers in many of its enterprises, coupled with an unfamiliarity with the nature, function, and requirements of such councils. This resistance underlines some of the observations made above with regard to NOC control of its 'partners,' but it also reflects the relatively unarticulated nature of the initial government mandate to the workers' councils: were they to function as glorified 'grievance committees,' as production, marketing, and financial advisory groups; were they to have some control over the establishment of production targets, working and safety conditions, wage rates, pricing policy, and the allocation of surplus, subject to company board approval; or was some other status envisaged? At the outset this was not clear. The strategy adopted by the government was thus effectively one of introducing the councils and then letting them gradually develop greater clarity as to the scope of their activities in the process of their actual operation, with the government articulating further guidelines on the basis of reports on the early experience. This method of introduction of the workers' councils, while it enabled a gradual transition towards greater worker control of the work place, was not conducive to explicit consideration of the potential conflict between 'workers' control' at the level of the individual enterprise and 'control by the workers and peasants' of the overall direction of industrial development. The fact that workers in large-scale industry represent a very small minority of the overall population of the country means that certain actions taken by workers at the enterprise level, which might appear 'just,'

69 Ian Parker 'reasonable,' or 'socialist' within that restricted context-such as a decision to reduce working hours in order to increase industrial employment, at the cost of a reduction in the surplus generated - might well be incompatible with the broader socialist objectives of the nation. Similar problems have been encountered, for example, in the systems of workers' participation in management adopted in Yugoslavia, and to a (considerably) lesser extent in Hungary, despite the moderating effects of mediated state control over the allocation of the social surplus to new investments via the banking system. These considerations do not constitute the basis of an argument for the repression of worker initiatives and demands by the state bureaucracy. Rather they imply the necessity of ensuring that such initiatives and demands are consistent with the overall prerequisites of the transition to socialism. It is in this light that expressions of the supremacy of TANU over Parliament and the state well before 1971, and the subsequent juridical formalization of the political supremacy of the party, as well as the efforts to strengthen the party's foundations, assume their greatest significance. The problems involved in maintaining effective control in all four spheres have been outlined above. The contradiction between political consciousness and technical competence within all four spheres has not yet been eliminated. The structural bias of the lower echelons of the government and of parastatal organizations such as the NOC is towards an emphasis on problems principally requiring technical competence. Ultimately, therefore, the responsibility and authority for the establishment of politically and technically sound policy directives regarding socialist industrialization and other strategies will lie with the party. In the absence of such a trend in the structure of authority, the potential for bureaucratization is genuine. If, however, the party can be developed to serve as the organizational medium for the articulation of national socialist priorities, if means of ensuring the technical feasibility of its policy directives can be developed, and if effective means of control by the party of the state, including both the government and parastatals such as the NOC, can be established, the possibility of a genuine, although gradual, transition to socialism, in the industrial sector and overall, can be realized. In relation to emerging class forces, the transition is in one sense a race against time, but it is a long-distance race, not a sprint. Moreover, notwithstanding the current fiscal and economic difficulties of the country,

70 Contradictions in the transition to socialism and the concern on the part of some 'Marxist' critics that the transition is not occurring on 'classical' lines (one recalls similar arguments regarding the possibility of revolution in pre-1917 Russia, and regarding the 'deviationism' of Mao's view of the role of the peasantry in the Chinese revolution) and that President Nyerere is not an explicitly self-avowed Marxist, the direction and pace of overall strategy has evidenced a remarkable sensitivity to the changing resources, capacities, and limitations of the system in the transition phase. Tanzania is not without its contradictions, as the preceding analysis should have suggested. No country is. The possibility of a restoration of a form of capitalist hegemony, whether private or 'state capitalist' in character, is not negligible. Yet the obstacles to the achievement of a socialist development path do not at present appear to be insurmountable, and with greater attention to the relative benefits of the accelerated Tanzanianization of industrial enterprises by technically qualified and politically conscious cadres, there is a genuine prospect that the industrial sector can make a positive contribution to the overall process of Tanzanian socialization.

NOTES

This chapter in its present form reflects the constructive comments of numerous participants at the 1976 Toronto conference. Without implicating them in any way, I would in particular like to thank Brian van Arkadie, Cranford Pratt, Reginald Green, Rob Martin, Lars Osberg, and Knud-Erik Svendsen. The direct empirical core of the present paper stems from my experience working in the National Development Corporation from 1968 to 1971, although I have drawn on subsequent direct research into development corporations elsewhere in Africa. The reader will not need to be reminded of the relative brevity of my stay in Tanzania, the time which has elapsed since my departure (during which time I have had access only to indirect information), and the fact that I worked in Tanzania as an expatriate. 1 Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (London and Dar es Salaam 1968), pp. 19, 314 2 This contradiction, which emerges acutely in hierarchical politicaleconomic organizations, has been analysed particularly effectively by Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York 1974), and by Charles Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China (New York 1974).

71 Ian Parker 3 A more extended discussion of the history of the NOC is contained in Ian Parker, 'Noc Investment Policy and Its Relation to National Industrial Planning Objectives,' Economic Research Bureau, University of Dar es Salaam, discussion paper, Dec. 1970. 4 Kenneth Arrow, 'The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing,' Review of Economic Studies, xix, 3 (1962), pp. 155-73 5 Parker, 'Ideological and Economic Development in Tanzania,' African Studies Review, xv, 1 (1972), pp. 43-78 6 Issa G. Shivji's The Silent Class Struggle (Dar es Salaam 1973), is an important seminal work on the question; G. Arrighi and J.S. Saul, eds., Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York 1973), pp. 272 ff., contains a more circumspect analysis. 7 Cf. K. Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa (New York 1970), and the references cited in note 6 above. 8 The classic statement of this principle is found in Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung (Peking 1967), pp. 89 ff. 9 V.I. Lenin, Selected Works: Volume 2 (Moscow 1970), pp. 682-705, especially 688 ff., 658-67, 678-81, 700-3; Selected Works: Volume 3 (Moscow 1971), pp. 362, 766; Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Readings, pp. 350 ff., especially 368-9; Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, pp. 45-152, contains a valuable critical analysis of 'Taylorism,' although it also contains (pp. 12-13) a reductionistic and unwarranted implicit criticism of Lenin's argument.

JOHN LOXLEY

Monetary institutions and class struggle in Tanzania

Tanzania's policies of socialism and self-reliance have always had an irresistible appeal to a wide range of foreign academics, from the liberal to the more radical, who have, perhaps, been drawn by the idea of one of the poorest countries in the world putting equality before growth and principles before foreign aid, challenging international capital for control over its domestic economy, and moulding a leadership to serve the people rather than its own selfish interests. In fact, the main attraction might well lie in the recognition in official policy statements of the central contradiction in the dual role of the post-colonial state, indeed of any capitalist state, between the legitimization function and the accumulation function of the state, and in the determination to deal with that contradiction. Thus, in the rhetoric at least, active state involvement in the economy is premised on bettering the lot of the ordinary Tanzanian and, consequently, becomes in itself indistinguishable from such traditional legitimization activities of the state as housing and social programming. The leadership code, the emphasis on greater equality, more relevant education, and co-operative agriculture, and, in general, the emphasis on people first and on people helping themselves, all seemed to challenge the orthodox development models that had uniformly failed elsewhere in the periphery. Indeed, the standard by which Tanzania was judged was usually that of the rest of Africa and against that standard she compared and, many would argue, still compares very favourably. In recent years, however, and it is significant and perfectly understandable that Tanzanian intellectuals have been in the forefront in this development, Tanzania's progress has been judged increasingly against the standards of its own declared policies and found lacking in many

73 John Loxley important respects. Indeed, many have concluded that not only has the country achieved neither socialism nor self-reliance but also that the tendency is towards increasing class formation within a state capitalist system and towards greater integration of the economy into the world capitalist system. 1 In short, a gap has developed between the rhetoric and the reality as these intellectuals perceive it and that gap is widening. There seems, in fact, to be less dispute between left-wing intellectuals over these tendencies than there is over the nature of and motivation behind the forces that led to the original policy pronouncements. 2 In what follows the developments in one sector of the Tanzanian economy, the monetary institution sector, will be analysed - within a critical framework of analysis that follows closely that of John Saul.3 This framework accepts Tanzania's socialist policy statements as being genuine aspirations expressed by a progressive section of the Tanzanian leadership. The argument of Issa Shivji and others that these pronouncements were the basis of a conspiracy whereby the Tanzanian 'bureaucratic bourgeoisie,' 'ministers, high civil servants, high military and police officers, and such like ... could carve out an economic base for itself,' 4 thereby reinforcing its class interests, is rejected. Rather, it is argued that this line of reasoning commits the fallacy of 'post hoc propter hoc,' confusing outcome with intent. It is a fact that Tanzania's 'socialist' measures have led to a rapid growth in the numbers and powers of senior bureaucrats and that this group has frequently acted to defend and extend its interests at the expense of workers and peasants in Tanzania, to the point where it has emerged as a clearly identifiable class. But at the same time this has not happened without resistance both from workers and peasants and from the progressive section of the leadership whose socialist initiatives have been frustrated, diluted, and diverted by the 'bureaucratic bourgeoisie.' In the process of this struggle since 1967 a number of very progressive measures have been implemented, some of which were designed to reduce significantly the well-being of senior Tanzanian bureaucrats in material terms. The impact of these measures on individual members of the bureaucracy was tempered to some extent by the substitution of public consumption (expense account lunches and trips, government cars and parties) for lost private income and by rapid promotion made possible by the huge growth in the state machinery since 1967. Nevertheless the material well-being of the bureaucracy is noticeably lower than that of its counterparts in neighbouring countries and the scope for using public office for personal accumulation of capital is extremely limited.

74 Monetary institutions and class struggle The emergence of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie as a class in recent years and the much clearer articulation of its class interests have, however, increasingly circumscribed the scope for progressive initiatives in Tanzania. The ruling class has closed ranks against its small, more progressive wing and against the workers and peasants when their interests have not coincided. This happened on numerous occasions between 1971 and 1975. In the industrial sector a number of strikes and workers' takeovers were crushed by the police on orders from the government. Police force was also used in confrontations between progressive students and the university leadership, and the military was called upon to move peasants forcibly into villages of development. These developments highlighted the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of Tanzanian socialism, and such confrontations may well become even more commonplace as the state grapples with the problem of managing the economy within the framework of international capitalism. For, as Shivji has argued, the ruling class in Tanzania is a 'dependent bourgeoisie - dependent on the international bourgeoisie ... incapable of restructuring the internal society and thereby disengaging from the world capitalist system.' 5 The result has been that Tanzania has remained locked into a production and consumption structure that has placed severe restraints on accumulation from domestic resources. We shall see that these structural problems have already been the cause of one major production, foreign exchange, and fiscal crisis and the cause of severe conflict between the accumulation and the legitimization requirements of the state, as shown by the use of force in dealing with workers and peasants in a bid to sustain or increase productivity. By 1975 there were obvious signs that both workers and peasants were experiencing increasing alienation and reacting by reducing productivity. This was recognized even in official publications of the government and accepted by such an authoritative person as the chairman of the Tanzania Investment Bank who spoke of, but did not explain, a decline in labour productivity and efficiency in several industries as one among several reasons for the fall in the share of industrial output from 11.5 per cent of GDP in 1974 to 10.8 per cent in 1975.6 This development could only serve to sharpen the already clear contradictions in the system. Developments within the monetary institutions sector are consistent with the above analysis and can only be understood fully within that kind of analytical framework. The monetary institutions sector as it now exists in Tanzania is almost entirely a post-Arusha Declaration creation. For this reason it reflects, perhaps more than any other sector, the pro-

75 John Loxley mise and the contradictions inherent in the Tanzanian political economy since 1967. But recent accomplishments and problems must be seen in their proper historical perspective and this requires a review of the developments in this sector, and their rationale, in colonial and post-colonial but pre-Arusha Declaration times. The colonial monetary system of Tanganyika both reflected and reinforced the basic features of colonialism, namely the dependence of the economy in terms of its production structure and its subservience to the needs of the metropolitan colonizing power; the foreign control of the local plantation economy and of export and import trade; and the exclusion of Africans from all but the most menial of jobs both in the state and the private sector. The major financial institutions were themselves simply small branches of large and powerful international companies, to the head offices of which they remitted their profits, while the rest were the creation of the colonial government and were designed to meet some specific need not otherwise met - for example, the Land Bank provided high-risk, long-term capital to white farmers.7 All existed to service the borrowing requirements of either the British economy or the foreign companies and personnel that controlled the Tanganyika economy. They were manned by foreign staff, adhered to procedures and policies laid down by their foreign head offices, and operated under laws imported directly from Britain or indirectly via colonial India. The commercial banks were the largest institutions and their main purpose was to provide working capital finance to the estates and the import/export companies. They also served as banker to the government and the expatriate population. For most of the colonial period the working capital requirements of the economy were less than the funds taken in by the banks as deposits and the surplus was therefore remitted overseas for investment elsewhere. This was the logical outcome of restricted growth opportunities in the colonial economy owing to poor productivity, limited international demand for primary products, and limited domestic demand for consumption items because of low and greatly unequal incomes. It was also due to the fact that commercial banks did not finance even the limited amount of long-term investment taking place in the private sector, nor did they purchase longer-term government debt. Many of the other financial institutions operating in colonial Tanganyika also invested considerable sums overseas. The insurance companies put some money into local buildings but exported the rest out of choice, whereas the Post Office Savings Bank and public sector pension

76 Monetary institutions and class struggle funds were required by law to invest overseas. Above all, for most of the colonial period, the currency supply was required to be backed, shilling for shilling, by investments in sterling assets. Thus no currency could come into circulation unless East Africa earned an equivalent amount in foreign exchange and invested this in London. Foreign companies raised their long-term capital requirements overseas or reinvested locally earned profits. The modest debt requirements of the Tanganyika government were likewise met from overseas. There was therefore no local long-term capital market and, indeed, there was really no need for one. For the functions they were designed to perform the colonial monetary institutions were both appropriate and efficient. As long as colonialism and economic dependence persisted, the monetary system was stable. Bank collapses were almost unheard of, inflation through the excessive printing of currency was out of the question, foreign exchange reserve problems were rarely encountered (because of the high level of reserves and because a balance of payments deficit would almost automatically lead to currency contraction and a corresponding reduction in the demand for imports), and both the exchange rate and the structure of interest rates were automatically pegged in line with those in London. In short, the monetary system was designed to enable the exploitative mechanism of the colonial economy to operate smoothly and efficiently and, in turn, it was an important component of that exploitative mechanism. While it is true that political independence did not alter the basic structure of Tanganyika's economy it did have tremendous implications for the expatriates living there. Many could not accept the fact of black rule and therefore took themselves, their assets, and their racism elsewhere. Others were prepared to wait and see but not to risk their financial assets. This applied equally to both companies and individuals. In either case substantial sums of money left Tanganyika as soon as independence looked like becoming a reality. The result was that the commercial banks, the building societies, the Land Bank, the hire purchase companies, and the Post Office Savings Bank lost millions of shillings in deposits and the country lost the equivalent amount in foreign reserves. The smaller institutions involved were all ones in which deposit liabilities were much more liquid than loan assets and, as a result, in the face of huge withdrawals of deposits they virtually collapsed, being rescued only by considerable infusions of capital by the larger banks, insurance companies, or the government. The commercial banks were in a double squeeze. They lost deposits but foreign companies also called on them for

77 John Loxley more working capital, having, for security reasons, remitted part of their own investments overseas. To meet this pressure the banks had for a number of years to reverse past practice and, instead of investing overseas, had to borrow from London. The ability of the banks to do this is frequently cited as being a strength of the colonial banking system. All too often it is forgotten that for most of the colonial period the flow of funds was in the opposite direction and that handsome profits were made on the loans when they became necessary. It should also be borne in mind that the need for foreign borrowing arose simply because of the absence of exchange controls, the absence of which had, in the first place, made the capital flight possible. Following this dramatic loss of deposits most financial institutions began to seek a more stable domestic financial base, which meant wooing the African saver. With the Africanization of the civil service, the increasing of the minimum wage, the rapid growth of government spending on infrastructure and services, and the attempts to attract private industry into Tanganyika to diversify the economy, this base began to grow as the African wage and salary bill expanded. No such shift took place in the investment pattern of the larger institutions such as the banks and the insurance companies for the simple reason that nothing much had changed in the basic ownership or production structure of the economy. They, therefore, continued to operate pretty much as before with the commercial banks still lending to expatriate companies and individuals, though having no surplus to invest overseas, while the insurance companies invested in real estate and remitted the balance outside the country. The remaining institutions became more or less moribund on the lending side, accumulating deposits simply to pay off the loans they had taken during the capital flight. At the same time, during the late fifties the London bond market had ceased to be an outlet for colonial issues of bonds even when these were backed by a British government guarantee. The result was that the newly independent government of Tanganyika could not rely on inherited domestic monetary institutions or on the London market to finance its ambitious capital budgets. Neither was there any institution providing credit assistance on any scale to African farmers and would-be businessmen, which the government saw as a further major defect in the monetary system. In response to these shortcomings the government pursued what can only be described as policies of nationalism in the monetary sector between 1961 and 1967. These took the form of altering the terms on which

78 Monetary institutions and class struggle existing institutions functioned and of creating new institutions designed to compete with or complement existing institutions. The introduction in 1965 of exchange controls certainly helped to prevent overt capital outflow, while the increasing liberalization of the reserve requirements of the East African Currency Board and its ultimate replacement, in 1966, by a central bank, allowed the government access to the savings implicit in the currency supply and to foreign exchange for imports. The creation in 1964 of the National Provident Fund provided the state with a steady source of capital financing as well as providing workers with a useful service. The National Co-operative Bank (Nee) of 1962 was designed to take away some seasonal crop finance and deposit business of co-operatives from the commercial banks; and its sister agency, the National Development Credit Agency (NocA), was designed to give longer-term loans to small African farmers and businessmen. The Tanganyika Bank of Commerce (Tee) was established to compete with the expatriate commercial banks while the National Insurance Corporation (Nie) was intended to compete with the expatriate insurance companies. Perhaps a secondary consideration in the creation of these institutions was the recruitment and training of some African staff which was proceeding very slowly in the expatriate institutions. 8 These policies were successful in demonstrating to the government that significant financial resources could be mobilized domestically and were probably a factor leading to the emphasis on self-reliance in the Arusha Declaration, especially since foreign private investment and bilateral aid had been well below the desires and expectations of the government. The new institutions did not, however, succeed in effectively competing with the expatriate institutions or in altering their behaviour. Indeed, this ought to have been obvious from the very beginning. The NCB and the NDCA were almost totally dependent on the expatriate banks for staff while the NCB obtained most of its resources for seasonal credit from those banks. The rec and the NIC were partly owned by the expatriate institutions with which they sought to compete and, since they were extremely small and adhered to exactly the same policies and procedures as their so-called competitors, could not be expected to grow at their expense. The failure on this account of the policy of nationalism in the monetary institutions sector paralleled the failure of the government to attract foreign private or public capital and to develop indigenous African capitalists (even though policies in the agriculture sector, including credit policies, went some way towards this). The state therefore continued to

79 John Loxley be divorced from an economic power base and the limitation of the inherited colonial economy continued to frustrate nationalist aspirations for the rapid growth of investment, incomes, and employment. It is in this context that the Arusha Declaration and the accompanying nationalizations must be understood. While the motivation of Nyerere and his progressive colleagues was certainly one of striving to build socialism, there can be no doubt that nationalism was not only part of this motivation but also, and perhaps more significantly, the key to the acceptance of the nationalization measures by the less progressive and predominant faction in the leadership of the party and the bureaucracy. For these latter, public ownership was accepted as a legitimate means of combatting the threat to the independence of the nation which reliance on foreign governments and foreign businesses seemed to pose by their failure to provide capital and jobs in Tanzania, and this legitimacy was underwritten by the tremendous popular acclaim that greeted the nationalizations. Public ownership was not, therefore, the logical outcome of a process of revolutionary social change, nor was it the first step towards a new mode of production and fundamentally restructured social relations; rather, it was a more limited, but nevertheless bold, political move which altered the relationship between the state and the enclave sectors of the economy and therefore between Tanzania and international capitalism; but it stopped short of severing ties with international capital or of altering in any basic way the relationship between workers and peasants and the means of production. Thus, as has been argued above, the Arusha Declaration did not give rise to policies designed to extricate Tanzania from the limitations of the international division of labour or to change the basic structure and functioning of the economy. What it did do was to allow Tanzania to function more 'efficiently' within the inherited economic framework by giving the state greater access to economic surplus and, ironically, foreign capital and know-how. This apparent dichotomy between policies of self-reliance leading to greater international dependence can be explained by a number of factors. The nationalizations certainly paid off in terms of surplus retention within the economy and in terms of greatly expanded investment activity. But this increased level of domestic effort also appealed to foreign donors as evidence of Tanzania's seriousness of purpose. Likewise the official policy emphasis on self-help and local initiatives was attractive to certain donors, especially the Scandinavian countries. The progressive leadership also successfully introduced income restraints and heavier taxation on higher income groups

80 Monetary institutions and class struggle which enabled expansion in the state budget, and this, together with the mobilization of surplus and the retention of profits that would otherwise have left the country, improved Tanzania's debt servicing capacity, making it a more attractive proposition for foreign aid. In addition, there was undoubtedly a desire on the part of certain countries and institutions to use aid flows in a bid to pre-empt any further movement to the left. For these reasons official aid flows increased dramatically after 1967 and especially so after 1969. At the same time Tanzania's industry could now offer a state guarantee to private capital and in that sense a much more secure accommodation for foreign capital, technology, and manpower; hence the spate of joint ventures and management agreements after the Arusha Declaration. It was inevitable, however, that the restrictive nature of the economy would reassert itself after a time. Dependence on weak primary product export markets and on steadily dearer imported capital, intermediate, and consumer goods was not reduced by post-1967 measures. Insufficient emphasis was placed on domestic food production as the weight of agricultural extension, credit, and marketing efforts was directed, as in colonial times, towards export crops, and production in the agricultural sector as a whole grew slowly because of poor techniques and peasant apathy in the face of declining terms of trade9 In a bid to raise agricultural production the government began forcibly moving large numbers of peasants into development villages in 1974. This wreaked havoc with production, the more so since the country also suffered a severe drought in that year. The result was a dramatic drop in marketable food surpluses, a massive increase in the prices of basic food stuffs, large-scale emergency purchases of imported staples, and an acute balance of payments problem. Thus food imports rose from around 129 million shillings in 1973 to around 1013 million shillings in 1974 and 739 million shillings in 1975. The food price index of Dar es Salaam wage earners rose from 133 in March 1974 to 247 in March 1975 and to 314 by March 1976 causing great hardship to lower paid workers in spite of increases in the minimum wage. 10 The ensuing balance of payments crisis was exacerbated by rising world oil prices. Together these led to a depletion of foreign reserves and of facilities at the IMF and necessitated huge foreign borrowings by the government. They also served to emphasize that far from being self-reliant Tanzania was, if anything, even more dependent on the international market and even more vulnerable to international forces than it had been in earlier years. This impression is reinforced by reference to the compo-

81 John Loxley sition of the development budget. In 1967-68 external financing accounted for 85 million shillings or 22 per cent of the development budget; by 1974-75 foreign financing was estimated at 1191 million shillings or 54 per cent of the total development budget. At the same time the share of total public sector investment (development budget plus investments by parastatals not financed from development budget) going into directly productive activities fell from only 25 per cent in 1969-70 to a dismal 13 per cent in 1973-74, so it can hardly be argued that these borrowings were contributing to self-reliance in the sense of import replacement or export generation in the short or medium run. Indeed, external imports as a share of GDP rose between 1967 and 197 4 from less than 20 per cent to over 30 per cent even after deducting food imports. 11 There has therefore been little change in the economic structure of Tanzania since 1967 as far as its external ties are concerned. Neither has the country's industrialization policy contributed towards an 'auto centred' (Amin) or 'convergence' (Thomas) type of growth centred around strategic basic industries catering for the consumption needs of the people.12 Instead it has tended to follow the classic import substitution pattern with the result that import dependence has not been reduced but simply shifted from dependence in the consumer goods sector to dependence in the intermediate and capital goods sectors. The principal effects of the nationalization measures were to reduce foreign profit outflows and to open up employment opportunities to Tanzanians at all levels but otherwise they did little to alter the structure of production and the dependence of the economy on external technology and, frequently, on foreign management.13 At the same time the nationalization measures did not reduce worker alienation in spite of the creation of party branches and workers' committees and councils at the enterprise level. Management systems remain authoritarian and organizational structures traditionally hierarchical. The TANU guidelines of 1971 were interpreted by workers as an invitation to attack and rid themselves of arrogant, authoritarian leaders - an invitation to a type of cultural revolution. But they were met with repression by the state as the bureaucracy closed ranks in self-defence. Once more the initiatives of the progressive leaders were thwarted and the workers, confronted with mass arrests and dismissals, were insufficiently strong to impose their will. The ranks of relatively well-paid bureaucrats have been swollen since 1967 by the expansion in the number of public institutions and by the decision to decentralize both government and parastatal activities. The state budget has risen very rapidly both on this account and because of

82 Monetary institutions and class struggle greatly improved services and infrastructure. As mentioned already, the growth in agricultural production has been slow and investment in directly productive activities has been only a small proportion of the total public sector investment with the result that tax revenues have grown more by heavier taxation in general and by progressive taxation in particular than by expansion in production. It has therefore become increasingly difficult to balance the budget and in 1974 the production and balance of payments crises combined to exacerbate the hitherto thinly veiled fiscal crisis. The drastic measure of reducing government employees by 20 per cent in 1975 is indicative of the extent of both over-bureaucratization and the seriousness of the fiscal crisis. Not surprisingly, though, this measure was aimed at workers and not at senior levels of the bureaucracy. The monetary institutions both contributed to and in turn were influenced, if not shaped, by these broader trends in the economy. The banking system has contributed significantly to the retention and expansion of surplus since 1967. Both the National Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Tanzania have regularly earned sizeable profits which have been reinvested largely in government bonds. These profits have been the result partly of monopoly profits, a form of taxation on the clientele of the banks, but they have nevertheless also been the product of efficient management. Nationalization of the commercial bank rendered it possible to close down branches that had originally competed against each other for business, to reallocate staff and equipment to more efficient use, and to minimize foreign exchange working balances. More importantly, both the NBC and the Bank of Tanzania have been willing and able to invest in government securities whereas previously the banks had been reluctant and the Currency Board had been more severely restricted in how much government paper it could hold. Branch expansion in areas previously not served by banks has also led to a very rapid expansion in savings accounts, increasing the deposit base of the commercial bank. The National Insurance Corporation likewise began purchasing government bonds and the Post Office Savings Bank repatriated its foreign assets and purchased government bonds in their stead. Because of sound negotiations, a strong Tanzanian bargaining position, and the willingness of banks outside of Britain to deal with the new bank, the compensation paid to the British banks was minimal and covered by the profits of the NBC in under three years. At the same time only one small insurance company was nationalized (the old NIC itself, in that the foreign partners were bought out), since nationalization applied

83 John Loxley to the business and not the companies, so compensation here was negligible. Thus even after allowing for compensation the new public sector financial institutions generated significant investible surplus. The efficiency of the monetary system was also improved in a number of significant ways. First of all, the institutional structure was rationalized and important gaps in the credit structure were filled. A hire purchase company, Karadha, was created by the NBC in 1968 and a mediumand long-term investment bank, the Tanzania Investment Bank, was started by the NBC, the Bank of Tanzania, and the new National Insurance Corporation in 1970. The Tanzania Rural Development Bank replaced the NDCA (1971) and the Co-operative Bank was amalgamated with the NBC in 1970 while a new Tanzania Housing Bank was created in 1972. 14 Secondly, new functions were acquired by the financial institutions. The NBC engaged in forward foreign transactions, executive and trustee services, medium- and long-term lending (until the creation of the TIB), and credit planning. The bank has had growing responsibility for import licensing and control, more restrictive exchange control, foreign exchange, and national financial planning. The link between the Tanzania shilling and the pound sterling was severed in 1967 when sterling devalued, since its rationale was not based on what was best for Tanzania but rather what was best for Britain. Likewise, interest rates became fixed from the point of view of purely local requirements since exchange control prevented the free flow of capital internationally in response to interest rate differentials. All of these measures have contributed to the smoother and more rational functioning of the monetary system within the framework of the dependent economy. They have not, however, in themselves reduced that basic structural dependence, and in many ways they have contributed towards increasing it. Thus the prime functions of the TIB, the TRDB, and the THB when these institutions were conceived were to direct state resources in a planned, organized, and efficient manner into the various sectors of the economy under their portfolios. Increasingly, however, they have been used as channels for raising finance overseas. Donors have been attracted by their specialized skills and clear lines of sectoral responsibility, with the result that much of their programming is geared towards meeting the requirements of foreign aid agencies. Thus by June 1975 the TIB had financed 66 million shillings or 26 per cent of its total assets by foreign loans and grants (sh 16 m from the International Development Agency, sh 14 m from CIDA, and sh 32 m from NORAD) and 'negotiations for additional funds from World Bank, African Development

84 Monetary institutions and class struggle Bank, NORAD, KFW, SIDA and CIDA were initiated during the year' 15 (these acronyms referring to the aid agencies of the Norwegian, German, Swedish, and Canadian governments). By 1973, 47 per cent of the TRDB' s outstanding loans by value had been financed by overseas loans and grants, mostly from the International Development Agency, the soft-term financing arm of the World Bank. Aid was also received from the Swedish International Development Agency (for storage), had been negotiated with the World Bank (for cattle), and was in the process of being negotiated with Denmark, Sweden, and West Germany. 16 Reflecting to a large extent the bias of the World Bank, the overwhelming majority of its loans were also extended to individual 'progressive' farmers for the production of export crops and were, in consequence, confined to those regions of the country suitable for such crops.17 Tanzania is a member of both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and in the last three years has borrowed extensively from both institutions. This link has strengthened even further the ties of the Tanzanian economy to the international capitalist system. The fact that most senior Tanzanian economists and finance staff pass through the training colleges of these institutions at one time or another or receive their postgraduate training in Western universities that propagate the ideology of capitalism, goes some way to explaining the prevalance of conventional and conservative economic thinking at most policy levels and a widespread failure to appreciate the constraints on development, let alone socialist development, imposed by the integration of the Tanzanian economy into the international capitalist system. Capitalist institutions, including a legal system based on capitalist social relations, still prevail in Tanzania. The economy is unplanned in all but a loose indicative, financial way and certainly there is little physical planning, reflecting above all else the dominance of the export/import sector and the weak internal linkages. Goods are distributed according to demand, by the market place and not according to need, and, while incomes are certainly more equal than most if not all other African countries, they are still very unequal so that demand is not an accurate proxy of need. Price control, which might have helped equate demand and need for basic goods, all but collapsed during the 1974 production crisis, but even before that time black marketeering and shortages were serious problems. These fundamental realities of Tanzania's political economy limit the scope for creative initiatives within the monetary institutions sector and the effectiveness of much of the innovativeness, for instance in the field of credit planning, that this sector has demonstrated.

85 John Loxley Incomes and other terms and conditions of service in the parastatal sector are fixed by the Standing Committee on Parastatal Organizations (scoPo). When this committee was first introduced it reduced all salaries and has since that time attempted to ensure rough parity of returns for similar work performed in whatever institution. Reasonably well-paid senior staff have, however, been able to circumvent such salary restrictions in a number of ways. Rapid promotion has been the most effective means either within an existing institution or within one of the many new institutions created since 1967. Other means are access to fringe benefits such as housing or cars or the extensive use of travel and expense accounts, including periodic trips abroad for conferences, courses, or consultations. In these legal ways, and sometimes in illegal ways, many of the senior bureaucrats have been able to reduce the impact of real salary reductions brought about through the initial cuts, higher prices for luxuries, and higher direct and indirect taxes. In this respect the staff of the financial institutions have fared as well if not better than most others, since the proportion of senior positions in total employment is very high and the business dealings with foreign institutions extensive. At the same time staff loans, which used to be very tightly controlled, became a widely used facility after 1967, giving the staff in this sector access to purchasing power not easily available to others. The creation of Karadha, the state hire purchase company, and later the creation of the state Housing Bank, also raised the issue of privileged access of the higher paid to credit facilities. The National Bank of Commerce had opposed granting credit to private individuals for the purchase of motor vehicles but relented under pressure from civil servants in the Ministry of Finance. It then attempted to 'tax' these facilities by charging high but slightly less than normal commercial rates on the credits extended but was subjected to great pressure by the Bank of Tanzania to lower these rates and, eventually, received political direction to reduce them. Subsequently, there was great public outcry over these facilities being made available to relatively senior bureaucrats and the party directed that they be withdrawn, as they were. This incident summarizes very aptly the pressures and contradictions in the monetary system and in Tanzania as a whole shortly after nationalization. The cynics might, however, point out that this move did not deny access to cars to very senior bureaucrats who simply use official vehicles. Similar controversy surrounded housing loans which used to be available, after 1967, for amounts up to 80,000 shillings, well beyond the reach of all but the most highly paid staff. In more recent years the upper

86 Monetary institutions and class struggle limit has been reduced dramatically and more of the Housing Bank's resources are directed towards lower income housing. But once again the more senior of bureaucrats still have access to publicly owned housing that was formerly occupied by senior colonial civil servants and management staff of multinational corporations. Also, since the nationalization of rental properties in 1971, the pool of public sector housing available to more senior staff has been increased considerably. While, over time, these fringe benefits have been made progressively less accessible and in some cases, such as housing, more expensive to acquire, and while they are probably worth much less than those available to senior bureaucrats elsewhere in Africa, they nevertheless still serve to broaden the real income gap in Tanzania, beyond that measurable by after-tax income data. In the face of declining real incomes in the urban centres such benefits, even when reduced in absolute terms, assume a greater importance relative to net income and become the mark of membership of an exclusive group in society. What is more the lower paid workers see these benefits and complain constantly about them. The whole issue of income differentials and of incentives was raised rather dramatically in 1972 when the National Bank of Commerce declared a bonus for all its staff calculated at 10 per cent of salary. This prompted a huge public outcry over two issues; the first was the prerogative of the NBC in distributing public sector surpluses while the second concerned the manner of the distribution of that surplus which greatly favoured higher income staff. Eventually the party intervened and all senior staff had to repay their bonuses in full. The effect of this decision was to undermine morale in the NBC, which up to that time had succeeded in maintaining a very high level of efficiency; while the payment of bonuses to parastatal workers has now been accepted in principle, no meaningful way of measuring productivity has been developed for the financial institutions, and, in the complete absence of any non-material incentives, there has been a deterioration in productivity, clearly discernible to even the casual observer. This has been made worse by the disillusionment of the lower echelons of workers generally in Tanzania over the state's response to their attempts to implement the TANU guidelines in so far as they concerned the attitudes and behaviour of leaders. The frustration of their efforts has created a great deal of cynicism and apathy among workers and, while the financial institutions were not themselves the scene of any of the more dramatic incidents, they have certainly felt the effects of the increasing worker alienation which shows itself in deteriorating levels of service to the public and increasing instances of theft

87 John Loxley and fraud by public servants both difficult to quantify but none the less striking to observers on the scene. Yet on paper there has never been as much worker involvement in decisions affecting working conditions or in policy formulation in parastatals. Workers' committees, until their recent replacement by organs of the official trade union organization (NUTA), gave workers a formal role in workplace improvement and a recognized grievance procedure while workers' councils extended their role to advice to boards of directors on policy matters. Workers' committees had a chequered history but on the whole performed a useful function in protecting workers' rights.18 Certainly in the banking sector they acted as a useful countervailing pressure to the inherited autocratic management style. But this was onlv a negative check - a useful form of worker protection but limited in terms of its creative potential. It is here that the party policy pronouncement in 1971, Mwongozo, appeared to offer so much more, nothing short of the possibility of workers positively influencing management styles by their ability to sanction or replace leaders not demonstrating the qualities called for by the guidelines. Likewise, workers' councils in theory offered workers the opportunity to influence the policy direction of public sector institutions, an unparalleled opportunity if only it could be given practical content. But boards of directors have been slow to accept advice even when it has been forthcoming and, more commonly, the councils have been dominated by management or simply dormant. The National Bank of Commerce had one of the most active ones due, perhaps, to the interest of the bank chairman in the institution (he was also the chairman of the council), and perhaps to the fact that many of the 'workers' in the council had extensive formal education, management experience, and, understandably, a fair degree of self-confidence. But even then some decisions involving management in dramatic changes of style were never followed up, such as the one that bank managers should live and do manual work for a period of time in an ujamaa village. One always had the impression that, while going much further than perhaps all other councils, the NBC council would go only as far as the senior executives wished it to go, and the advisory nature of the function of councils certainly reinforces this impression. So, in reality, worker involvement fell far short of what was possible or, from the workers' point of view, desirable. At the same time, however, there is no doubt that management styles in the financial sector are not as autocratic as they used to be before 1967 and workers do have greater security than previously. But this is where the dilemma arises. In

88 Monetary institutions and class struggle the past, efficiency was guaranteed by tight discipline and material incentives. Now, although organizational structures remain hierarchical, it is more difficult to enforce discipline or to use the threat of dismissal as a means of ensuring performance. At the same time, collective material incentives are not operational and the abortion of the guidelines and the workers' councils has clearly circumscribed the scope for collective efforts at management. The cynicism that was the product of that abortion rules out the use of 'moral' or political incentives to improved performance. Thus, while the efficiency of the financial institutions is still generally among the best of all public sector institutions, after 1973 there was noticeable deterioration in productivity and at this stage there are few grounds for expecting changes for the better. There is in fact reason to suspect that the state response to continuing production and fiscal crises might be that of regressing into more autocratic management styles; this at least has precedents in the rural sector and would be consistent with the state response to the takeover of factories by workers following publication of the TANU guidelines. In this respect, the replacement of workers' committees with NUTA bodies also provides greater opportunity for the state to tighten up on discipline by setting uniform guidelines on working conditions and grievances in all work places, since NUTA is effectively part of the state machinery. There are two other areas in which the behaviour of the financial institutions reflects the contradictions inherent in the economy as a whole, namely in the treatment of female employees and in the decentralization of decision-taking. As in all capitalist economies women are grossly underrepresented in the official employment statistics, virtually not represented at all in senior bureaucratic positions, and tend to occupy the lower paying clerical positions. At the same time official policy recognizes the existence of sex discrimination and attempts to combat it by removing legal and bureaucratic obstacles to access to senior positions. Tanzania is also one of the few countries in the world to offer three months' paid leave of absence to pregnant married women and recently extended this privilege to unmarried mothers. Part of the reason for the apparent contradiction between policy and reality is deeply rooted in Tanzania's social structure. Access to education is costly and traditionally first preference is given to male children. Male chauvinism is very prevalent rendering promotions difficult for women even when they have the necessary education and experience. But also in some respects the contradictions are more apparent than real.

89 John Loxley Thus the payment of maternity leave by the state to unmarried mothers could be interpreted as a shifting of responsibilities from the individual to society as a whole through the state budget, a shift necessitated by the decline in urban living standards in recent years. The financial sector has very consciously attempted to recruit women to professional positions but few occupy senior posts. At the same time personnel , practices in the banks have come under heavy fire from women. In an unusual move in 1974 a group of women in the National Bank of Commerce denounced the bank for not assisting women to find alternative jobs in the bank when their husbands (working for other institutions) were transferred from one town to another, thereby forcing them to live apart from their husbands or to resign from bank service. They also complained that they were treated as unproductive workers by senior bank staff and that they were being punished for taking time off to tend to sick children. This incident was unusual in that women have rarely come together as a group in parastatals to fight for their interests and rights, as women. It affords a valuable insight into a problem that extends well beyond the financial institutions sector. The decentralization issue raises similar concerns. The official policy was undoubtedly well intentioned and designed to enable decision-taking to be much more sensitive to the needs of people at the local level and to enable local people to participate in such decision-taking at that level. While this was the intent, some would argue that the result has been an extension of the state and party bureaucratic arm from the centre to the districts, thereby expanding the bureaucracy and enabling much greater central control over local affairs. Certainly there is ample evidence to support this view. The bureaucracy has expanded as a result of decentralization and local budgets do normally tend to be directed from the centre. What is not clear is the extent to which the centre is influenced by the localities, the degree of independence that the districts and regions have from the centre, and the extent to which decentralized bureaucrats act as a group to protect their interests and those of the bureaucrats at the centre. The performance of the financial institutions has not been uniform on this issue. The NBC began its life by centralizing all decisions and, as it gained a better working knowledge of its staff, gradually shifted responsibilities to the regions and the branches so that a good deal of discretion became exercised at the local level but within the offices of, and by the staff of, the bank. In more recent years local committees consisting of senior representatives of other banks, the regional administration, the

90 Monetary institutions and class struggle co-operative movement, etc., have been established to deal with credit requests. From the bank's point of view this has reduced the pressures on head office and provided a speedier local processing of credit requests and an input of local expertise. No doubt it has also increased the power of a number of local bureaucrats who were previously not party to credit allocation decisions and therefore tightened the hold they have over economic decision-taking at that level. Other financial institutions have not yet gone as far as the NBC. The TRDB has similar regional credit committees but they are purely advisory with all decisions being taken at head office in Dar es Salaam. The NIC has a number of local branches which, incidentally, frequently have to compete with private insurance agents also working on behalf of NIC, but again decision-taking is highly centralized. While decentralization of decision-taking is a necessary facet of socialism it is clearly not proof of the existence of socialism, and one's view of Tanzania's decentralization measures must be determined by one's view of the role of the state, at whatever level it operates. What is at issue here is the accountability of the bureaucracy to people living in the regions and the extent to which the bureaucracy at that level serves its own interests at the expense of the general good of society. It has been the contention throughout this paper that in the last analysis the performance of Tanzania's financial institutions will reflect the broader contradictions at work within the economy. At no time has this been more apparent than it was in 1974-75 during the production, exchange, and accompanying fiscal crises. The temporary amelioration of these crises required massive overseas borrowing by both the central and the commercial bank of some 900 million shillings on top of a loss of foreign assets of about the same amount (or 83 per cent of all foreign reserves between September 1973 and September 1975). Lending to the government by the banking system almost doubled during this period with the central bank lending money to the commercial bank for onlending to the government when the former began approaching the legal limits of its holdings of government paper. Thus the fine division of labour between the commercial bank and the central bank broke down under the acute crisis conditions caused neither by mismanagement by the financial institutions nor by inherent deficiencies in the laws governing them, but by the deeper contradictions within the Tanzanian economy. Resolution of these contradictions in the short term will necessitate a reduced standard of living for most Tanzanians and vigorous attempts to raise both production and productivity. This may well entail

91 John Loxley even further departure in practice from a number of formal progressive policy positions and an increase in authoritarian attitudes towards workers and peasants. Such a move will simply serve to heighten the struggle between the bureaucratic bourgeoisie and the workers and peasants and to entrench the economy even further into the international capitalist system (to meet the mounting foreign debt commitments), with all the limitations that this implies on future income growth, distribution, and stability. Thus the crisis in 1974-77, which found such vivid reflection in the balance sheets and profit and loss accounts of the financial institutions, was simply the prelude to a much longer-term struggle. The outcome of this struggle will determine the type of society there will be in Tanzania and the relationship that state institutions, such as the banks, will have to the workers and peasants of that country.

NOTES

1 2

3

4 5 6

7

8

See especially Issa G. Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania (London and Dar es Salaam 1975) There is no denying that the Arusha Declaration spelled the beginning of the end for the (essentially Asian) commercial bourgeoisie and provided the bureaucratic bourgeoisie with an economic base; but was this the conspiratorial intent of the declaration or, as others including the author would argue, was the Arusha Declaration the product of a progressive faction of the leadership who saw ownership and aid links with international capitalism as a major source of Tanzania's economic problems in the 1960s? See Saul, 'African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania,' in G. Arrighi and Saul, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York 1973), and J. Loxley and Saul, 'Multinationals, Workers and the Parastatals in Tanzania,' in Review of African Political Economy, no 2 (1975) Shivji, Class Struggles, pp. 64, 79 Ibid., p. 85 Tanzania Investment Bank, Annual Report, July 1974 to June 1975, chairman's statement, p. 5. Mr Mbowe quotes the 1974-75 Economic Survey to support his argument. For a fuller exposition, see Loxley, 'The Development of the Monetary and Financial System of the East African Currency Area, 1950-1964,' unpublished PHD thesis, University of Leeds, 1966. These developments are analysed at length in Loxley, 'Structural Change in

92 Monetary institutions and class struggle

9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17

18

the Monetary System of Tanzania,' in L. Cliffe and J.S. Saul, eds., Socialism in Tanzania, 1 (Dar es Salaam 1972). This case is made forcefully in Clive Y. Thomas' Dependence and Transformation: The Economics of the Transition to Socialism (New York 1974). See Bank of Tanzania, Economic Bulletin, vm, 1 (March 1976), pp. 40, 46 See Loxley, 'Government Expenditure in Tanzania,' Institute of Finance Management, reading materials, mimeo., 1974; and Economic Survey, 1974-75, and Bank of Tanzania, ibid. Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale (New York 1974); Thomas, Dependence and Transformation See Loxley and Saul, 'Multinationals' See Loxley, 'Financial Planning and Control in Tanzania,' in J.F. Rweyemamu et al., eds., Towards Socialist Planning (Dar es Salaam 1972) See ns, Annual Report, 1974-75, pp. 10-11 See TRDB, Annual Report, 1 July 1972 to 30 June 1973, p. 8 For an elaboration of the difficulties encountered by rural credit institutions in adapting to policies of socialism and self-reliance, see Loxley, 'Rural Credit and Socialism - A Critique of Rural Credit Policy in Tanzania,' and I. Seushi and Loxley, 'Financing Ujamaa - State Resources and Cooperative Development,' both in L. Cliffe et al., eds., Rural Cooperation in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam 1975). While Shivji's argument that such committees serve to 'individualize the workers and their grievances and attempt to destroy their class solidarity' cannot be denied, his implication that these committees were established with this in mind is rejected. This is one more example of Shivji's tendency to assume 'post hoc propter hoc' in an elaborate conspiratorial design orchestrated by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie.

JONATHAN BARKER

The debate on rural socialism in Tanzania

A central element in Tanzania's strategy for self-reliant and socialist development inaugurated in 1967 was the policy of rural socialism. Rural people were to be persuaded by education and by example to live together in villages, to work together in communally owned fields, and to share the product of their collective work. The villages were to be democratically run by their members and production decisions were to be co-ordinated with regional and national economic development plans. By January 1974 official figures showed that 2,560,470 (out of about 13 million rural Tanzanians) lived in 4666 ujamaa villages. Some doubt about the socialist content reflected in these figures is justified by the fact that only 'more than 395' villages had 'reached the third stage of registering themselves as cooperative societies.' 1 There was an important change in policy at the end of 1973: party and government directed that by 1976 all rural Tanzanians were to live in nucleated settlements with no stipulation that collective production was required or would later be required. The massive resettlement 'operations' earlier carried out in Rufiji District (1969), Dodoma Region (1970), and Kigoma Region (1972) were extended to all regions. The policy change of 1973 stimulated much commentary by observers and participants concerned with Tanzania's rural development. 2 Several basic questions had to be faced: 1 Had ujamaa policies caused stagnation or reduction in agricultural production? 2 How would the renewed and accentuated dependence of the economy and of government plans upon aid and loans from Western countries affect ujamaa policy?

96 The debate on rural socialism 3 Had socialist and production priorities been abandoned in favour of modern services such as brick houses, straight streets, schools, water taps, and dispensaries? 4 How should one interpret the willingness of the party and the government to use force and to forego consultation in a matter so basic to people's well-being, and the absence of peasant reaction against what appeared to be arbitrary and damaging administrative action? These questions about the new policy provoked critical reassessment because Tanzania had been one of the few African governments to make greater independence from international markets a goal, to spell out and to implement such socialist policies as nationalization of major commercial, financial, and industrial enterprises, to elaborate a rural-centred socialist development strategy, to limit the privileges and incomes of government and party elites, and to advocate and devise means for popular choice and participation in a one-party socialist regime. Most commentators on ujamaa fall into one of two categories. Both may be in sympathy with Nyerere's formula of self-reliant and egalitarian development and his efforts to promote a socialist attitude of mind. They differ in the relative importance they give to collective incentives and socialist organization as against individual incentives and private management in agricultural production. One category will be called 'production socialist' and the other 'production liberal.' In fact, many in the first category are Marxists and many in the second are social democrats, but it is the narrower and more precise distinction which is relevant here. Production liberals are sceptical of the effectiveness of communal or collective production in agriculture. They place their bets on the self-improvement motive of families and individuals and fear the dead weight of a production-managing bureaucracy or a self-appointed political vanguard. Production socialists, on the other hand, wish to avoid the unholy alliance of local landlords and national bureaucrats geared into world commodity markets and insulated from the needs of the rural majority. Before examining in some detail the critiques of ujamaa generated from these two different perspectives, as well as some points that do not fit neatly into either camp, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves of the content of the major steps in the implementation of ujamaa in the eight years that followed the Arusha Declaration in 1967.

97 Jonathan Barker TRAJECTORY OF UJAMAA

1967-73: Education and administrative inducement January 1967: The Arusha Declaration set forth the policy of 'socialism and self-reliance.' In agriculture it called for hard work, with intelligence, from the peasants. It warned against exploitation of the rural areas (where export crops were produced) by the towns (where projects were located whose financing depended upon foreign currency received for agricultural exports). It also warned against laziness, especially on the part of rural men. 3 September 1967: President Nyerere's paper, 'Socialism and Rural Development,' set forth the principles of ujamaa - living together and working together for the good of all in democratic communities. It called for a return to the traditional values of mutual respect, common ownership, and obligation to work (but in conditions which would overcome the poverty and the exploitation of women characteristic of traditional ujamaa) and for a new departure away from the class system emerging in the rural areas out of the colonial connection and towards 'a nation of ujamaa villages.' 4 The new policy was to be implemented by persuasion in a step-by-step fashion flexibly adapted to the specific social-economic conditions of an area. November 1967: The Regional Development Funds were established to finance small projects chosen by villagers. The initial 500,000 shillings per region was later increased to over one million and then to two shillings per capita.5 January 1968: In a speech at the university entitled 'Progress in Rural Areas,' Nyerere gave a fuller account of how ujamaa villages would spread. He stressed each village's self-government and its right to make its own mistakes on all internal matters. But the key to implementation was leadership, which persuades and teaches the people and learns from the people and is with the people. 'If we can get a few of these village communities working in every area, their success will lead to others also being started.'6 This spontaneous strategy was soon backed by administrative inducements. October 1968: After some ujamaa villages were imposed by force and threats, Nyerere published 'Freedom and Development,' in which he stated: 'No one can be forced into an ujamaa village and no official - at any level - can go and tell the members of an ujamaa village what they should do together, and what they should continue to do as ujamaa

98 The debate on rural socialism farmers.' 7 However, the Tanganyika African National Union (the sole political party in mainland Tanzania) was to provide education and leadership so that prospective members would know why they were forming an ujamaa village. Moreover, government services would give priority to fulfilling the needs of ujamaa villages. Early 1969: Presidential Circular no 18 required that 'All Government policies, and the activities and decisions of all Government officials must ... be geared towards emphasising the advantages of living together and working together for the good of all; and they should be angled at discouraging the continuation of private individual farming; and should attempt to dampen down the urge for private expenditure on consumer and farm durables in favour of communal expenditure on things like cooperatively owned farm implements, stores, water supplies, good houses, dispensaries, nursery schools, roads, community centres, and so on.' This, while also increasing rural production, required an 'all-out effort' by TANU and the government. The three-phase strategy was to educate TANU and government leaders through study of 'Socialism and Rural Development' and related documents; under TANu's leadership to take these ideas to the people so they would decide in groups to form villages; and, under the leadership of the government (especially the Ministry of Rural Development), to give technical and organizational assistance to the infant villages. Both TANU and the Ministry of Rural Development were given ujamaa divisions to formulate ujamaa methods and policies. The Regional Development Funds were to be 'deployed primarily for the purpose of helping these new [ujamaa] groups ... and of supporting new development in established ujamaa villages.' May 1969: The second five-year plan called for a 'frontal' rather than a 'selective' approach to ujamaa, 'mobilizing the full range of governmental and political institutions behind the principles of Ujamaa.' 9 But it should be noted that the enormous emphasis on ujamaa was written into the plan after the main document had been prepared - perhaps an indication of doubts and divisions within the government about the importance of ujamaa policy. 10 The tempo of village creation picked up quickly after 1969. Operation Rufiji in 1969, which moved the population in the river's flood plains to higher ground, was followed in 1970 by Operation Dodoma, which pulled resources from other regions to settle the semi-nomads in this drought-prone region. In 1971 a major effort to bring ujamaa was launched in the capitalist maize farming zone, Ismani division of Iringa Region, by the regional commissioner, who was shot dead by a maize

99 Jonathan Barker farmer on 25 December 1971. More 'operations' in Chunya and Kigoma, helped by World Bank funding, were launched in 1972. May 1972: The 'Iringa Declaration' ofTANU under the title 'Siasa ni Kilimo' ('Politics Is Agriculture') reflected government worry about stagnation in agriculture. It stressed the importance of good farming techniques, whether in ujamaa villages or on private farms, and pledged the government and TANU to promote more effective and modern practices. July 1972: Decentralization was begun - to get administration and planning closer to the problems.11 1973-76: Villagization

September 1973: TANU conference resolved that all rural Tanzanians must live in clustered villages by 1976. Villagization operations followed throughout rural Tanzania with no requirement for socialist practices in most cases. The education and inducement strategy was abandoned. August 1974: As drought hurt agricultural production and food grain imports shot up, Nyerere called on all families to establish food plots and to increase food production. August 1975: The Law on the Registration of Villages, Recognition of Ujamaa Villages, and Government of Villages was passed. It was soon elaborated in regulations and orders promulgated by the prime minister as provided in the law. 12 During the 1967-69 period the rural policy seems to have had little effect. Some older TANU Youth League communal villages continued and some new ones were started in Handeni and West Lake and elsewhere. But the official figures for December 1968 show only 180 villages with 58,000 inhabitants. Subsequent progress is given as follows: 13

Villages Members

December 1969

1970

1971

1972

March 1973

January 1974

650 300,000

1965 531,200

4484 1,545,240

5556 1,980,862

5628 2,028,164

5008 2,560,472

Like its progress, the commentary on and analysis of ujamaa has almost entirely followed the change of policy of 1969. I have seen no analysis of why the educational strategy failed and why it was replaced. Anthony Ellman and G. Cunningham, who observed it at first hand,

100 The debate on rural socialism simply say that progress was slow.14 Presumably the 1969 initiatives grew out of impatience on the part of Nyerere and the TANU leadership for socialism and rural development to progress. COMMENTARIES ON UJAMAA POLICY

As a policy for the promotion of rural socialism and the increase of productivity the 1969-73 effort must be read as a failure, perhaps a qualified failure, but a failure none the less. Although food production is notoriously difficult to measure, estimates suggest that during this period it stagnated or decreased. The more reliable cash crop production figures also reveal stagnation. 15 Moreover, neither the government nor the party claimed any breakthrough in establishing socialist practices in agriculture. Unofficial surveys found few enduring successes and many retrogressions, failures, and fictions. Some efforts to understand shortcomings in the policy as it unfolded will be examined here. The basic fact is that the rural socialist policy was never made broadly popular among peasants, nor were its material benefits demonstrated on a wide scale. In searching out reasons for the unfortunate beginnings of ujamaa, there are three broad areas open to question: constraints on the quantity and quality of the skills and resources the policy required, the basic principles and values of the policy itself, and the instruments and strategy for implementing that policy. A fourth angle of criticism considers the place of agriculture in the overall development strategy. All these lines of criticism can be related. For example, a production liberal who is sceptical of the appeal and effectiveness of ujamaa methods of production may agree that a successful rural socialist policy is conceivable, while arguing against it on the grounds of resource limitations. Such a criticism appears agnostic on the question of the appropriateness of socialist methods of production when, in fact, doubts about socialist methods drive the estimate of the costs of implementing the policy upward. The underlying argument of the production liberals against ujamaa is that communal production cannot deliver the goods as well as peasant family farms. However, not all critics invoke production liberal principles. Several have rested their case on the shortage of appropriate knowledge and skills among farmers, extension service officials, and administrators, or on the scarcity of improved seeds and fertilizers and the means of distributing them. In 1971 G. Helleiner noted that the ujamaa sector had not done well while the private incentive sector had shown

101 Jonathan Barker 'impressive' results; but he seemed to approve an ujamaa policy which remained 'a pragmatic one of trial and error, with voluntarism and selfreliance the principle watchwords at the local level.' For him socialist production was out of reach on the grounds that the managerial and planning capacity to make each ujamaa scheme work were simply not available. K.E. Svendsen questioned the continued appropriateness of the frontal approach to ujamaa and called for a more 'rational use' of political, administrative, and planning resources and the striking of a new balance that would favour the social and economic strengthening of existing ujamaa villages over the creation of new ones. Later, Reginald Green attributed the failure to improve production to lack of the relevant agronomic knowledge, lack of improved seed, and poor weather. Goran Hyden explained the poor performance of communal work in ujamaa villages partly in terms of the environmental unknowns of the new village sites which confound the knowledge and skills of the villagers. 16 Rene Dumont is much more explicit than the above writers in his critique of Nyerere's principles, although he too says it is 'not the opinion of the foreign expert which counts, but rather that of the farmers, the principal people involved.' The principles Dumont disputes are those of communal work, ownership, and shareout - and, in a more limited way, egalitarianism. Dumont argues that 'it is not possible to omit, without major inconvenience, the stage of the "progressive farmers."' One of his reasons is that 'Development requires that people can become rich to a certain extent by hard and prolonged work and by economy.' Moreover, the task of recording the quantity and quality of the work of each person each day is 'tedious, psychologically difficult, and very costly,' but without it, he believes, the best workers work to the level of the worst - except in China 'with her extraordinary overall moral discipline.' 'The path to the ujamaa village should therefore be very pragmatic. The traditions of African mutualism cannot, in my opinion, constitute a sufficient basis for allowing a general acceptance of rural socialism.' And, with respect to village government, the 'democratic principle ... is scarcely accepted ... ' 17 Recent World Bank reports take a similar line, questioning whether collectivization can have any positive productive results and concluding that the only reason for ujamaa villages is to advance egalitarian goals. Few micro-studies have examined directly the incentives working for and against co-operative production. David Feldman's study of tobacco growers in Iringa found that co-operative owning and working did occur when economies of scale operated in the first three years of establishing farms. When the economies of scale ceased, the co-operation also fell

102 The debate on rural socialism off. But other factors pressed families away from co-operative ownership, production, and distribution. Food crops grown for consumption would create allocation problems if grown collectively because food needs would not be proportional to work contributed. Food plots provide an inheritance for heirs and give women an economic base of independence. Family heads do not want to give up the direct control they have over family labour. 18 Since the critique of ujamaa by production liberals turns importantly on the question of incentives, it is worth noting the evidence on this point. Anthony Ellman, on the basis of information available to the Ministry of Rural Development, reported that 'proceeds from communal enterprises are in most cases divided according to work contributed' and that differences in motivation are linked to the size and cohesion of work groups. A small community (thirty members) with high cohesiveness and firm mutual trust had no need to keep records of work attendance because no one was ever absent without a valid excuse. 19 The largest survey to date of reported motives of ujamaa village members finds some evidence that 'the more active participants [in communal crop production] were prompted to join more because they expected it to be materially profitable.' 20 Hyden, in his review of unpublished university student research on ujamaa villages, reported that 'The system of regulating and assessing work has usually been rudimentary with emphasis only on attendance, and quality and attitude towards work or fellow-workers generally ignored.' Even villages well underway in the late 1960s had lost their motivation and reverted to more individual forms of production. Dean McHenry more recently confirmed the fact that there is little communal production but shows that among ujamaa villagers neither participants nor non-participants in communal work are hostile towards it. He found that persons who expected material advantage from ujamaa were most likely to join in communal work. He also found a trend from day-rate to piece-rate payment and that piece-rate payment was associated with more participation in communal work. 21 Some production liberals bolster their case against ujamaa with the historical argument that African and Tanzanian traditions were not very socialist and that those that were have by now been undermined by the penetration of market values. 22 Production socialists have made a similar case, but they have sometimes argued that Nyerere himself perceives the growing class reality in rural Tanzania. 23 The production liberals, as

103 Jonathan Barker noted below, do not effectively join the issue of where support for either socialist or liberal rural policies is likely to be found . In sum, the case against ujamaa by production liberals has two strands which receive different emphasis from different writers. The argument in terms of resource constraint does not always query the principles of ujamaa, but finds that family production can do the job of increasing production with acceptable costs while collective production cannot. The argument from principle notices that agricultural output has not responded to the ujamaa programme and reasons, therefore, that the principles of communalism and egalitarianism must not conform to the real motives of rural Tanzanians. What has not been made clear in the resource constraint argument is what the necessary costs of ujamaa are, what long-term savings might be realized through ujamaa, and how to quantify the opportunity cost of failing to forestall further development of rural capitalism. The argument from principle ignores what motives in what structures are in fact relevant to rural development in Tanzania. Production socialists are as reluctant to question their assumption that collective farms are most efficient and humane as a way of getting a living as production liberals are to question their belief in the acquisitive individualism (or 'familism') of rural Tanzanians. While production liberals can be satisfied by jumping straight from circumstantial evidence of poor performance of ujamaa enterprises to their liberal premises, the production socialists seek to discover some intervening forces that derail socialist policy. Because they have been interested in how socialism can be made to work under Tanzanian conditions, the production socialists have done far more research on ujamaa than have the production liberals. They have found no enduring exemplary cases of ujamaa (so far as I have been able to learn) but they have examined in considerable detail a large number of obstacles and problems in making ujamaa work in several different kinds of rural society. Since they have assumed that socialist production is both feasible and desirable, they have focused analysis on faults in the way ujamaa is presented and implemented. Repeatedly they call for more emphasis on production in the idea of ujamaa and for the creation of a corps of trained cadres who know the idea of ujamaa, the local political economy, and methods of participatory and consciousness-raising political work to bring socialism into existence throughout the countryside. They discover that the 'bureaucracy' and the local 'kulaks' or 'proto-kulaks' sabotage or distort the ujamaa programme. For

104 The debate on rural socialism them the obstacles to successful ujamaa are at once structural - the increasingly capitalist and class-ridden nature of Tanzanian society - and political - the failure of the political leadership to create an effective instrument (cadres) and viable methods (political-economic education in the villages) for overcoming the structural obstacles. 24 The production socialists have been responsible for several sensitive studies of class formation and class forces standing in the way of successful implementation of ujamaa. In parts of Iringa, Rungwe, and Tanga an anti-ujamaa alliance between larger farmers and government staff has been documented.25 However, studies in some other localities reveal no such hard and fast capitalist bias on the part of peasant elites. In Mwanza cotton-growing created no land-rich and landless classes, but a strong class of traders and transporters who saw ujamaa as a potential threat though not an immediately deadly one.26 In parts of West Lake the larger farmers were clearly part of a peasant class being dominated by the local agents of such external networks as government and market. 27 One study in the Mbeya Region found the big peasants to be more receptive to ujamaa than the smaller producers. 28 The regional and areal distribution of ujamaa villages appears to support Green's conclusion that the policy appeals to the poorer sections in the country, but this conclusion assumes that the choice of ujamaa was voluntary. To the extent that government and party administered ujamaa into existence it is likely that they would choose the weakest regions and zones where it would be easiest to have their way. The richer areas were not simply failing to choose ujamaa, according to this reasoning, but resisting it. There is another twist in the argument from a number of local studies which find that wealthier farmers in many instances promote ujamaa enterprises as a way of gaining access to land and to government aid in activities that are simply added on to their family farms.29 The desire for more land, which is often cited as a reason for accepting ujamaa, may be felt by land-rich families wanting to expand still further as well as by land-poor families trying to establish greater economic autonomy. The case against the bureaucrats comes from informal as well as formal observation of ujamaa planning and the behaviour of agricultural field officers and other officials in ujamaa villages. Planning typically comes to the village from above and from outside without significant consultation with villagers. Government officers typically do not participate in village work. The many examples of official high-handedness with peasants are taken as evidence of an emerging class-based attitude of superiority.

105 Jonathan Barker Nyerere's position in 1962 was that socialism is an attitude of mind that even a rich person could adopt. Without abandoning this idea, his more recent writing displays an awareness of real obstacles to socialist commitment in the attitudes of richer farmers and of government and party officials. Samuel Mushi has adopted a position similar to Nyerere's recent one, classifying the opponents of ujamaa as the capitalist-minded ('embourgeoise') among workers and peasants as well as among officials and traders and the traditionalist peasants. Even more than for Nyerere the problem is one of 'revolution from above' in which the few in any social category who have achieved an ujamaa consciousness must play a key role. Mushi is less populist than Nyerere precisely because he finds that traditional values of co-operative labour were and are based on reciprocity among family subsistence production units for survival, something quite different from co-operative production for a collective surplus. 30 J. Mwapachu takes the same line of analysis in showing how the appointment of village management technicians might be part of an institutional strategy for 'the inculcation [in villagers] of a positive consciousness of change.' 31 Without necessarily agreeing on the content of desirable change or methods of administration, writers like Green, Helleiner, and Hyden also take a 'pragmatic' or 'eclectic' approach to the question of where support for ujamaa is likely to be found and how its success is to be evaluated. In general their eclecticism and pragmatism masks an implicit assumption that the centres of government are the only real force for change and that peasants can only take their direction from above. In H. Mapolu's analysis of Sukumaland there is no social base for genuine ujamaa since the small peasants have accepted individualist values; the intermediary class of co-operative officials and small traders is thoroughly petit bourgeois; the official cadres of ujamaa are either nonexistent or confused by an incomplete or mistaken version of socialism: and there is no class of landless labourers. Thus for Mapolu, as for Mushi and Nyerere, no major antagonism blocks the progress of socialism in the rural sector. The difference is that for Mapolu the only socialism that can advance appears to be an ineffective 'petit bourgeois socialism' until a revolutionary party with proletarian theory, firm organization, and a comprehensive strategy is in command. 32 Other analysts have stressed the existence of antagonistic division in rural society. The perceptions of social division in rural Tanzania can be arranged according to whether the line of antagonism is seen to separate urban bureaucratic and commercial classes from all agriculturalists or

106 The debate on rural socialism whether they are viewed as united with richer agriculturalists to the disadvantage of middle and lower peasants. A second division separates observers who advise a strategy of accentuating and politically polarizing social divisions from those who advise minimizing them and preventing their politicization. These positions can be represented as follows: Political strategy

Polarize it

Minimize it

Significant division Government and party staff and traders v. peasants and/or workers

Staff and 'kulaks' v. middle and poor peasants

Peasant/worker revolutionaries Boesen, Coulson, Mapolu

Poor peasants for socialism Van Velzen, Cliffe, Sender

Eclectics and pragmatics Nyerere, Green, Helleiner, Mushi, Mwapacha, World Bank

Peasant capitalists for development Lofchie, Dumont

Nyerere, while acknowledging the growing importance of class divisions, has not identified a 'major contradiction,' nor has he said that class divisions should be politicized. But he and TANU have warned against oppressive leaders and big capitalist farmers. The local research reveals a good reason for caution (and incidentally shows why the table is highly simplified) : regions differ in the degree and pattern of their emerging class formations. Research on the Usambaras, for example, reveals 'that the majority of the proto-Kulaks were only able to accumulate land and exploit labour by virtue of the fact that they had been wage earners' - a fact which would create difficulties for a worker alliance with poor peasants against richer peasants. 33 A few observers have tried to encompass these complexities. 34 VILLAGIZATION AND THE FOOD CRISIS

Adherents to both production schools have taken villagization and the food crisis of 1974-7 6 as validation of their more dire fears and have drawn 'necessary' though opposite political conclusions. Thus Andrew Coulson, a production socialist, ends his review of ujamaa and villagization:

107 Jonathan Barker ... the peasants have to liberate themselves - or to be liberated. This struggle may be directed in the first instance against their most obvious exploiters in the cooperatives, in order to get higher incomes for the rural producers, but also against the bureaucratic class which continues to use up the surplus unproductively. It might lead to yet another attempt to establish capitalist development, but this development would not be independent, nor could it possibly succeed, as Nyerere himself has pointed out in The Rational Choice [the title of a major address prepared for delivery at the University of Kha!'toum in 1972]. The alternative is to build socialism from below, which means starting with small groups of politicised peasants who will have to march largely on their own. The groups of co-operating farmers have to be small enough to trust and discipline each other. The bureaucracy will have to be drastically reduced in size, and rural development will not be seen as coming about by Government staff or Government money, but by people who combine together to build a new life. Even this cannot succeed without sensible industrialisation plans. But the logic of the present situation is that the only immediate hope for socialism in Tanzania is a cultural revolution. 35

R. Ma tango reaches similar conclusions in his analysis of Tanzania's food production: 'Our ujamaa villages need a re-organization which must lay the foundation for an egalitarian society based on our socialist ideology. Such a reorganization should be done now when people have just moved into the Ujamaa Development Villages so that whatever is done in their new environment takes the form of socialist development.' In particular, he cites the need for real village democracy, concentrating government aid on production bottlenecks not on services, and village leadership by party cadres. Michael Lofchie, reviewing the same history of agricultural stagnation, also concludes that a new policy based in a different social group is called for, but the policy is diametrically opposed. 'Tanzania is now compelled, because of its productivity crisis and the political pressures of international donors, to consider an alternative strategy of rural development. The country has now twice attempted to "bet on the weak" - first during the early villagization program, and currently in its program of collective villages. Both attempts have been economic failures and have run the Tanzanian Government perilously close to the edge of bankruptcy. The only viable remaining strategy is to "bet on the strong" or, as critics of the strategy prefer, "let the kulaks run."' 36 Most production liberals have yet to publish their reactions to villagization, perhaps because it did not fit with their view of Nyerere as a

108 The debate on rural socialism social democratic leader, but some (such as Lofchie) took it to be forced collectivization and a further step into the swamp of socialist agriculture. Most production socialists (such as Coulson), writing in the immediate aftermath of the 'operations,' saw them as the clinching evidence that a new class of bureaucrats was tightening its exploitative grip on the peasant masses under the protective shade of pseudo-socialism. They noted the resurrection of colonial laws enforcing minimum food and cash crop acreages for peasant families. They remarked upon the absence of socialist elements in the new villages and the confusion about whether they were ujamaa or 'development' villages. They were dismayed by the attitude of peremptory superiority expressed by government and party officials and by the press. They noticed that the World Bank had been led to believe that the Tanzanian government had officially but quietly - for the bank, too quietly - dropped the collective ownership and production goals of ujamaa. The law on the registration of villages and ujamaa villages has put the move away from ujamaa in perspective. The booklet explaining the law indicates that living in villages is mandatory, while the law makes it clear that engaging in collective ownership and production is optional, although it is regarded with approval and merits legal recognition. The balance of power between officials and villagers is left unclear: organization of villages as TANU party branches and self-governing units may strengthen them vis-a-vis local authorities and may provide the means for better participation by members, but the law gives virtually unlimited power to the prime minister to issue binding directives to all villages, to groups of villages, or to one village. The worst fears that the bureaucracy would be increasingly rapacious seem not to have been justified. Minister for Commerce and Industries Amir Jamal, in a speech at the university, looked forward to a stronger peasant political voice as a result of villagization. The one detailed report by an administrator of an 'operation' suggests that the pressures of administrative competition, between regions and of 'refugees' fleeing to regions and districts not being villagized immediately, dictated a frontal strategy against the preferences and planning of many district and regional officials. 37 None the less it is of interest to trace out the ideological sources of the high-handedness and at least occasional brutality characterizing the 'operations.' There is a real ambivalence in the official attitude towards the rural population. In the Arusha Declaration after the section 'Let us pay heed to the peasant,' which celebrates the peasants' economic contribu-

109 Jonathan Barker tion, comes a section on 'The conditions of development.' The two conditions are 'hard work' and 'intelligence,' both of which, we learn, are in short supply in the peasant world. 'It would be appropriate to ask our farmers, especially the men, how many hours a week, and how many weeks a year they work. Many do not even work for half as many hours as the wage-earner does. The truth is that in the villages the women work very hard. At times they work for 12-14 hours a day ... harder than anybody else in Tanzania. But the men who live in villages (and some of the women in towns) are on leave for half of their life.' 38 Rene Dumont held a similar view: 'the woman peasant [is] the real proletarian of this country ... In denouncing exploiters, it would be good never to forget the lazy man, for he is an automatic exploiter of his family and of his cooperative .. .' Coulson agreed that 'most peasants in Tanzania do not work as hard as peasants in India or China, and that they could work harder if they wanted to.' Why doesn't the peasant want to? 'If he works harder he notices that somebody else gets most of the benefit - the corrupt cooperative official, the salaried staff member, or (very correctly) the foreign consumer who buys his cash crops. He thus does not think that more work can significantly change his life. And the historical record suggests that he is right.' Coulson goes on to argue that a socialist will not call peasants lazy, but will 'show them how they are exploited and ... how they can combine to throw off the exploiting classes, and build a new life.' Phillip Raikes, too, has stressed that the seeming laziness and stupidity of peasants are really forms of passive resistance against interference and exploitation by officials. 39 SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS OF UJAMAA

If the critique of ujamaa by the production liberals stresses the questions

of resource constraints, incentives, and management, and if production socialists criticize implementation, writers in both groups and some writers less easy to categorize raise other questions of equal importance. It is convenient to discuss these with reference to an elaborated version of the formula for ujamaa : (1) living together, (2) owning together, and (3) working together for the good of all in (4) democratically run communities (5) integrated into the national economy.

Living together Nyerere's 'Socialism and Rural Development,' his major exposition on the principles and implementation of ujamaa, can be read in a way that

110 The debate on rural socialism makes villages a means or precondition of a more important goal: socialist production. There he says that in some places co-operative production may, for good reasons, precede living together, and in some places among pastoralists, for example - villages may not make sense for a long time. But a reference back to Nyerere's 1962 presidential inaugural address reveals that living together, if not an end in itself, is, in his view, indispensable for economic and political progress: ... what we must do is to try and make it possible for groups of farmers to get together and share the cost and the use of a tractor between them. But we cannot even do this if our people are going to continue living scattered over a wide area, far apart from each other, and still haunted by the old superstitious fear of witchcraft, just as in the days of our grandfathers. The first and absolutely essential thing to do, therefore, if we want to start using tractors for cultivation, is to begin living in proper villages ... unless we ao we shall not be able to provide ourselves with the things we need to develop our land and to raise our standard of living. We shall not be able to use tractors; we shall not be able to provide schools for our children; we shall not be able to build hospitals, or have clean drinking water, it will be quite impossible to start small village industries, and instead we shall have to go on depending on the towns for all our requirements ... if we do not start living in proper village communities then all our attempts to develop the country will be so much wasted effort ... What is more, the growth of village life will help us in improving our system of democratic government. 40

Although the reference to tractors clearly belongs to the era of the capital intensive settlement schemes, the rest of the reasoning remains valid for more recent policy. It is significant that the preamble to the 15 August 1975 law on the registration of villages makes reference to this 1962 speech. In the light of this statement, it seems clear that living together has consistently been an important intermediate goal, valuable for economic and political reasons. When Nyerere speaks of 'A nation of such [ujamaa] village communities' in 'Socialism and Rural Development,' he is articulating a real goal, and the qualifications in that same text are just that, qualifications due to practical difficulties that over time will be overcome. William Luttrell, writing before villagization, calculated that in the high population density areas where one-third of the population resides, almost all cultivable land is claimed. And, therefore, 'to base a pro-

111 Jonathan Barker gramme of socialist development in such areas from the beginning on villagization is clearly out of the question if development is to be voluntary and democratic.' He goes on to argue that the stress on villagization in 'ujamaa vijijini' is an inappropriate hangover from the discredited 'transformation approach' (which Nyerere's speech cited earlier in part refers to). Luttrell's position is 'that the principal concern should be with how best to begin and develop cooperative ownership, production and marketing, and cooperative social relations, in a truly democratic framework throughout rural Tanzania.'41 In purely material terms and in light of socialist priorities, Luttrell's argument seems unassailable. And, in fact, in the densely populated regions of Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Rungwe, and Bukoba, village boundaries were most often established without moving households. Elsewhere, however, suddenly to be faced with the new reality of propinquity may open people to many social, political, and economic innovations. For example, women and children may find it easier to assert their needs and preferences in a more persuasive way if they meet one another more frequently. There are indications that the demands for schools, water, and health facilities have multiplied as a result of villagization. It is easy to imagine that men and women and children accustomed to living in their separate farmsteads will have to reconsider many of their principles and values as they come to terms with village life. Thus there may be a useful result from delivering the shock of villagization to several million Tanzanians. McHenry's study shows that villagers obliged to move have not massively closed themselves off to change: 'Participation [in communal farming] appears to be relatively independent of force used to move people together.' 42 A related question is more troubling - the size of the new villages·- a minimum according to the law of 250 families, or about one thousand people. Some are much larger. These are small towns and face the environmental problems of towns in sanitation, water supply, refuse disposal, and transportation to work. Equally important is the relation between size and effective organization and motivation. We have already cited evidence that smaller ujamaa villages were more successful. Given the obstacles to good record-keeping, self-management is likely to be easier for smaller numbers. The large size appears to be dictated only by administrative convenience and the efficient supply of centrally accorded services. The fact that large villages are now required for legal registration suggests that the service mentality is dominant.

112 The debate on rural socialism

Owning together

Until the 1975 legislation, ujamaa villages had no legal status - except for the few registered as co-operative societies. Even under the new law the rights of members in community property remain unclear. In 'Socialism and Rural Development' Nyerere wrote: 'There would be no need to exclude private property in houses. or even in cattle; some energetic members may wish to have their own gardens as well as share in the community farm.' 43 He has repeated this sentiment in recent years in order to dispel anti-ujamaa rumours, and the 1975 law provides for communal ownership of large tools, equipment, shops, and storage buildings. But this leaves open questions of (1) how property brought to the village is treated - is there compensation for coffee trees pooled in a collective farm? (2) Can private property such as houses, garden crops, small tools be bought and sold? (3) What rights do members have in collective property their labour has helped to create? These questions cut deeply into basic issues about the structure of rural society and the motivations of its members. One argument is that the fundamental protection of a family is its ability to gain access to land on which it can support itself by dint of its own efforts. Where right of access to land is conditional and where tools and labour are under collective control, the family cannot fall back for social protection on its own autonomy; it can only defend itself politically. Thus the techniques and organization of members' political participation are of extraordinary importance, and we shall return to them later. Also important is the compensation due to persons who must leave the collective. Can they claim their 'share' in the collective capital in cash or kind? Can they resume their membership later? Must new members 'pay' in some way for the collective capital they profit from? There is a real risk to people who commit their labour to collective improvements without definite rights in the resulting capital. Extended families in pre-colonial Tanzania had definite rules about what a divorced wife or a younger brother could take with them on leaving the collective production unit. Ujamaa village members may feel the need of similar clear rules.

Working together for the good of all

A related question is how much land and labour should be collective and how much should remain under family control. Nyerere clearly saw a gradually increasing proportion of collective work and collective property. He seems in some passages to imply that, if exploitation is ruled out, the degree of collectivization is a pragmatic question depending

113 Jonathan Barker solely on whether it will bring material benefits through the efficiency that follows from increasing the scale of operation and the greater division of labour: 'The extent of the private activities may well vary from one village to another, but always on the basis that no member is allowed to exploit another - nor to exploit a non-member - and that all must play a fair part in the life of the community from which all benefit.' Ujamaa villages have had extensive experience with the problems of how to organize a division of labour, what principle of compensation to adopt, and how to manage compensation. The published writings contain no systematic survey of the solutions attempted and their relative success. Yet these are practical issues of immense importance for the success of rural socialism on which real practical information exists.

Democratic communities

The case studies reveal that the success of ujamaa villages is closely tied to the existence of a trusted and dynamic local leadership - often one man. Often the decline of a village occurs when the key leader loses or abandons his position. Less understood is the importance of democratic participation by village members. Many critics have simply assumed that such participation is a prerequisite and been satisfied to reveal its absence. A few studies44 show the principle at work, but again there has been no systematic effort to discover how in practical terms participation has been made effective.

Integrating agriculture into the national economy

The World Bank has advocated regional crop specialties. This kind of specialization maximizes the efficiency of the regional agricultural extension and marketing services. The integration of the economy occm:s at a higher level - national or international. There is no reason, then, not to have efficient family-sized peasant farms producing side by side but without much local division of labour. Another image is that of the mixed farming and artisanal manufacturing community growing a variety of crops and making articles of use to the local population. Here, too, it is possible to imagine each work place being organized on a family basis or on a brigade basis. But economic integration, complementarity, and balance of tasks, matching of production to needs, selecting individuals for special tasks or for special training, takes place locally. Obviously, these images are extremes, but they suggest real alternatives which have enormous implications for the manner in which work is collectivized.

114 The debate on rural socialism It takes a much more elaborate system of political and of managerial control to run a community in which twenty different types of production take place than to run one in which everyone grows food crops plus tobacco. On the other hand, the sense of being part of a community in which each person is working to fill the real needs of others and in which others work to fill one's own needs can only be had in the more complex socialist community. Nyerere seems to want the more whole and complex type of community - not commodity villages. But he does not spell out the philosophical basis for such a principle, nor does he notice the implications for local work organization. In 'The Purpose Is Man,' 45 Nyerere draws the picture of rural-based development growing from traditional roots on the basis of oxcart technology, decentralized small industry, and widespread credit channels. The same picture is given in more detail in 'Socialism and Rural Development.' But the linkages between industry and agriculture, city and country, are not treated at any length in these statements. The second five-year plan states in its chapter on objectives and strategy that 'Rural development goes hand in hand with the provision of services to agriculture, an expansion in the supply of commodities and services to meet the consumption needs of the rural population and improvement of the channels of communication through which agricultural output can be marketed. In the countryside the range of possible productive activities is large, including small-scale industries, and crafts.' 46 The colonial economic pattern of cash crops for export to pay for imported manufactures will be modified by increased internal trade. In contrast to this vague advocacy of increasing the complementarity of industry and agriculture, town and country, critics such as Lionel Cliffe have called for a much tighter integration of rural policy into an overall 'strategy for socialist revolution': 'In particular, calculations should ideally be made as to how the promotion of rural cooperative farms can be dovetailed into this wider strategy. Economically the organisational forms of ujamaa production, the actual products and the marketing arrangements should be related to the country's long run industrialisation strategy, this strategy itself emphasising the complementarity between rural and urban developments.' 47 However, I have yet to find a detailed statement about how this complementarity might look in practice, although the lines for such a statement are suggested in R. Woods' article on regional peasantries and a recent article on small-scale industry. 48 One problem is posed by changes in prices in Tanzanian imports and exports which simultaneously underlines the desirability of a

115 Jonathan Barker more integrated and self-sufficient economy and forces attention to production which will keep balance of payments in line. The recent food deficit and high grain import bill has brought the World Bank to recommend a major emphasis on food production, something Dumont recommended years ago. But the dovetailing of industry and agriculture is another step that the World Bank has not begun to take, for it continues to advise giving priority to high return agricultural exports - playing the current and foreseeable market. Reginald Green argues that the government's response to the drought -world food price-oil price-global inflation crisis of 1973-74 is 'clearly relevant to national economic integration, greater geographic balance of income generation, avoiding shortages of mass needs ... and - at least in the case of grain - offering opportunities for a significant number of peasants to escape from rural poverty.' Priorities are 'food first, mass domestic consumer goods second, export processing third, and primary export expansion fourth.' The response aims 'to save the development and equality momentum built up over 1967-73.'49 But Green identifies no specific new priority to promote agriculture-industry complementarity, and he himself does not appear to see it as more than one means to the end of greater equality and poverty eradication. CONCLUSIONS

Although this survey gives evidence that ideological preconceptions colour research, the conclusion to be drawn, if there is one, is that the ideological premises should be taken more seriously and therefore more critically. If production liberals had been more serious about the importance of incentives, they would have done research on what incentives in fact operate in ujamaa and non-ujamaa agriculture in Tanzania, instead of jumping from large premises to overall production figures and back again. If production socialists had been more serious about the potential effectiveness of socialist production organization, they would more often have looked beyond the problem of implementation to a detailed study of division of labour, production management, leadership, and participation in ujamaa enterprises. In the event, production socialists, pressed by the practical implications of their ideology, went much further in conducting scientifically interesting research than did the production liberals. The reason is clear: they were faced with an anomaly. The policy (broadly) was correct according to their ideology, but the results were poor - why? Production liberals faced no such anomaly and therefore

116 The debate on rural socialism were not moved to detail their explanation. Production socialists, however, were prone to accept too readily the first and most obvious explanation of failure: a faulty implementation of the policy because of the influence of bureaucratic and big farmer class interests; hence the failure to examine sufficiently the questions noted above about the working of socialist enterprises. From a theoretical and ideological standpoint Tanzania's experience with socialist agriculture leaves us with a challenging set of important issues that are not only 'researchable' but can be brought closer to resolution by a careful study of existing research. Some tentative conclusions and a few observations about questions for close examination come out of this survey of some of the research on Tanzania's experience with ujamaa. One broad conclusion is that throughout the period since 1967 there has been important lack of clarity about several crucial aspects of a rural socialist policy for the country. Since the Presidential Circular no 1 of 1969 refers to 'Socialism and Rural Development' as 'the basic text' for the 'training of TANU and Government leaders in the ideology, purpose and methods of establishing ujamaa villages,'50 it is appropriate to return to this text in trying to identify some of the things which this survey suggests need clarification. Where the research appears to warrant it, the direction in which clarification might be sought will be indicated. It has been argued that it makes little difference that Nyerere's parallels between traditional family ethics and reciprocal assistance between families on the one hand and communal living, working, and sharing for a better life today on the other hand are inexact. What matters is whether the appeal to tradition is ideologically successful. However, there is much evidence that the great confusion over the meaning of ujamaa in the Tanzanian local leadership and rural population is connected with this appeal to tradition. Mushi, commenting on the response of a national sample for the 1970 election study to the question 'What is ujamaa?' notes 'that the overwhelming majority of the respondents defined Ujamaa in accordance with the traditional norms of co-operation - living together and working together in harmony.' Only 30 per cent mentioned any of the key elements of modern ujamaa such as collective work for the benefit of all, self-reliance, sharing the product of collective work, and eliminating exploitation. The responses Mushi recorded in a sample from an ujamaa village in Morogoro are not very different. 51 The low participation in ujamaa activities found by McHenry, Mapolu, and others is indicative of the same confusion about what ujamaa is. The

117 Jonathan Barker videotapes of the Tanzania Year 16 Project show that in real-life decisions and conflicts the members of Mbambara time and again experienced the tension between 'traditional' and 'ujamaa' forms of development.52 Several researchers have commented that local leaders also are often unclear about the distinction between modern and traditional ujamaa. In fact, the evidence from studies of ujamaa villages makes it clear that ujamaa living entails several changes which not only forestall the development of class divisions (as Nyerere has stressed) but also offend deeply held social practices embedded in the material fabric of living and producing in many parts of Tanzania. One of the difficult changes is moving into a nucleated settlement. This was the one aspect of ujamaa doctrine that was widely understood. Now that virtually all households outside of dense settlement areas have been moved into nucleated settlements, it will be all the more important for villagers to understand the other changes required by ujamaa. Nyerere is reported to have seen villagization as the authoritarian prelude to socialism by persuasion. 53 The most basic existing reality which stands against the ujamaa requirements is closely related to the resistance to village settlement; it is the commitment to the relative autonomy and self-subsistence of the family production unit. This fact is one reason for the growth of inequality in rural Tanzania. Budding capitalists can build on this individualism. But it also means that families resist giving up this autonomy and men and elders resist diluting the economic and social power they wield in the family when family functions are given over to village bodies. An adequate doctrine of ujamaa would need to take much more realistic account of the strains involved in the shift from a family-focus to a village-focus for ownership and for sharing out work and the product of work. The 'negative undercurrent' of rumours about ujamaa villages uncovered by the 1970 election study undoubtedly is grounded in part in the real fears involved in this basic shift. 54 Accommodating individual and family rights

It follows from the recognition of the gravity of the shift to communalism that the image of an ujamaa community and the rules that govern such communities need to accommodate the realities of individual and family identities. The research shows that these are not mere attitudes of mind or traditional outlooks which good cadres or change agents can educate away. They are rooted in the need for specific knowledge of particular plots of ground, the use of simple tools and production tech-

118 The debate on rural socialism niques appropriate to family-scale production, the experience of powerlessness when outside authorities or helpers do not deliver the agreed goods or services. If it is not a question of a generalized prejudice, then the ways in which individual and family identities are accommodated should vary with circumstances. The minimum requirement appears to be explicit legal recognition of individual and family rights in the collective property and some scope for family and individual production. How much scope should depend upon the skills and tools and division of labour that the production requires. Similarly, legal and non-exploitative ways of meeting needs for extra short-term labour and for organizing non-agricultural production in the countryside should be devised, not in the abstract, but out of the experience of past, present, and future ujamaa communities.

The question of cadres, and other outsiders In Tanzania as well as elsewhere in the rural sectors of the Third World, the village-level technical agent has generally made a poor showing. The scheme, now being implemented, to post village management technicians, one technician for every five registered villages, is the most recent and far-reaching attempt to solve the problem of cadres in Tanzania. The technician is a government functionary whose work will be co-ordinated by the ward secretary, who links party and government at the ward level. The job of the technician is generally to co-ordinate and help to organize the work of government functionaries and village councils and to 'encourage the establishment of socialist economic programmes.' 55 Although it is not possible to comment specifically on so new a programme, the research in Tanzania suggests that the top-down vision of the spread of socialist and developmentalist activity is fundamentally in error. Crucial for effective work by a cadre is the creation of strong and effective horizontal ties within co-operating groups. And this can only exist where the group can generate its own political authority and sense of direction and where the real social cleavages and issues in the locality are able to play themselves out. In other words, the cadre has to be subject to a real measure of control from below and the system of posting cadres needs to spell out clearly what are the scope and the power of that community control. Otherwise there is real danger of a widening sphere of suffocating administrative tyranny in matters in which the technical and social knowledge of the villagers is essential to progressive change. Ujamaa communities will be much stronger if they can include as ordinary members persons with special mechanical and technical skills and knowledge. Yet the market for skilled workers is such that villagers

119 Jonathan Barker who acquire skills in such areas as machine maintenance, preventive and curative medicine, or accounting can earn much more elsewhere than in an ujamaa village. If such persons are given special incomes then their presence becomes, like that of government employees posted to a village, a continual source of friction. Again the experience of villages may yield some effective ways of handling this problem.

Organization within and among villages The studies show that before villagization ujamaa villages typically suffered from a sense of isolation and of being regarded with hostility by many neighbours. The doctrine of ujamaa has provided no means for the formation of some kind of ujamaa league whereby different villages in the country could share knowledge of common problems and take advantage of solutions discovered elsewhere. It would give them a vehicle for promoting a more realistic and less threatening popular image and for developing the case for their effectiveness. This is another example of the importance of horizontal organization. If each ujamaa village is a separate unit under the gaze of an increasingly powerful planning and implementing bureaucracy, then the likelihood of sufficiently informed and self-motivated policy is poor. On a smaller scale, the evidence for better work and motivation in smaller ujamaa villages suggests that the large villages now required should be encouraged to form work teams or brigades with some autonomy within the village. The image of rural society The ujamaa doctrine has not yet presented a clear image of rural society. Is the objective a multi-faceted rural economy with extensive exchange within and between regions or is it specialized crop regions? No doubt there needs to be a mix, but the nature of the mix and the means to develop more local economic linkages need to be made explicit. At the same time the linkages between agriculture and industry and between agriculture and export production require better specification. While ujamaa villages and other local authorities cannot decide the question of the overall type of society they should be creating, they can contribute to such a decision and they can understand what the objective is in order more realistically to locate their own work in the national effort. The issues of how ujamaa has worked in the rural sector in Tanzania and how it might be made to work better transcend the categories in which much of the analysis has been cast. Production liberals are too

120 The debate on rural socialism blase about the social costs of growing rural inequality in Tanzania and too ignorant about the real motives and possibilities which have been uncovered in ujamaa experiences for more effective, equitable, and satisfying working and living. Pragmatists are too reticent about the opportunity costs of their advice to slow down and too slow to accept evidence of administrative authoritarianism, probably because of certain unexpressed assumptions concerning the way high technical and administrative skills are needed and spread. Production socialists are too slow to accept the evidence that communal production is far from a universal solvent of the glue of underdevelopment and that misimplementation is not the only reason for the failure of ujamaa in Tanzania. Without entering into the important debate on the nature and possibilities of the Tanzanian political regime, the research on socialism in the rural sector of Tanzania suggests that the most fruitful attitude to strike is that of a critical production socialist sceptical of the authorities, capable of looking at social relations and production relations in Tanzania as they really exist and capable of looking for socialist solutions without romanticizing the communal content of Tanzanian tradition. There is much more to be learned from Tanzania's experience of ujamaa than this brief survey of often limited and superficial research studies could possibly uncover. Villagization has not resolved any of the questions about rural socialism in Tanzania, but it has raised the political and economic stakes of getting good answers. The crude administrative power of the party-government hierarchy has been demonstrated and the needs of the rural population for government services and improved production have been increased and legitimized. Moreover, their ability to make effective demands may have been increased. Yet most of the mysteries of ujamaa remain intact. How hard will the policy be pushed? What forms of private accumulation will be prevented? What rights in property will be recognized in ujamaa villages? What has been clarified is the organizational form for the new villages. Through the new village committees and village TANU branches some answers to the other questions may begin to emerge. Given the heightened economic crisis in Tanzania and the possible receptivity of the newly villagized millions to new forms of social life, the answers that emerge are crucial. One hopes that a more concerted effort than is as yet evident will be made to learn from the fruitful experience with ujamaa from 1967 to 1973. One fears that the political-administrative leadership may be

121 Jonathan Barker drawing the over-hasty and under-researched conclusion of many production liberals that somehow rural socialism has failed, when in fact only an inspiring, but in practice very incomplete and tentative, socialist effort was attempted.

NOTES

1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

The author gratefully acknowledges a grant from the Canada Council which provided time and travel to undertake this study. Comments by Roger Barker, Gerald Helleiner, Dusan Pokorny, Cranford Pratt, and John Saul revealed weaknesses in earlier drafts, but the author stubbornly claims all responsibility for the faults which persist. Tanzania, Economic Suroey, 1973-74 (Dar es Salaam 1975), pp. 51-3 This paper studies the reactions of observers and reflects no access to internal government memos, but some participants (Ellman, Cunningham, Coulson, Green, Svendsen) have published assessments from time to time. The same issues appear to be raised inside and outside government probably with more concern about resource constraints inside and more about socialist content outside. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (London and Dar es Salaam 1968), p. 245 Ibid., pp. 337-84, especially 365 S. Mushi, 'Revolution by Evolution: The Tanzanian Road to Socialism,' unpublished PHD thesis, Yale University, 1974, p. 390 Nyerere, Freedom and Development (London and Dar es Salaam 1973), pp. 5-11, especially 7 Ibid., pp. 58-71, especially 67 Reprinted in Lionel Cliffe et al., eds., Rural Cooperation in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam 1975), pp. 27-36 Tanzania, Second Five- Year Plan for Economic Development, 1969-74 (Dar es Salaam 1969), p. 27 A. Coulson, 'Agricultural Planning in Tanzania,' Economic Research Bureau, University of Dar es Salaam, mimeo., Nov. 1970, p. 3 J. Nyerere, Decentralisation (Dar es Salaam 1972) Tanzania, Ofisi ya Waziri Mkuu, Sheria ya Kuandikisha Vijiji na Nijiji vya Ujamaa (Dar es Salaam 1975) A. Ellman, 'Development of Ujamaa Policy in Tanzania,' in Cliffe, Rural Cooperation, pp. 312-45, especially 319 Ellman, 'Progress, Problems and Prospects in Ujamaa Development in Tanzania,' ERB paper 70.18, University of Dar es Salaam, mimeo., 1970, and

122 The debate on rural socialism

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26 27

28

Cunningham, 'The Ujamaa Movement in Tanzania, 1971,' Rural Africana, no 13 (Winter 1971), pp. 28-37 Economic Survey, 1973-74 and 1974-75 Helleiner, 'Socialism and Rural Development in Tanzania,' Journal of Development Studies (1971); Svendsen, 'Tanzania after Mwangozo,' mimeo., Sept. 1971; Hyden, 'Ujamaa, Villagization and Rural Development in Tanzania,' ODI Review Oan. 1975), pp. 53-72; and Green in Chapter 2 of this volume Dumont, Tanzanian Agriculture after the Arusha Declaration, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Development Planning (Dar es Salaam 1969), pp. 5, 34, 36 Feldman, 'The Economics of Ideology: Some Problems of Achieving Rural Socialism in Tanzania,' in Colin Leys, ed., Politics and Change in Developing Societies: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Development (Cambridge 1969), pp. 101-5 Ellman, 'Progress, Problems and Prospects,' p. 22 D. McHenry, 'A Report: Communal Agricultural Production in Ujamaa Villages,' mimeo. [1976), p. 13 Hyden, 'Ujamaa, Villagization,' p. 60; McHenry, 'A Report' Dumont, Tanzanian Agriculture, and M. Lofchie, 'Agrarian Socialism in the Third World: The Tanzanian Case,' Comparative Politics (April 1976), pp. 479-99 L. Cliffe, 'The Method of Political Economy and Socialist Practice in Tanzania,' in Cliffe, Rural Cooperation, pp. 174-201, and H. Mapolu, 'The Social and Economic Organization of Ujamaa Villages,' MA thesis, University of Dar es Salaam, Sept. 1973 The best collections of their work are Cliffe, Rural Cooperation, and L. Cliffe, and J. Saul, eds., Socialism in Tanzania, 1, Politics, 11 Policies (Dar es Salaam 1972 and 1973). On rural policy see part 4 in I and part 6 in 11. R. Feldman, 'Rural Social Differentiation and Political Goals in Tanzania,' in I. Oxaal and T. Barnett, Beyond the Sociology of Development: Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa (London 1975), pp. 154-82; H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen, 'Staff, Kulaks and Peasants,' in Cliffe and Saul, Socialism in Tanzania, 11, pp. 153-79; M. von Freyhold, 'The Government Staff and Ujamaa Villages,' paper presented at the Annual Social Science Conference of the East African Universities, Dar es Salaam, Dec. 1973 Mapolu, 'Social and Economic Organization' J. Boesen, 'Development and Class Structure in a Smallholder Society and the Potential for Ujamaa,' Institute for Development Research, Copenhagen, paper A72. 16, May 1972 K. Pipping, 'Land Holding in the Usangu Plain,' Scandinavian Institute for African Studies, Uppsala, research report no 33, 1976

123 Jonathan Barker 29 Boesen, 'Development and Class Structure,' and J. Sender, 'Some Preliminary Notes on the Political Economy of Rural Tanzania Based on a Case Study in the Western Usambaras,' ERB paper 74.5, University of Dar es Salaam, May 1974 30 Mushi, 'Revolution by Evolution,' pp. 217-20, 359 31 J. Mwapachu, 'Decentralized Participatory Development in Tanzania: An Institutional Strategy for Managing Rural Development,' mimeo., n.d., p. 29 32 Mapolu, 'Social and Economic Organization,' pp. 64, 76, 107-11 33 Sender, 'Some Preliminary Notes,' p. 47 34 Cliffe, Rural Cooperation, and Election Studies Committee, Socialism and Participation: Tanzania's 1970 National Elections (Dar es Salaam 1974), especially chap. 1 and appendix 35 Coulson, 'Peasants and Bureaucrats,' Review of African Political Economy, no 3 (May-Oct. 1975), p. 58 36 Matango, 'Agricultural Policy and Food Production in Tanzania,' paper presented to the Conference on Factors Affecting Land Use and Food Production, Soni, May 1975, p. 23; Lofchie, 'Agrarian Socialism,' pp. 497-8 37 Jamal, 'Some Perspectives on Our Economy,' Daily News, Dar es Salaam, 26 and 27 Nov. 1974; J. Mwapachu, 'Operation Planned Villages in Rural Tanzania: A Revolutionary Strategy for Development,' Mbioni, vn, 11 (1975) 38 Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, p. 245 39 Dumont, Tanzanian Agriculture, pp. 3, 24; Coulson, 'The Evolution of Rural Policies in Tanzania or Can a Government Bureaucracy Bring About Development?' University of Dar es Salaam, mimeo., n.d., pp. 9-10; Raikes, 'Differentiation and Progressive Farmer Policies,' ERB paper, University of Dar es Salaam, Oct. 1972 40 Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, (London and Dar es Salaam 1966), pp. 183-4 41 Luttrell, 'Villagization, Cooperative Production, and Rural Cadres: Strategies and Tactics in Tanzanian Socialist Rural Development,' ERB paper 71.11, University of Dar es Salaam, 1971, pp. 8, 13 42 McHenry, 'A Report,' p. 13 43 Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, p. 352 44 See, for an example, C. Ingle, 'From Colonialism to Ujamaa: Case Studies in Tanzania's Search for Independence,' paper delivered at a Conference on the Political Implications of Change at the Local Level in Africa, University of Toronto, Jan. 1971. 45 Reprinted in Freedom and Socialism, pp. 315-26 46 Second Five-Year Plan, p. 5 47 Cliffe, 'The Method of Political Economy,' p. 177 48 Woods, 'Peasants and Peasantries in Tanzania and Their Role in SocioPolitical Development,' in Cliffe, Rural Cooperation, pp. 39-50; Special Cor-

124 The debate on rural socialism

49

50 51 52 53 54 55

respondent, 'The Role of Small Scale Industries in Economic Development,' Daily News, 24-28 Dec. 1974 Green, 'Toward Ujamaa and Kujitegemea: Income Distribution and Absolute Poverty Eradication Aspects of the Tanzanian Transition to Socialism,' ERB paper 74.11, University of Dar es Salaam, Nov. 1974, p. 52 Reprinted in Cliffe, Rural Cooperation, p. 30 Mushi, 'Revolution by Evolution,' pp. 2-3, 263 G. and P. Belkin and G. Mendel, 'Mbambara: Village Collectif Ujamaa. Action-Video en Tanzanie et Lecture Sociopsycoanalytique' (forthcoming) C. Pratt, The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945-68 (Cambridge 1976), p. 255 J. Moris, 'The Voters' View of the Elections,' in Election Studies Committee, Socialism and Participation, p. 334 Tanzania, Office of the Prime Minister and Second Vice-President, 'The Village Management Technicians,' mimeo., n.d., p. 2

JANNIK BOESEN

Tanzania: from ujamaa to villagization

UJAMAA - IDEOLOGY AND POLICY

'Ujamaa vijijini' (rural socialism) is a basic element in the political philosophy of Tanzania's President Nyerere. After 1967 it became one of the most important parts of the more openly declared - and pursued - postArusha socialist development policies. 1 Stressing 'socialism and self-reliance' as the basis for the country's future development, the Arusha Declaration demanded greater national control over the 'commanding heights' of the economy (a demand which was followed by the nationalization of major parts of the modern economic sector) and a change of emphasis from urban to rural development. Later in 1967 President Nyerere issued a policy paper, 'Socialism and Rural Development,' in which he called for 'the establishment of ujamaa villages - cooperative villages in which people live together and work together for the good of all ... ' After a detailed discussion of the variety of ways in which the move towards ujamaa living could be started, the paper concluded: What is here being proposed is that we in Tanzania should move from being a nation of individual peasant producers who are gradually adopting the incentives and the ethics of the capitalist system. Instead we should gradually become a nation of ujamaa villages where the people cooperate directly in small groups and where these groups cooperate together for joint enterprises. This can be done. We already have groups of people who try to operate this system in many parts of our country. We must encourage them and encourage others to adopt this way of life too. It is not a question of forcing our people to change their habits. It is a question of providing leadership. It is a question of

126 From ujamaa to villagization education. And it is a question of all of us together making a reality of the principles of equality and freedom which are enshrined in our policy of Tanzanian socialism. 2

While the policy statements were deliberately open to many different initial forms of ujamaa villages, and to various ways of starting them, there was no doubt about the importance attached to the rapid achievement of at least some movement towards ujamaa in all parts of the country. Neither was there any ambiguity with regard to the central role party and government officials were supposed to play as the primary initiators in the implementation of the policy. This was further underlined in the new 1969-74 five-year development plan and in a special Presidential Circular no 1 of 1969. This circular stressed that 'it is to the building of ujamaa villages that government must turn its attention. We have to organize our government and party machinery to assist their establishment; we have to give them priority in all our credit, servicing, and extension services - at the expense of the individual producer.' And the circular went on to give detailed instructions on how this should be organized institutionally, emphasizing that 'no department of TANU and no ministry of government is exempt from the requirement to participate and to contribute to the success of this policy.'~ In the years to come this was followed by other directives and by reorganizations within the individual ministries, the parastatals, and party organizations at both the centre and in the regions in order that ujamaa villages could be more effectively promoted. Regional leaders in government and in TANU felt themselves under great pressure to show results, while at the same time they enjoyed a large degree of freedom with regard to the ways and means to achieve these results and also with regard even to their actual content. After six years of continuous campaigning, including several large-scale 'operations' to move the populations of whole regions into ujamaa villages, the official number of these villages in 1973 was 5556 ujamaa villages in the whole country, with a total population of over two million or about 15 per cent of all Tanzanians. 4 These villages were not at all evenly dispersed throughout the regions. Moreover, there were wide variations in the economic and social organization of these villages and in the ways in which they had been initiated. In some regions the majority of the population was already enrolled, while in others ujamaa villages included only a single per cent of the inhabitants. 5 There were completefy collectivized new settlements; settlements where the people had (been?)

127 Jannik Boesen moved together to become more accessible to government help and services, but with hardly any communal production activities; old traditional villages, where some inhabitants cultivated a communal field while retaining their private farms as their main occupation; and many other types of ujamaa villages. Incentives to establish these villages ranged from the ideological commitment and understanding of the villagers themselves, over different degrees of persuasion and coercion by administrative and political officials, to material rewards in the form of expanded service or direct support from the government. It was characteristic of the whole approach that it consisted, at the ideological level, of Nyerere's fairly detailed, 'utopian' description of the ideal society, derived from a few basic ethical principles, and, at the policy level, of directives and suggestions from the centre concerning very concrete steps on the road towards ujamaa, often of an organizational nature. The policy contained very little, however, in the way of a general strategy for the socialist transformation of rural Tanzania, linking the ideology and the tactics of implementation together through analyses of such questions as: the development of the relations between agriculture and industry, the role of the different regions, large-scale versus smallscale production, the development of the country's external economic relations, or the relations between the different sectors of the economy and the corresponding relations between social classes, notably between the peasantry and other classes. Whatever thinking in TANU there was on such questions was in any case not propagated as an essential framework for the implementation of the ujamaa policy, nor as a tool for the peasantry in this implementation process. Goran Hyden has said: 'A main reason why the socialist results of the ujamaa programme so far have been meagre is that any revolutionary strategy is ultimately a class strategy and not a development strategy that can be bolstered by, for example, bureaucratic control and technical assistance inputs. For many reasons, some clearly beyond the control of a poor country like Tanzania, its socialist rural development strategy has been on the latter terms.' 6 While it is doubtful if the ujamaa policy does in fact include any strategy, or if the difficulties in implementing ujamaa has anything to do with Tanzania's poverty, it is true that the lack of a comprehensive revolutionary strategy (and class strategy) forced the local political and administrative bureaucracies to - or perhaps rather left them free to establish the tactics of the move towards ujamaa almost in a political vacuum, only vaguely demarcated by the still but generally expressed ujamaa ideals, and unrestrained by any consciousness among the

128 From ujamaa to villagization involved peasants as to how to use ujamaa to further their interests as a class. One serious consequence was that there were no politically accepted criteria for the evaluation or criticism of these locally evolved tactics by the people directly affected by them, namely the peasants. Lacking this, the measurements of success which were generally used were the number of ujamaa villages at least nominally established and the size of their membership. Sometimes also the acreages cultivated or incomes realized by single ujamaa villages or by all the ujamaa villages in a region were hailed. Hardly ever were any of these developments analysed in relation to general rural transformation. The original ujamaa policy had its heyday during 1969-71. It is hard to say whether it has been completely or only temporarily shelved since the turning-point in 1973-74. At that time the president, followed by the party, changed the emphasis from, in principle, voluntaristic establishment of co-operative or collective economic ventures to forced massive resettlement into villages of almost the whole rural population. A forewarning of a change of policy came in 1972 with the TANU National Executive Committee policy paper 'Siasa ni Kilimo' (Politics Is Agriculture), which stressed the importance of improving and modernizing agriculture but hardly mentioned ujamaa, although one might have expected it to be given an important role in this process. In the second half of 1973, after some regions, particularly Dodoma and Kigoma, had carried out region-wide 'operations' to resettle their entire populations in the new ujamaa settlements, Nyerere gave a number of speeches calling upon all Tanzanians to move into villages. In October the party's biannual conference approved that this was to be party and government policy/ and by the end of the year the policy was made more precise still - by 1976 all Tanzanians must live in villages or towns. Since then, national and, especially, regional authorities have worked hard to implement this decision as rapidly as possible, in some cases with very little planning but with a clear use of force to get the peasants to move. Some of the more serious mistakes with regard to the location and layout of the new villages have later been admitted, and more recently some regions have started moving people once more as an effort is made to correct the initial errors. Attempts to get peasants living on their separate and scattered farms to move into villages were of course not new in Tanzania. Both before and after independence efforts such as these recurrently were part of government policy. The argument then, as now, was that by living closer to-

129 Jannik Boesen gether peasants could more easily be fully involved in the national economy and polity. However, never before had non-voluntary resettlement on such a large scale been given first priority in national policy. Nevertheless as the original ujamaa policy had not been propagated in strategic terms, there seemed to be little understanding that a fundamental change of priorities had taken place in the declared policy. As a result there was little sense of need that the new emphasis must be explained to the people at large. At the level of implementation, villagization was in fact more a quantitative extension of than a qualitative change to the technocratic and bureaucratic control measures that were already the main content of much ujamaa implementation. This could, for example, be seen in the confused way in which different leaders would use the concepts of 'planned village' or 'development village' alternatively as more or less synonymous with, as a first step towards, or as having nothing to do with, ujamaa villages. In the Village and Ujamaa Village Act of 1975 some of the formal organizational ambiguities have been cleared up, and the institutional incorporation of 'villages' and 'ujamaa villages' in the government and party hierarchy has been formalized. But it seems as unclear as ever what is supposed to be the strategic role of agriculture, the peasantry, 'villages' and 'ujamaa villages' in the future development of Tanzania - apart from being as always exhorted to produce more. In the following section, West Lake Region, where the author worked for three and a half years between 1970 and 1975, will be used to illustrate how implementation was carried out in one region of Tanzania and to exemplify some of what has been said above. In a relatively short article the emphasis must necessarily be on the analysis and the conclusions to be drawn, while the large volume of data on which they are based can only be hinted at. It should be noted, furthermore, that the West Lake experience does not appear to be unique, nor are the more general analyses in this paper based entirely upon that experience. 8 UJAMAA IMPLEMENTATION IN WEST LAKE REGION

Resettlement In its theoretical formulation the ujamaa ideology stresses the importance of its voluntaristic and participatory character. Ujamaa is to be achieved through the education and mobilization of the peasants. However, without any strategic framework for the content and direction of this mobilization, for allowing the necessary time for it to materialize,

130 From ujamaa to villagization and for supporting it in the conflicts that might follow it, the local government and TANU leaders were left entirely to 'mobilize' the peasants with whatever means and for whatever implementation measures the leaders might decide to apply. The first response of the West Lake leaders was to think of resettlement. During 1968 twenty new settlements were established on empty land in the bush, to which people with little or no land in the traditionally settled, densely populated areas were moved. In 1969-70 a few more were started, while some of the original twenty settlements were given up because their locations were found to be unsuitable for agricultural production. So the total number of villages by the end of 1970 remained around twenty with a total population of from ten to twelve thousand people. Creating these new settlements had had several advantages. They were highly visible, they facilitated the redirection of massive government inputs and controls, and they were easy to organize from the very beginning in the nice orderly way preferred by bureaucrats (for example, with the houses and shambas in straight lines) . By moving the 'idle and loitering' poor peasantry into organized new settlements it was expected at the same time to ensure their full-time participation in agricultural production, to secure the implementation of the modernization messages of the agricultural extension service, and to increase control over an eventual surplus production. Finally, since it was aimed at the poorest stratum of the peasantry, fairly forceful means could be used to resettle them, without confronting the more important parts of the peasantry, particularly those with close ties to the leadership. Resettlement, furthermore, was one of the well-established methods, originating far back in colonial times, to control and increase peasant production. As often before, however, frequently the results were negative. The settlers' response to the authoritarian and patronizing behaviour of the bureaucrats connected with forced resettlement was to be passive: they left the whole responsibility for their fate to the government, they ran away, or they received whatever benefit they could from the government while otherwise maintaining their own activities outside the new settlement. The populations of the new settlements in West Lake were very unstable. There was a continuous moving in and out during the first two to three years. All the settlements got food supplies from the government in their first years of existence, and several continued to need them when those supplies were finally stopped in 1972-73. By then many settlers

131 Jannik Boesen had not yet completed cultivation of their private one- or two-acre plots in the settlements and a large number still spent more time in the old villages as agricultural labourers or tending their family shambas there. When the regional authorities responded to the presidential circular of 1969 and concentrated their efforts on promoting communal production in the new settlements, many villagers saw this as an effort to get them to work for the government. When they later saw the negligible outputs partly caused, of course, by their own lack of involvement but partly also by bad planning on the part of the authorities - they came to regard the communal work as more or less a waste of time. This is illustrated in my case studies in the region, where less than half the potential working days in the agricultural season were used for communal work, only four to five hours' work was actually done on these days, and participation averaged between one-third and a half of the potential working force on these days. In the face of this reluctance, the administration saw no alternative but to increase mechanization in order to achieve at least a minimum of communally cultivated land. Because of the bureaucratic budgeting and accounting procedures, no kind of cost-benefit analyses were, or could have been, applied. The uneconomic quality of these investments therefore remained unexposed and of no major concern to anyone. Despite the increased government expenditures on the ujamaa villages in 1969-71 there was very little increase in productivity in the ujamaa sector, while these expenditures in turn undermined the self-reliant component of the villages. While the communal organization was used to enforce the usual extension messages, there were no attempts to change the more basic structures of rural production, distribution, and domination. In principle, the ujamaa villages were supposed to become multi-purpose co-operatives with their own councils commanding an increasing control over their environment and their economic and productive circumstances. In fact, the ujamaa villages were not encouraged to extend their scope beyond the usual agricultural production. Small-scale industries were also supported but only if they were the type already existing in the rural areas, such as carpentry, and normally carried out by individual peasants who were also part-time craftsmen. A main consequence, therefore, of this support was to transfer some activities from this uncontrolled sector of the village economy to a more tightly controlled sector. Even the sharp economic and social distinction between peasants and government officials was maintained, with the village leaders some-

132 From ujamaa to villagization where in between, but trying to identify themselves with the officials. This was further enhanced by the large influx of officials who were stationed in the ujamaa villages, such as agricultural field officers, teachers, dispensary personnel, policemen, tractor-drivers, and game-scouts. A major potential conflict has been inherent in this whole situation. A political and governmental bureaucracy, whose mode of operation is to direct and control, is implementing a policy which demands democratic decision-making and participation as a clear ideological precondition and probably also as a precondition for its success in practice. This contradiction between the way the political and governmental leaders in a region exercised their authority and the mass participation that was to be a major feature of the villages did not emerge at all clearly. For one thing no one tried to provoke a conflict by discussing with the peasants their own specific situation and how they could use ujamaa and co-operation to improve it on their own conditions. The institutions actually existed through which this peasant involvement might have taken place. The village general meeting, the village committee, and at a higher level the district development council could possibly have played this role. So far, however, bureaucratic dominance has prevailed also within these institutions. As such there were no efforts to use village planning as an educational and mobilizational tool, no effort to involve the villagers in any real sense in the preparation of the many plans that were instead drafted by the officials. Villagers have been' educated' and persuaded to accept the advice of party and government leaders far more than they have been genuinely encouraged and aided to participate. Furthermore, this whole style of operation was facilitated by the general 'ndiyo bwana' (yes Sir) response of peasants whose tactics have long been readily to agree to advice or instructions from bureaucrats but to do as little as possible afterwards. Finally, the government and TANU leaders have the power and the resources to use material inducements to bring about the decisions desired by them. This game on many occasions became almost a parody when neither the promised support nor the activities agreed to by the villagers ever materialized and when both parties may even have suspected from the beginning that this would be the final outcome. As a case in point may be taken the ujamaa villages in Ngara District, which won a tractor as the best village in the region in 1969. Like all the other villages in the region, it was visited in 1970 by a high-powered planning team consisting of regional and district government officers from other parts of the country. These men spent four days in the village during which time

133 Jannik Boesen they set up an economic plan with detailed targets for inputs and outputs for almost every conceivable activity in the village for each of the next four years. The targets as well as the promised government support in terms of bulldozers, tractors, etc., were so substantial that everyone involved in the exercise must have known that they were utterly unrealistic. Yet this plan was later presented to and approved by the village committee. During the first 'plan-year' three more plans for that very year were prepared, one by the district ujamaa and co-operative development officer together with a few of the village leaders when he came unannounced to the village and the other two by the agricultural field officer stationed in the village. Each of these three additional plans reduced further the targets of their predecessors ending, for example, with the objective of bringing under communal production in the year in question less than a quarter of the land envisaged for communal fields by the first of the 'full-year plans.' In reality, even less was cultivated, and in almost every area of economic activity what happened in the village had little relationship with what had been inserted in the 'plans.' Thus in spite of the efforts of the bureaucracy the ujamaa villages did not provide quick and impressive results. This tended in turn to lead to a typical bureaucratic response which was put in these terms by one responsible leader: 'Irresponsibility and laziness among the villagers are among the major factors which have hampered the development of certain ujamaa villages in West Lake Region.' Hardly any new villages were started for some years after the first big jump in 1968-70. The normal bureaucratic methods were only partly effective and the last resort of bureaucratic action, the use of open force, had been excluded since 1968 when instances of official concern had led to an open conflict between the regional commissioner, representing the government and the party, and some members of Parliament, who were also part of the leadership elite but who at least owed their position to being elected by the peasants. The members' complaints, the most severe of them being about the use of force by the regional commissioner to implement ujamaa development, were formally rejected by the party. These MPS were later dismissed from both party and Parliament. The supremacy of the party and also the government bureaucracy was thus vigorously upheld. However, a lesson had been learned. Shortly afterwards the president removed the regional commissioner from his position and from then on it was an unwritten rule that force should not be used in the promotion of the ujamaa villages.9

134 From ujamaa to villagization

Ujamaa in 'traditional' villages Eventually a new approach was developed in the region. It consisted of encouraging ujamaa activities in existing villages. The activities chosen for ujamaa promotion by the authorities were, however, only marginal to the existing p~tterns of production, as it was expected to be easier to get the peasants to accept the new system when it did not immediately interfere with their basic economic activities and traditional rights. Progress was made in introducing some measure of ujamaa co-operation in such activities as tea plots, dairy units, fisheries, shops, and bars. Ujamaa co-operation was more easily comprehended by peasants as they saw it in these areas as a new method to supplement the income of their individual family farms. The main technique used to generate this limited amount of co-operative activity was persuasion; it combined with the interest that influential villagers had in maintaining good relations with administrators and politicians and in securing the material support that came with the new programmes. As management, instruction, and capital inputs were often provided by government very little initiative, responsibility, or risk-taking was demanded of the villagers themselves. The bureaucracy, on the other hand, could report good progress on the ujamaa front : it could list new villages, additional members, new ujamaa activities initiated, and specific government assistance extended. Unreported was the near universal failure to promote enthusiastic peasant involvement in economically successful, self-managed socialist agricultural production. This policy, of course, did also provide some new production and income opportunities, and as such it was not just a waste of time and money. It facilitated as well the work of the modernizers in the extension services, for often peasants traded their adoption of the recommendations of the extension service for government support. Results along these lines were already being realized even before this date by the Bukoba tea scheme, which was run and tightly controlled by the Tanzania Tea Authority, and to a certain extent also by dairy development supported by the Bukoba Co-operative Union and the livestock department. These schemes gave more peasants a chance to earn small additional incomes in return for extremely small contributions of their time and effort. But with their even more bureaucratically run operation, there was less incentive and less possibility to ensure that they were to some extent economical than in schemes based on individual peasants. The peasants, trading their consent to a plan proposed by government or party representatives against promises of mass support from the govern-

135 Jannik Boesen ment, had nothing at stake and had no reason to make any special effort to make the investments economical. A major difference, for instance, between the earlier schemes and the tea and dairy ujamaa units was that in the former the peasants got support such as tractor ploughing, planting material, and milk cows as loans while in the tea and dairy villages these items were now financed from the regional development fund or more directly from other government sources. These expenditures were not expected to be paid back. The area of tea planted per participant nevertheless lagged badly behind the expected areas, and the improved pastures, which were made essential by the sizes of herds given to some villages in the densely populated regions near the town of Bukoba, were never in fact established. In both cases the reason for failure was the lack of peasant participation in communal work. Some of the dairy units even hired labour to do the most necessary work. The main conclusion is unavoidable. The crucial shortcoming again and again was the complete lack of any attempt to use these limited ujamaa experiences as educational tools in order to bring the average peasant to an understanding of how his general situation might be improved through collective action.

Spontaneous 'ujamaa' villages The last type of ujamaa villages to appear in West Lake Region were the villages established through the spontaneous and voluntary initiative of the villagers themselves. These villages at least, it might be hoped, were a sign that the peasants were at last responding to the ideology of ujamaa. At a closer look, however, the spontaneous villages turn out rather to be examples of the adaptability of the peasantry to changes in its social and political environment. In the last years of the ujamaa 'period' there was an increasing number of instances of groups of villagers or whole villages joining together to start some communal activity which they knew to be acceptable to the government but often undertaking it in such a limited way as to be merely symbolical. On this basis they then applied to the government for approval as ujamaa villages and expected from the government the support which was supposed automatically to follow this approval. In many cases such actions were centred around genuinely felt village needs. For example, a communal field was opened in a village in order to get support for a road 'on which to transport the communal harvest,' and in another case money was requested to start an ujamaa shop in an area

136 From ujamaa to villagization where no private shop-owner had found it profitable to start business. Sometimes the motivation seems to have been plain envy at the - in fact seldom excessive - profits of some part-time non-agriculturalist peasant. Finally, there were examples of small groups of people trying to attract support to ujamaa enterprises, which were in fact closer to being joint stock companies. These new spontaneous ujamaa villages of whatever type did not involve an attempt to use ujamaa to transform the peasant economy or to change the peasants' relations to the wider society. At first the administrative and political leaders were only too happy to be able to include these third type of villages as ujamaa villages and to accept them as eligible to receive government support. There were, however, more recently, some signs that with this last addition the variety of ujamaa villages was becoming so wide that the administration was beginning to find it increasingly difficult to extend effective control to all of them. In particular, they found it hard to extend to all, the most successful but also the most resource-dt;?manding method of control, namely material inducements. And this was despite the fact that West Lake Region had only a total of some fifty to seventy ujamaa villages of whatever type involving little more than twenty thousand people. Villagization It was therefore with clear relief that the West Lake authorities received the changing signals from the centre in 1973-74. Some even went to the extent immediately of interpreting the new villagization approach as having nothing to do with ujamaa. Later they have learnt to include ujamaa rhetoric when talking about the call for villagization, but in fact their first notion was more in line with reality for (as yet?) there is no element of communal production in the new 'development villages.' The new approach was much more clearly related to an activity which the bureaucracy felt was within its competence, namely the enforced movement of peasants into new modern settlements - that is, settlements with the houses placed close together, in straight lines, along the roads, and with the fields outside the nucleated village organized in block farms, each block containing the villagers' individual plots but with only one type of crop and therefore readily accessible for control by the agricultural extension officer and eventually ready also for cultivation by government tractors. In the areas where this 'vision' was implemented by the book, the existing agricultural and land use systems were often disregarded although they were the basic elements in the adaptation to

137 Jannik Boesen the ecology of different areas of the peasants' vital demand for security and for the maintenance of their family development cycles. The existing infrastructure, and notably the roads, is still dominated by the colonial model, which had as its main consideration the achievement of the cheapest and most effective way to facilitate administration and to get the export crops out. Uncritically moving the people to live along the roads implicitly indicates these are still some of the major considerations behind villagization, and in fact this was on occasion openly declared to be the case. To ease the construction of the major roads, whcse main function was to connect regional, district, and divisional administrative centres, these roads were often located so as to pass through the driest possible places. They were therefore often not close to the best agricultural land, nor near the natural sources of the water that is needed every day in peasant households. The only saving feature in West Lake Region was that villagization was in fact not carried out uniformly and completely over the whole region. The most radical operations took place in 1974 in the thinly populated areas of the Biharamulo and southern Ngara districts. These areas mainly produced an annual crop, cotton. Most of the population was resettled and the old scattered homesteads destroyed. In several places by the end of 1974 there were indications of food shortage and even hunger, which could not be just attributed to drought, and there was an influx of people from the Biharamulo to the Bukoba District, some of whom were in fact Waha from Kigoma Region who had moved to Biharamulo during the earlier villagization operation in that region. In the densely populated areas of Bukoba and the northern parts of Ngara District, where there were large villages of perennial banana and coffee shambas so close to each other that it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins, there was not much scope for large-scale resettlement. The final policy in these cases was that the poorest people were moved from the existing villages to new settlements in the bush on the outskirts of the densely populated area, while village boundaries were drawn within the densely populated areas without requiring any relocation of the great majority of the population. Most problematic were the areas in which perennial cash crops were grown but in which the population was more scattered. This is especially true of most of Karagwe District. Here a nearly full-scale villagization operation was planned but was implemented only hesitantly at first, apparently because of strong opposition from peasants. After threats that

138 From ujamaa to villagization the army would be brought in if the people did not move voluntarily, it seems that the final result has been that lines of huts have been erected along the roads on top of the ridges while the shambas have remained where they were, in the valleys, and the people live most of their time in their old houses there. UJAMAA AND TANZANIAN DEVELOPMENT

It does not seem satisfactory just to see the development of the ujamaa policy in isolation, either as a temporary setback in rural transformation caused by adverse circumstances, as merely a change in emphasis for tactical reasons, or as the simple consequence of a deficient understanding of the ideology by local officials. On the contrary, the whole development appears to parallel other trends within the overall development of the Tanzanian social formation. Although it cannot be sufficiently penetrating, the following is an attempt to suggest how the ujamaa development may be set in such a wider perspective. The major trend in political development in Tanzania since independence has been a steady increase in the control of the economy and society exerted by the state and by TANU. Tanzania has developed from a typical post-colonial state, with all its appearances of Western 'pluralism,' into a more monolithic society. Indeed, socialist Tanzania has sometimes employed regulations of the earlier colonial regime in an effort to move away from the pluralism created by the British. During the first few years after independence, government and party were integrated from top to bottom with regard to both functions and personnel. After the adoption in 1967 of openly declared socialist policies, firm party/government control has been extended to all sectors of the economy. Popular organizations such as the trade unions are now placed under party/government control. Paradoxically, the decentralization of the past few years has involved the replacement of district councils, which had had limited autonomy, by district and regional development committees totally dependent upon derived revenues and dominated by centrally employed civil servants. Most recently the co-operative unions have been replaced by parastatals. In almost all underdeveloped countries, whatever their ideologies and political systems, there is a relatively high degree of state involvement in the economy. The practice in Tanzania is therefore not abnormal in this regard though it has certainly been pursued with a sustained vigour.

139 Jannik Boesen The strengthening of public control over the Tanzanian economy has taken many different forms. Indirect control of economic activities is maintained through nationalizations, government directives, restrictions, and other regulations. In this way import, export, and other external financial transactions are regulated by the Ministry of Finance and by the nationalized banking system. Internally, almost all wholesale and retail prices as well as producer prices on products from peasant agriculture are fixed by the government or by its price commission, and trade in agricultural products is restricted to state and co-operative organizations. Private business and investment is limited to certain spheres of the economy, notably in the retail trade, though even in the area of trade there are certain widely used goods which have become the monopoly of co-operative shops. Moreover, in 1976 it was declared that all shops in the new villages should become co-operatives. Transport, small-scale industry, and construction, in addition, of course, to peasant agriculture, are the other sectors that are still mainly in private hands. Minimum wages are fixed by the government and political and administrative leaders are prohibited from involvement in private business, again with the exception of peasant agriculture. At the other end of the scale, the most direct public control is exercised in the form of parastatals, that is, government-owned economic enterprises. The parastatal sector has grown rapidly since the first nationalizations in 1967 and it now dominates banking and insurance, the import, export, and wholesale trades, mining, large-scale industry, construction, and the tourist industry, while it has a large share of transport, estate agriculture, and housing. The ordinary parastatal is an enterprise that seeks to conduct its particular line of business in a way that will produce a profit for the government. However, another type of parastatal is becoming more and more common, the crop authorities such as the cotton authority and the tobacco authority. These do not primarily undertake production at all but instead are responsible for initiating and for operating schemes to develop further the production of their particular crop among peasant producers. Such schemes usually include rather restrictive planning and regulations as well as the supply to the producers of such things as tractors, services, improved seeds, fertilizers, and insecticides. Normally deductions are made from the produce prices to cover the expenses of the schemes as well as the intense advisory services, the close supervision of the activities of the peasants, and sometimes also the organization of marketing and processing of the crops. As the long-

140 From ujamaa to villagization established coffee marketing board is taking on the same role as these newer crop authorities, such parastatals now exist for all major export crops, and it has been proposed to establish one or several food crop authorities as well. The livestock, fisheries, and small industries development organizations are parastatals of the same model. The peasant sector is the basis of the Tanzanian economy. While the government, through all the means described above, holds almost all strings that tie the peasant economy to the surrounding world, it is much more difficult for the government directly to influence and regulate peasant production. The crop authorities' schemes attempt to do this but Tanzania is far from having the capacity to cover all crops and all areas with such schemes. It has tried political mass mobilization campaigns supplemented by legal regulations, persuasion, and even force to secure from the peasants a greater willingness to follow the preferred lines in their productive activities. But again the capacity to maintain the necessary supervision over a long period does not exist and the long-term effects are therefore often limited. Despite the aims of the ujamaa and villagization policy, namely the social and economic transformation of the countryside, it appears that the main effect of this policy, as it has been implemented, has been to establish a greater control over the peasantry but without any accompanying increase in production. All this raises an extremely important point in connection with the extension of government control. While the means of exerting control over the economy have been drastically increased, the co-ordination and direction of the use of these means in order to integrate policy seems to have advanced scarcely at all. At one level this results from a lack of integration between various branches of government and the party. For example, party directives contradict the policies of the tactical ministries and parastatal corporations invest without regard to the interest of the local authorities in whose area they are operating. But more than this it reflects the failure of government and party to outline a consistent strategy for the transformation of the economy from its inherited dependence on exports and from its dependence for surplus on peasant agriculture. This includes a failure to give a wider strategic perspective and direction to such major policies as ujamaa and villagization, the irrigation campaign, or the crop development scheme. Furthermore, neither the agricultural programmes nor the ongoing efforts to promote small-scale industries or the larger industrial projects have been related to each other through an industrial study.1°Finally, foreign dependency has in many ways increased rather than decreased despite the Arusha Declaration's

141 Jannik Boesen emphasis on self-reliance. From 1962 to 1973 imports grew from 27 to 30 per cent of GDP while exports fell from 28 to 22 per cent, of which agricultural crops continuously made up about 70 per cent. The trade deficit thus increased for several years. The severe deficit in 1974-75, while aggravated by oil prices and increased grain imports, was not solely caused by them. Some 60 per cent of government development expenditures in 1976 were foreign-financed as compared to about 20 per cent in 1969. The growth in isolated, consumer goods industries has made Tanzania more and more dependent upon foreign technology, equipment, skills, and energy. The failure to establish a transformation strategy is not only consistent with the immediate interests of the bureaucracy in maintaining existing structures. It is also consistent with the merger that has in reality taken place of Nyerere's 'utopian socialism' and a common bureaucratic 'modernization' ideology, both of which provide little basis for strategic thinking, into the state ideology of the emerging dominating bureaucratic class in Tanzania. The peasant sector provides a vast portion of all surplus in the economy. Given the steady expansion of the state sector and its failure to generate sufficient surplus to maintain its own growth, the need to extract surplus from the peasant sector has increased steadily. This in turn has led to government penetration into the operation of the peasant sector in an effort to increase production of surplus, as evidenced by the reintroduction of coercive agricultural legislation, the establishment of tightly regulated crop schemes, and the forced implementation of villagization. Some of the major functions of the state machinery, then, are to coordinate relations between a largely pre-capitalist rural economy and international capitalism and, simultaneously, to ensure an increasing internal appropriation of surplus. The state ideology therefore has two important functions : it must justify the dominance of the bureaucracy and its efforts to increase production and it must help to bridge the gap between the more selfish interests within the bureaucracy and its interests as a class. Crudely speaking, the bureaucratic modernization ideology amounts basically to the belief that the educated minority who make up the middle and higher ranks of government, party, and parastatal bureaucracies are the purveyors of 'modernization' to the mass of the people who, being less educated or uneducated and 'traditional,' will tend not to be able to understand and therefore often resist the proposed changes. This ideology is tidily self-fulfilling as the self-satisfaction it

142 From ujamaa to villagization induces amongst bureaucrats and the coercive methods it encourages in the introduction of change invite the very resistance to change the coercion is supposed to counter. In Tanzania the whole system has received further legitimation through the integration of party and government machinery and through the merger of Nyerere's idealistic utopian socialism with the modernization ideology of the bureaucracy. It already has been shown how these two strands in the common ideology express themselves in the ujamaa policy and in the ways in which it was in fact implemented. There is, however, one major contradiction between these two constituent parts of the common ideology. The writings of Nyerere put forward a vision of a voluntaristic socialism based upon the involvement of a politically mobilized population. On the other hand, a large part of the bureaucracy, and the president himself on occasion, seem to think in terms of the crude dichotomies of modernization theory according to which the involvement of the traditional sector in decision-making about its own modernization would be virtually a contradictio in adjecto. At any rate, although democratic organization and planning were declared central parts of the ujamaa policy, they have generally disappeared in the actual implementation process, and with villagization, which is sometimes declared to be the first step towards ujamaa, there is no voluntary element within it at all. Similarly, when the party guidelines (Mwongozo) of 1971, which emphasize workers' participation, sparked off a number of strikes and factory takeovers by workers in protest against authoritarian managements, the government after a short period of ambiguity supported management and stopped the strike. 11 Finally, while decentralization of administration and planning from ministries to regions and districts has perhaps increased bureaucratic efficiency and activity in development planning and implementation at regional levels, its third declared objective, increased popular participation in planning, has not been realized. Regional planning does not start in the villages or in the wards but in the region and district bureaucracies. Sometimes, but not always, ward development committees are told to submit their wishes, which are then in any case disregarded as they tend only to ask for more schools and dispensaries and in many cases too many of these. Policy, then, has moved towards an emphasis on 'modernization' with an increased reliance on coercion. In part this reflects the direct interests of the bureaucracy. Partly it also reflects the way in which modernization theory is self-fulfilling, for when it is followed it induces behaviour

143 Jannik Boesen which generates the resistance to change on which the initial bureaucratic behaviour was posited. At a deeper level it reflects a contradiction inherent in the need for the bureaucratic state to exact an ever-increasing surplus from the peasant sector. This takes the form of a sort of 'scissors crisis.' The state needs more production and more surplus; however, if it extracts additional surplus it reduces producer incomes and lessens the incentives for greater production. Coercion is then introduced as a means to avoid this destructive cycle and at the same time the market ideology is dropped. Peasants thus become to the bureaucrats 'traditional' and so are fit only for coercive measures. But experience - also from Tanzania - amply demonstrates that peasants find hundreds of ways to evade the coercive measures, even at the cost of falling production. If this is true, the Tanzanian bureaucracy - and leadership - will still be left with increasing difficulties in extracting enough surplus for its own maintenance, and even more so for the expansion it has become used to. The crisis, which is accelerated as decreasing terms of trade leads more surplus out of the country, has so far been avoided by increasing the country's external debt, by internal inflation, and by stopping the growth in state expenditures, including real cuts in the size of the bureaucracy. But a long-term solution still has to be found. Although Tanzania is certainly 'not a socialist country,' with the increasing entrenchment of the bureaucracy and its legitimizing ideology a solution may have to imply a turn in a more definitely socialist direction in which villagers and ujamaa villages can play an important role in the struggle to improve their own conditions.

NOTES

Some aspects of this paper are dealt with in more detail in J. Boesen and P. Raikes, 'Political Economy and Planning in Tanzania,' Institute of Development Research (mR), Copenhagen, paper A.76.6, and in J. Boesen, A.A. Moody, and A.B. Storgaard, Ujamaa - Socialism from Above, Nordic Africa Institute (Uppsala 1978) 1 Publicity Section, TANU, The Arusha Declaration and TANU's Policy on Socialism and Self-reliance (Dar es Salaam 1967). Like all the other policy papers referred to in this paper it consists partly of principles and aims of a broad and ideological nature and partly of more concrete decisions of a policyoriented character. In principle, the term 'ujamaa' comprises all the princi-

144 From ujamaa to villagization

2

3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10

11

pies and policies of Tanzanian socialism as a whole. But since 'ujamaa vijijini' occupies such a central place both at the ideological and at the policy level, in this paper 'the ujamaa policy' will be used as synonymous with 'the policy of ujamaa vijijini.' Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism/Uhuru na Ujamaa (London and Dar es Salaam 1968), pp. 365 ff. This is not just a guideline for the policy of 'ujamaa vijijini'; it is also here that some of the basic elements of the overall ujamaa ideology have been most clearly stated. Nyerere, 'Presidential Circular No. 1 of 1969: The Development of Ujamaa Villages,' mimeo., Dar es Salaam, March 1969, p. 3 Daily News, Dar es Salaam, 15 Oct. 1973 P. Gumbel, Ujamaa: Tanzania's experiment in socialism (Stockholm 1973), p.23 Hyden, 'Ujamaa, Villagization and Rural Development in Tanzania,' ODI Review, 1 (1975), p. 70 See, for example, 'Utekelezaji kiserikali wa maazimio ya Mkutano Mkuu wa TANU wa 15 ma 16,' Prime Minister's Office, Dar es Salaam, 18 March 1974. The sixteenth meeting ended 1 Oct. 1973. See, for example, Hyden, 'Ujamaa, Villagization,' and P. Raikes, 'Ujamaa Vijijini and Rural Socialist Development,' IDR paper A.74.4, March 1974. The detailed West Lake data are presented in the above-mentioned book by Boesen, Moody, and Storgaard. H.U.E.T van Velzen and J.J. Sterkenburg, 'The Party Supreme,' in L. Cliffe and J. Saul, eds., Socialism in Tanzania, 1, Politics (Dar es Salaam 1972), p. 259 It appears that a long-term industrial strategy with some emphasis on basic industries is included in the new five-year plan (1976-81), but also that the actual projects included in the plan hardly constitute a departure from the present line of establishing isolated consumer goods industries (such as textiles and sugar) . See Issa G. Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania (London and Dar es Salaam 1975), chap. 13

ADOLPHO MASCARENHAS

After villagization-what?

We couldn't find much to do and thought we ought to go and find another village, but when Secretary Chang came and asked for material, facts and figures, we had very little to give him! From Fanshen by W. Hinton

In the eleven or so years since Tanzania officially embarked on the programme of rural development through 'ujamaa vijijini' (socialist villages) much attention has been focused on this programme both within Tanzania and abroad. Many ardent supporters of Tanzania have hailed the programme, though the initial enthusiasm of some has paled, and there are individuals and groups who can now see little virtue in the experiment. Between the extremes is the world of reality where exploitation is still present despite sanctions, infant mortality is incredibly high in spite of child care clinics, poverty exists while resources remain untapped, the aspirations of some people are negated by the apathy and sterility of imagination of others, and honest and enlightened leadership contrasts with hypocrisy and astounding pettiness. Similar contradictions no doubt exist in other countries. In Tanzania, the anomalies in the villagization policy can perhaps be best understood if one considers the evolution of the policy, its present status, and, lastly, some of the ideas that are emerging about the policies that must follow. While villagization can be attained physically, as a strategy for rural development, it is a long-term process and its effectiveness will depend upon the proper identification and the successful implementation of the policies that must follow villagization.

146 After villagization - what? EVOLUTION OF VJLLAGIZATION

A note on the period up to the First World War What makes Tanzania's policy of villagization radical is that it is now part of the national strategy for development and has been undertaken on a scale that is very dramatic. Nevertheless, the villagization process is rooted in Tanzania's past. Historically, the settlement pattern in Tanzania has varied over time and from place to place. Thus, while the majority of people have lived in scattered homesteads, there have been other areas where there were nuclei, if not actual villages. The occurrence of these nucleated settlements tended to be site-specific, for example, fishing settlements that were sufficiently dense to be known as villages and places where there was a permanent supply of water in an otherwise dry area which therefore attracted clusters of population. But not all villages were resource- or site-specific. There were other places where the growth of the extended family or the emergence of a local political personality led to nucleation. By the time of the arrival of the European explorers and the German colonialists, there were several examples of villages that seemed to function as capitals for the ruling groups - for instance, in Morogoro, the village where the queen resided had nearly five thousand inhabitants. Villages also grew as a result of the need for protection or defence against unfriendly neighbours or invaders. Here, quite startling changes could occur within a short period. For example, the Wazaramo lived in stockaded villages when they were threatened by hostile Akamba elephant hunters but returned to living in scattered homesteads once the threat was removed. Lastly, one must not forget that there was trade even before the arrival of the European colonial powers, and, consequently, along many parts of the coast there were also developed settlements. The coastal settlements were linked to those in the interior of the country. Some of these settlements in the interior were also clustered. The effects of slave trading in places dispersed people but in many others led to concentrations. Nevertheless, despite all these examples of nucleated settlements, by the time of the British colonial period it would generally be true to say that over most of Tanzania the population was scattered. Even in areas where the population density was high, the settlements were not nucleated. Just as nucleation was a defensive measure during the pre-colonial period, a scattered population became a defensive mechanism during the European colonial period. Thus, during both the Maji Maji period and the First World War, previously existing nucleated settlements dispersed

147 Adolpho Mascarenhas as people fled to avoid the colonial impact. In other cases, particularly in the interior, disease and other natural hazards had a similar impact. But far more important is the basic fact that over large parts of Tanzania the ecology of the country would not permit permanent settlement to grow to a large size without major additional government expenditures. The system of agriculture employed throughout most parts of the country in adaptation to the ecology, made it necessary for people to shift from time to time to use new land. Living too close to each other would thus constitute a hindrance to expansion. Where extensive areas of good land were available, as for example in large parts of the Kilimanjaro uplands, there was also no advantage in living close together. Over large parts of the country that were semi-arid in nature and where water is not available throughout the year, dense settlements were also out of the question. Pastoral groups had to move from place to place in search of food for their livestock and this too precluded permanent nucleated settlements. Nucleated settlements, then, were not given the preconditions necessary for their growth : time, resources, or organization.

British attempts at establishing settlements During the British period there were several attempts to increase the concentration of people. Many of these nucleated settlements grew for reasons of administrative convenience and to make more feasible the provision of services, even though such initial concentrations of Africans in the colonial period were established for the convenience of the nonAfrican population. In the early 1930s a special category of settlements known as 'minor settlements' were created by ordinance. These minor settlements, numbering over a hundred, became centres where tax was collected, justice administered, and trade carried out. The minor settlements were the outposts of the large towns, which in turn were connected to the capital of the colony and eventually linked to the metropolis. It is not surprising that both towns and minor settlements were generally regarded as alien features. Towns in particular represented a new way of life, a break from the past and from entrenched agricultural practices. The few who became 'townsmen,' less than 5 per cent of the population even at the time of independence, were to a certain extent the privileged class - the traders, the administrators, and the educated, who generally operated within quite different terms of reference from the rural masses. The activities of the missionaries also resulted in nucleated settlements which, in some cases, such as Peramiho, almost approached the dimen-

148 After villagization -what? sions of large towns. Others of these mission centres were remote outposts; as such they were less alien for they could only survive with the backing of the people. There were isolated examples of administrators wishing to bring about the development of clustered populations. In other cases, the British colonial government deliberately tried to create nucleated settlements in response to specific health hazards. The best example of this type of settlement is found in connection with the anti-sleeping sickness drives. Such communities were short-lived since they had neither an economic base nor social significance. Finally, the plantations, particularly of sisal, preferred to hem people into islands of dense concentration so as not to be hindered in their own expansionist policies. This effectively meant establishment of a reservoir for tapping labour. But obviously the large majority of people in Tanzania preferred to be away from administrative control and plantations in order to grow their food for subsistence as well as the increasingly attractive cash crops.

Efforts to transform agriculture through resettlement During the colonial period it was accepted that changes in the pattern of land use could take place most simply by expanding into new areas. But, in 1960, the World Bank mission to Tanzania introduced another approach, drawing attention to the need to create improvements through modernization of the agricultural system.1 Thus, it proposed two types of changes: the improvement approach and the transformation approach. These became the basis for most of the planning that took place prior to and during the first five-year plan of independent Tanzania, 1964-69. The improvement approach largely concentrated on the continuation of the traditional system of agriculture with a few modern inputs through extension services, including community development methods. In areas where greater inputs were anticipated and resettlement was necessary because of heavy population density, the transformation approach could no longer be seen as incremental but was rather aimed at a transformation of both agricultural practices and socio-economic institutions. The World Bank report, in recommending that this transformation approach should be followed in appropriate areas, recognized that the cost would be high. As far back as 1962, President Nyerere stated that 'the first and absolutely essential thing to do, therefore, if we want to be able to start using tractors for cultivation, is to begin living in proper villages.' In

149 Adolpho Mascarenhas advocating this Nyerere was doing much more than merely repeating the World Bank advice. He was rather expressing a profound conviction. The need to promote villages became an integral part of Tanzania's rural policies. As part of the first five-year plan, and following the IBRD proposals, the first village settlement schemes were started in 1964.2 Some of them used the nuclei of settlement schemes started during the colonial period. Despite the administrative machinery and massive capitalization, these settlement schemes proved to be a burden. Scarcely two and a half years after their inception, the whole programme was dropped, ending yet another attempt to bring about transformation in the rural areas. Thus, six years after independence, over two-thirds of the population in Tanzania were still outside the main stream of development. A large proportion of the remaining third practised a form of agriculture that, while giving them cash incomes, did not, in the long run, promise any real security. The policy of ujamaa vijijini

Following the Arusha Declaration of January 1967, and the dramatic week in February when a large sector of the economy was nationalized, the government recognized that the nationalizations would not automatically increase the wealth of the country. While the main economic controls were available to the planners, there was also the realization that little had been done to tap the largest potential resources of the country - the people and the land. The country as a whole would develop only if the emphasis was on the rural sector, especially agriculture. The development of agriculture would be a myth if the only tool was still the hoe, yet modernization from the hoe to the tractor was too great a leap for most of Tanzania. Moreover, the development of modern farming by individual farmers would generate severe income inequalities in the rural areas. A means of modernization must therefore be found which did not seem to call for large-scale highly capitalized private farms. It is here that the inspiration from the past became significant. 'In traditional African life the people were equal, they cooperated together, and they participated in all the decisions which affected their lives. But the equality was an equality of poverty; the cooperation was on small things; and their government was only the government of their own family unit, and of their clan, or at most of their tribe. Our task, therefore, is to modernise the traditional structure so as to make it meet our new aspirations for a higher standard of living.'3

150 After villagization - what? The policy of ujamaa and rural development is contained in the president's paper, entitled 'Socialism and Rural Development.' Rural development is construed to mean more than economic development. The document looks at traditional ujamaa living, the manner in which Tanzania was developing since independence, the changes occuring in the rural areas, and the implications of this kind of development, particularly the emergence of a capitalist class. To counteract this trend, rural development would be anchored to 'ujamaa vijijini.' Rural socialism is based on a relation of mutual respect, communal ownership and sharing of basic goods, and the obligation of everyone to work. Success would depend on voluntary villagization, where people live and work together for the good of all. While aspects of the traditional extended family were to be incorporated in the communities, nevertheless modern knowledge would be applied and the barriers that previously existed between groups would have to be broken down. The transformation would take place on a step-by-step basis, moving first from a stage in which scattered homesteads were persuaded to move into a single village and followed by the next stage in which villagers would get involved in collective enterprises, such as a school farm. The third step would come when the farmers developed such confidence in the community farm that most of their efforts would go into it. The returns for labour would have to be just, simple, and easily understood before this third stage would be entered upon voluntarily. Nyerere cautioned that there was no simple or single answer for the whole of Tanzania. The great diversity in production and social organization meant that the application of the principles of ujamaa 'must take into account the different geographical and geological conditions in different areas, and also the local variations in the basically similar traditional structures ...' There was also to be respect for the social customs of the people and recognition that decisions 'must be made by the members, not by anyone else, even Area Commissioners and visiting Presidents ... ' 4 It must be underscored that it was appreciated that there would be problems. The new ujamaa policy was not simply going back to traditional living. It was a strategy to raise the quality of life of people in rural areas. The subsequent development of ujamaa policy took place in three more or less distinct phases. Basically, in the first phase of ujamaa, from 1967-70, the primary means of mobilization was exhortation, largely by the president and the party, for voluntary association and locally adapted ujamaa development. Encouragement was through example, particular attention being concentrated on a number of villages at se-

151 Adolpho Mascarenhas lected locations to serve more or less as models for the rest of the country. In Rufiji District, however, which had been hit by a flood, and in Handeni District, which was experiencing drought, people were compulsorily resettled in villages. A new phase began soon after the introduction of the second five-year plan in 1969. Emphasis shifted from the type of 'selective approach' to what was called the 'frontal approach,' a more comprehensive strategy in which the 'whole range of government and political institutions is mobilised behind the principle of Ujamaa.' 5 Exhortation was supplemented by inducement via preferential access to government resources. In Dodoma District, which had experienced drought and famine, government resources were channelled in an impressive way, and the 'operations' programme was initiated. It was not until 1973 that the third distinct phase began, with the introduction of a massive villagization campaign characterized by a willingness to use direct coercion. The 'ujamaa' part of the policy was noticeably de-emphasized after 1973. The primary objective was to get people into villages. Progress towards socialist agricultural production would follow thereafter, it was hoped, as people came to see the wisdom of co-operative production. STATUS OF VILLAGIZATION

Population of villages

Prior to 1970 there are only a few statistics available to illustrate the salient features of the status of villagization in Tanzania. Since then the picture has improved considerably, pointing to the increased administrative capacity of the prime minister's office. According to the available statistics there were already more than half a million people living in villages in 1970 (see Table 1). In all the regions, people were living in villages, but Mtwara, with over 170,000 villagers, had the largest number, followed by Mara. In the following year, villagization was pushed in the Dodoma, Lindi, and Iringa regions so that each of them had over 200,000 people in villages. Altogether, some 1.5 million people were in villages in 1971. In 1972, an operation was launched in Kigoma, and over 100,000 persons were resettled. The following year most of the increase resulted from the consolidation of the programme in Dodoma, Mtwara, and Iringa, but overall, 1973 was a relatively quiet year and only 47,302 persons joined villages. In 1974 another half a million people were added, mainly because of a fairly large number joining villages in Singida. By this time, Dodoma and Mtwara each had over half

Table 1 Growth of population in villages Region Arusha Coast (Pwani) Dar es Salaam Dodoma Iringa Kigoma Kilimanjaro Lindi Mara Mbeya Morogoro Mtwara Mwanza Rukwa Ruvuma Shinyanga Singida Tabora Tanga West Lake

Tanzania

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

275,765 157,641 40,000 630,858 804,391 452,285 , 14508 386,664 626,687 934,800 123,256 667,413 1,437,095 346,800 378,511 940,335 247,834 553,770 105,184 26,432 9,140,229

5200 48,300

14,018 93,503

19,818 111,636

20,112 115,382

26,400 11,600 6700 2700 70,673 84,700 32,900 6000 173,027 4600

239,366 216,200 27,200 2616 203,128 127,371 64,390 10,513 371,560 13,641

400,330 207,502 114,391 5009 175,082 127,370 98,571 23,951 441,241 32,099

378,915 243,527 114,391 4934 169,073 108,868 103,677 19,732 466,098 49,846

9000 12,600 6800 16,700 7700 5600

29,433 12,265 51,230 18,408 35,907 9491

29,430 15,292 59,420 25,115 77,859 16,747

42,385 12,052 59,420 29,295 77,957 13,280

25,356 167,073 4713 504,952 244,709 111,477 3176 218,888 233,632 86,051 25,509 534,126 40,864 24,988 62,736 18,425 141,542 28,730 67,557 15,968

531,200

1,545,240

1,980,862

2,028,164

2,560,472

1975

153 Adolpho Mascarenhas Table 2 Number of villages by region Region Arusha Dar es Salaam Dodoma Iringa Kigoma Kilimanjaro Lindi Mara Mbeya Morogoro Mtwara Mwanza Pwani Rukwa Ruvuma Shinyanga Singida Tabora Tanga West Lake Tanzania

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

20

25

59

92

95

40 60 14 7 148 19 22 15 264 10 46

75 350 34 9 185 174 91 19 465 28 56

246 651 132 11 572 376 493 113 748 127 121

299 630 129 24 626 376 713 116 1088 211 185

336 659 129 24 589 271 715 118 1103 284 188

110 25 354 619 123 14 339 111 534

26 6 41 37 21

120 98 16 52 37 22

205 150 201 81 132 46

205 123 263 148 245 83

242 108 263 174 245 85

1052 153 238 121 180 134 317 156 255 77

180 53 388 464 193 16 315 303 933 397 773 106 238 385 315 369 258 324 302 72

809

1956

4464

5556

5628

5008

6944

1969

12

96

Source: Maendeleo ya Vijiji vya Ujamaa, Prime Minister's Office, June 1975

a million people in villages. However, even at this stage, less than a fifth of Tanzania's population lived in villages. In 1974-75 the most dramatic changes took place. In Mwanza Region, from a mere 40,000 people, the numbers living in villages rose to 1.4 million. Equally dramatic were the increases in Shinyanga and Mbeya regions, where over three-quarters of a million people in each region were also resettled. So spectacular was the increase in the number of people in villages that by 1977 two out of every three persons in Tanzania resided in villages. The pattern of distribution is also interesting. In Mbeya, Mwanza, and Rukwa regions, practically every person is a villager and not far behind are Iringa (91 per cent villagized), Mara, Shinyanga, and Tabora. Trailing the list are Kilimanjaro (0.5 per cent), West Lake (3), Coast Region (8), Tanga (10), and Morogoro (15 per cent). Generally mountainous areas have remained untouched not only because densities of population are

154 After villagization - what? Table 3 Average size of villages by population and region

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

Total population 1975

208

238

215

212

352 33 197 300 247 487 362 316 372 164 863

973 332 206 328 343 339 131 93 497 147 773

1339 329 887 209 280 339 138 206 406 152 603

1128 370 887 206 287 339 145 167 423 176 614

75 129 429 321 208 255

144 82 255 227 272 206

144 124 226 170 318 202

175 112 226 168 318 156

231 188 1427 395 906 227 646 2105 161 266 508 267 702 207 349 138 447 184 265 207

1532 800 1634 1876 2343 281 1196 2232 1000 521 863 2371 528 900 1201 2540 960 1708 348 377

272,765 40,000 630,858 804,858 452,285 4508 386,664 626,687 934,800 123,256 667,413 1,437,095 157,641 346,800 378,511 940,335 247,834 553,770 105,184 26,432

272

345

357

360

511

1260

9,140,229

Average number of people per village Region Arusha Dar es Salaam Dodoma Iringa Kigoma Kilimanjaro Lindi Mara Mbeya Morogoro Mtwara Mwanza Pwani Rukwa Ruvuma Shinyanga Singida Tabora Tanga West Lake Tanzania

Source: Maendeleo ya Vijiji vya Ujamaa, Prime Minister's Office, June 1975

so high that there is little room for mass movement expansion but also because permanent tree crops made it impractical to do so. Tanga District is one of the least villagized partly because there is little unclaimed land available. If the density is a critical factor, Mwanza should not have been villagized to the extent it has been and it may well prove to be a problem area.

Number of villages On the whole, after the initial spurt in 1970-71 the number of villages has grown relatively evenly. In 1970 there were slightly less than 2000 villages, but the number had increased to over 4000 the following year, and to a little less than 7000 in 1975 (Table 2). In 1974 nearly 20 per cent

155 Adolpho Mascarenhas of these villages were located in Mtwara, but since then Mbeya Region has taken a lead. The number in Mwanza fluctuated before the great leap in 1975. In several regions the growth has been steady, except for Mtwara where the number dropped from 1103 in 1973 to 773 in 1975. The growth of the number of villages is a useful measure only in relation to other factors.

Size of villages

This is perhaps one of the most crucial statistics available on villages. The average number of inhabitants per village increased from 272 in 1970 to 360 in 1973. It crossed the 500 mark in 1974. While in 1970 only the villages in Dodoma had a population exceeding 1000 persons, in 1975 the average village size throughout Tanzania had increased to 1260 inhabitants or roughly 250 families per village. In several pronouncements this has been mentioned as the ideal unit. But variations between regions and within regions can be startling (see Table 3). On an average, in 1975, the largest villages with populations exceeding 2500 were found in Shinyanga. Not far behind were Kigoma (2343), Mwanza (2371), and Mara (2232) . Generally, along the coast the villages have become smaller; but Ikwiriri in Rufiji is purported to have over 16,000 inhabitants. Similarly, there are at least two villages in Dodoma District with over 7000 people.

Some implications of village size

There is no ideal village size. A small village may not be economically viable even though the group may be very well integrated. The larger the village, the greater the need for inputs unless the area is very well endowed with natural resources. The optimum size is determined partly by the goals one has in mind and partly by the resources available and the cost at which they can be exploited. Thus, in Rufiji the delta lends itself to intensive cultivation and, with improved management, could absorb whatever reasonable population growth takes place. But these advantages could be offset by disadvantages, as well. For instance, the close proximity of many people to one another can result in rapid spread of disease, so that, with such hazards, one must improve health facilities or put a great deal of effort into preventive measures. In the more fragile environments one has to be even more careful. Here, land has to be rotated more often and, consequently, there is a village size beyond which the villagers would have to waste too much effort in getting to and from their fields. But even here one has to be cautious - the whole of Dodoma, for instance, is not semi-arid. In certain

156 After villagization - what? localities, where water is available and where labour is intensely used, the size of the village could be well over the ideal 250 families. PROBLEMS ARISING IN THE VILLAGIZATION PROGRAMME

The IBRD report, which had advocated the resettlement of fairly large numbers of people, and the subsequent attempt to implement the policy through the village settlement agency, both underestimated the tasks that lay ahead. The first five-year plan only considered the creation of sixty-nine settlements, having about 17,250 families. Even after the plans were abandoned there was no attempt to evaluate precisely why and in what way the schemes had failed. They were conceived, falsely, on the assumption that capital alone was the determining factor for success or failure. There was no real attempt to identify the additional obstacles that would have had to be overcome even if the schemes had 'worked out' financially. Indeed, the village settlement plans were economically not viable but the failures were just as much due to other errors including lack of trained managers, ignorance of crop suitability, and so on. Basically, then, there were no positive lessons learnt from the settlement schemes, except the fact that the country could not afford capital intensive schemes. The ujamaa policy was another attempt towards rural development. It had been conceived essentially as an attempt to generate self-reliance and as an educative process in which the masses would learn from their own experience. The role of the government and the party would only be to provide such assistance as was necessary to facilitate this process. In addition, the government would be in a position to provide social infrastructure and to facilitate the introduction of modern inputs. In spontaneous villages, such as those in Ruvuma, which developed even before the Arusha Declaration, it is interesting to note that the spirit of the pioneer fringe prevailed. Thus, for instance, many of those who joined the Ruvuma villages soon gave them up, but there were others who continued and attracted additional followers. There was a trial and error element which is typical of all agriculture. When the ujamaa villagization programme was taken up by the bureaucrats, the trial and error implications were entirely overlooked. Resettlement was adopted as a technocratic solution to development, creating an atmosphere in which it was assumed that the only thing necessary was to put people in villages. However, villagization is only a means and a start to development.

157 Adolpho Mascarenhas The early villagization programmes soon after the Arusha Declaration took place in Handeni where drought conditions had brought famine, 6 and in Rufiji where floods had caused destruction of homes and farms. The subsequent evacuations were not without problems. For instance, in the Rufiji delta it has meant changing the old agricultural system which was eco-specific. 7 To date no new solution has been found. Evacuation is not development and the educative value that could have been obtained and that had been stressed by the president was ignored. Instead, an even more massive 'operation' was launched in Dodoma in 1970. The scale on which it was undertaken was much grander. The inputs of the government administration became so large that resettlement has become firmly rooted as a technocratic solution to development. Because of the involvement of the bureaucracy the administrative aspects were emphasized, involving mobilization of state transport, famine relief, and sometimes the arm of the law. The scale of operations and the rapidity with which they were implemented made it inevitable that some errors, impatience, and even high-handedness took place. There was simply no time to understand the environment and the social problems of the peasants or to wait for the feedback from Handeni, Rufiji, or Dodoma before the next operations were launched. It is true that a degree of suffering and destruction accompanied these villagization programmes. However, some of the dislocation would have taken place in any event. Few appreciate that in Dodoma, for instance, the suffering caused by food shortages and poor development was a recurrent phenomenon in the history of the region.8 But this time the solution was sought not solely from Oxfam and other charities but in a new approach - villagization. On the other hand, the development process itself inevitably brought some suffering, just as the fireman's axe brings destruction and the doctor's needle brings pain. In addition, there were certainly some errors of planning and execution in the villagization process. Professionalism and the application of formulae are likely to bring problems along with their advantages in any part of the world. For example, it is well known that in the United States some surgeons have over-enthusiastically and unnecessarily used their scalpels. But does one condemn the entire profession or the way health services are provided because of the excesses of a few? Nor should the inevitable concomitants of the development process, including the errors of a few, result in the condemnation of the entire villagization programme. Villagization, then, has brought many new opportunities but, equally, problems both of an immediate nature and of a more deceptive, long-

158 After villagization -what? term nature bearing serious implications for the future. The opportunities include improvement in the means of reaching the population with basic welfare and development services and with political education. Villagization means also that co-operative structures and representative institutions are likely to develop more easily and that villagers will be better able to articulate their demands than ever they could while living as scattered holdings. However, there are also immediate problems - the increased risk of hazards such as disease, outbreak of fire, and water contamination. Longer-term problems are likely to be site-specific. In a semi-arid environment, for example, where vegetation is a major resource (not fully appreciated by all), regeneration takes time. The concentration of population, especially if done suddenly, can cause environmental degradation. In a compact village, new homes mean a sudden demand for wood for housing and fuel. Destruction of trees first takes place around the village because the trees are conveniently located for exploitation. In addition, food is also required for livestock and the grass cover is soon exhausted. In such situations, villages are rapidly surrounded by barren land that will be quickly eroded by the rains. Therefore, there is a great need for planning and monitoring changes. Only by sober reassessment and revision in the light of experience can the villagization programme be maintained and its positive potential fulfilled. In summary, the villagization programme of the 1970s has succeeded, to the point where in seven short years two out of every three Tanzanians lived in villages. The key assumption of the programme is that villagization is a precondition of rural development and that, therefore, the initial unpopularity of the policy will soon be replaced by a recognition of the advantages of living together. This consequence, however, is not inevitable. A great deal will depend upon the policies and activities of T ANU and the government. The germane question, therefore, is 'After villagization - what?' VILLAGIZATION AND THE FUTURE

Tackling the inherited problems Some of the biggest tasks, which have to be undertaken before there can be transformation in the rural areas, still face Tanzania, despite villagization. Tanzania does not enjoy the luxury of starting afresh; it inherits problems from the past. These problems include the competitiveness for all resources, the multiplicity of factors hindering agriculture, poor national bargaining power in the international arena, the obstacles to in-

159 Adolpho Mascarenhas centive and co-operation, the need for proper and maximum utilization of national resources and for trained manpower. In 1964 the government was not able to provide more than a handful of managers to develop the settlement schemes. This deficiency still exists even though decentralization has sent considerable manpower to the regions. But the training of the high level manpower now in the regions has not really been in the area of rural development. While technical expertise both working and stimulating development in rural areas will remain, the bureaucracy in Tanzania cannot be looked upon as a source for thousands of 'managers' who will be provided to the villages by the government. The villagers themselves must provide the leadership. However, this leadership will need to be able to draw upon the skills, experience, and advice of government officers. This leadership not only must set an example; it must also provide the impetus to push its followers into the future. This future cannot be one of poverty, ignorance, or disease. The need for knowledge, especially in agriculture There is an awareness now that knowledge about the rural areas is needed more than ever. The lack of it creates a dilemma. Thus, arising from the disappearance of ethno-science, there is a tendency to imitate blindly models developed elsewhere. Such models, even if they were successful in other parts of the Third World, do not necessarily provide a workable solution for Tanzania. An example will illustrate this point. One of the strengths of Tanzania's agriculture has been that there is no single staple food, but rather area-specific food crops. Consequently, the whole of Tanzania has never suffered simultaneously from food shortages; only parts of Tanzania have suffered.9 In the initial and transitional stages of villagization, the vulnerability of Tanzania in the cultivation of staple food is increasing. This arises partly from the fact that a few of the world's cereals are being promoted on a large scale and foreign assistance is available for programmes relating to these crops. The educated group and the decision makers are conversant with these cereals and with the 'package deals' available from aid agencies. However, a few have questioned the applicability of these deals to the different environment of Tanzania. The questioning proved insightful. Thus, the maize programme promoted by the World Bank and other interested groups in Tanzania has been presented as a panacea rather than as a cautious experiment requiring a number of local adjustments before the launching of a major programme. Yet farmers did not automatically follow the new way. Already in at least two areas of Tanzania where maize has been

160 After villagization -what? promoted by the application of models from elsewhere there have been dramatic reversals. The political leadership has been fast in reacting. In Dodoma, for example, farmers have been urged to go back to their traditional crops instead of embarking on maize. More recently in Mwanza, where 80,000 acres of maize dried up, peasants have been advised to resort to millet and sorghum. The moral is clear. The successful introduction of any new crop depends on both a whole host of organizational, technical, and environmental preconditions and the participation of the people themselves. In many cases, for the foreseeable future, Tanzanian farmers may continue to practise multiple cropping rather than depend on a single crop because it increases their security and continue to use traditional tools and plants because this permits participation and gives them a chance to engage in some commercial agriculture at a price that the farmers can afford to pay. Innovations, if they are to be accepted, must be designed to meet these basic needs of the peasant community. If villagization is to increase productivity and, therefore, to raise the quality of life in the rural areas, a great deal will depend on the effective dissemination of a very substantial amount of tested and area-specific agricultural advice. Further, such scientific advice will have to be popularized so that it is understood by the users rather than exclusively by the club of advisers and experts. For their failure to achieve this understanding, the extension services of the country have been the favourite 'whipping boys.' But unless the educational training programmes for extension workers are dramatically altered to give them the means to carry out their tasks, it is unlikely that much change can be expected.

The role of institutions and learning from mistakes

There are serious flaws in present planning and management relating to the villages. In many cases where people were sent out to plan villages in the rural areas, surveys report on the destruction of existing houses, with subsequent rebuilding in straight rows lined up along roads. The assumption seems to have been that straight rows are progressive and modern. Similarly, villages are stretched for several kilometres along a major trunk way as if on the assumption that roads were built to cross fertile areas rather than to pass through the shortest distance or most accessible course between two points. Such simplistic and naive planning has in fact taken place. But it must be remembered that this naivety is not part of policy. Poor planning whether from ignorance or indifference has not been condoned. Both party and government leaders have been rebuked for not working hand in glove with the peasants. 10

161 Adolpho Mascarenhas Obviously, then, there is need in the future for a trained cadre of planners: but one wonders whether these planners should be professionals who do not necessarily share the views of those who are most affected or suffer from the consequences of planning. In any event, since knowledge and data adequate for sound planning are simply not there, might it not be more relevant for the villagers themselves to learn from experience? This really means that, far from looking at failures negatively, they must be looked upon as a learning process. There is, therefore, an urgent need to record failures, not for the sake of criticism, but to understand the course that it may be necessary to take in the future.

Co-operation The whole question of ujamaa and co-operation will have to come up again, for the villagization programme now being undertaken no longer emphasizes this aspect. But even here the situation is not dismal. There is some evidence, already, that co-operation in obtaining infrastructure is taking place. This co-operation takes the form of several villagers combining their resources to purchase mills, vehicles, tractors, to obtain loans, and even to have the land cleared. However, co-operative agricultural production is still a thorny issue and might take a great deal of effort and discipline to see that it works. But, even here, some of the investments that have been made because of villagization demand that there be co-operation. For example, in areas where irrigation would be an improvement in agricultural practices, it is imperative that there be co-operation. Co-operation must also be thought of in the wider context of intervillage, inter-district, and even inter-regional relations. Perhaps some of the institutions already in existence will have to be decentralized - food crops, sugar, and other produce are known to be held up so that there are shortages even in those areas where the item is being produced. The complementarity of different regions of Tanzania has yet to be fully exploited. Planning and government involvement Some of the problems in planning still remain. Planning routines appropriate in their time are often continued long after they have outlived their usefulness. Since planning still takes 'form' at the centre, even though these may be regional centres, it is sometimes on a scale not quite relevant to local aspiration or needs. Then, too, there has developed a tendency on the part of the people to wait until the 'government does

162 After villagization - what? something.' This attitude will not change overnight for it requires skills, experience, and self-confidence on the part of the people to accept responsibility. There are good reasons why this essay fluctuates between advocating more government involvement at times, and less at others. Thus, the injection of modern techniques in agriculture cannot be left to chance but co-operative or communal work should be a process and not an activity forced by the government. So far, government authority has been used mainly to force people into villages and encourage surplus production, while few government resources have gone towards discovering or carrying out the goals of the villagers themselves (a very large proportion of government expenditure is on salaries and recurrent expenditure). Neither this use, in the first case, nor non-use, in the second, of government power, is conducive to genuine socialist development. Priority should be reversed, with local policy-making encouraged but at the same time education, both technical and political, and material support and services made available to the localities as desired. The government should strive to stimulate and support local co-operative initiative, rather than enforce the mere forms of socialism from above while neglecting (or even obstructing the expression of) the real context of social needs. As long as villagization policy is designed for the convenience of the planners as opposed to the people - with force applied in the form of constraints rather than energy added - it will be resented and perhaps even resisted. Villagization (that is, some form of productive, or at least residential, collectivization) is very likely a prerequisite for development; in this respect, the reallocation of a large percentage of the Tanzanian population constitutes a step forward. But if it is necessary, it is nevertheless not sufficient; and even more crucially, if not followed up by mobilization and support for local self-direction, it may not at all be followed up by any fostering of socialist development. Similarly, unless it is accompanied by a successful effort to introduce agricultural practices that will be appropriate to the more dense and permanent cultivation that will be a consequence of it, villagization may even lead to declining productivity. We have seen that in the context of both ecological conditions and social formations prior to independence, Tanzanians adopted a settlement pattern of scattered homesteads as their most suitable defence. Unless the villagization programme actively works to change that context, scattered homesteads may remain, with good reason, a desirable pattern in the eyes of some Tanzanians.

163 Adolpho Mascarenhas

The Village Act: an instrument for self-expression and development Villagization itself was the implementation, primarily of a philosophy and only secondarily of a strategy for development. Despite the note of caution contained in 'Socialism and Rural Development' and other policy papers, about the pace and manner in which villagization was to be implemented, it is clear that in a number of instances persuasion was replaced by coercion. Yet the earlier truth still stands: the mobilization of the peasant masses is only possible by the willing participation of the people and the communities themselves. An important effort is now being made to overcome the shortcomings of decentralization and the manner in which villagization was implemented in some areas through the Villages and Ujamaa Villages (Registration, Designation and Administration) Act of 1975. By this act, any corporate group of people with not less than 250 households (kayas) within a definable area may be registered as a village and be gazetted as such. Such villages have a village assembly consisting of every resident over the age of eighteen. The village assembly elects a council as well as a secretary. Following the election of the council and the registration of the village, the registrar will issue a certificate of corporation under which the village is 'capable in law of suing or being sued in its corporate name, of purchasing, holding, obtaining, managing and disposing of any property.' In addition, the council is empowered: 1 (a) to do all such acts and things as are necessary or expedient for the economic and social development of the village; (b) to initiate and undertake any task, venture or enterprise as is designed to ensure the welfare and well being of the residents of the village; (c) to plan and co-ordinate the activities of and render assistance and advice to the residents of the village engaged in agricultural, horticultural, forestry or other activity or industry whatsoever; (d) to encourage the residents of the village in undertaking and participating in communal enterprises; (e) to participate, by way of partnership or otherwise, in economic enterprises with other Village Councils. 2 A Village Council shall have the power to do all such acts and things as appear to it to be necessary, advantageous or convenient for or in connection with the carrying out of its functions or to be incidental or conducive to their proper discharge. 3 A Village Council may establish committees and delegate to such committees any of its functions.

164 After villagization - what? Where the regional committee is satisfied that a substantial portion of the economic activities of the village is being undertaken and carried out on a communal basis 'the Regional Committee may recommend that the Minister designate the village as an Ujamaa Village. The President may confer on such Village Councils any powers, including judicial or administrative powers, in relation to the village or to an area (including some area outside its boundary) for the proper and efficient administration or management of the village affairs or for the political, social or economic development of the villages.' The potential now for participatory involvement of the village is considerable, though with such powers also comes the need for greater discipline and responsibility. The Village Act also clears the air about the relation of the village to other institutions. The Co-operative Unions, which had earlier expanded so rapidly and in many instances had become a burden, have been abolished. In future, most of the villages will be eligible to function as primary, multi-purpose co-operative societies. In self-reliant communities in which members of the village are well known to each other, there is less room for undetected corruption and matters can be handled more expediently. Just as the Arusha Declaration gave the nation a commanding position over its economy, the Village Act gives local communities considerable power to decide for themselves their future and the manner in which they wish to develop. One of the problems of development in Tanzania has been the narrow interpretation and rigid application of policy. The Village Act widens the horizon and allows the rural development to be undertaken by those who will benefit the most from it. Tanzania's villagization programme ranks among the most outstanding indigenous rural development policies in Africa. In less than ten years the rural settlement pattern of Tanzania has been physically transformed, and now over ten million Tanzanians live in villages instead of living in scattered and isolated homesteads. Both in a narrow technical sense as well as in a wider context, groups of people living in nucleated settlements make it easier to improve the well-being of people. Resettlement and changes in the way of life brought difficulties but the majority of Tanzanians in rural areas seem now to see the advantages of living in villages. Whether this will be their lasting judgement will depend on the ability of the government to get basic social services to them, on the likelihood that the farmers will be able to adjust their farming systems to

165 Adolpho Mascarenhas the different requirements that are a consequence of their now living permanently in close contiguity to others, and on their skill in using effectively and positively the new institutions of democratic local rule. Villagization is thus but the first stage of a process that must now be carried forward to its conclusion if both economic development and the socialist transformation of Tanzanian society are in fact to be promoted by it.

NOTES

1 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Economic Development of Tanganyika (Dar es Salaam 1960) 2 Tanganyika, Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development, 1964-69, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Development Planning (Dar es Salaam 1964) 3 J.K. Nyerere, After the Arusha Declaration, Ministry of Information and Tourism (Dar es Salaam 1967), p. 15 4 Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (London and Dar es Salaam 1968), p. 350 5 Tanzania, Second Five- Year Plan, 1969-74, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Development Planning (Dar es Salaam 1969); see also Anthony Ellman, 'Development of Ujamaa Policy in Tanzania,' in L. Cliffe et al., eds., Rural Cooperation in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam 1975) 6 S.A. Sumra, 'An Analysis of Environmental and Social Problems Affecting Agricultural Development in Handeni District,' MA thesis, University of Dar es Salaam, 1975 7 A. Sandberg, 'Socio-Economic Survey of Lower Rufiji Flood Plain, Part I: Rufiji Delta Agricultural System,' Dar es Salaam, BRALUP research paper no 34, 1974 8 C. Brooke, 'The Heritage of Famine in Central Tanzania,' Tanzania Notes and Records, no 67 (1967), and A.C. Mascarenhas, 'Studies in Famines and Food Shortages,' Journal of the Geographical Association of Tanzania, no 8 (1973) 9 Ibid . 10 Daily News, Dar es Salaam, 14 April 1976

BISMARCK U. MWANSASU

The changing role of the Tanganyika African National Union

On 3 June 1975 the Tanzanian National Assembly passed a bill that could prove to be another major landmark in the history of the Tanzanian one-party system of government. This act, the Interim Constitution of Tanzania (Amendment) Act, reaffirmed the country's status as a oneparty state and established the full legal supremacy of the party (TANU). In the preamble to the bill, its purpose is stated as being' ... principally to reflect in the Constitution the supremacy of the Party.' The relevant amendment, subsection (4) of Section 3, states: 'The functions of the organs of the United Republic of Tanzania shall be performed under the auspices of the Party.' This amendment might appear to be insignificant. There had already been statements by President Nyerere and others to the effect that the party was supreme. 1 Indeed, as will be shown later, there are many examples which suggest that the supremacy of the party was already an existing political fact at the time the amendment was introduced. However, even if it merely legalized what was already taking place, this act put an end to the anomaly that the party should exercise powers that had not been formally conferred upon it. The act is important for a second reason: it helps to clarify the particular meaning that has been given in Tanzania to the doctrine of the supremacy of the party. Tanzania is not the first or only country to adopt an idea that receives different meanings and interpretations in different countries. It is therefore imperative that we understand the particular meaning given to this doctrine in Tanzania. THE ROLE OFT ANU IN TANZANIAN POLITICS Many studies of Tanzanian development problems and prospects have commented upon the fact that TANu's ability to exercise effective leader-

170 The changing role of TANU ship has been handicapped by its organizational and ideological weaknesses, and various ways have been suggested to overcome these weaknesses. For example, in his pioneering study on TANU, Henry Bienen pointed out that the party's personnel had neither the administrative experience nor the technical skills to realize the goals they had set for themselves. Moreover, TANu's central structures were unable to exercise effective control: as a result, 'there is a great deal of deflection from orders and plans made at the center.' Bienen also found that the party played only a minimal role in shaping policy; citing the experience of the formulation of the first five-year plan, he reported that 'neither the National Executive Committee nor the Conference 'made' policy in the Plan.' In an article reviewing Bienen's book, Lionel Cliffe argued that the party's weakness could be attributed largely to a lack of ideological clarity. This factor, he felt, could be explained by TANu's history, particularly by its 'success in building a united front against colonialism,' which gave it the character of a rally of diverse and sometimes conflicting interests. The need to accommodate these interests made it difficult for the party to work out a coherent and clearly defined ideology. John Saul then took this point further. He attributed the party's weakness to a lack of 'that will to push across-the-board socialist solutions in the manner one might theoretically expect of it.' He linked this weakness with another factor, namely that TANU has not the actual capacity to do so entirely effectively in any case. For certain steps which would seem to be necessary to confirm the party in its leading role have not been forthcoming' (his own emphasis). Saul did not conceive this weakness merely in terms of skills, experience, and expertise; he also conceived it in ideological terms. 'It cannot be assumed that the party has systematically been manned by the most progressive members of the petty bourgeoisie; too often, its functionaries have been more typical representatives of the class's conventional preoccupations and its authoritarian style.' The implication of this observation is that if TANU is to be strengthened, attention should be paid to the political orientation and ideological commitment of its membership and its workers, not merely to their administrative experience and technical competence.2 This position coincides with an argument that recurs in non-academic circles in Tanzania. For example, at a weekend seminar organized by the TANU Youth League in 1970, it was resolved the ' members or leaders of TANU who have capitalist connections or ideas should be expelled from the Party in order to make it a vanguard party of workers and peasants only.' This concern to change the party from a mass party to a vanguard 1

171 Bismarck U. Mwansasu party was the theme also of a feature article in the Nationalist, the party's English-language daily newspaper, which raised such questions as 'whether TANU was ideologically strong, whether it could become a vanguard party and what the consequences of its becoming a vanguard party would have upon its mass character.' 3 A small group within TANU continues to this day to argue that TANU ought to become a vanguard party. One conclusion common to the studies mentioned above is that TANU is weak and that it could be and should be strengthened. Bienen's solution was to increase the administrative and technical competence of the party so that it would be equipped with the organizational capacity needed to promote development and to transform the structure of the economy.4 For him, the cure seemed to lie in having a highly centralized and disciplined party with an authoritative and powerful centre as well as experienced and technically competent personnel. Others, however, placed greater emphasis on the ideological commitment of those who are to be recruited to work in the party. For example, while calling for 'the overhauling of Party machinery and [introducing] radical changes in methods of work,' Nyelwa Kisenge's objective was not so much to create a vanguard party as to.create 'a vanguard within a mass party.' For him, the most crucial point was to have 'a hard core of committed socialist cadres' within the mass party. Since it is this idea which the TANU Youth League and others repeatedly champion it would be worthwhile to explore his particular conception of 'committed socialist cadres.' According to Kisenge 'socialist cadres are the party activists, propagandists, agitators, motivators, persuaders, ideologists, interpreters and defenders of party ideology and policies in all walks of life.' In addition, 'They do not have to be all employees of the Party, but wherever further [sic] may happen to place them in factories, ministries, armed forces, state farms, schools, ujamaa villages, private concerns, etc. they are always party militants proponding [sic] and defending the ideology of the masses.' Cadreship is not conceived, then, only in terms of the office a person occupies. Membership is attained by commitment to an ideology, a particular life-style, and a method of work. It is this which gives the cadres a 'sense of mission deeply rooted in their profound political convictions and unbending commitment to socialism.' It is this type of people that John Saul thinks would constitute 'the building blocks of the Party,' capable of facilitating what he describes as 'that blending of ideological perspective and technical calculation so necessary to the task of concretising ideology in a practical and readily applicable manner.' 5

172 The changing role ofT ANU To be sure, what has been outlined above does not represent the main current of ideas expressed on how to strengthen the party. This point must be made because within TANU more influential ideas presented another conception of what sort of party TANU should be. Indeed the president of TANU, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, has persistently articulated this other viewpoint. For him, TANu's claim that it speaks for the people must rest on its representative quality rather than on its ideology. One of the earliest expressions of this view appeared in 1962 in TANU na Raia (TANU and the Citizen) where he argued that the only acceptable leadership was that which derived its legitimacy from the people because it was elected and answerable to them. His preference for this leadership is rooted in the conviction that 'The best custodians of the people's rights are the people themselves. To expect that such rights would be safeguarded by leaders who are neither elected nor answerable to them is to leave such a crucial issue to chance.'6 Therefore, if TANU was to have any claim as a party that spoke for the people, it had to remain an open party. This posits a different image of what sort of party TANU ought to be, from that presented by Saul and Kisenge, and it is this image that appears in the recent formulations on the supremacy of the party. THE GENESIS OF THE TANZANIAN DOCTRINE OF THE SUPREMACY OF THE PARTY Since the enactment of the constitutional amendment of 1975 attempts have been made to explain the reasoning behind the changes introduced. The one explanation that has been given repeatedly is that the time had come to make a de facto situation de jure.7 It was argued (contrary to Bienen8) that TANU had been playing a very crucial role in the country's decision-making process since independence, thereby exercising powers not constitutionally conferred upon it. In 1962, for instance, the National Executive Committee of TANU decided to introduce a democratic oneparty system of government; in 1967 it decided that socialism and selfreliance would be the country's policy; in 1968 the committee decided to expel from the party seven members of Parliament as a result of which they lost status as MPs; in 1973 it decided to transfer the country's capital from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma. The party's assumption and exercise of these powers did not go unchallenged. There were people, particularly after the announcement of the Arusha Declaration, who questioned the legality of the party's assumption of the right to define the country's

173 Bismarck U. Mwansasu basic political and economic decisions. 9 But the only serious challenge of this sort came from some members of Parliament. Although members of TANU itself as well as being members of the national conference of TANU to which the National Executive Committee is answerable, these MPS never won support for their view in that conference. 10 One may fairly conclude that TANu's supremacy had been accepted by the people. All that was required, so concludes this argument, was to make this status explicit and constitutional. As an exposition of the rationale behind the constitutional amendment, this argument is inadequate. It does not explain, for example, the reasons for the party's decision to give its doctrine on supremacy the particular meaning that appears in its formulations. Moreover, although TANU had been in political control for a long period before the constitutional amendment, this dominance was assumed, almost as a matter of habit, to be part of the political culture of Tanzanian society. It is now embodied in law as a result of a conscious and deliberate decision, which was itself based on coherent and clearly worked-out theory. The road to that decision needs to be explained. There is, furthermore, a substantial development in the leadership's conception of the role of the party that must be considered. The party's occasional interventions notwithstanding, and in spite of the generally accepted fact that TANU was responsible for bringing about the country's independence, Nyerere and his colleagues at first behaved politically on the premise that it was the government that was considered supreme rather than TANU. They were coming to power within a political system modelled after the parliamentary democracy at Westminster. They believed that after winning an election TANU should remain on the sidelines, leaving Parliament and the government as the main arenas within which policy decisions would be taken. Thus, we find Nyerere, as the chief minister in 1960, issuing a circular that, among other things, said: 'I would remind you that policy is decided by the central government and not by local party representatives.' A year later, in his independence message, Mwalimu Nyerere repeated the same point in these terms: 'It is the job of the government to work out an overall policy plan and to check the direction in which we move just as the TANU National Executive in the past worked out the tactics of the struggle ... It hANu] is an organization of the people. Through it the people can and must express their desires and worries to the government. Through it the government can and must explain to the people what it is doing and why.' 11 At that time the role of TANU was

174 The changing role of TANU conceived as a 'two-way all-weather road, along which the purposes, plans and problems of the government can travel to the people the same time as the ideas desires and misunderstandings of the people can travel to the government.' 12 In other words, TANU was not conceived as an independent instrument that could direct the government. William Tordoff has not only noted the predominance of government during the early years of independence but he has also attempted to explain it: 'party leaders, who had become central government ministers, found it easier and more efficient to work through the government rather than Party channels.' 13 This tendency on the part of the leaders had the overall effect of making the government appear to be more important than the party. Unfortunately, it was not only a question of appearances. In reality the government was seen to be doing things which were conspicuously beneficial to the people. For example, it was to the government that people looked for assistance for all the various services as well as for security and protection. Moreover, its functionaries commanded respect because they represented the might of state power; and they were generously remunerated, certainly in comparison with ordinary citizens. However, this was not the case with TANU . Its officials did not appear to play a positive role following independence. Even when they were encouraged to mobilize people in nation-building activities, they often found their job frustrating because they were operating in a sort of ideological vacuum. As Vice-President Kawawa told the fifteenth national conference of TANU, 'between 1961 and 1967 we did not have any policy for the development of this country.' 14 Mwalimu Nyerere concurs: 'During 1966 there was a general realisation that although some economic progress was being made, and although we were still talking in terms of socialist objectives, the nation was drifting without a sense of direction.' 15 This lack of ideological clarity meant that exhortations by party functionaries were often without concrete substance. An equally important factor, which further complicated the work of these functionaries, was that they had very few resources at hand. This was accentuated by the fact that they were paid low salaries, and irregularly too. They were clearly in an inferior position vis-a-vis government functionaries, a factor which confirmed the belief of many people that the government was more important. Even the area and regional commissioners, although politically appointed officials, tended to lean more on the government side, thus implying that they considered their role as

175 Bismarck U. Mwansasu government representatives more important than their role as party secretaries. This is borne out by section 20 of the constitutional amendment which specifically mentions that the president will appoint regional party secretaries who on the basis of that office also become regional commissioners. The effort has thus been made quite deliberately to reverse the earlier pattern in which the commissioners were appointed by the president qua president of Tanzania and thereby became as well party secretaries. The government often provided the yardstick or point of reference against which other institutions could be compared. Thus, when recommending how to strengthen the party's National Executive Committee, the Presidential Commission on the Establishment of a Democratic OneParty State reported that the NEC should have 'the power to summon witnesses and to call for papers which is conferred by chapter 359 of the Laws of the National Assembly and the sessional committees of the Assembly.' In addition, the report went on, 'those members of the National Executive who are not also members of the National Assembly should be paid the same salaries and allowances as are paid to Members of Parliament' (p. 17). The idea here was to raise the NEC to a par with the National Assembly. The implication clearly was that the status of the party would thereby be elevated. By 1974, the balance between the two institutions was in danger of being tilted the other way. Between August 1974 and April 1975 the president of TANU found it necessary to make the basic distinction between the party and government the theme of his speeches at two important seminars. At the first, held in August 1974 and attended by members of the party's Central Committee elected in June of that year, Nyerere spoke at length not only on the fact that the party and government were distinct entities different in their nature and their origin but also on the need and necessity to maintain them both while also keeping them separate. Addressing another seminar attended by district and regional leaders of the party, he observed: It is quite possible that when some TANU leaders talk about the supremacy of the Party they do not want there to be any distinction between the Party and the Government, that the Party should involve itself directly in performing the functions of administration. We might be thinking that if the Party performed these functions, it would become more powerful. However, this is not true for should the Party assume these functions, it would atrophy.

176 The changing role of TANU This statement is revealing. It indicates that many people, including TANU leaders, understood by the supremacy of the party that the party would take the place of the government. Explaining why this was a misconception, Nyerere went on: There are people who think that if the Party governs it would be strong but I say that is not true. Should the Party and Government merge into one, it is the Party which gets transformed and becomes the Government. The Government would never be transformed and become the Party. What is transformed is the Party and not the Government. The Government has one characteristic, it never gets transformed ... It is possible for a country not to have a Party; but you cannot have a country without a government. Never! Such a Government could be socialist or capitalist, good or bad, but it will have to be there. 16

The recently formulated doctrine of party supremacy embraces this recognition of the distinction between the party and the government and the need to keep them separate, with the party being in command. But Nyerere's speeches illustrate quite clearly that these consequences of the supremacy of the party had not yet been properly grasped. The view was still prevalent that, although in the past the government had been supreme, under the new doctrine the party would absorb its functions. Nyerere sought to correct this view and the new constitutional amendment reflects his judgement that the two institutions must be kept distinct and separate, with the party being supreme but not interfering directly in the activities of the government. Mwalimu Nyerere's remarks also show an important development in his own thinking since the country's attainment of independence. When arguing the case for a democratic one-party system in 1963, he said that once the party assumed the character of a national movement open to all and identified with the whole nation, then 'the present distinction between TANU and the TANU Government, a distinction which, as a matter of fact, our people do not in the least understand, would vanish.' 17 This was his line of thinking in 1963. Notice that he mentions the fact that people do not understand the difference between the party and the government, a point he was to repeat in August 1974 and April 1975. Notice also the shift that has occurred in his ideas on how to rectify this situation: whereas in 1963 he contemplated a possible merger of the two, a position other TANU leaders apparently continued to hold ten years later, Nyerere had by then come to argue against such a merger. Whereas in the early sixties he felt that such a merger would mean that the distinction be-

177 Bismarck U. Mwansasu tween the government and the party 'would vanish,' ten years later he felt that what 'would vanish' would be the party and not the distinction. Why was Nyerere so very determined in 1974 to make sure that the party continued as the central supreme political institution with its identity kept quite separate from that of the government? What had happened between these years to cause such a basic change in his thinking? The answer, it seems to me, lies in the increasing recognition that governments grow out of touch with popular needs if they are not in some way or another democratically and electorally responsible to the people. More than that alone, it was also recognized that in order to serve the people governments often create 'fairly elaborate organisations as well as complex communications systems and so on.' As a result, those who work in such an environment get so entangled that they forget the purpose of their activity. Such a situation 'introduces a new danger that the people's servants will become a bureaucracy that is out of touch with the people and which is slothful, inefficient or complacent in its own comfort.' 18 Equally important was the growing realization of the fact that the nature and character of the state itself greatly contributed to making the government and its functionaries out of touch with the masses. There are many aspects to this. This first is fairly straightforward and relates to the simple fact that those working in these institutions are expected to work according to prescribed procedures and regulations and under tremendous pressures as well. Mwalimu Nyerere explained this problem very well when closing the fourteenth national conference of TANU in 1969: However much you try t~ be near the people, to be constantly in their midst - and we have tried - the responsibilities of leadership, particularly now, necessitate our reducing the time we would like to be with the people ... Pressure of work reduces the time we would like to be with the people. In addition, there are government protocols, some necessary and others quite unnecessary, which help to build a wall between the leader and the people thereby making the possibility of being together for longer periods remote.19

The attitude of the people themselves also contributes to such a situation. On their own, people have preferred to keep their distance from the government. They fear government: it has at its disposal the might of the coercive instruments of state power which it uses or threatens to use against those who are unwilling to comply with its wishes. They particularly fear the government because the functionaries who man the

178 The changing role of TANU various coercive instruments are not directly answerable to them; there is thus always the danger that those instruments would be turned and used against the people. They decide, therefore, that it is better to keep one's distance from those with power. Mwalimu made this point when he said : 'By their very nature the Government and its instruments are coercive. The Government does not plead or solicit compliance from the people because once it starts doing that, people would begin asking what sort of Government it was. The Government rules and this entails issuing orders and the various instruments that are created are meant for ordering people around and instilling fear rather than for pleading with people.' 20 This inherent characteristic of government led Nyerere to observe elsewhere ' ... that government is detached from the people ... to try and turn back and approach the people is to go against the current of government practice ... and it is difficult for a government not to have this characteristic because once you remove it, what you have will not be government.' 21 This detachment brings to light another danger in addition to public servants becoming a bureaucracy 'out of touch with the people': that is, of the government becoming the master and oppressor of the people and thereby making them its instruments instead of being their instrument. The full realization of this particular threatening characteristic of the state came after the announcement of the Arusha Declaration and after the adoption of various measures designed to implement the policies enunciated therein. Thereafter the government was to be an instrument of the peasants and workers; but the inherited colonial government structures, methods of work, and styles of leadership were often inappropriate to assignments intended to promote and defend the interests of the peasants and workers. There was, therefore, a need to restructure the government machinery so as to make it a more effective instrument for socialist change. Inevitably this raises some questions. Who was going to effect these changes? What force would ensure that the government and other public institutions served the interests of the people they were created to serve? From what has already been said, it is evident that such a force must come from outside and must be independent of the government and its institutions. The party is the only institution capable of providing such a force; it was created to promote and defend the interests of the great mass of the Tanzanian people. TANU is also the only institution whose life, strength, and survival depends on the backing and sustained support of peasants and workers. This backing and support is given on the

179 Bismarck U. Mwansasu understanding that the party speaks for peasants and workers. Failure to meet this expectation leads to a rapid withdrawal of support and subsequently to an erosion of the party's basis of existence. The party, therefore, has always to be amid the people, forging links with them so as to keep in perpetual interaction with the people. Only in this way can it hope to have a correct appraisal of the feelings, anxieties, and wishes of those it is supposed to speak for. It is the party's proximity to the people, the fact that its leaders are answerable to these people and replacable by them, and, one hopes, the party's dedication to serve them which makes it duty bound to see that the interests of peasants and workers are always paramount and which gives it the moral force to exercise leadership over all the institutions in society. What confers such powers on the party is not merely the fact that it describes itself as a mass party; it is rather the actual character of the institutions of the party itself. As Mwalimu Nyerere pointed out: ' ... the only instrument that is close to the people is their Party. It is always in their midst, not just in theory, but in actual practice because that is how it is structured. From the ten-house cells to the branches, there are leaders who are always with the people not only because they live and work like other ordinary working people but also because they are periodically elected.' 22 This means that if the party is to become a force capable of exercising the people's control over government it must be organized in such a manner that it not only remains open and responsive to those for whom it is supposed to speak but also is run by them and not for them. It is only by acquiring and retaining this quality that it can remain 'a Party which is rooted in the hearts of the people, which has its devoted workers in the villages and the towns throughout the country.' Only in this way will it have the ability 'to tell the government what are the people's purposes, and whether they are being carried out effectively [and, therefore] ensure that Government and people work together for the people's purposes.' 23 It has been necessary to dwell at length on the emerging ideas relating to the distinction between the party and the government after the announcement of the Arusha Declaration because these ideas shed light on the reasons for the particular meaning given by Nyerere and TANU to the doctrine of the supremacy of the party. They also help to explain why TANU kept itself an open, mass party. However, before examining more closely the meaning that is being given to this doctrine in Tanzania, it is useful to look first at the changes that have been made to the structure and organization of TANU in the period after the Arusha Declaration.

180 The changing role of TANU TANU IN THE POST-ARUSHA DECLARATION PERIOD

The announcement that Tanzania was committed to build a socialist society did not immediately result in a fully sociali~t society. Neither did the statement that TANU was a party of peasants and workers automatically transform it into such a party. Ten years after the Arusha Declaration one still could not say that TANU has succeeded in its goal of being a party that spoke for the peasants and workers. However, what can be said is that since 1967 a lot of thinking and effort has gone into giving the party the characteristics that are likely to make it increasingly a party of peasants and workers. It is to an examination of these efforts that this discussion will mainly be directed. One of the problems which plagued the party for a long period was that the party had not been close enough to the people. ln part this was because of a key structural factor. Since its formation, TANU had been organized on the basis of geographical areas. The branch, for a long time the lowest unit in the party structure, was organized on that basis. This meant that wide areas and large numbers of people were incorporated, particularly in rural areas, thus reducing the party's ability to remain close to the people because it was not possible to reach all members in the branch easily, let alone to attend to their problems. This was further accentuated after the Arusha Declaration. In various places in the rural areas ujamaa villages were set up, thereby injecting within the boundaries of existing branches of TANU new socio-economic units. There was a parallel problem in urban centres where the area of a TANU branch often incorporated various institutions and factories; thus many branches included various elements whose interests were uncommon. A party branch including all these diverse socio-economic units could not provide a suitable forum in which members could discuss problems specifically related to their unit. The rapid expansion of the public sector as well as the establishment of ujamaa villages in the rural areas brought to the fore the need to think again about what would be the most appropriate basis on which to organize T ANU at the local level. As a result of such rethinking, in 1969 an amendment to the constitution of TANU was effected which provided for the establishment of TANU branches, in work places where there were more than fifty party members or in ujamaa villages with more than 250 members, as effective forums for people's participation. One of the amendments to the TANU constitution introduced in 1975 further provided that members of the branch should meet once in every month.

181 Bismarck U. Mwansasu These measures help to bring the party close to the people. They do not solve this problem entirely. The party's ineffectiveness at the branch level was also due to its not having effective functionaries to man the branches. Even if a person managed to get to the office of the party branch, there was no guarantee that he would find anybody there or, if someone was there, he would attend to his problems. Experiences of this kind atthe local level led some members to despair and, subsequently, to write off the party as an institution to which they could take their problems. If the party tolerated this weakness for long it would undermine its legitimacy. As one delegate to the fifteenth national conference in 1971 observed: 'If we are weak at the branch level, we weaken the district; if we are weak at the district level, we weaken the region and ultimately the headquarters of the Party.' What was needed, as another delegate pointed out, was that every branch should have a full-time secretary. 24 The force of these arguments was recognized within the party. Various initiatives were taken to train people who were then to be posted to each branch of TANU . The first serious effort began in 1973 when a decision was taken to combine the offices of TANU branch secretary and ward executive officer, an arrangement similar to that at the district and regional levels where the commissioners had both party and government offices. Most of the candidates who were selected had already served either as T ANU branch secretaries or as ward executive officers. After selection, they underwent intensive training and all were expected to attend a three-month course at the party zonal colleges so as to make them more effective. An equally important effort in this direction has been the attempt to recruit and to train party secretaries who are to be posted in various work places. The first twenty-five were appointed in July 1975 after undergoing a three-month intensive course at Kivukoni College, the main party educational institution. Another course for a second batch of would-be party secretaries commenced in January 1977. The recruitment of full-time party secretaries demonstrates that an effort is being made to ilYlprove the quality of personnel at the branch level within the party. These efforts notwithstanding, the problem of staff inadequacy at the level of party branches is far from being completely solved. There are still a large number of work places and villages which do not as yet have full-time secretaries. At the district level, the staffing problem assumes a slightly different dimension. One of the perennial problems here afflicting the party has been its inability to attract competent staff to assist the district party secretary to organize and run party activities in the district. This problem

182 The changing role of TANU became particularly acute after the introduction of the government's decentralization programme because each district executive committee of TANU was expected to scrutinize all programmes and plans proposed for the development of the district by the specialized and technically oriented development committee. The district party office was expected to prepare briefs for members of the executive committee so as to acquaint them with the main issues on which they were required to make decisions. Without effective briefing of this kind these committees could not facilitate 'that blending of ideological perspective and technical calculation' which, as we saw, John Saul had called for. Such a role could only be exercised effectively if the members themselves had acquired strong technical understanding and an ideological clarity. Unfortunately, this is not yet the case with the district executive committees of TANU. Nor are the district TANU officials able to prepare competent briefs for them. As a result, TANU has not played the role it was expected to play in the decentralization programme. Mention is made of this fact because it adds another dimension to the party's manpower problem. The solution to that problem cannot be conceived exclusively in terms of strengthening the organizational and technical capacity of its functionaries. Whereas such a measure would enhance the party's capacity to gather its own data and sift it in a manner that would service the various committees, the problem would remain if the committee members themselves were unable either to read the briefs prepared or to comprehend the issues being discussed. This is an important dimension to the overall problem and is not unique to TANU. It is common to all other institutions created with the purpose of facilitating genuine participation of the people in considering, planning, and implementing programmes of their own development. Many of these participants are ordinary peasants and workers. The level of their literacy, technical competence, and ideological clarity will be reflected in the competence of the work of the committees themselves. Where this level is low, as is the case in Tanzania, the capacity of the various representative committees, including those of TANU, will also be low. This means, therefore, the final solution to this problem lies in raising the level of literacy, technical competence, and ideological clarity of the entire population, particularly members of TANU and those occupying leadership positions at all levels in the party hierarchy. It is because of this broad conception of the problem that the party's efforts have not been concerned exclusively with training its own functionaries. This explains why a great deal of attention has been paid to

183 Bismarck U. Mwansasu education, reflected in the fact that out of the eight guidelines for implementation issued after the Arusha Declaration, two are on education. 25 The accent of these guidelines as well as of numerous directives issued by the government is not merely on making the country's system of formal education 'relevant'; rather it expresses the need to create a politically conscious citizen capable of participating in politics, administration, and overall development. That is why prominence is given to political education, broadly conceived as education for liberation, as a central component of functional literacy, adult education, and formal education. The party's manpower weakness has been dwelt upon at length, but this does not mean to imply that it has been the only issue occupying the party's efforts since 1967. During the period under discussion, the party also addressed itself to problems relating to the procedures, elections, and composition of its various organs. Some of these efforts will be outlined below. PROCEDURES AND COMPOSITION OF STRUCTURES WITHIN TANU

Up to the thirteenth national conference in 1967, such conferences met once a year and the election of all office bearers took place annually. It was decided in 1967 that the conferences should be held biannually, and in 1969 it was decided that elections for office bearers should be held once every five years. To some observers an unexpected feature of these conferences is that they were run without any rules of procedures that were commonly understood. For example, there was no accepted order according to which delegates could acquire a right to address the conference. As a result, very often there was a great commotion after a delegate had finished speaking - there was a general rush to the microphone since the first to arrive received the right to speak. Secondly, there does not seem to have been a shared understanding about what a delegate could speak on. With every delegate left to speak on what he liked, sustained debate was often not forthcoming. Moreover, it was not unusual for people from the same area to criticize each other about various acts of omission and commission perpetrated in their localities. One could not be sure whether a delegate was expressing his own opinions or the concerns and anxieties of party members in his area. Again, the party did not have any method of summarizing what appeared to be the consensus of the conference.

184 The changing role ofTANU There were no resolutions which all delegates would be responsible to implement. As a result, every delegate left the conference with his own interpretation of what had been the consensus. It was not until the fifteenth national conference in 1971 that these procedural points were straightened out. It was decided that resolutions would be passed at the end of each conference and that delegates would report to each conference on the implementation of the resolutions of the previous conference. 26 This meant that delegates would know in advance who was expected to speak and also what they were going to talk about. A related procedural weakness was the fact that for a long time delegates and committee members went to their meetings without prior knowledge of the agenda. It is reported that even the National Executive Committee at its historic meeting at Arusha in 1967 did not begin with socialism and self-reliance as an agenda item of which members had foreknowledge. Instead, it was introduced at the meeting by the president. 27 Even on an issue of this magnitude members received no advance notice; they went to these meetings without having either thought about the issues or discussed them in local party circles. Elections for party officers were also not carried out according to a set of explicit procedures. The names of candidates for various offices, including those of the president and vice-president, were not known until election day because nominations were made from the floor. The obvious inadequacies of such casual and unstructured arrangements were not corrected until the decision taken in 1969 that aspiring candidates for leading positions in the party leadership must fill in prescribed forms in advance of the elections. These would then be scrutinized by a higher party structure before the election proper. In addition to these improved procedures, the party has sought to democratize the various organs of the party by making the decision-making bodies within it more representative. For example, representatives from the branches and districts to the district annual conference and to the national conference respectively were increased from two to ten in 1969. In addition, members of the district and regional committees who had for a long time been nominated by district or regional chairmen of T ANU were from 1969 on elected directly by their respective conferences. At the same time it was decided that Central Committee members should be elected by the national conference rather than appointed by the president. Explaining the reasons for this change, Mwalimu Nyerere told the fourteenth national conference:

185 Bismarck U. Mwansasu It is the feeling of the National Executive Committee that our Party is becoming more mature. This year we will be marking the 15th Anniversary of TANU . As the Party grows and becomes more mature, this change must also be reflected in its various organs. And the Central Committee is one of these main organs. As our party begins to involve itself seriously in various national activities, whether we like it or not, the Central Committee will of necessity assume greater responsibilities and, hence, become more powerful. With this new status, it will have to derive its authority from the same source as the President. 28

As well as making the working of the central committee more representative, these changes also increased the party's capacity to exercise leadership. The new committee was smaller in size, which made it a more appropriate forum for the detailed discussion of complex issues. To make the Central Committee more effective, it was decided to divide it into four sub-committees - political affairs, economic affairs, cultural affairs, and defence and security. Each member of the Central Committee is expected to belong to at least one of these sub-committees. All the executive committees of the party from the region to the branch level are to be divided into sub-committees in a similar manner. The idea was to give an opportunity to members to specialize in a particular field so as to acquire a working knowledge that would put them in position to make substantial contributions during deliberations at committee meetings. To facilitate this, the party headquarters was also reorganized into four departments, each of which services its respective sub-committee. In 1974 the sub-committees were increased to seven: namely political, defence and security; national guidance; economic affairs; finance and planning; youth and culture; social welfare and development; and organizations affiliated to TANU and elders. This change was accompanied by a parallel reorganization of the party headquarters so that there are now seven departments as well. Since 1974 there has also been a more concerted effort to equip these departments with qualified people who would constitute a secretariat for each of these sub-committees. The purpose of building such a secretariat, it should be reiterated, was not to set up a sort of 'shadow government' at the party headquarters; it was rather to have qualified staff members for each sub-committee who can collect relevant data, analyse it, synthesize and present it as background briefs for the members of the sub-committees. The main deliberative work as well as the power to make decisions would still remain in the hands of the representative bodies.

186 The changing role of TANU Although the changes have been introduced only recently and there are still gaps in the party's manpower capacity, there are indications that these various reforms are taking hold. For example, in many of the places where the party secretaries were sent the party branches are becoming important as organs that speak for the workers. At the national level, the Central and National Executive Committees are also assuming an increasingly creative role in initiating party policy. Since 1969 these committees have issued rather than merely ratified a number of important guidelines and directives. This was not the pattern before that date since almost all policy initiatives had earlier come exclusively from the president of TANU, Mwalimu Nyerere. An important part of the Arusha Declaration in 1967, as is well known, was the leadership rules, a basic code of behaviour which was applied to all persons in responsible positions in the party and the government. This code sought to rule out any indulgence by those persons in capitalist activities in addition to their government or party positions. It was recognized that such activities not only distracted attention and energies that ought to be single-mindedly devoted to official responsibilities but as well they actually helped to foster and entrench the very forces which the party was committed to uproot. 29 Realizing this danger the party decided to lay down a specific code of behaviour for members, particularly those in leading positions. Moreover, in addition to this leadership code, the Arusha Declaration emphasized the point that 'the time has now come for emphasis to shift from mere size of membership on to the quality of the membership' and that 'Greater consideration must be given to a member's commitment to the beliefs and objectives of the Party, and its policy of socialism.' On the recruitment of members, it is stated that membership should be denied where it is judged unlikely that an applicant really accepts the beliefs, aims, and objectives of the party. These injunctions have not led to strict ideological membership tests that would sharply reduce the representative quality of the party. They have, however, reinforced the efforts of the party to extend political education widely throughout its ranks. What emerges from the preceding discussion is a picture of the structural and organizational arrangements that TANU thinks will help to ensure that it speaks for the peasants and workers. These should help to ensure that those who lead are always close to the people and that there are frequent opportunities for a wide section of the ordinary membership to contribute to policy discussions and to participate in the various

187 Bismarck U. Mwansasu activities of the party. The insistence that leaders should live exemplarily and should eschew all feudal and capitalist activities is also meant to contribute to a close identity of interests between the leaders and those they lead, the peasants and workers. By being so constituted and organized, TANU hopes to become the party that speaks for the people. We are thus led back to the doctrine of supremacy. THE DOCTRINE OF THE SUPREMACY OF THE PARTY The doctrine of the supremacy of the party formulated in recent years is but a summary of the ideas that had been emerging and crystallizing inside the party since 1967. The constitutional amendment of 1975, for instance, defines 'the party' as all the organs that are provided for in the constitution of TANU. This provision reflects TANU's view that the body that is to be supreme is the collectivity of TANU members, as constituted in the structures that are formally provided in the party constitution, ranging from the national organs, such as the national conference and the Central Committee, down to the branch executive committee. This point is important. It reflects the belief, already observed, that no person, including a leader or group of persons, can substitute himself or a group for the peasants and workers. Therefore, if anybody presents a view as an expression of the will of these people, it must be a decision that had been collectively taken by a legally constituted party meeting. A second major point is this. To be true to the doctrine of party supremacy, the party must acquire a greater ability to exercise its leadership functions more effectively. This greater ability requires the constitutional but also the administrative and technical capacities necessary to exercise those functions. This means that the party must be able to acquire information, to interpret it, and to utilize it; thus it must have access to the expertise, experience, skills, and other technical inputs that are available but are not within the ranks of its own staff. This, it should be repeated, is to enable the party to exercise its leadership functions more effectively, not to enable it to carry out the actual tasks of administration and execution. According to 'The TANU Guidelines, 1971,' paragraphs 12-14, these major functions of TANU fall into four main categories: firstly, defining the national goals as well as issuing directives and guidelines of implementation; secondly, politicizing, organizing, and mobilizing the people; thirdly, overseeing and supervising the work of all public institutions charged with the task of implementing the policies laid down; lastly, reviewing the record of performance of these institutions.

188 The changing role ofTANU It is evident that the achievement of these objectives will largely depend not only on an adequate access to expertise but also on the willingness of the peasants and workers to utilize the institutions of TANU to exercise their political will. This in turn will be influenced by what will happen in regard to a number of simple questions: will the various organs meet as required and will their members attend; will party members take their problems for discussion to these organs and will they have the moral courage to speak their minds on the issues which come to them for decision? It is only by developing these features that the supremacy of the party can come to mean the supremacy of the people as organized through the institutions of the party. From the meaning which TANU is seeking to give the doctrine ot tne supremacy of the party it is evident that the aim is to establish the presence of the party at all levels within society. Moreover, the party's leadership functions are to be exercised collectively. Collective leadership is emphasized not merely because it is one of the main principles of socialist organization but also because it is one of the main mechanisms for ensuring popular participation in planning operations and management of public affairs. Leadership is not to be exercised from the outside by some external body which periodically descends on the implementation agencies but from within and on a day-to-day basis. Secondly, it is not to be exercised by a party machine that is technically competent and efficient or by 'a hard core of committed socialist cadres' or 'a vanguard within a mass party.' It is rather to be exercised by the peasants and workers themselves, assembled together in their formally constituted party organs. It is only by organizing itself in this manner that TANU believes it will retain its character as a party that speaks for the peasants and workers. These are high ideals. Their realization will constantly be threatened by lethargy, by oligarchic tendencies within the leadership, by ideological elitism, and by the influence that is accumulated by those with relevant managerial and technical expertise. Nevertheless it is clear, from the recent reforms within TANU, that Tanzania is striving still to minimize and contain these risks and to increase the opportunities for effective citizen participation within TANU. To have established this, which I hope this paper has done, is to establish a lot. POSTSCRIPT

Since completing this chapter, various changes of some relevance to the interests of this discussion have taken place. Most important has been

189 Bismarck U. Mwansasu the merger of two hitherto independent and separate political parties, the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) of Zanzibar and TANU, to form a new party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (The Party of Revolution). This means, therefore, that after 5 February 1977, the day ccM was formed, TANU ceased to exist. Hence, CCM and not TANU should be the organization that must be the focus of any discussion on the doctrine of the supremacy of the party in contemporary Tanzanian politics. What is the significance of this change? Does it mark a departure from the ideas and principles that were characterized as constituting the basis of the country's emerging socialist system? The first comment is fairly obvious. CcM is a new organization and is therefore structurally different from both TANU and ASP . In other words, ccM should not be conceived as a mere continuation of either TANU or ASP because as a merger of these parties it incorporates the experiences, norms, traditions, and values of both parties; it can be neither identified with nor equated with those of any one of the former parties. Although it is based on the former parties, ccM intends to carry over only what was the best and most progressive in them. CcM also aspires to be a more effective and purposeful instrument which will work more deliberately towards pushing the socialist revolution to a higher stage. The merger has thus provided an occasion for a fresh recommitment to socialism and the opportunity for a reappraisal of practices and structures that were well established in the older parties. The second comment of a general nature relates to ccM's brief history. The main activity of the party after its formation was to constitute the various organs as stipulated in the constitution. This means that most of what can be said about CCM is more about aspirations, ideas, impressions, and tendencies than about actual performance. Because our knowledge is based on prescriptions of what cCM says it is and intends to be and do, all comments on the meaning and significance of the formation of CCM at this stage cannot but be very tentative. From its declared intentions, ccM aspires to become a powerful political force that is ideologically and organizationally strong. This is considered necessary so that the party may be able to exercise effectively its role as the supreme organ in the polity. An important aspect of this aspiration is the conception of what would constitute the basis of such strength. CcM believes that the only source that can give the party the required power and strength are its members. This belief is based on the generally accepted assumption that it is members that ultimately give an organization meaning, life, and vitality and who, therefore, make or unmake an organization. This is an important aspect because one of the

190 The changing role of T ANU issues that was dominant in discussions on TANU was that of membership. It is, therefore, interesting to note ccM's stand on this issue. CcM believes that the party can only acquire the power and strength to which it aspires if it retains the character of an open party like TANU. To be sure, this does not mean, therefore, that its membership policy is identical with that of the former party. There are in fact important differences. For example, the provisions on criteria for members are different. The conditions that were only applied to leaders under TANU are now required of every CCM member. There are additional qualities required of those who aspire for leadership. For example, every ccM member is expected to discharge a number of specified duties and responsibilities that are made explicit in the constitution. However, these differences between the criteria for membership in TANU and in the new party are not fundamental. They do not have the overall effect of giving ccM the character of an exclusive and closely restricted party. The requirements are of such a nature that they do not constitute a serious obstacle for any willing working Tanzanian to join the party. Equally important, ccM's membership policy does not require one to demonstrate one's loyalty, dedication, and commitment to the party or one's ideological purity by passing tests and checks that are specifically administered. All that is required is acquaintance, familiarity, and understanding of the basic principles and objectives the party stands for. However, the character of an open party alone is not considered an adequate basis for its strength and power. The party must also be democratic because CCM believes that it is only when members actively participate in making decisions as well as in the general affairs and running of the organization that they will be identified with it and committed to its survival. CcM's commitment to the democratic principle is manifested in its insistence on elections as the only mechanism for recruitment into leadership positions as well as in the various constitutional provisions which give various opportunities to members to participate in the general running of the party. This commitment is likely to give ccM the same democratic character as TANU. These brief comments do not provide a basis for any general statements on the meaning and significance of the formation of ccM. As has already been pointed out, it is too soon to make such statements. The best that can be done is to offer tentative statements about tendencies. If the tendencies discerned in the brief comments above are indicative of the direction CCM is moving, they suggest the fact that there will be no marked departure from what are characterized in the main body of this

191 Bismarck U. Mwansasu chapter as the fundamental elements of the country's emerging socialist system.

NOTES

1 On the basis of their study of the proceedings of the National Assembly for the June-July and October 1968 sessions, H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen and J.J. Sterkenburg wrote an article with the suggestive title 'The Party Supreme'; their conclusion was that 'The Party has always been supreme.' In L. Cliffe and J. Saul, eds., Socialism in Tanzania, ,, Politics (Dar es Salaam 1972), p. 262 2 Henry Bienen, Tanzania: Party Transformation and Economic Development (Princeton, enlarged version, 1970), pp. xix-xx, 4-5, 446; L. Cliffe's review of this book entitled 'Socialist Transformation and Party Development,' as well as a number of contributions, in Cliffe and Saul, ibid.,, (1972), p. 270; J. Saul, 'African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania,' in G. Arrighi and Saul, eds., Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York 1973) p. 303; N. Kisenge, 'The Party in Tanzania,' Maji-Maji, no 4, Sept. 1971 3 Resolution quoted in the Nationalist, Dar es Salaam, 22 Oct. 1970; article by Magome, 'TANU: Its Continued Militancy,' ibid ., 31 Dec. 1971 4 That the party Bienen recommends would have this character is brought out quite clearly in his reply to Ali Mazrui's letter where he says: 'The question that Tanganyika faces is, can a single party be a vehicle for nation-building without turning into a Leninist party (I use "Leninist" to describe a militarily disciplined, centralised Party with a powerful and authoritative Party ... centre).' See Mazrui's letter to the editor, 'The Party and the Non Party State: Tanganyika and the Soviet Union,' Transition, no 14, p. 5, and Bienen's reply, pp. 5-6. 5 Kisenge, 'The Party in Tanzania,' pp. 16, 11; Saul,' African Socialism,' p. 305 6 Nyerere, TANU na Raia (Dar es Salaam 1962), p. 2 (my own translation from Kiswahili) 7 See, for example, R.M. Kawawa, 'Chama Kushika Hatamu' (The Supremacy of the Party), speech introducing a Bill to Amend the Interim Constitution of Tanzania, 1965; and Pius Msekwa, 'Chama Kushika Hatamu za Uongozi' (The Supremacy of the Party), paper presented at a Seminar of Heads of Parastatals in Dar es Salaam, 1-6 March 1976. 8 According to Bienen's observations in his Tanzania, TANU did not make policy. 9 See, for example, Question no 500 which asked the government to state which was more important of the two, the party or the government. Hansard, Dar es Salaam, 18 July 1967.

192 The changing role of TANU 10 Majadiliano ya Mkutano Mkuu, Taarifa Rasmi: Sept. 1971, p. 129. For a more comprehensive discussion of the prevailing ideas at that time on the supremacy of government and Parliament, see R.C. Pratt, 'The Cabinet and Presidential Leadership,' in Cliffe and Saul, Socialism in Tanzania, 1, pp. 226-40 11 Cited in R.C. Pratt, The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945-68: Nyerere and the Emergence of a Socialist Strategy (Cambridge 1976), pp. 97-8 12 Nyerere, Freedom and Unity (London and Dar es Salaam 1966), p. 158 13 Cited in Bienen, Tanzania, p. xxi 14 Majadiliano ya Mkutano Mkuu, Sept. 1971 (my translation) 15 Nyerere, Freedom and Development (Dar es Salaam 1973), pp. 276-7 16 Nyerere, 'Maana ya TANU Kushika Hatamu' (The Meaning of the Supremacy of TANU) Uhuru, 7 July 1975 (my translation) 17 Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 202. It is worth pointing out that in the exchange between Mazrui and Bienen already referred to, Mazrui observed that Nyerere's argument for a one-party state was in essence an argument for a no-party state. This point is worth noting because after a decade Mwalimu Nyerere himself had come to a similar viewpoint. 18 Nyerere, Freedom and Development, p. 281 19 Majadiliano ya Mkutano Mkuu, Tarrifa Rasmi, June 1969, p. 708 (my translation) 20 Nyerere, 'Maana ya TANU Kushika Hatamu' 21 Majadiliano ya Mkutano Mkuu, June 1969, p. 709 22 Ibid ., p. 708 23 Nyerere, Freedom and Development, p. 33 24 Majadiliano ya Mkutano Mkuu, Sept, 1971, pp. 106, 198 25 'Education for Self-Reliance' (1967), 'Socialism and Rural Development' (1967), 'The TANU Guidelines, 1971', 'Politics Is Agriculture' (1972), 'The Directive for the National Executive Committee on the Establishment of Small-Scale Industries' (1973), 'The Call for Irrigation' (1974), 'Directive for the Implementation of Education for Self-Reliance' (1974), 'Everybody Must Work' (1976) 26 Resolutions 14 and 15 of the fifteenth National Conference make specific mention of the fact that party conferences are forums through which the ideas of ordinary members at lower levels in the hierarchy are communicated upwards and, therefore, that appropriate steps should be taken to ensure that the speeches delegates make should express these ideas. 27 I owe this information to Pius Msekwa. 28 Majadiliano ya Mkutano Mkuu, June 1969, p. 100 29 For a further discussion on this point, see Pratt, The Critical Phase, pp. 231-7.

CRANFORD PRATT

Tanzania's transition to socialism: reflections of a democratic socialist

It was suggested in the first chapter of this volume that the Tanganyika

African National Union is pursuing a strategy for a socialist transformation of Tanzania that has as its major features an emphasis on the achievement of greater equality, the enhancement of citizen participation, and the creation of an environment that will encourage the development of socialist values. Through policies aimed at the achievement of these objectives, TANU hopes to move the whole society harmoniously towards socialism. It was argued as well that this strategy has also been a development strategy whose objective is to produce concrete improvements in the living standards of Tanzanians. The Tanzanian leadership refuses to see these two objectives, an egalitarian and participatory society and economic development, as being in conflict. 1 In pursuit of these objectives there have been periods in which the primary emphasis shifts towards the achievement of greater equality and other periods in which the government is preoccupied with development. Yet neither objective as yet has been permanently neglected in favour of the other, nor have other objectives for long intruded to the exclusion of these basic aims. President Nyerere recently said that the transition to socialism in Tanzania will be a lengthy affair and that it will take much longer than the thirty years he predicted in 1967.2 The transition only began in that year. Any assessment of the strategy must therefore be provisional. Nevertheless the objective is of such fundamental importance and of such widespread interest that interim assessments are as desirable as they are inevitable. Tanzania is seeking to devise and to pursue a development path that will not involve the entrenchment of severe income differentials, the generation of a narrowly selfish acquisitiveness, and the emergence of a powerful and dominant ruling bourgeoisie either as a property-owning

194 Reflections of a democratic socialist class or as the members of the leading strata within the bureaucracy and the party. What can one learn from Tanzania about the possibility of a democratic transition to socialism in a country that is sparsely endowed by nature, economically poor, and has recently emerged into full statehood? In the late 1960s Tanzania attracted to its university and, to a lesser extent, to its civil service a number of able Marxist and neo-Marxist scholars from Europe and North America. As a result, for the period from about 1969 to 1975 Tanzania was one of the very few non-Communist countries on which the major portion of the scholarly work was written from an extreme left perspective. There is of course no unanimity of viewpoint amongst these critics on the left; they themselves are divided in ways that are important. Nevertheless they do have a great deal in common as a group, which distinguishes them from a second group of socialist commentators whose sympathies and ideological orientations bring them closer to Nyerere and to the Tanzanian position. Appropriate labels for each of these two groups are not easily invented. 'Marxist' and 'non-Marxist' socialists is one possibility. However, the second group would include some who regard themselves as Marxists, as well as many who, though not Marxists, would prefer to have their position defined in positive terms. Ralph Miliband's designations, 'insurrectionary socialists' and 'constitutional socialists,' are illuminating but as these terms are not in active use in Tanzania it seems a little forced to try to introduce them. 'Vanguard socialist' and 'democratic socialist' I would tend to favour, as each designation refers to a concept of importance to that school. However, some 'vanguard socialists' would be likely to regard their use as polemically hostile to them. On balance the terms that seem the most neutral are 'Marxist socialist' and 'democratic socialist,' as these identify each group by the use of a designation that the writers in that group themselves are likely to accept. 3 THE MARXIST CRITIQUE OF TANZANIAN SOCIALISM

The Marxist socialists, in recent years, have become increasingly open in their hostility to Nyerere and to the socialist policies of the TANU government. Colin Leys, for example, writing with obvious sympathy for the view that he is quoting, says that 'in a recent sketch Aidan Foster-Carter recently went so far as to argue, with uncomfortable plausibility, that the portrayal of Tanzania as a country making the "transition to socialism"

195 Cranford Pratt is and always has been a myth and that the reality is one of the last of an old line of populist regimes stretching from Sukarno through to Nkrumah and one whose days are also numbered.' Issa Shivji's second essay is equally severe; John Saul has recently also moved closer to a fully critical position; and the Review of African Political Economy, which is much influenced by a group of radicals who have worked in Tanzania, frequently features articles that are strongly critical of Tanzanian policies. 4 One can fairly conclude that there has emerged a new conventional wisdom of the ultra-left that is scornful of and impatient towards the socialist policies of the Tanzanian leadership. In some ways it is the earlier cautious tone often adopted by the Marxist socialists towards Nyerere and towards Tanzanian socialism that requires explanation rather than their later open criticism. Nyerere in 1967 was certainly no Marxist. However, the Arusha Declaration and the nationalizations that followed it aroused high expectations amongst the few Marxists in Tanzania that their perceptions would soon be more widely held and their ideas more influential. They recognized how central Nyerere was to all that was happening. It made no sense for them to alienate themselves from a leader of such widespread popularity especially when he was capable of quite radical initiatives. These Marxist socialists were therefore at first very circumspect in their criticisms of Nyerere's policies and of his socialist ideas. It was only after it had become clear that Nyerere was not, himself, in transition to a Marxist position and that the Tanzanian strategy for socialism was ignoring several central Marxist perceptions, that they became less tentative in their criticisms. A few Marxist socialists now argue that Tanzania ought never to have been regarded as in transition to socialism. In part their central argument is a semantic one. They define socialism in terms of the coming to power of the proletariat. A transition to socialism must therefore involve proletarian dominance within a governing coalition. Shivji, for example, has written: The supremacy of the party manifested through the ultimate control of the committed vanguard is therefore a prerequisite for destroying the old social order and building of socialism ... The state power must be in the hands of the workers and peasants led by the present revolutionary leadership and not the bureaucracy. A class - in this case the workers and peasants - cannot build a society in its interest without wielding political power. Building socialism is the workers' and not the bureaucrats' business. 5

196 Reflections of a democratic socialist Shivji is himself ambivalent, indeed contradictory, in what he feels is required for a transition to socialism. Sometimes this transition appears to require rule by an actual proletariat. At other points in his writing the crucial factor for Shivji is whether or not it is the proletarian ideology which is in dominance. This second formula, of course, is much more voluntaristic. It allows that a regime may be in transition to socialism if led by members of a radicalized petite bourgeoisie, even though its leadership may include few, if any, peasants or workers. However, the more doctrinaire Marxist socialists are in no doubt that Tanzania has not now, nor ever has had, such a regime. In their view, Nyerere and his colleagues represent the interests of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, sometimes defined widely enough to include senior politicans and army officers. The Arusha Declaration and the nationalizations, far from being socialist initiatives, were deliberate deceits. They were presented as socialist initiatives but their purpose was in fact to bring important sectors of the economy under the direct control of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie for the direct advantage of the members of that bourgeoisie and of international capitalism. This argument is an extravagant example of the risks of an analysis that moves from an ideological position to assertions about historical events. The actual origins of the Arusha Declaration and of the nationalizations have been closely discussed in a number of recent studies.6 In none is there any evidence of influences of the sort suggested by Shivji. Interestingly, amongst those few socialists who reject the idea that Tanzania has ever been in transition to socialism are a few who, unlike Shivji, are nevertheless positive in their overall assessment of the historical role of the regime. These few have tended to write primarily in MajiMaji, the rather curious mimeographed publication of the university branch of the TANU Youth League in Dar es Salaam. They have shown less intellectual independence than Shivji or Leys. They write within the established traditions of either Soviet- or Chinese-oriented communism. They are searching for a way to label Tanzania that would withhold from it the title 'socialist' but nevertheless justify close relations by socialists and by socialist powers with Tanzania. Thus there are one or two who write of Tanzania following a non-capitalist road of development while a few others instead speak of Tanzania as an anti-imperialist country that is at a pre-revolutionary, pre-transition to socialism phase in its development.7 These differentiations are of little interest to any save those intrigued by the intricacies of doctrinal debate. Far more important are the Marxist

197 Cranford Pratt and neo-Marxist commentators who have taken a more positive view of what might be accomplished in Tanzania by a TANU government. 8 These commentators did not automatically dismiss those in power in Tanzania as a bureaucratic bourgeoisie that had sold out to international capitalism. Neither did they assume that socialism could not be directly pursued by Nyerere and his colleagues. They recognized that there have been genuine socialist initiatives since 1967 and they have talked of there being in process a struggle between a major part of the bureaucracy, which is eager to establish a dependent capitalist state, and the radicalized petite bourgeoisie, whose members are seeking to accomplish a genuine socialist transformation of Tanzania. For socialists of this particular school, Tanzania has been a rather special case. By accident of history a leader had come to power who claims to be socialist even though there did not yet exist any mass revolutionary consciousness. Writers such as Lionel Cliffe and John Saul spent a good deal of time in the period 1967-72 considering what policies to urge upon the Nyerere government in this unexpected circumstance. In these first years after 1967, when they had hoped still to be able significantly to influence government policy, they developed a well-integrated set of policy recommendations. They urged the leadership to curb the civil service and to develop an ideologically committed vanguard, which could help to keep the bureaucracy's persistent bourgeois tendencies in check. They stressed the need to increase mass hostility to imperialism and to exploit the emerging class differentials within both the towns and the rural areas in order to raise the level of political consciousness and thereby to consolidate mass support behind the socialist initiatives. Their writings were marked by a high optimism that a mass revolutionary energy can be generated which, once released, will not only assure mass support for a genuinely socialist leadership but will also accomplish a major transformation in the productive potential of the countryside.9 Given their central faith in scientific socialism and their acceptance that this socialism represented the true interests of workers and peasants, they were able to assume that the policies they recommended would, over time, generate an aroused mass consciousness and a coming together of the views of a radicalized leadership and a politicized rural and urban mass. 10 As Saul and those of a similar view grew more sceptical of the likelihood that they would be able significantly to move the Tanzanian leadership closer to their position, they tended to move closer to Shivji's fully hostile position. Nevertheless their position is less doctrinaire than

198 Reflections of a democratic socialist his and relies much more upon a detailed assessment of the actual pattern of events in Tanzania. There is much to be gained by a continuing dialogue between Marxist socialists of this particular persuasion and democratic socialists. Each admit the possibility that the regime may lose its socialist thrus~; neither claim that this is inevitable. The disagreement between them may acquire a large part of its intensity because of ideological overtones, but it is also a debate about the significance of actual events. It is an argument about what constitutes the dominant tendencies in Tanzanian politics; and is therefore a debate in which there may be more common ground and a greater capacity for mutual enlightenment than might at first be suspected. Ultra-left commentators have tended to the view that Tanzania is failing to move towards socialism. Two rather different sets of arguments to this end can be identified within their writings. The first relates to the failure of Nyerere and of the Tanzanian leadership to transform TANU into a vanguard party - a failure that many regard as of central importance. The second set of arguments offers a series of specific criticisms of actual Tanzanian policies which these commentators feel confirms and establishes the validity of their view that the bureaucracy is increasingly entrenching itself as a new ruling class and is shaping government policies in its own interest and in the interest of international capitalism. Marxist socialists share the conviction that TANU and Nyerere made a major mistake in relying as much as they have done upon the structures and institutions of the Tanzanian government and of TANU and upon the persons already in prominent positions within these structures. This, as we have already seen, was Shivji's view, with his call for a party of politically committed and ideologically trained cadres. These cadres, in the view of another Tanzanian, Nyelwa Kisenge, were to be: ... the party activists, propagandists, agitators, motivators, persuaders, ideologists, interpreters and defenders of party ideology and policies in all walks of life. Red socialist cadres identify their interest with the cause they believe to be just. They have a sense of mission deeply rooted in their profound political convictions and unbending commitment to socialism. The triumph or failure of socialism is their triumph or failure. In short, cadres are a multi-purpose revolutionary party vanguard, an inexhaustible source of party renovation, rejuvenation and dynamism. 11

John Saul, perhaps the most influential and subtlfst of the Marxian scholars working on Tanzania, also hoped for an ideologically tighter

199 Cranford Pratt party. He sought signs of movement within TANU which might suggest that it was being reconstituted as a vanguard party, and he was ready to contemplate as one possibility, a time when it would be appropriate for a more committed socialist leadership within the party, because of its ideological purity, to use its authority more fully and more directly in pursuit of socialism. 12 In Chapter 1 it was suggested that four influences had contributed to TANu's rejection of the idea of a vanguard party. These were: TANu's own history as an open mass party and its image of itself as a movement representative of the whole nation; Nyerere's deep antipathy to ideological elitism; the political weakness of the few who supported vanguardism; and, finally, Nyerere and TANU's commitment to the principle that leadership ought to be electorally responsible to ordinary citizens. These factors have continued to block any serious move within TANU to convert it into a full vanguard party. However, two questions need to be asked as part of a fuller review of this issue. Each of these questions implies that the contrast between the vanguard party and the democratic party may not in fact be as central a distinction as is being suggested here. First, could there not be a version of the vanguard party under which the cadres remain highly responsive to the needs and wishes of ordinary people; and, second, could not the exercise of strong leadership within the structure of a democratic single-party system bring the actual practice of such a system close to that of a vanguard party? It is to each of these questions that we now turn. There is a version of vanguardism that claims to be democratic and to avoid the authoritarian implications we have suggested are unavoidable within it. This is the vanguardism of the ' mass-line,' a vanguardism in which the party is seen as an ideological elite whose members live amongst the people, learning from them and never oppressing them. The role of such a vanguard is to take the needs and demands of the people, often incoherently felt and insufficiently integrated, and to formulate these needs into specific programmes that will advance the society towards socialism and will also be recognized by the people as embodying their demands and, therefore, meriting their support. There is thus expected to be a dialectical relationship between the vanguard and the people, each learning from the other, with the vanguard never asserting its authority beyond the limits set by the level of political consciousness reached by the masses and the masses never articulating demands that the. vanguard is unable to integrate into a programme of action that will advance the society towards socialism and will be accepted by the masses

200 Reflections of a democratic socialist as still being their own. A further refinement to this argument suggests that the vanguard's role would only come into play after a genuine mass revolutionary action had overthrown the bourgeois state. Before that time, the radical intellectuals, and any movements in which they had a dominant influence, would seek to promote the emergence of a revolutionary consciousness amongst the masses. Only after the overthrow of the preceding ruling class would there be a need for an ideological vanguard to articulate and to give cohesion to the ' mass-line.' Certainly there are important elements in this particular approach to the vanguard party that would limit an early and easy retreat to authoritarian short cuts. However, even in this, its most participatory form, there remain components within vanguardism that are foreign to the socialist and democratic ideas of TANU and Nyerere. Even within this approach the elite remains self-appointed, the legitimacy of its claim to its position resting upon its alleged grasp of the proletarian ideology rather than on its being an elected and representative leadership. This conflicts with the deep commitment in TANU to an open party and to recurrent elections. 13 The contradiction cannot be fully resolved between a belief in scientific socialism on the one hand and, on the other, a commitment to pursue socialist policies under a leadership that remains democratically responsible to the people. The appearance of contradiction can be removed by assuming that any conflict between scientific socialism and majority opinion is a result of a false consciousness within the masses and that the true consciousness of workers and peasants does in fact coincide with the dictates of scientific socialism. On this assumption the advance of socialist ideas can be seen as an advance along a linear path, the vanguard cadres being farther ahead in their understanding but limiting themselves in their use of their power to those initiatives that can be grasped and appreciated by workers and peasants in the present state of their consciousness. But this is special pleading, not analysis. It does not remove the contradiction. It leaves the ideological elite with the responsibility of identifying which of the opinions of the masses are to be encouraged, as they reflect their true consciousness, and which are to be discouraged, as they constitute a false consciousness. Moreover, even in this mode of presentatioi:i the authoritarian undertone to the idea of a vanguard party is apparent. The people are to participate to the extent that this participation coincides with the perception of the ruling elite. When it does not, policies are not to be forced upon the people; but neither is it likely that the judgement of the masses will

201 Cranford Pratt positively influence policy. It is, I suppose, theoretically possible to hope for a dialectical relationship between the masses and the party in which the party adjusts its ideology whenever it encounters solid working-class resistance to specific policies. However, it is hard to imagine that, in such a situation, a cadre, which believes that it has a scientific basis for its policies and makes easy use of the idea of false consciousness, will in fact be likely to conclude that it, the cadre, is wrong and that the less well trained masses are right. Instead, education and exhortation by the cadre will be likely to continue on the assumption, comforting to the believers but surely overbearing and oppressive to ordinary persons, that the masses will eventually come to see the validity and the force of the position being insisted upon by the vanguard. Only by removing the faith in the omniscience of scientific socialism as an unfailing guide to the true interests of the working class is it likely that authoritarian responses can be avoided to the question, 'what is to be done if the party and the people disagree?' It was noted earlier that the Marxist socialists offer two further types of criticisms of Tanzania's transition to socialism in addition to the criticisms that focus upon the rejection of the idea of a vanguard party. One of the additional criticisms is philosophical. To the extent that they have a developed philosophy, they are historical materialists. There are thus profound differences between their theoretical approach and the idealism, populism, and democratic socialism that come together in Nyerere's thought. However, in developing this, the most fundamental of their differences with Nyerere and his colleagues, the Marxist socialists tend to rely upon detailed empirical examples which they feel demonstrate the validity and usefulness of their basis perspective. They have developed a series of detailed arguments which, they feel, justifies the conclusion that the Tanzanian bureaucracy has become a new ruling class not pursuing socialism but integrating the Tanzanian economy more closely into the world capitalist system. The analyses of social and political phenomena by Marxist commentators focus in particular on the presence still of neo-colonial influences in Tanzania, the emergence of an indigenous class system, and the class struggle which, they argue, is already well developed. They have been particularly sensitive to any tendency of the senior officials of government and party to become an entrenched ruling class. They have concentrated also upon the study of emerging class differentiation in rural areas, seeing in such a development the emergence of a fundamental contradiction which will frustrate any effort by TANU to achieve socialist patterns o( agricultural development.

202 Reflections of a democratic socialist Their writings offer a variety of evidence that together, they feel, constitute a justification for their increasing pessimism. These six arguments feature most prominently in their catalogue of TANu's errors: 1 After the nationalizations in February 1967 the government in many cases signed management agreements with the international companies whose Tanzanian operations it had just taken over. These agreements were often highly advantageous to these corporations. Moreover, while the Tanzanian bureaucracy did secure overall control over their operations, these new public corporations have had pricing and investment policies and have followed management and administrative procedures which are indistinguishable from those of capitalist enterprises. 14 2 Some leaders found ways to evade the restrictions imposed upon them by the leadership code in 1967. This involved more than surreptitious evasions for, in 1967, the government agreed that leaders could transfer to legal trusts the ownership of any additional houses or other forms of capital which the leadership code forbade them directly to own themselves. The income earned by these trusts could not be used to the direct advantage of the original owners but the terms of the trust could specify that the income was to be used for the specific benefit and advantage of their children. Moreover the various fringe benefits received by those in senior positions continued to constitute important additions to their income. 3 The government failed in the second five-year plan to develop either an industrial strategy or an effective overall planning process such as to make possible the promotion of a more autonomous and a more genuinely socialist national economy. In recent years the Tanzanian economy has become more dependent than ever upon international capitalism and upon assistance from the major western states. 4 In 1972 and 1973 the government first welcomed but then suppressed the efforts of workers in a number of factories in Dar es Salaam to lock out their managers, and to run their factories as workers' collectives. In the view of many Marxist socialists the government thus missed a crucial opportunity to ally itself directly and intimately with a genuine expression of proletarian radicalism.15 5 The most important socialist initiative since 1967, the promotion of socialist agriculture in the ujamaa villages, nas very largely failed for reasons which these critics link directly with a reliance upon bureaucratic techniques when the villages were established, and upon a failure to build these villages around the class interest of the poorer peasants.

203 Cranford Pratt The use of coercion on a fairly widespread scale to bring peasants into villages is seen as the climactic indication of the collapse and/or corruption of the ideals of the original drive for ujamaa farming. 16 6 It is argued that few, if any, effective changes of a socialist kind were made to educational institutions or to the health services. Instead the social services continued to reflect the elitist values which were an integral part of them as they had been inherited from the colonial regime.17 On the basis of criticisms of this order, Marxist socialists have come to the conclusion that Tanzania can no longer be judged to be in transition to socialism. More and more, instead, they see Nyerere and his colleagues as members of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie whose ideas on socialism mystify and facilitate the increasing dominance that they as a class have established in Tanzania. As an introduction to an alternative perspective, four criticisms can be offered of this ultra-left chronicle of Tanzanian errors. Firstly, many of their criticisms relate to particular failures that, over time, have been corrected. Thus, for example, the criticisms that the leadership rules were being ignored, and that elitist features of the medical and educational services were being perpetuated, were each sound in the period 1968-70 but have since been rendered much less relevant by fresh and important new initiatives in these areas. Secondly, some of the ultra-left criticisms are, in a sense, being overworked; they are being asked to carry a too substantial part of the overall ultra-left critique of Tanzanian socialism. For example, the failure of the government to support the workers' takeover the factories in Dar es Salaam in 1972 is sometimes cast in extravagant, even romantic, left-wing terms. It is certainly true that the Tanzanian government finally intervened in that situation in a harsh and authoritarian manner and that it has not yet been very successful in its efforts to introduce workers' participation in the management of factories and businesses in Tanzania. However, there can be few socialist initiatives that are more difficult to accomplish successfully than the introduction of meaningful workers' control. Failure in this area, especially in the early years of the transition to socialism, can hardly be taken by itself as evidence of an overall collapse of the socialist commitment of the regime. Thirdly, ultra-left commentators persist in viewing specific failings and faults in Tanzanian policy in terms of their central preoccupation, which is to establish that the Tanzanian regime is now dominated by a bureaucratic bourgeoisie that is shaping government policy in its own

204 Reflections of a democratic socialist interests. Thus failures in the parastatal sector and in the promotion of ujamaa villages tend to be explained not in terms of possible errors in the policies being pursued or in terms of the inability of an already overstretched governmental and party bureaucracy successfully to promote these policies; rather they are seen as evidence of a failure of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie to commit itself fully to the socialist policies of the government. This is a point of central importance. When faced with specific failures, the ultra-left critics tend to see the problem in political terms requiring tougher controls over the bureaucracy and a more persistent and more sustained socialist thrust to government policy. Democratic socialist observers, in contrast, have been more ready to consider alternative explanations for specific failures. They are more likely to be ready to consider whether the policies in difficulty had been wrongly conceived or whether the policy initiatives should have been delayed in order not to overburden further the hard-pressed government and party structures. Such alternative explanations, because they suggest caution and moderation rather than an intensified and more highly politicized implementation of policies that are in trouble, often lead democratic socialists to quite different policy prescriptions once a major policy runs into serious problems. This whole process is well illustrated by the contrast that exists between the attitude of Marxist socialists and democratic socialists towards the whole ujamaa village policy. For at least six years, from 1967 to 1973 the promotion of ujamaa villages was a central preoccupation of Nyerere. By 1969 he had succeeded in making it as well a major feature of the government's rural development policies and a major responsibility of TANU. In its initial conception, as is well known, the policy stressed that peasants should be led by explanation and socialist teaching to come together voluntarily into villages and gradually to undertake socialist farming on an expanding scale. However, the final outcome of this policy, in the years 1974-76, was the major effort, which included a significant use of coercion, to bring all peasants into villages throughout most of the districts of Tanzania. Simultaneously with this policy, the emphasis on socialist farming was dropped so that very few of the thousands of new villages engage in any communal farming. Marxist commentators in the early years of this policy strongly supported it. They urged that it be promoted throughout the whole country; they suggested that the villages should in particular be a focal point around which to organize poorer peasants against less poor peasants; they argued that coercion would be required against the wealthier peas-

205 Cranford Pratt ants if the policy was to succeed; and they stressed the need for an ideologically committed cadre to effect a successful implementation of the policies. In recent years, in contrast, Marxist socialists have provided some of the most severe and most telling of the criticisms of the whole policy in practice. They tend to see the abandonment of communal farming and the forced-pace villagization as two aspects of a more determined effort by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie to control the countryside more closely in order to extract from the peasants a greater surplus. The implication is that the central faults have been political and that, in consequence, it is not so much that socialist farming has failed as it is that socialist farming has never been properly attempted. The doctrine itself thus stays unchallenged. Democratic socialists readily acknowledge the extensive evidence now existing of how often communal farming failed, was diverted from its objectives, was introduced only because of heavy-handed party or government pressure, and was sustained only by a continuous input of government resources. However, they tend not to see these many mistakes primarily as evidence of a good policy gone bad because of the influence of ideologically inadequate officials and conniving wealthier peasants. Rather they tend to see these many mistakes as evidence that the policy itself had severe weaknesses. Democratic socialists within the government, such as those particularly involved in 1968 with the preparation of the second five-year plan, men like Amir Jamal, Cleope Msuya, Dickson Nkembo, and Brian van Arkadie, gave little prominence to the promotion of ujamaa villages until the president insisted that they must. At that time as well, academic commentators outside of government such as Gerald Helleiner and Erik Svendsen warned of the risks of an attempt to achieve a rapid introduction of socialist villages. Democratic socialist commentators on the ujamaa villages have been sceptical that ideological instruction by however committed a cadre would be likely to win peasant acceptance for socialist farming. They have tended to emphasize the peasant farmer's strong preference to be in charge himself of the farming on which his livelihood and that of his family depends. They have stressed that opposition would be avoided only if it is transparently clear to the peasants involved that they would themselves benefit from the communal farming being pressed upon them. They suspected that this might often not be easy to demonstrate, partly because of their view that small-scale individual peasant farming is likely to be more efficient and partly because of their recognition that a wholesale rapid promotion of socialist farming leading to its voluntary

206 Reflections of a democratic socialist practice on a widespread basis was beyond the capabilities of the government and the party. The decision by 1974 to move slowly on this policy, and to accept that small-scale peasant farming is compatible with a socialist society, is therefore seen by them not as a retreat marking a decline in socialist commitment but rather as an essential act of socialist realism. Democratic socialist commentators, however, have been somewhat ambivalent in their reaction to the forced villagization. Because they are ideologically sympathetic to Tanzanian socialism they have tended initially somewhat to suspend their judgement on this issue. Nevertheless, their analyses of Tanzanian politics have always given prominence to an oligarchic tendency within the leadership of which this policy provides but further evidence. Moreover, as everything in the democratic socialist tradition is against this sort of coercion it is not surprising that social democrats were amongst the first to express their dismay over it. (Parenthetically, may I offer as evidence my own reference to it in my The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945-68, published in 1976, where I briefly went beyond the period covered by the book to comment on the forced villagization: 'The coercion which Nyerere appears to accept here is an expression of an impatient nationalism not a coercive socialism. This does not make the use of coercion any less risky or any more attractive. The efforts of impatient nationalists to effect rapid social transformation in the rural areas, particularly if some of them still exhibit a general inclination to authoritarian rule, may prove as difficult as the efforts of an impatient colonialism in the 1950's to coerce the peasants into agricultural practices which it judged in their interests.') At the least, it seems reasonable to conclude that the failure of the ujamaa village policy must be attributed to a wider range of causes than those suggested by many Marxist analyses and cannot be presented primarily as having been determined by the growing power of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. A final point can be made with reference to the Marxist critique of Tanzanian policies. There is a tendency in some analyses to move from an identification of alleged or actual consequences of a policy to the suggestion that these were the consequences intended by the policy-makers. This can easily generate severe pessimism about the prospects for socialism in Tanzania for if the consequences in question are anti-socialist in their implications, and if these are assumed to have been the intended consequences, then it is easily concluded that the socialist commitment of the regime is fast disappearing.

207 Cranford Pratt The importance of this last point is easily illustrated. Some socialist commentators have argued that the major forced-pace movement of peasants into villages has brought the peasants under much closer bureaucratic control than when they lived on their dispersed and scattered holdings. By then assuming that this was the purpose of the villagization policy it can be presented as a deliberate technique for the greater exploitation of the peasants. This is, in my judgement, neither illuminating nor accurate. For one thing, once peasants are gathered into villages they are much more likely to articulate demands upon the government, a fact that is already being demonstrated in Tanzania. It is also the case that there is no evidence that the purpose of villagization was, in fact, as these Marxists allege. There is no reason to disbelieve that the reasons for the policy were those claimed by TANU and Nyerere, namely the conviction that it would only be when peasants were living in villages rather than on isolated and scattered holdings that they could be reached with agricultural, education, and welfare services. Villagization was thus seen as a prerequisite to a whole range of desirable, indeed essential, social, economic, and political developments. It is not convincing to argue that, whatever the motivation behind the forced villagization, what is alone important are the results. Much appears to have gone wrong in the implementation of the villagization policy. If the purpose of the policy had been merely to control the countryside more closely and thereby to extract a surplus more effectively, the pattern would presumably have continued to be repressive, probably increasingly so. However, in fact, major efforts continue to be made to correct the mistakes in the initial siting and planning of the villages, to bring government services to the new villages, to train a new cadre of village technicians/managers to facilitate productive communal activity and a greater degree of village self-management, and to introduce village councils. The abuses that featured in the period in which the villages were first established can therefore be seen as reflecting serious staff shortages and inefficiencies, a proneness to an authoritarian style of operation, and a tendency to try to do far too much at once. These are severe failings but at least they do not suggest that the abuses are part of a deliberately intended design. The main alternative perspective on Tanzanian socialism is that of the democratic socialist commentators. It is the contention of this chapter that this is the more nuanced and more accurate perspective.

208 Reflections of a democratic socialist A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

The control of power No society can achieve its communal objectives without the use of experts. However wide the participation of ordinary citizens in the public affairs of a society, there is bound still to be an important leadership role played by men and women with specialized administrative, technical, and political skills. To rely upon such experts is, however, to risk oppression by these experts. The question of how such experts can play their leadership role in society without thereby being able to abuse their power is thus a central issue in any society. On this issue there is a key division in socialist thought. Marxist socialists, in contrast to democratic socialists, are totally sceptical of the value of the mechanisms of constitutional democracy. They see these mechanisms as instruments by which people whose political consciousness is not yet developed are manipulated to serve the interests of their rulers. Instead Marxists are much more ready to rely upon the ideological commitment of an elite to ensure that the elite will not abuse its power. Democratic socialists, in contrast, do not dispose of the problem of power in that way. The control of power for them remains a central preoccupation. They are without the Marxists' faith that scientific socialism identifies the real interests of the working class. They lack also their faith in a vanguard, even a vanguard of themselves. 'A vanguard party would need to be a party of angels and we are not angels,' was how Nyerere recently expressed this democratic scepticism. 18 Democratic socialists remain painfully conscious of the power of an ideology to dull the moral sensitivity of men in power. They know still of the arrogance which is often generated by a vision of a transformed society. They are well aware that these are the gods that in particular tend to fail. For them, therefore, popular participation and democratic controls are essential components in any transition to socialism, essential both to help assure that power is not put to corrupt uses and to facilitate the development of socialist values. 19 Two quotations from Nyerere will illustrate the force with which he has held these convictions: The people's freedom to determine their own priorities, to organize themselves and their own advance in welfare is an important part of our objective. It cannot be postponed to some future time. The people's active and continued voluntary participation in the struggle is an important part of our objective because only through this participation will people develop.

209 Cranford Pratt I know that there are, even in Tanzania, some beliefs that periodic elections are dangerous. It is said that they give the enemies of our political system an opportunity to sow confusion; it is said that they could be used to destroy our unity; that they could be used to get rid of good leaders and replace them with bad leaders ... I am myself aware that periodic elections do bring these dangers yet I am quite unable to see what we can put in their place ... Only while there is this kind of recurring opportunity for choice are we, their representatives, forced to overcome our indolence or our selfishness and serve them [the people] to the best of our ability.20

To deduce evidence of the commitment of the Tanzanian leadership to democracy is, of course, not to establish that democratic institutions in Tanzania are firmly in place and functioning effectively. Nyerere and his colleagues decided, soon after independence, that the institutions of parliamentary democracy and a competitive party system, which the British had hurriedly put into place in Tanganyika in the late 1950s, were inappropriate to the needs of the country. They introduced a highly original political system which sought to achieve a real measure of democratic participation within a single-party system. 21 The major argument for these constitutional innovations were three: that Tanganyika had a de facto single-party system because of the very widespread support received by TANU and that some form of electoral participation within TANU was therefore required if there was to be any significant popular participation within the political institutions of the country; that TANU was one of the few effective forces of political integration in a nation that was still very much a nation-in-the-making; and that an open single-party system was far more in line with the communitarian values of traditional African societies than is a competitive party system. The basic features of the democratic single-party system which was introduced are well known. TANU (or since 1977, cCM) is the only political party in Tanzania; it is, to a very substantial degree, an open party; and the elections to the National Assembly are preceded by a widely participatory process within the party by which the party identifies the two candidates that will be placed before the electorate in each constituency. Three national elections have now taken place under these constitutional arrangements and there seems every indication they are widely accepted and highly valued. Marxist scholars, writing in the late 1960s, hoped that TANU would be transformed into a Marxist vanguard party. They welcomed what evidence there was that TANU was beginning to provide ideological training

210 Reflections of a democratic socialist to its members. They hoped that the introduction of the leadership code and the mention in the Arusha Declaration that the party ought not to accept as a member anyone who did not appear to accept the faith and objects of the party would mean that TANU would become more demanding of its members ideologically and that it would move towards a screening of prospective members to assure that they were good socialists. 22 Democratic socialists have reacted to the democratic one-party state in Tanzania quite differently. They conceded the force of the argument that the Westminster model was inappropriate to African countries such as Tanzania. They responded positively to the 1965 constitution, seeing it as an imaginative and democratic response to the political realities and requirements of that society. Social democrats have since been concerned that these institutions remain democratic. Far from welcoming, they tend instead to be concerned about, any innovation that lessens the open character of the party lest significant numbers of people should thereby be disallowed from active involvement in politics. They stress the importance of protecting freedom of association and of speech so that political debate in the country will be vigorous and criticism able to be expressed. They have not tended to judge the constitutional system in Tanzania primarily in terms of its contribution to the development of socialism; instead they have seen it primarily as the institutions through which Tanzanians govern themselves. The focus of their concern has been much more that these institutions should remain democratic in the traditional sense of being open, participatory, and free. Interestingly, a leading Marxist commentator, John Saul, suggested in 1974 that Tanzanian workers perhaps need an organization of their own, independent of the party and the government. 23 Social democrats will certainly agree with him, though it can be fairly claimed that Marxist support for one feature at least of a free and democratic society is tactical in origin, a consequence of their judgement that the Tanzanian regime is not in fact likely to embrace Marxism, while social democratic support for independent popular institutions is a central principle of their ideology. More or less simultaneously with the introduction of the democratic one-party state, the Tanzanian government made a number of other important efforts to increase popular participation in national and local institutions. These efforts have very largely not succeeded. Few would claim that the government-sponsored trade union movement and the co-operative movement have in fact been structures through which workers and peasants participate in the control of institutions of impor-

211 Cranford Pratt tance to them. Far more were these structures seen by workers and peasants as operating to control them and indeed, in the case of the co-operative movement, to extract significant sums from them. Nor are they the only examples of failure in this regard. The district councils, the representative institutions of rural local government, had finally to be completely abandoned in 1971. There were, moreover, important components of the political values that have predominated in Tanzania and have complicated and inhibited the emergence of more vigorous democratic participation. There has been widespread opposition within TANU to organized political activity that is in opposition to the views of the leadership. This has many roots. In part it is a product of an understandable fear of factional strife in a country whose unity is still somewhat fragile. In part it is a product of the nationalism that initially was the dominant political sentiment uniting all TANU members and tended to identify any who opposed the leadership as thereby opposing also the nation itself. However, one can fairly suspect as well that this continuing opposition to independent structures, which would represent different group interests and divergent political tendencies, either within or outside of the party, reflects as well an oligarchic hostility to any serious challenge. In 1963, when Nyerere created the commission to study the establishment of a democratic one-party state, he put to it eleven crucial questions. One of these was: how can the freedom of the people to form pressure groups for particular purposes be ensured? This question was the only one of the eleven which the commission ignored. It is still unanswered in Tanzania. As a result, in addition the atrophy of most participatory institutions that have existed within the overall system of government, there is very little independent association of people, either together within or outside the party, to pursue common political objectives. There has also been prevalent amongst many within the middle and higher ranks of TANU the attitude that the holders of elected political office ought to be well rewarded. Such offices as membership in the National Assembly and in the National Executive Committee of the party have in fact become an important avenue to incomes that would otherwise be unobtainable by the many who now receive them. From the time of independence Nyerere has not been able to hold the line firmly against the efforts of those in elected positions to demand incomes vastly out of line with the overall poverty of the country. This fact, reinforced by the oligarchic and authoritarian bias within the political culture more generally, has meant that parliamentary and even NEC debates may well

212 Reflections of a democratic socialist often reflect the self-interest of the office holders rather than the interests of the electorate. Nyerere has long recognized the force of these considerations. In 1968 he wrote: 'The people's purposes in society, however, will only go forward smoothly when they exercise their power over leadership in a calm and deliberate manner - and when the institutions of the society enable them to do so. And the people have to understand their own power and its importance to their future; they have to understand the basic principles of socialism.' As a result he identified as being 'of particular priority ... the outstanding tasks of socialist adult education and of strengthening the people's self confidence and pride. They are the essential preliminaries to real freedom from the abuse of power, and from the dangers of manipulation by ambitious, dishonest, and selfish men. They are also fundamental to the people's active participation in, and control of, a new society.' 24

The role of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie The ultra-left has in recent years identified the bureaucratic bourgeoisie as the primary obstacle to the achievement of socialism in Tanzania. Democratic socialists have had to come to terms with this critique of recent developments in Tanzania. This is no easy task. The problem is to decide what weight to give to specific pieces of evidence. There are bound to be ambiguities, contradictions, and reversals in government policies in Tanzania. The central task is therefore to identify the character and direction of a dominant trend. In my judgement the ultra-left criticism is misconceived. Their argument downplays the importance to Tanzania of the skills and experience that are concentrated in the bureaucracy; it underestimates the willingness of the bureaucracy to use its skills and experience to promote the policies of the TANU leadership; it exaggerates the power wielded by this bureaucracy; and it misses the importance of the party - and within the party of popular pressures - as a check upon the abuse of power by the leadership and by the senior civil service. The argument of the democratic socialist is not that there is no risk that the present senior members of the bureaucracy might become a new, dominant ruling class in Tanzania. That risk is present in Tanzania as it is in many Third World societies. Rather, the argument is that the evidence does not support the conclusion that this group has already established itself as a ruling class, is shaping policies to promote its own separate class interest and the interests of international capitalism, and that it constitutes the immediate and primary obstacle to a successful transition to socialism.

213 Cranford Pratt This counter-argument has several facets to it. Firstly, it is noted that TANU has been increasingly important as a counterweight to the bureaucracy. TANu's sovereignty has been confirmed in law and has been realized in actual practice. This political influence and control from the party, combined with the leadership of the president himself, has held in check the tendency towards a bureaucratic determination of policy that would otherwise have been much more substantial. Moreover, the senior civil servants do not themselves possess power independent of the authority they exercise because of their office. They can mobilize neither wealth nor political influence separate from the wealth and influence they have as civil servants. The net result is that the members of the senior civil service, far from feeling themselves securely in charge, instead have a definite sense that their individual security is none too strong and their collective ability to shape policies none too firmly entrenched. 'We could each of us very easily, at any time, fall from grace to grass' was how one senior civil servant summed up his own personal sense of insecurity and that also of many of his colleagues.25 Many of the senior civil servants and senior political figures in Tanzania no longer set their personal aspirations at what might fairly be called international bourgeois levels. The egalitarian measures of 1967 and the continuing, radicalizing processes that followed, nipped in the bud many bourgeois aspirations. Most members of the senior bureaucracy seem now not to define their position, either openly or covertly, as part of an international bourgeoisie. They know full well how poor is their country. They are, in very large proportion, first-generation civil servants, the sons and daughters of peasants. Their links with the countryside are close and their association is intimate with their kinsmen and the members of their extended family, most of whom are much poorer than they are. Their tastes and aspirations now seem much more appropriate to Tanzania than was beginning to be the case in the mid-1960s. The food they eat, the houses they live in, their holiday travelling, their forms of entertainment, their plans for retirement, all indicate that they have remained intimately part of the Tanzanian scene. As a result it seems less and less appropriate to regard them as the local representatives of an international bourgeoisie.26 There is, no doubt, still much ambivalence within the bureaucracy but the members of the senior civil service and of the senior ranks of the party are neither as hostile to Tanzanian socialism nor as powerful as the conventional wisdom of the ultra-left has tended to make out. They are neither saints nor aesthetes, of course, and some of their aspirations do

214 Reflections of a democratic socialist divide them still from the mass of the people. But there is little evidence that the bureaucratic bourgeoisie has moved to a conspiratorial hostility towards socialism and a great deal to suggest that, despite the very severe difficulties which the government of Tanzania faces, the senior ranks of the party and of the government continue within the bounds set by human frailty to serve that government loyally. It is nevertheless the case that the morale and attitude of the civil service will have a major influence upon Tanzania's transition to socialism. It is also true that many of the policies of the government have limited and restricted the advantages that were once theirs. Their zeal, enthusiasm, and loyalty cannot, therefore, merely be assumed to be high. If their morale collapses, if they become disaffected and disillusioned in their work, then Tanzanian socialism will surely be in very dire circumstances. The phenomenon that would result cannot be described as rule by a government dominated by a bureaucracy which is purposefully pursuing its separate class interest. It would rather be a government whose effectiveness was blunted by the individual alienation of an increasing number of its civil servants. This distinction is not only conceptually important; it is also of practical importance. If one's judgement is that Tanzania is dealing with a bureaucracy that is organized in hostility to its socialist leadership and is successfully subverting it, then presumably other classes must be mobilized against this bourgeoisie in an intensified class struggle. However, if one judges that the bureaucracy has so far been surprisingly loyal but that its zeal and commitment could easily be undermined, then one looks instead for policies that will provide the prerequisites of a well-run and actively involved public service. This suggests the importance of concerns quite different from those to which the ultra-left analysis directs attention. It suggests the importance of efficient and humane management within the public service: fair practices relating to promotions, transfers, and leaves; recognition of merit and extra effort; opportunities for up-grading; comparative permanence of work groups; and a participatory style of administration. It suggests the importance of ensuring that the civil servants remain an integral part of the party. It suggests, finally, that the tasks and responsibilities assigned to the various units within the public service must be manageably within their competence so that the individuals involved can genuinely feel that they are doing an important job successfully. Tanzania is attempting to move its whole society towards socialism. In this process much leadership is expected of the public service. It follows that a high priority must therefore be at-

215 Cranford Pratt tached to the various policies and practices that will help to ensure that the morale of the public service is high and its involvement and commitment sustained.

The transition to socialism

Many democratic socialist commentators are likely to feel that the case for a democratic transition to socialism in Tanzania is particularly compelling. The factors that explain the decision against the vanguard party in 1967 are still operative. The radicalized intelligentsia, even if fully supported by Nyerere, could still not hope to constitute the basis of a civilian regime under a vanguard party. The driving need to achieve continued development and the general proneness within the political culture of Tanzania for leadership to expect acquiescence and for ordinary people to concede it, further increase the risk that if vanguardism in fact became widely accepted within TANU the result would not be an austere democratically responsive, ideologically pure, and incorruptible vanguard. Much more likely, the language of vanguardism would in fact provide a rationale and a cover for an incipient but not very socialist oligarchy as it consolidated its power. In the Tanzanian context the vanguard party is an extreme version of the classical Leninist position; it is extreme for, in this instance, the vanguard would be a vanguard not of the proletariat but rather a vanguard of radical petite bourgeoisie for the proletariat and, indeed, for a proletariat which in large measure is still to emerge. In the face of the awesome authoritarian implications of this sort of proposition, Nyerere draws back. 'Socialism,' he said, 'needs a long incubation period in societies not yet ready for it. Otherwise they will bring forth monsters.' 27 In this, the democratic socialist approach ofTANU does seem now, as it did in 1967, to be the more appropriate strategy. 28 The issue can be briefly cast into a wider context. Michael Harrington, a prominent and perceptive American socialist, has argued that poor Third World societies cannot advance directly towards a democratic and socialist future. If the effort is made to do this through democratic institutions it will be blocked by the passivity of the masses. If, instead, a new ruling ideological elite seeks to accomplish it on behalf of the masses it will quickly fall into Stalinist ways, 'turning against the proletariat, the peasantry and everyone else.' 29 Nyerere in effect accepts only part of Harrington's analysis. He shares his fear of the likely consequences of any effort by an ideological vanguard to introduce socialist policies ahead of majority support for them; however, he refuses to accept that every effort to achieve socialism would be driven in a Stalinist direction.

216 Reflections of a democratic socialist His position can be formulated, in contrast to Harrington's, by noting that he believes that it will be possible both to avoid divisive acquisitive individualism in Tanzania despite its poverty and to develop an economically productive communalism. He believes that political leadership and the bureaucracy can be kept responsive to mass needs and can be led to define their own aspirations, not in terms of Western standards of consumerism but rather in terms far more appropriate to a country as poor as Tanzania. He thus hopes, and acts on the supposition, that it will be possible to lead the whole society, harmoniously, to socialism. Nyerere, of course, does not cast his argument along these lines but his position can be analysed in these terms. It is only on the basis of assumptions such as these that a democratic transition to socialism by a whole society can be envisaged for countries such as Tanzania. The point was made in the preceding section that the central task in any interim assessment of Tanzania's transition to socialism is to identify the character and direction of the dominant trend within the sociopolitical development of Tanzania. In my judgement Tanzania is still a country in transition to socialism. Evidence for this judgement can best be presented under headings that relate to the major features Nyerere has identified as essential components of the transition to socialism. These are: the achievement of a greater measure of equality; an increase in democratic participation in the political institutions of the society; the development of a national community that is more socialist in its values and in the quality of its life; and the achievement of greater national self-reliance. These have been the main components of the democratic strategy for transition to socialism in Tanzania. If there have been significant advances on these fronts then democratic socialists are likely to be content to regard this as progress towards the achievement of a more socialist society in Tanzania. A greater equality. Here the evidence of sustained socialist initiatives is multiple. Income tax and wage and salary policies have succeeded in narrowing very significantly the differential between the income of the most highly paid and the most lowly paid in Tanzania. The ratio between the top salary in government and the most lowly paid government civil servant, after taxation, was 26: 1 in 1966. By 1977 it was a ratio of 9: 1 and Nyerere in 1976 said he hoped to be able to get this ratio down to 7:1. This has involved a significant fall in the real salary levels of all middle and upper level positions in the government. Even in 1974 when the first overall salary increases were introduced for more than a decade, necessi-

217 Cranford Pratt tated by strong inflationary pressures, the occasion was used further to equalize incomes. At the lower end of the salary scales the increase accorded was 12 per cent but this increase narrowed to 6 per cent in the higher brackets and provided after taxation only an additional one hundred shillings a month for the most highly paid members of the government service. Salary levels and secondary benefits are still somewhat more generous in the public corporations than they are within the government proper. However, the Standing Committee on Parastatal Organizations has sought with increasing success to bring salary levels in the parastatals into line with other government salaries. Earlier fears that the leadership code would in fact quickly be little heeded proved unfounded. Instead enforcement machinery has become more vigorous, especially since the creation of a new commission on the model of Tanzanian Permanent Commission of Inquiry, to investigate allegations of breaches of this code. Moreover, the obligation to obey the rules of this code has now been extended to all members of TANU . In recent years the egalitarian thrust of government policy has had a major impact upon both educational and public health policies. It is true that both these services for long had built into them significant biases favouring the middle-class urban population. In the first years after the Arusha Declaration the continued presence of these biases gave substance to the fears that there was little emerging in Tanzania that could be called socialist. This line of criticism is now simply out of date. Two of the most important of the initiatives taken more recently by the Tanzanian government have been designed to eradicate these biases. In 1974 TANU instructed the Ministry of Education that its top priority should be the achievement of universal primary education by 1977. This was, of course, a monumental undertaking in a country that had but 52 per cent of children of primary school age actually enrolled in classes in 1974. It is indeed a target which cannot even be approached without abandoning many previously unquestioned assumptions about primary schooling. Tanzania had inherited from the British a whole set of ideas relating to the standards of primary school building, the formal qualifications of teachers, and the hours of the day within which schooling should take place, which virtually ruled out any possibility that primary education could be spread rapidly to all children. As a result of the T ANU instruction, a great deal of basic rethinking has been going on in the Ministry of Education, as it devises a primary school system that could conceivably be extended to all of its children in the very near future. In area after area of educational policy the previously inconceivable is now being speedily

218 Reflections of a democratic socialist introduced. Along with this there has been a remarkable holding of the line on the expansion of secondary and higher education. In African societies where educational policy is very largely influenced by middleclass aspirations, secondary and university education has expanded a great deal, very largely to the benefit of this middle class. That the Tanzanian government has restrained the expansion of secondary and university education in the interests of a rapid expansion of primary education, demonstrates that the regime is responding to pressures and demands that emanate from the great mass of the citizens of the society rather than from its emerging elite. Health services have undergone a parallel transformation. Until recently a small number of fully developed urban hospitals had absorbed a major portion of the budget of the Ministry of Health. This pattern has been very significantly turned about in recent years. The government's primary concern is now to bring basic and simple medical services within easy reach of every peasant and worker, with a network of rural health centres sufficiently widespread to be accessible, though less easily, to as many as possible. As most senior policy-makers within both the party and the government reside in Dar es Salaam or in one or another of the other major cities of Tanzania these decisions as well demonstrate that the regime is responding to the needs and the demands of the great mass of the people rather than of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie.

Increased popular participation. The Tanzanian political leadership has not been enormously successful in achieving a significant increase in the participation of ordinary Tanzanians in decision-making concerning political and governmental matters. 30 Yet they have continued to try. Following the abolition of the rural district councils, the government sought to give greater importance to development committees at the various levels of local rule. However, these more recent initiatives have not in fact accomplished the increased popular participation which was hoped of them. The regional development committee, and the regional development funds that were put at its disposal, appear very largely to be under the effective control of senior political and governmental officers at the regional level. Similarly the equivalent structures at district and sub-district levels appear to be largely either ineffective or, where effective, dominated by local officials. 31 The more recent major decentralization of government has brought the civil service closer to the people but as yet has done little to involve the people more fully in the new institutions of local administration.

219 Cranford Pratt

It is as important to note that initiatives of this sort continued to be made as it is to be aware of how consistently difficult it has been to secure a real measure of popular participation in governmental decisionmaking at any level in Tanzania. Moreover, these initiatives continue. At the local level a fresh and major effort was launched in 1976 to create local councils in the thousands of villages recently established or demarcated throughout the country. One must, therefore, simultaneously acknowledge both the comparative failure to achieve a significant increase in popular participation and a persistent and imaginative effort to find the structures that would make it workable and effective. All of this underlines that the overall importance of participation within the Tanzanian political system has very much depended upon its importance within TANU. However, the trends relating to participation within TANU are not at all easily identified. There has been, since independence, a pronounced tendency within the leadership towards authoritarian rule, which has been held in check by a democratic and populist component within the Tanzanian political culture that Nyerere in particular has nurtured. Moreover, although the tendency to authoritarian rule is easy to distinguish, conceptually, from the commitment to socialism and is theoretically a quite different phenomenon, yet the socialist commitment does provide, from time to time, the rhetoric to rationalize a retreat to authoritarian means. The net result is that it is particularly difficult to come to a clear view of what has been the dominant tendency relating to participation within TANU. Certainly there are a number of important features of the party system in Tanzania that limit the effectiveness of popular participation within TANU. Political office is still very often viewed as a vehicle to high income and there continues to be a profound bias against any opposition to the leadership. This bias is extended to become as well an hostility to any organized or indeed sharply articulated opposition within the party to activities or policies of the leadership. Within TANU there have been major barriers to any organized effort to seek policy changes or to replace the existing leadership. Moreover, the right of one or another of the committees of the party to exclude candidates from election lists for both parliamentary and party positions could at any time be used to silence individuals whose criticisms had become too telling. Other more general features of Tanzanian politics also lessen the extent and the vigour of public debate on major issues. TANU controls the newspapers, the trade unions, and the co-operative movement. There is an important emphasis upon ideological training in the schools, in the network of ideological

220 Reflections of a democratic socialist colleges that operate under the overview of Kivukoni College, and in the increasing number of ad hoc courses for public servants. In addition, in the last election the rule was applied that all candidates should concentrate in their campaigning on explaining (rather than discussing, let alone criticizing) the party's electoral manifesto. Nyerere's speeches and his major policy papers receive very widespread circulation throughout Tanzania and appear to be in process of becoming sacred texts, to be read, to be revered, to be understood, it is hoped, but not to be questioned. Moreover, an hierarchical and authoritarian bias still marks the popular political culture, which makes it hard to imagine that many local officials will see themselves as the spokesmen and agents of their branches or their villages or that the branches and villagers will easily use the institutions of participation to challenge and control those officials. Much within the Tanzanian pattern has continued to counterbalance these various tendencies either towards a closed, ideological elite vanguard or towards an authoritarian non-ideological oligarchic rule. Checking any tendency towards ideological elitism have been three important factors. First, the party still remains virtually an open party. No significant effort has been made to weed out the ideologically unsuitable or to confine the party solely to those who are particularly committed ideologically. There is a greater emphasis on political training but this is much more a case of seeking generally to raise the level of consciousness throughout the society than it is an effort to convert TANU into an ideological elite. The leadership rules, which are now required of all members of TANU, do not constitute a demanding ideological test that mark off the party members as an especially austere inner group. Rather the rules express those components of a socialist ethic that have now become widely accepted in Tanzania. Their embodiment within the constitution of the party constitutes an entrenchment and consolidation of an advance in socialist consciousness that has been accomplished rather than a special set of rules for a narrow and superior elite. Second, a fundamental feature distinguishing TANU from a vanguard party is that the political cadres being trained to further the political mobilization of the people do not themselves constitute either the party or a closed elite that dominates the party from within. Third, the party leadership continues to preach an ideology of democratic socialism in which the people are called upon to be vigilant in the defence of their rights. TANU thus continues to be a political party unto itself, neither a constitutional party on the Western model nor a vanguard party on the model of the singleparty systems of eastern Europe.

221 Cranford Pratt Perhaps a more searching question, however, is not whether TANU is becoming a vanguard party but, rather, whether the oligarchic and authoritarian tendencies within TANU are becoming more prominent than the populist and democratic tendencies. The record shows an important series of initiatives in recent years designed to increase the vitality and the representative quality of the structures within the party. The Central Committee, for example, has been transformed from a weak committee appointed by the president into a strong and assertive committee, largely of elected regional party leaders. Elections within the party are now much more formally organized and less susceptible to manipulation. The major representative structure within the party, the National Executive Committee, has effectively superceded Parliament as the forum in which major policy decisions are formally taken. The NEC does not have some of the safeguards which help to assure that parliamentary debate is open and vigorous. For example, the NEC meetings are open to neither the public nor the press and the rules of procedure within the NEC are much more casual and less formal than is typical in legislatures. Nevertheless it is a widely representative body whose debates, from all reports, are at least as lively and open as those of the National Assembly. Perhaps the most interesting development relating to the party has been the subtlety that has emerged in the relationship between the party and the government. The party cannot hope to exercise intelligently, if at all, its responsibility for major policy-making unless its representative national institutions are effectively briefed. That need is now recognized. The Central Committee of the NEC now has sub-committees each of which oversees an important area of government policy and each of which has a senior staff person responsible to it. Yet if the party's control is to be meaningful, neither the Central Committee nor the NEC should become dominated by ministers and civil servants. In a number of interesting ways, the separate identity of the party and its capacity for independent decision-making are being preserved. For example, very few ministers are members of the NEC or of the Central Committee. They participate on the new functional sub-committees but much more as invited experts who are present to answer questions than as full participants. Finally, there has been introduced recently the full-time, specially trained party secretaries, for party branches in the public corporations. These secretaries, popularly called commissars, report directly to the Central Committee and are intended to be watchdogs for the party within the public corporations. This last innovation carries its own major problems but it is a further indication of the party's determination to maintain its autonomy vis-a-vis the government. The party in a wide

222 Reflections of a democratic socialist variety of ways exercises very important controls over the government and its policies. It is inaccurate to think that the civil service dominates the shaping of government policy. At the least, one must see the division between the party leadership and the senior civil service as an important continuing determinant of the pattern of politics in Tanzania. To the extent that the main structures within the party remain representative, this increasing importance of the party augments the democratic component within the Tanzanian political system. The barriers to effective democracy in Tanzania continue to be many and major. They may yet be insurmountable. However, the evidence shows that continuing efforts are being made to develop appropriate democratic institutions and to generate a political culture that will sustain them. Tanzania does appear to be persisting in its effort to accomplish a democratic transition to socialism.

The achievement of a society more socialist in its values and in the quality of its life. In regard to this, the third component of the Tanzanian strategy for the transition to socialism, there have also been important initiatives. Much more effort is going into political education. Kivukoni College now has five subordinate colleges associated with it in different parts of the country, each giving courses with a high political content to middle level people within the party and the government. The school curriculum in a number of key subjects has been revised to promote socialist and communal values and efforts continue, though not always successfully, to break down the elitism of the school system. The government is in the process of abandoning a system of differential classes of accommodation within hospitals and it has announced that it will shortly be abolishing private medical practice. Bonuses paid as a percentage of salary to employees in a number of parastatals have been blocked in favour of collective bonuses shared equally by all employees. Adherence to the leadership rules is now required of all TANU members, not just of the leaders. It is illegal to purchase a new car or a car that is less than four years of age for purely private use, a measure which is not so much an exchange control as an effort to curb one of the most visible and important of the forms of conspicuous consumption open to salary earners. Finally, the party manifesto, Mwongozo, in 1971 called upon party and government officials to abandon authoritarian and domineering modes in their relationships with ordinary men and women. Even the experimentation with workers' control, which got a real impetus from Mwongozo, did not end in 1972 with the distressing and authoritarian crush-

223 Cranford Pratt ing of the spontaneous efforts by workers in a number of factories to seize control and to exclude management. Renewed efforts were again made to establish workers' councils and they are now formally in existence in most industries. In many cases, no doubt, they are still not particularly effective. But political education officers from NUTA, the government sponsored trades union movement, and from the Ministry of Labour, as well as the new 'commissars,' are seeking to increase their effectiveness. Finally, the governing boards of parastatals are being transformed so that they will no longer be made up primarily of senior civil servants and ministers but will instead include a 40 per cent contingent of elected workers plus very significant representation from the party and from other non-governmental bodies.

The pursuit of a more self-reliant economy and a more autonomous pattern of economic development. Until a few years ago the investment programmes of the major public corporations were not at all well integrated one with the other. There was little determination of comparative priorities as between the investment programmes of different corporations and little discussion of criteria for public investment beyond the inherited criteria of profit maximization. This lack of an industrial strategy and this continued attachment to the mechanisms of the market have been the subject of much radical criticism since 1967. This whole pattern and set of attitudes have recently been significantly changed. Public investment funds and foreign exchange are both centrally controlled and an effort is made to allocate these in line with national planning objectives. There is now a Central Development Fund which manages parastatal investible surpluses. There are licensing and foreign exchange controls. Tanzania has also more recently advanced a long way towards a wellarticulated industrial strategy. There is now a concern to avoid largescale investments that require managerial skills of a high order and national systems of supply and distribution. Sparked by the example of the machine shops built by the Chinese as part of the Tanzara railroad project, great emphasis is now placed upon each industry setting up its own workshop in order that it may itself make the replacement parts that it needs. Priority is given to local industries that will produce basic capital goods and essential intermediate goods needed for improved agricultural practices and to industries that will further process Tanzanian primary exports. There is a far greater willingness than previously to use import controls as a means of directing consumer demand to home-produced goods. Research and experimental manufacturing centres have been

224 Reflections of a democratic socialist established to promote local innovating competence in technology and to develop locally designed and produced basic capital goods for agriculture. The government is, in particular, promoting steel-consuming industries in order that there will be a greater local market for the iron and steel industry which Tanzania hopes may yet be developed with Chinese assistance in southern Tanzania. This evidence is not overturned by the continued importance to Tanzania of primary product exports, nor by the importance of foreign capital assistance. It is a particularly doctrinaire judgement to conclude merely from these two facts that Tanzania is therefore as dependent as ever and cannot be seen to be serious in its effort to build a socialist society. Tanzania inevitably and unavoidably, if it is to develop, has import requirements, particularly capital goods and intermediate goods, for which the country must acquire foreign exchange. Primary products that are exported in order to acquire the funds to finance such imports are a direct contribution to the development of a more autonomous national economy. They are not at all to be compared to the export of primary products in order merely to finance the importation of consumer goods. A simple condemnation of Tanzania because there has been in recent years a major foreign contribution to the capital projects of the government is similarly simple-minded. There have been two major reasons for the increase in the foreign assistance component of the overall development programme. The first has been the importance since 1970 of several major projects in which there is an abnormally high import content. These were, initially, the Tazara project assisted by China and, more recently and for the next few years, Air Tanzania, and the railways, harbours, and telecommunications that Tanzania must quickly get into effective operation following the breakdown of the East African Authority. The second has been the combined impact on Tanzania of the drought of 1974-75, the soaring price of petrol and of petroleum by-products, and the adverse shifting terms of trade. Without major foreign capital assistance and loans Tanzania would have had to face an almost total halt in its capital development projects, and would have been hard pressed even to pay for her increased food imports required because of the drought. In this situation the leadership in Tanzania decided that the transition to socialism would be more likely to be threatened by the fall in living standards and the standstill in development that would follow any halt in foreign assistance than by the dependency implicit in remaining dependent on foreign capital assistance.

225 Cranford Pratt Finally, the management contracts, hastily entered into by Tanzania at the time of the first nationalizations in 1967, have all been reviewed. Most have been renegotiated and several have been abrogated. All new contracts must be approved by the economic committee of the cabinet and dose guidelines are in operation that provide safeguards against the worst and most obvious at least of the abuses of such contracts. The conclusion seems incontrovertible. There has continued to be a wide variety of important initiatives with regard to each of the four main components of the Tanzanian strategy for the transition to socialism. This evidence is weightier and is, cumulatively, far more convincing than any evidence that suggests that Tanzania is not in transition to socialism but is rather a state capitalist system dominated by its bureaucratic bourgeoisie. What therefore needs now to be explained is why it is that Tanzania has maintained this socialist impetus. THE DYNAMICS OF TANZANIAN POLITICS

It has already been noted that the party has grown in importance in recent years and is a significant counterweight to the bureaucracy. Because it has maintained its populist character, the party is also an important source of support for radical policy initiatives, particularly when their purpose is egalitarian. This is reinforced by Nyerere's own influence. He perhaps does not now dominate policy-making to the same extent that he did in earlier years, but his direct influence is still a very important contribution to the socialist thrust, which we have identified. He has himself, in turn, continued to evolve politically under the influence of both internal and international factors, which have tended to have a radicalizing impact upon him. It is also true that a widening group of political and governmental leaders and intellectuals are now socialists in the 'Nyerere mould.' The 'first-generation' nationalists who were not socialists but had claims to high position because of their early association with the struggle for independence have, with very few exceptions, now been dropped from prominent political positions. Shaba, Lusinde, Tewa, Munanka, Bryceson, Maswanya, and Swai, to name but the best known who were still prominent in 1967, are each now out of the cabinet and without any senior TANU position. The leadership is therefore ideologically more cohesive and closer to Nyerere, intellectually and politically, than was the case eight years ago.

226 Reflections of a democratic socialist Moreover, the regime has continued to bring into senior government positions many of its ablest radical critics. John Saul commented in 1973 in the regime's favour that almost all the indigenous radicals 'had chosen to work within the established structures.' 32 The force of this observation is stronger today than ever. The regime has in particular brought into its ranks many younger radicals. Henry Mapolu, who wrote the ablest radical critique of the government's response to the factory seizure by workers, was appointed personnel officer for the Friendship Textile Mills and had responsibility, therefore, for the effective operation of the workers' council in the largest factory in Tanzania. Nyerere moved directly into very senior positions in government two of the ablest radical economists at the university, Kighoma Malima and Justinian Rweyemamu, Malima to be the principal secretary to the Ministry of Finance and Rweyemamu to be economic adviser to the president. Reinforcing the impact of these several factors has been an internal political dynamic which has operated in Tanzania to sustain the radical thrust of government policy. It is a dynamic that has influenced not only popular attitudes but also the civil service and political leadership. The Tanzanian government now controls the commanding heights of the economy. The public i,ector dominates the whole of the non-agricultural sectors of the economy, and the government ministries, agencies, and boards closely control and influence agricultural development. It is natural and inevitable that it is to the government and the party that demands are directed for increased services and for higher incomes. Moreover, the rhetoric of Tanzanian politics is increasingly a socialist rhetoric. The temptation, often unresisted, is to blame particular governmental failures on lingering capitalist influences and, therefore, to seek to overcome these failures by a further radical initiative. The alternative, to move more slowly and to dismantle socialist projects that have proven ineffective, is politically and emotionally much less congenial and its advocacy requires much more political courage. The party, far from meekly ratifying the policy proposals of a conservative civil service, has tended instead to be resistant and unsympathetic towards those who talk the language of priorities, of moderation, of bottlenecks, and of shortages. Thus within the party itself, grass roots pressure generates a willingness to accelerate the pace of socialist innovation. Foreign affairs have further reinforced this whole dynamic within Tanzanian politics. Tanzania's ideology is not yet firmly or finally defined. International and intra-African politics relating to the liberation of southern Africa continue to have a radicalizing impact upon Tanzan-

227 Cranford Pratt ian opinion. Nyerere and the leadership more generally are deeply committed to that liberation. They have learned over the years that only the Communist states are willing to provide extensive support for the liberation struggle. On this, the most important single issue of Tanzanian foreign policy, Tanzania therefore is in close alliance with the Soviet Union, China, and other Communist powers. Moreover, it has particularly close relations with Mozambique, in many ways seeing itself as being closer ideologically to that newly independent southern African state than to any other African country. All of these developments have influenced the way in which Tanzania defines itself as a socialist country. They have further augmented the continuing radical thrust within TANU generally. THE MAJOR OBSTACLES TO THE SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM

The argument of this chapter, to this point, has been that the government of Tanzania has continued to pursue its strategy for the transition to socialism in Tanzania and that the bureaucratic bourgeoisie has neither subverted this process nor have its dominant values and attitudes been the primary obstacle to the success of that transition. This strategy, with its emphasis on greater equality, on democratic participation, on the creation of a more socialist environment, and on greater national self-reliance, does seem to offer a greater prospect of long-term success than the alternative strategy implicit in the analyses of the ultra-left commentators. Yet Tanzania is nevertheless a country under quite severe strain and its transition to socialism is certainly confronting major problems. Many of these are a consequence of the fact that socialism in Tanzania must also be a strategy of development. Socialism in a poor country cannot primarily concern itself with distributive questions or with questions of social organization. A socialist regime in a poor country, if it is to avoid the imposition of an increasingly militarized discipline, must show results in the form of rising living standards for the great mass of its people. This has not been adequately achieved in Tanzania. Significant exogenous factors have contributed to this: the shifting terms of trade, the soaring price of petrol and of such petroleum products as chemical fertilizers, and a severe two-year drought. Yet it is also true that, even after discounting the impact of these factors, the pace of development has not been encouraging.

228 Reflections of a democratic socialist As a result, the regime sees itself as being under great economic pressure, as indeed it is. The leadership has become much more productionconscious. Many within the government appear now to regard increased agricultural and industrial production as having the very highest priority. In many ways they are right. Socialism will surely go sour in Tanzania if it comes to be associated in the popular mind with a perpetuation of mass poverty. Closely related to this question is the problem of governmental inefficiency. Fifteen years ago most observers felt that the middle 1960s would be the years of maximum strain in the public sector. It was expected that by 1968 the increased flow of Tanzanians out of the higher educational institutions would result in a gradual improvement in the efficiency of the public sector. This has not happened. The contribution of the growing number of educated and experienced Tanzanian public servants has been more than offset by the impact upon governmental effectiveness of the enormous expansion of the public sector and of its increasing complexities. As a result there have been very severe breakdowns within the public sector. The signs of these are many. Major industries operate for long periods below capacity because of a failure in their electricity and water supplies or a breakdown in the supply of the inputs which they need. The level of services provided to the general public in a number of areas such as municipal and rural bus services has fallen abysmally. There have been gross errors of commercial judgement and of organization within the State Trading Corporation, leading to widespread shortages of essential products. Control mechanisms that are important to careful financial management, such as the Treasury's control over government spending and the control by central establishments over new appointments, work far less effectively than they did ten years ago. Law enforcement in the towns has become less efficient and police prosecutions are increasingly haphazard. Literally hundreds of police officers have been retired prematurely in an effort to tighten discipline within the force. A further aspect of the declining competence of the machinery of government has been the substantial failure of governmental planning. The failure has been one of planning in its broadest sense - a failure to relate major policy decisions to the resources available; a failure to take into account the capacities and the weaknesses of the agencies that would have to implement the major decisions being taken; a tendency for political commissioners to rush into the implementation of any measure they surmise has the approval of the president or the prime minister; a

229 Cranford Pratt failure to establish priorities that are adhered to over a number of years, with the result that every six months or so there emerges a new 'top priority' task articulated by TANU distracting attention and resources away from important but still half-finished projects from previous years. Much has contributed to this continually impetuous style of decision-making. 33 A dominating president who is much more an initiator than an administrator has certainly been a factor. So also is the party itself, for it asserts its power erratically and with little sense of the overall context of the decisions it is taking. The socialism of TANU has been inadequately articulated and inadequately understood, leaving such bodies as the National Executive Committee without any lasting consensus on its priorities. Within the government, the Ministry of Development Planning and Finance, which might otherwise have fought to bring order to the threatening chaos of decision-making, has found itself desperately overworked and has been able to play this central role with declining effectiveness. The result is wasted resources, ill-considered initiatives, and very unsettled priorities. Tanzania faces more than an accumulation of individual and particular inefficiencies. Jon Moris has written in regard to Tanzania (and Kenya as well) that 'Contemporary rural administration has reached a genuine state of crisis - a point where the ineffectiveness of major public services has become so obvious that it becomes difficult to justify further public investment in these sectors.' 34 In many cases what is involved is more than inefficiencies caused by a lack of appropriate technical skills. Rather what has happened is that whole sections of the government have broken down as effective operating mechanisms. There are distressing indications of a general decline in the competence, the discipline, and the morale of the public service. The KRUM report in 1975 (an acronym of the Swahili title of a committee of the National Assembly) told story after story of the most severe lapses in administrative competence. A report on the management of secondary schools at about the same time demonstrated that the decline in discipline and in morale had extended also to the teachers and school administrators. This situation, especially when combined with bad personnel management within the civil service, will quickly produce, and many say already has produced, extensive alienation, a collapse of morale, and an upsurge of corruption within the ranks of the bureaucracy. The solution is unlikely to be found in the public harassment and haranguing of the bureaucracy. Neither is it likely to be produced by a heightening of the levels of radical rhetoric which so often has led to further major imposi-

230 Reflections of a democratic socialist tions of responsibility upon the already overstrained bureaucracy. Greater realism about the capacity of the machinery of government; greater care to ensure that the increased effort being called forth from peasants and workers results in improved incomes for those who make this effort; a fuller concentration of the time and energy of the ablest leaders and civil servants on production-related activities; more energy into organizational and managerial matters that so often determine both the level of morale of those involved and the success or failure of the projects concerned: it is issues such as these that have now become of central importance to the continued effectiveness of Tanzania's transition to socialism. These are not politically glamorous matters. There is, moreover, as we have seen, a dynamic in Tanzanian politics that draws attention and energy towards other issues. Nevertheless the importance of increasing productivity, raising living standards, and improving the effectiveness of the machinery of government has been rediscovered. From 1967 until quite recently Nyerere and TANU had placed a greater emphasis upon the promotion of equality and upon the construction of socialist institutions. The primary need now is to ensure that the new institutions do in fact generate a sustained increase in productivity and rising living standards for ordinary Tanzanians. There are indications that the centrality of this need is now accepted within the leadership. The changes made in the new cabinet after the 1977 elections have placed some of the ablest Tanzanian administrators into the prime ministership and the key ministries of finance and development planning, industry and commerce, and communication and works and the 1977-78 budget gives a higher priority to key services than previously. However, the difficulties are bound to be severe and many. Yet if they are not overcome to a significant degree it is hard to see how Tanzania will be able for long to sustain her effort to achieve a peaceful and harmonious transition to socialism. The need for greater productivity and increased governmental efficiency is a major immediate need but it cannot be the only objective of public policy in a socialist Tanzania. A second immediate objective of great importance is greater popular participation in the political institutions of the country. There has continued to be a marked tendency towards oligarchic rule. This tendency has been present in Tanzanian politics since independence. It has so far been checked and counterbalanced by a number of factors : the populist traditions ofTANU; the president's own commitment to participation; and the wide popularity of a

231 Cranford Pratt number of the democratic control mechanisms that have been introduced to limit abuses of power. However, in recent years the balance has tipped somewhat in the direction of a fuller and firmer exercise of power by the leadership. The main reason for this is the greater centrality within TANu's thinking of the need for more rapid economic development. This preoccupation, reinforced by an impatience and sense of superiority towards the ordinary peasant which is widespread amongst urban and educated Tanzanians, has generated a much greater willingness to use the short cut of force as a technique to win greater peasant economic activity. The best known example of this is, of course, the massive movement of hundreds of thousands of peasants into villages in an eighteen-month period in 1974-75. However, there are many other examples as well: the requirement in 1976, for example, that each peasant family must cultivate a minimum acreage and that all adults over the age of eighteen must work. Initiatives continue to be taken to increase popular participation in the institutions of local rule and to keep participation vital and meaningful within TANU. If these fail, if rule by TANU becomes synonymous with oligarchic rule, then there are no adequate and convincing reasons to hope that those in power will for long be responsive to popular needs. Yet this increased participation will not easily be achieved. Many efforts to that end have already failed. The search continues for the institutional structures of popular participation that are right for Tanzania. There is still a widely prevalent, general acquiescence towards those in authority that must be overcome and there are many in leadership positions who are in fact little interested in increased citizen participation. In the party, despite extensive rhetoric extolling citizen participation, there has been very little progress made in developing detailed programmes of how that widened participation can in fact be encouraged or in motivating party workers to be activists for greater democratic involvement. Moreover, there is a contradiction in the short run between the need for greater participation and the need for greater production. Increased political participation is likely to bring a more vigorous articulation of community needs, adding to the pressure on government to divert resources from expenditures that directly contribute to increased production, to expenditures on popular social services. In the longer run, it is to be hoped, greater participation should mean a greater involvement with national objectives and a resultant willingness to make a greater effort to promote them. But it would be naive to expect this as the immediate result, rather than a heightened demand for more welfare services.

232 Reflections of a democratic socialist It is a central insight of democratic socialist thought that, despite difficulties such as these, participation cannot safely be postponed until a later day. The goodwill and commitment of neither an ideological elite nor a bureaucracy can long be assumed without effective political institutions of popular control and participation. The force of this insight is recognized and accepted still by the Tanzanian leadership. It is this fact that explains the continued determined effort to achieve a democratic transition to socialism in Tanzania. This democratic component, demonstrated in the persistent initiatives to build participatory institutions and in the continued vitality of the party as a mass movement, no doubt has complicated the transition to socialism. It has restrained the use of authoritarian short cuts; it has required continued attention to the extension of such popular government activities as water development, education, and rural health services; and it has made it harder for the regime to ride out extended periods of severe strain such as were experienced in the years 1974-76. Nevertheless there remains a constant tendency towards an authoritarian style of rule and towards the consolidation of the bureaucracy and the political leadership as a new ruling class. There is still the risk that an ultra-left ideology will provide the rationale for authoritarian elite rule. The continued vitality of the democratic component within the ideology of the leadership has been a remarkable and distinguishing feature of Tanzanian socialism. The ability of the party and the leadership to translate that democratic commitment into vigorous participatory institutions will be one of the most crucial tests by which the longer-term success of this democratic socialist government is likely to depend.

NOTES

1 The critical view offered by Peter Gutkind, that the Arusha Declaration is an attempt to make Africans satisfied with their poverty, 'a doctrine,' he says, 'designed to achieve a take-off into sustained poverty,' is badly misconceived. There is no glorification in Nyerere of the hunger, the disease, and the poverty of his fellow Tanzanians. Far from it, there is a desperate search for a development strategy which will rapidly lessen their burden. He rejects, of course, the full paraphernalia of Western consumerism and he recognizes that its intrusion into Tanzania would generate appetites that could not be met and would contribute to the further deepening of class stratification. But this in no way entails an acquiescent attitude towards the real

233 Cranford Pratt

2 3

4

5

6 7

poverty in which most Tanzanians live. Claude Ake captures well this key distinction between those goods of which Tanzania needs more if she is to give her people 'good health, better food, drinkable water and clean, cheap houses' and those more superficial adornments of Western consumerism, the desire for which is a form of enslavement. For Gutkind's views, see 'Tradition, Migration, Urbanization, Modernity and Unemployment in Africa: The Roots of Instability,' Canadian Journal of African Studies, m, 2 (Summer 1969); Ake's views are in his 'Tanzania: The Progress of a Decade,' African Review, II, 1 (June 1972). Nyerere, The Arusha Declaration Ten Years After (Dar es Salaam 1977), p. 1 Amongst the most prominent of the commentators on Tanzanian affairs here placed in the 'Marxist socialist' category are Manfred Bienefeld, Andrew Coulson, Lionel Cliffe, John Loxley, Phillip Raikes, John Saul, Issa Shivji, and M. von Freyhold. Included amongst the 'democratic socialists' are Reginald Green, Goran Hyden, Helge Kjekshus, Bismarck Mwansasu, Jon Moris, Samuel Mushi, Cuthbert Omari, Cranford Pratt, Knud-Erik Svendsen, and, of course, Julius Nyerere. There are a few socialist commentators that are hard to categorize in these terms. There are others who are not socialists of any persuasion. These include some excellent scholars. However, for anyone interested in Tanzania's socialist strategy the debates between and within these groups of scholars, both of whom are socialist, are more important. Leys, 'The Over-Developed Post Colonial State: A Re-evaluation,' Review of African Political Economy, no 5 (Jan.-April 1976), p. 5. The Foster-Carter sketch to which Leys refers is a brief unpublished set of anti-Nyerere aphorisms. Issa Shivji, The Class Struggle Continues (London 1976), and John Saul, 'The State in Post-Colonial Societies -Tanzania,' in Ralph Miliband, ed., The Socialist Register, 1974 (London 1974) Shivji, The Silent Class Struggle (Dar es Salaam 1973), pp. 37-9. This overall position, though most closely associated with Shivji, has had a wider influence. See, for example, K. Ngombale-Mwire's two articles in Lionel Cliffe and John Saul, eds., Socialism in Tanzania, II, Policies (Dar es Salaam 1973), and M. Segall, 'The Politics of Health in Tanzania,' in J.F. Rweyemamu et al., eds., Towards Socialist Planning (Dar es Salaam 1972). See, for example, the titles by Justinian Rweyemamu, John Saul, and Cranford Pratt which are listed in footnote 2 in the Introduction to this volume. See, for example, O .W. Nabudero, 'The Political Economy of Imperialism,' Maji-Maji, no 24, Dar es Salaam, Nov. 1975, and Peter Meyns, 'Tanzania: The Struggle for National Independence and Socialism,' ibid., no 15, Aug. 1971.

234 Reflections of a democratic socialist 8 For good examples of articles in this general school of analysis, see Cliffe and Saul, 'The District Development Front in Tanzania,' African Review, no 2 (1972), and Cliffe, 'Ujamaa Vijijini and the Class Struggle in Tanzania,' in Cliffe and Saul, Socialism in Tanzania, 11. 9 A typical example of this high optimism, which is marked by a combination of enthusiasm and a lack of any detailed exposition as to how this transformation is to be accomplished, can be found in the final pages of M.A. Bienefeld, 'Planning People,' in Rweyemamu, Towards Socialist Planning. 10 See in particular John Saul, 'African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania,' in G. Arrighi and Saul, eds., Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York 1973), and his 'The State in Post-Colonial Societies.' 11 Kisenge, 'The Party in Tanzania,' Maji-Maji, no 4, Sept. 1971, p. 10 12 See in particular his 'The Nature of Tanzania's Political System: Issues Raised by the 1965 and 1970 Election,' parts 1 and 2, Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, v, 2 and 3 (July and Oct. 1972). 13 Nyerere's views on the importance of democracy during the transition to socialism are discussed in Cranford Pratt's The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945-68: Nyerere and the Emergence of a Socialist Strategy (Cambridge 1976), especially pp. 255-64 14 See, for example, Shivji, The Silent Class Struggle, and John Loxley and John Saul, 'The Political Economy of the Parastatals,' in East African Law Review, v, 1 and 2 (1972) . This second article is reprinted in revised form in the Review of African Political Economy, no 2 (Jan.-April 1975). 15 The ultra-left position on this question is developed in Henry Mapolu, 'The Organization and Participation of Workers in Tanzania,' in the African Review, 11, 3 (1972), and in Loxley and Saul, ibid. 16 The literature on the ujamaa villages is discussed in detail in Chapter 5 in this volume by Jonathan Barker. 17 This line of argument is to be found in A.J.M. van de Larr, 'Towards a Manpower Development Strategy in Tanzania,' in Cliffe and Saul, Socialism in Tanzania, 11, and also in his 'Arusha: Before and After,' in East African Journal, v, 2 (Nov. 1968), and in Segall, 'The Politics of Health.' 18 Quoted in Pratt, The Critical Phase, p. 261 19 For a discussion of these democratic socialist attitudes in the Tanzanian context, see Nyerere's introduction to his Freedom and Socialism (London and Dar es Salaam 1968), and also his 'The Supremacy of the People' and 'Freedom and Development' which are republished in Nyerere, Freedom and Development (London and Dar es Salaam 1973). The relevance and application of the democratic socialists' perspective of Tanzania is discussed at some length in Pratt, The Critical Phase, especially pp. 243-64.

235 Cranford Pratt 20 Nyerere, Freedom and Development, pp. 333, 184-6 21 This democratic single-party system is discussed in a good number of academic studies. See, for example, Lionel Cliffe, ed., One Party Democracy (Nairobi 1967), and Pratt, The Critical Phase, pp. 201-15. 22 See, for example, Saul, 'The Nature of Tanzania's Political System.' 23 Saul, 'The State in Post-Colonial Societies,' p. 367 24 Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, pp. 26, 32 25 This observation was made to the author in the summer of 1976. 26 The assessment of the mood and morale of the senior civil service contained in this paragraph and in the preceding one summarizes the author's impressions obtained during a research visit to Tanzania in the summer of 1976. 27 This answer was given by Nyerere in a question-and-answer session with Dutch students during a visit to Holland in 1976. 28 A particularly insightful analysis, written from a democratic socialist's perspective, of the Tanzanian strategy for the transition to socialism can be found in Samuel Mushi's 'Revolution by Evolution: The Tanzanian Road to Socialism,' PHD thesis, Yale University, 1974, especially chap. 10. 29 Harrington, Socialism (Boston 1976), p. 219. Harrington discusses the Tanzanian case specifically and with great empathy in his The Vast Majority (Boston 1977). 30 Moreover Parliament itself appears to be of declining importance. See Helge Kjekshus, 'Perspectives on the Second Parliament, 1965-70,' in the Election Studies Committee, University of Dar es Salaam's Socialism and Participation: Tanzania's 1970 National Elections (Dar es Salaam 1974). 31 See, for example, Paul Collins, 'The Working of Tanzania's Rural Development Fund: A Problem in Decentralization,' in A.H. Rweyemamu and B.U. Mwansasu, eds., Planning in Tanzania: Background to Decentralization (Nairobi 1974), and W. Meyer, 'Implementation and Control under Decentralization: Tanzania Rural Health Centre Programme,' University of Dar es Salaam, mimeo., 197 4. 32 Saul,' African Socialism in One Country,' p. 312 33 Goran Hyden has suggested that this style of leadership is a good deal more functional than it might at first appear. It is a way to generate interest, involvement, and commitment amongst ordinary Tanzanians. In a society that has not inherited a closely knit communalism and a willingness to sacrifice from a liberation movement and that wishes to avoid the coercive mobilization of its people, it has much to recommend it. See his illuminating 'We Must Run While Others May Walk: Policy Making for Socialist Development in the Tanzania-Type of Politics,' Economic Research Bureau, paper 751, Dar es Salaam, mimeo., 1975.

236 Reflections of a democratic socialist 34 Moris, 'The Transferability of the Western Management Tradition into the Public Service Sector: An East African Perspective,' paper presented to the International Conference on Management Education in Africa, mimeo., Nov. 1976

Contributors

Jonathan Barker is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He spent two years as a member of the Department of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam from 1970 to 1972. Jannik Boesen is a research officer at the Institute of Development Studies in Copenhagen. He did field research on West Lake Region in Tanzania for three and a half years between 1970 and 1975. Reginald Herbold Green has been at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Sussex, since 1975. He was before that for eight years economic adviser to the Treasury of the government of Tanzania. John Loxley is professor of economics at the University of Manitoba. He spent over five years in Tanzania working in senior positions in the National Bank of Commerce and the Institute of Management Training in Dar es Salaam. Adolpho Mascarenhas is professor of geography and director of the Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning in Dar es Salaam. Bismarck U. Mwansasu is regional development director in Moshi, Tanzania, and a former lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam. Ian Parker is assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto. He was attached to the National Development Corporation in Tanzania for three and a half years from 1968 to 1971.

238 Contributors Cranford Pratt is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He was principal of the University College, Dar es Salaam, from 1960 to 1965. He has returned to Tanzania on a number of occasions since for extended visits to pursue his research.

Index

Acquisition of Buildings Act (1971) 21 agricultural development 13, 25, 38-40, 80, 113-15, 140-2, 149; see also Ujamaa vijijini Ake, C. 233n Arusha Declaration (1967) 7-9, 78-9, 108,149, 195-6,210 autonomy, national economic 11-12, 34-9, 62-5, 79-82, 113-15, 223-5 banks, foreign commercial: role in colonial period 75-7; role after independence 76-9; nationalization of 35, 37, 82-3 Bienefeld, M.A. 234n Bienen, H. 170-1, 191n, 192n Britain, relations with 9, 35, 36 bureaucracy: at local level 118-19; efficiency promoted by 214; ideology of 141-2; as a separate class 7, 63-5, 73-4, 201; role and power of 138-43, 202-4, 212-15; see also Civil service Canada, relations with 35-6, 83-4 cashew-processing project 57-8

Chama Cha Mapinduzi (cCM) 15n, 188-91 China: relations with 35-6, 227; technical and capital assistance from 56-7, 224; example of 223 civil service: Africanization of 7, 33-4; competence of 35, 40-2, 228-31; organization of 6-7; salary levels in 12, 27-31, 85-6, 216-17; and socialism 7-9, 212-16 Cliffe, L. viii n, 106,114,170,197 consultants, use of 34 Coulson, A. 106-7, 109 crises management 40 crop authorities 139-40 Cunningham, G. 99-100 decentralization 14, 32, 89-90, 138-9, 218 development budget 80-1 development planning: control over Noc 53; inadequacy of 84, 140-1 Dumont, Rene 101, 106, 109, 115 economy of Tanzania: characteristics of 7-8, 19-20; crisis in 1973-75 14-15, 23, 38, 82, 90-1, 224,227;

240 Index dependent character of 34-7, 140-2; development of 38-9, 138-43; strategy for development of 12, 20-3, 32-42; see also Autonomy, Economic integration economic integration, national 32-3, 113-15, 203, 223-4 education: adult 22, 25, 34, 211-12; universal primary 22, 25-6, 217-18; educational reforms after 1967 13, 31, 217 efficiency in public service 40-2; declining after 1973 86-8, 228-31 Ellman, Anthony 99-100, 102 equality, promotion of 11, 12, 23-31, 216-18, 222-3 exchange controls 78 exploitation, control over 31 Feldman, David 101-2 financial institutions: role in colonial period 75-7; in the 1961-67 period 76-80; after 1967 81-91 passim five-year plan, second 53, 98, 114, 126,202 food: importation 80; price index 80 foreign aid 35-6, 79-84, 224 Foster-Carter, Aidan 194-5 fringe benefits 30, 85-6 Germany, relations with 9 government structure 6 Green, Reginald 43-5n, 101, 105, 106, 115 Gutkind, P. 232n Harrington, M. 215 health services 26, 31, 40, 217-18 Helleiner, G. 100-1, 105, 205 Hyden, G. 101-2, 105, 127, 235n

import controls on cars 31 income distribution 27-31 industrial strategy 32, 58-62, 202, 223-4 Institute of Development Management 34 Jamal, Amir 108, 205 Karadha (state hire purchase company) 83, 85 Kisenge, Nyelwa 10, 171, 198 Kivukoni College 181, 220, 222 KRUM report 229 labour-intensive projects 57-8 Land Bank 75, 76 leadership code 12, 186, 202 Leys, Colin 194-5, 196 Lofchie, M. 106, 107 Luttrell, W. 110-11 Malima, K. 226 manpower planning 33-4 Mapolu, H. 105, 106, 116, 226 Marxist critics of Tanzanian socialism 199-205; responses to 203-8; and vanguard party 208; view of bureaucracy 212 Matango, R. 107 Mazrui, A. 191n, 192n McHenry, Dean 102, 111, 116 meat packing industry 41 Miliband, Ralph 194 monetary institutions: colonial period 75-7; 1961-67 77-9; 1967 to present 79-88 Moris, Jon 229 Mozambique 227 Msuya, C. 205

241 Index Mushi, S. viii n, 103-6, 116, 235n Mwapachu, J. 105 Mwongozo 14, 87, 142, 187, 222 National Bank of Commerce 12, 41, 82; bonuses and privileges within 85-6, 222; decentralization of 89-90; efficiency of 41, 86-7; policies towards women employees 87-9; workers' committees within 87 National Co-operative Bank 78 National Development Corporation (Noc): evolution of 51-4; and foreign partners 60-2, 65-7; government control over 52-3, 67-70; and the public sector 51; industrial strategy, role of 58-62; and socialist development 62 National Development Credit Agency 78 National Executive Committee (NEC) of TANU, policy initiatives 172-3, 229 National Milling Corporation 37 National Provident Fund 78 National Small Industries Corporation 58 nationalizations: 1967 12, 51, 79, 81-2; 1971 21, 86; management agreements following 202, 225 non-alignment 35-6 Nkembo, D. 205 Nyerere, Julius K.: on the economy 37; on education 211-12; on party-government relations 172-80; on public discussion 42; on socialism 9; on the transition to socialism 22-3, 193, 208-9, 215-16; on ujamaa vijiiini 97-9, 102, 105-6, 109-112, 116, 125-7, 150; on a vanguard party 9-10, 172, 208-9; on villagization 148-9

Omari, C.K. viii n one-party system, democratic 6-7, 2C9-10, 211 Operations Dodoma, Handeni, and Rufiji 95, 98-9, 151, 156-7 participation: at local level 210-11; at national level 68-70, 210; obstacles to 211-21; promotion of, in government 218-19, in party 219-22; role of, in transition to socialism 11, 13-14; in ujamaa villages 132, 142, 150 peasants: official attitude towards 108-9, 143; and ujamaa 100-3, 205 political economy of Tanzania 19-43, 138-43 Post Office Savings Bank 75-6, 82 price control 30-1, 84 public sector 19-20, 50-2, 79, 139-40 radicalism, continued, reasons for 226-7 Regional Development Funds 97,218 rural development, see Agricultural development, Ujamaa vijijini Rweyemamu, A.H. viii n Rweyemamu, J. viii n, 226 Saul, John 73, 110, 170-2, 195-9 passim, 210, 226 savings: level of 39; extraction from countryside 141 scientific socialism 200, 208 self-reliance 11, 24-9; see also Autonomy Shivji, I. viii n, 6, 73, 7 4, 92n, 195-9

passim

social democratic perspective on Tanzania 208-25

242 Index social services 25-6, 203, 217-18 socialism: contradictions relating to 48-50; debate over, in Tanzania 3-4, 194-208; definitions of 4-6; see also Public sector, Nationalizations, Transition to socialism Standing Committee on Parastatal Organizations (scoro) 85, 217 State Trading Corporation 12, 37, 41, 228 Svendsen, K.E. 101,205 Sweden, relations with, 35, 83-4 Tanga Fertilizer Plant 54-6 Tanganyika African National Union hANu) 169-91 passim; branches in work place 188; elections within 184, 209; membership of 172, 186-7, 210; Nyerere's leadership within 225; participation in 219-22, 230-2; and public corporations 69; radicalism of 226-7; relations of, with government 20, 172-9, 213-14, 221-2; bureaucracy within 181-3, 185; supremacy of 169, 172-9, 187-8; structures within: branches 180-1, Central Committee 184-5, 221, National Conference 183-4, National Executive Committee 72-3, 186, 211, 221; as a vanguard party 9-10, 170-2, 198-200, 209-10, 220; and ujamaa villages 98, 186 Tanganyika Bank of Commerce 78 Tanzania Investment Bank 83 Tanzania Rural Development Bank 83,84,90 Tanzania Tourist Corporation 52 Taylor, Charles 4 taxation, incidence of 28-30, 39 technology, increasing local

competence 34 Tordoff, W. 174 transition to socialism: assessment of, in Tanzania 19-43 passim, 216-32; bureaucracy as obstacle to 73-4, 104, 118, 212-16; characteristics of 7-10; Chinese and Soviet experience, relevance of 65; contradictions within 48-50, 62-5; critics of Tanzania's 72-4, 194-203; democracy and 208-9, 215-16; industry's role in 70; Marxist critique of Tanzania's 73-4, 194-203; obstacles to 227-32; parastatal sector and 50, 79-82; social democratic view of 203-6, 208-25; strategy for 10-15, 20-45 passim, 72, 193 Ubungo Farm Implements factory 56-7 ujamaa vijijini 13, 26-7, 97-9, 125-9, 138-43, 149-51; and agricultural development 156-60; bureaucracy's role regarding 103-6, 131-2, 161-2; comments on 96, 100-6, 115-17, by production liberals 100-3, 107-8, 119-20, 205-6, by production socialists 103-6, 107-8, 119-20, 204-5; failure of 202-3; future of 158-63; incentives within 101-3; and national integration 114; policy regarding 13, 67-73, 97-9, 125, 149-51; precursors to 146-9; peasant elites within 103-5; property rights within 112, 117-18; selfgovernment of 118-19; social and organizational aspects of 109-13; skilled workers within 118-19; strategy regarding 127-9; statistics on 151-6; West Lake experience re-

243 Index garding 129-36; see also Villagization United States, relations with 36 urban-rural gap 24-5 van Arkadie, B. 205 vanguard party 9-10, 199-201, 209-10; see Tanganyika African National Union village managers 118 Villages and Ujamaa Villages (Registration, Designation and Administration) Act (1975) 99, 108, 110, 129, 163-4, 219 villagization 80, 99, 106-11, 111, 128-9, 151; and agricultural development 148-51, 161-2; coercion in implementing 106-8, 136, 157, 203-4, 206; in colonial and precolonial periods 146-8; Marxist and social democratic views on 106-8, 202, 206-7; participation in 163-4;

problems facing 158-63; scale of 111, 151-6; West Lake experience regarding 136-8 wage levels, rural and urban 24 West Lake ujamaa villages 129-38; bureaucratic domination of 130-3, 134; co-operation with establishment of 134-5; inefficiencies in 132-3; party's role in 133; peasant attitudes towards 132, 134-5; policies since 1973 136-8 Williams, David 5 women, role of: in agriculture 109; in financial institutions 88-9 Woods, R. 114-5 workers' councils 14, 68-9, 87-8, 142, 202-3, 222-3 workers' unrest 7 4, 202, 203, 223 World Bank 83-4, 106, 113, 115, 156, 159