Issue 6 cover
BRITAIN-TANZANIAN SOCIETY
Bulletin of Tanzanian Affairs No. 6 – July 1978
Contents
Extracts from a statement by President Nyerere
Tanzania’s Third Development Plan, 1976-80 – J. Roger Carter
Family Planning in Tanzania – Christina M. Nsekela
School and Agriculture in Tanzania – Sally Simpson
Review of Helge Kjekshus: Ecology Control and Economic Development – David Leishman
Graham Mytton – Digest of Tanzanian News.
Extracts from a Statement by the President Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, 8th June 1978.
I have been very concerned indeed about world reactions to recent events in Africa, and it seems to me to be necessary that I should make Tanzania’s position clear. For the events of the past few weeks have once again demonstrated that although our legal independence is officially recognised, our need and our right to develop our countries and our continent in our own interests has not yet been conceded in practice. The habit of regarding Africa as an appendage of Western Europe has not yet been broken.
Soviet Forces in Africa.
In Angola the M.P.L.A. did almost all the fighting against the Portuguese colonialists. As independence approached after the Revolution in Portugal, various Western countries – led by the United States of America – decided to try to prevent the establishment of an M.P.L.A. Government in that country. They conspired with South Africa, and gave under-cover finance and arms to rival nationalist movements which had previously been almost inactive. Faced with this conspiracy and the consequent attacks on Angola from South Africa and across the Zaire border, the M.P.L.A. Government sought help from those who had given support to the Movement during the independence struggle. Cuba and the Soviet Union responded to those requests. With their help the Angolan Government overcame the immediate military threat to its existence, pushed South African troops back across the border into Namibia, and pushed the F.N.L.A. troops back to where they had come from – Zaire.
Cuban troops are still in Angola; and the Soviet Union continues to give military assistance to Angola. The Angolan Government is forced to ask for this assistance to be continued because the threat to the integrity of Angola still exists. Only last month South African troops entered Southern Angola again, and inflicted heavy casualties upon Namibian refugees. UNITA continues to get outside support. There have been continual attacks made across the Angolan/ Zaire border by F.N.L.A. troops, who are financed and supplied with weapons by external forces and who operate with the active or tacit support of the Zaire Government. That all this is happening, is known to the Secret Services of South Africa, and of U.S.A., France, and some other western countries. It would not be happening without their connivance and their involvement. It would be incredible if the Governments of those countries did not know what their Agencies were doing.
The history of the ex-Katangese Gendarmes pre-dates the independence of Angola. It was not actions of the M.P.L.A. which took them to Angola; nor were they trained by M.P.L.A. They are a living reminder to Africa of the determined and shameless attempt by the West to dismember the former Congo (Leopoldville) in their own economic interests. When that attempt was defeated, some of these Gendarmes moved into Angola and remained there as refugees. Now things have changed; the west has a different view of Zaire and is using it to de-stabilise Angola. It would therefore not be surprising if Angola, on its part, felt forced to withdraw the restraints it had been imposing on those Zairean refugees in Northern Angola.
Whether such a policy of retaliation is correct or wise is a matter of judgment; it is nevertheless understandable. But one thing is clear. There is no evidence of Cuban or Soviet involvement in this retaliation. The U.S. State Department was at one time reported to have said as much; the Cubans have persistently and convincingly repudiated such allegations.
So Cuba and the Soviet Union went into Angola and are still in Angola for understandable reasons, at the request of the Angolan Government. There is no evidence at all that they have been involved, directly or indirectly, in any fighting within Zaire.
Cuban and Soviet Forces are also in Ethiopia, at the request of the Ethiopian Government. The reasons •for their presence are well known. They have helped the Ethiopians to defend their country against external aggression. They have not – and nor has the Ethiopian Government – engaged in any fighting outside Ethiopia’s borders. And there is some evidence to suggest that the Cuban Government at any rate makes a distinction between the fighting in the Ogaden and the fighting in Eritrea.
Apart from those two countries, where else in Africa are there Soviet or Cuban Forces? There are a few Cuban and Soviet Nationals, and a few Chinese Nationals, helping to train the Freedom Fighters of Southern Africa in the use of weapons Africa gets from Communist countries for the liberation struggle in Rhodesia and Namibia. Apart from vague generalities, and rumours based on the jackets people wear, there is no serious suggestion that these Forces are operating or stationed anywhere else in Africa.
It is, then, on the basis of Soviet and Cuban Forces in two African countries that there is a great furore in the West about a so-called Soviet penetration of Africa. And those Forces are in those two countries at the request of the legitimate and recognised Governments of the countries concerned, and for reasons which are well known and completely understandable to all reasonable people. Yet Western countries are objecting, and are holding meetings ostensibly about how to defend the freedom of Africa against what they call Soviet Penetration.
Let me make it quite clear. Tanzania does not want anyone from outside Africa to govern Africa. We regret, even while we recognise, the occasional necessity for an African government to ask for military assistance from a non-African country when it is faced with an external threat to its national integrity. We know that a response to such a request by any of the Big powers is determined by what that Big Power sees as its own interests. We have been forced to recognise that most of the countries acknowledged as World Powers do not find it beneath their dignity to exacerbate existing and genuine African problems and conflicts when they believe they can benefit by doing 00. We in Tanzania believe that African countries, separately and through the O.A.U., need to guard against such actions. But we need to guard Africa against being used by any other nation or group of nations. The danger to Africa does not come just from nations in the Eastern Block. The West still considers Africa to be within its Sphere of Influence and acts accordingly. Current developments show that the greater immediate danger to Africa’s freedom comes from nations in that Western Block.
A Pan-African Security Force.
It might be a good thing if the O.A.U. was sufficiently united to establish an African High Command, and a Pan-African Security Force. If, having done so, the O.A.U. then decided to ask for external support for this Force, no-one could legitimately object. But the O.A.U. has made no such decision. It is highly unlikely that the O.A.U. meeting in Khartoum will be able to agree unanimously on the creation of such a military Force, or – if it did – that it would be able to agree unanimously on which countries to ask for support if that was needed.
Yet until Africa, at the O.A.U., has made such a decision, there can be no Pan-African Security Force which will uphold the freedom of Africa. It is the height of arrogance for anyone else to talk of establishing a Pan-African Force to defend Africa. It is quite obvious, moreover, that those who have put forward this idea, and those who seek to initiate such a Force, are not interested in the Freedom of Africa. They are interested in the Domination of Africa.
It was from Paris that this talk of a Pan-African Security Force has emanated. It is in Paris, and later in Brussels, that there is to be a meeting to discuss this and related matters pertaining to the “freedom” of Africa. The O.A.U. meets in Khartoum in July; but we are told that African freedom and its defence is being discussed in Paris and Brussels in June.
There is only one reason why the idea of Europe setting up, or initiating, a Pan-African Security Force – or an African Peace Force – does not meet with immediate and world-wide amazement and consternation. It is the continuing assumption that Africa is, and must always remain, part of the West European ‘Sphere of Influence’. This assumption is hardly being questioned yet. Even some African states take it for granted.
We all know the facts of power in the world. But we cannot all be expected to accept without question this new insult to Africa and to Africans. We may be weak, but we are human; we do know when we are being deliberately provoked and insulted.
The French have troops in many countries of Africa. In Chad, in Western Sahara, in Mauretania, and now also in Zaire, French Forces are engaged in combat against Africans. France continues to occupy Mayotte. But there are no meetings in Washington, or even in Moscow, to discuss the threat to Africa’s freedom by the French Penetration of Africa. Nor should there be. But not even Africa, in Africa, discusses the question. The reason is very simple. It is the continued assumption that it is natural for French troops, or Belgian troops, or British troops, to be in Africa, but it is a threat for troops from any Non-member of the Western Block to be in ,Africa. A threat to whom? To African freedom, or to the domination of Africa by ex-colonial powers and their allies, operated now through more subtle means and with the help of an African Fifth Column? The answers to those questions are very obvious. There have been continued incursions by South Africa and Rhodesia into Angola, Botswana, Zambia, and Mozambique. The West has not shown much concern about these; nor have their new-found surrogates in Africa.
When the U.S.S.R. sent its troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 Tanzania was one of the many countries which protested. Is it expected that we should not protest when Western Powers send their troops into an African country? These ‘rescue operations’ almost always seem to result in the death of a lot of innocent people and the rescue of a Government. But that is apparently not regarded in Europe as interference in African affairs. Instead, the same country which initiated the military expedition then calls a meeting to discuss, they say, the freedom of Africa!
There should be no mistake. Whatever the official Agenda, the Paris and Brussels meetings are not discussing the freedom of Africa. They are discussing the continued domination of Africa, and the continued use of Africa, by Western Powers. They are intended to be, taken together, a Second Berlin Conference.
The real Agenda, inside and outside the formal sessions of these meetings, will be concerned with two things. It will be concerned with neo-colonialism in Africa for economic purposes – the real control of Africa and African states. That will be led by the French. It will be concerned also with the use of Africa in the East-West conflict. That will be led by the Americans. These two purposes will be coordinated so that they are mutually supportive, and the apportionment of the expected benefits – and costs – will be worked out. It is at that point – the division of the spoils – that disputes are most likely to occur.
But the costs may also be higher than the participants anticipate. Tanzania is not the only nationalist country in Africa. There are nationalists everywhere. Sooner or later, and for as long as necessary, Africa will fight against neo-co10nialism as it has fought against colonialism. And eventually it will win. western Block countries which try to resist the struggle against neo-colonia1ism need to recognise that it will not only be African countries which will suffer in the process.
Nor will the whole of Africa acquiesce in being used in the East-West confrontation. We are weak, but weak countries have before now caused a great deal of embarrassment and some difficulty for Big Powers. If the West wants to prove, either to the Russians or to their own people, that they are not soft on Communism they should direct their attention to where the Soviet tanks are, and the Soviet front-line is. They should not invent an excuse to bring the East-West conflict into Africa. For if they succeed in doing that Africa will suffer, and African freedom will suffer; but it may also turn out to be very expensive for those who choose Africa as another site for East-West confrontation.
The African people have the same desire as every other people to be free and to use their freedom for their own benefit. They have the same determination to work and to struggle to that end. They know that no-one else is interested in their freedom. This talk in Europe about a Pan-African Security Force is an insult to Africa, and a derogation of African freedom.
It makes little difference if the European initiators of this plan find Africans to do their fighting for them. There were Africans who fought with the colonial invaders; there were Africans who assisted in the enslavement of fellow-Africans; and there were Africans who fought against the freedom movements. But we ask those African Governments which may _have. agreed to participate in this plan to consider well be fore they go further. We have the O.A.U. With all its faults and its incapacities, it is the only Pan-African organisation which exists and which is concerned with African freedom. Do not let us split it – and Africa – between those who are militarily allied with the West and those who may in consequence find themselves forced to seek assistance from elsewhere against the African-assisted neo-colonialism.
Tanzania’s Third Development Plan, 1976-81 (1)
The Third Tanzanian Five Year Plan, which was recently published, contains much interesting information about the state of the economy and its prospects. It consists of four parts, viz. Part I: Targets and General Analysis; Part II: Regional Plans; Part III: Projects; and Part IV: Manpower Development. Though chronologically the third five-year plan for the development of Tanzania, it is in fact the first of its kind, having been produced entirely by Tanzanians and after protracted discussion at various levels. It therefore represents – so far as complex economic documents of this kind can represent – a sort of national consensus about the developmental effort and the allocation of resources in the next few years.
Strictly speaking, the Second Five Year Plan finished on 30th June, 1974, but in view of the economic situation following the oil crisis and the number of uncompleted projects, the period was officially extended for a further year – to 30th June, 1975. A further year was allowed to pass before the introduction of the Third Five Year Plan on account of the national preoccupation with the villagisation of the rural population and the programme for universal primary education (UPE). Another reason for delay not mentioned in the plan was doubtless the time occupied in activating the novel and complex machinery for formulating the plan on the basis of consultation at all levels.
The formulation of the Third Plan was entrusted in 1972 to a Planning Commission consisting of the members of parliament as representatives of the people, with the Prime Minister in the chair. The Commission was assisted by 18 sectoral committees each specialising in a different aspect of the economy, to which experts were attached. The secretariat for the Planning Commission and its committees was provided by the Treasury. A committee consisting of the chairmen of the sectoral committees sifted and reconciled the recommendations of the various committees before forwarding them for debate and approval by the Commission.
Experts were also sent to the Regions to advise on the formulation of Regional and District Plans on the basis of the widest possible consultation with the people. The various regional and district officials of Government and Party were consulted about the choice of projects to be implemented during the plan period and agreed lists of projects were forwarded to the Office of the Prime Minister and the Treasury for further processing and selection and for scrutiny by the Treasury in relation to the available resources and the capacity of the economy. In this way, in comparison with its predecessors, the Third Five Year Plan rested on a wide basis of consultation with the people of Tanzania.
The Plan aims at the fulfilment of four general objectives, viz. the creation of wealth, the building up of the economic infrastructure, the extension of the social infrastructure and the establishment of respect for hard work and self-discipline.
The economic targets of the Plan may be summarised by a declared intention to increase the Gross National Product (GNP) by an average of 6% per annum. This target compares with a planned annual increase of 6.7% in the First Plan and 6.5% in the Second Plan, but during the period of the First Plan the actual average annual increase was 5% and of the Second Plan 4.8%. The target figure for the Third Plan must therefore be seen as an ambitions, though not wholly impossible, figure. Its attainment depends on the standard of the administration of the Plan in all its aspects, the terms and conditions of international trade and the availability of external aid of the form and in the extent desired. The first and second of these conditions of success affect among other matters the timely availability of resources for development purposes, since the increasing complexity of the economy and tte interdependence of its parts calls for a nice synchronisation of production where the output of one sector (e.g. cement or fertiliser) is a crucial input for another (e.g. water development or agriculture); while the import of capital goods for development will depend both on the volume of exports and the prices that they are able to attract.
The actual growth rate so far during the period of the Third Plan, though commendable, has fallen somewhat short of the target figure of 6%; in the calendar year 1976 the rate of growth was 5.2% and according to the Bank of Tanzania there was ‘some moderation in economic activity’ in the middle of 1977. This means that it will be a hard struggle to keep up an average of 6% over the whole plan period from July 1976 to June 1981 and some shortfall in the full accomplishment of the planned targets seems not unlikely.
In the light of the policy of self-reliance, the Plan lays great weight on the importance of increasing the production of export crops and other materials to sustain the import of the materials and equipment needed for development. Income from traditional export products must be increased over the Plan period by almost 100%, while a still greater increase is required out of the earnings of miscellaneous exports, such as timber, tyres, batteries and clothing. Judging from recent performance, this must represent a considerably enhanced production and export effort.(2) The Plan recognises that any balance of development requirements will have to be financed out of foreign loans and aid, but emphasises nevertheless that the main effort must go into trade and not aid. However, the Plan calls for continuing international cooperation with the aim of increasing the volume of loan money on easy terms for developing countries, seeking grants wherever possible and aiming at a general reform of the world economy.
An interesting passage relates to incomes policy, which is integral to the plan. The policy implicit in the Arusha Declaration of narrowing income differences between town and country and between different occupations is to continue, as greater equality of income is considered fundamental to a country based on ‘ujamaa’ principles. But under the Third Plan, while increases in real incomes will have to be coordinated with increases of GNP, consideration will also be given to extra payments based on labour productivity. It is also recognised that the stabilisation of commodity prices is closely bound up with the implementation of an incomes policy. Consequently, emphasis will be placed on the regulation and stabilisation of prices in order to enable industry to produce wealth under conditions of greater productivity.
The Plan envisages the fixing and explaining of baseline labour costs against which the performance of labour can be measured. The agreement of the Union of Tanzania Workers is to be sought in the fixing of grades and to be registered with the Permanent Labour Tribunal. Incentive payments out of the profits of production are to be considered. Finally, there is to be a change in the labour laws so as to emphasise duties and not, as hitherto, only the rights of labour.
Part IV of the Plan gives details of a manpower survey. Manpower planning, though inevitably approximate and prone to error, is an important tool in economic and social planning at the present stage of development, as it helps to ensure both that the essential skills are forthcoming in approximately the right numbers at the right time and that scarce resources are not dissipated by excessive or premature production in any category. Although manpower demand estimates are increasingly uncertain as the economy becomes more complex and transfers of function more numerous, they can still serve a useful purpose by indicating the order of magnitude of demand.
The shortcomings and limitations of manpower planning are well illustrated by comparing the projections in the Second Plan (1969-1974) with the number actually employed in 1975 as ascertained for the purposes of the Third Plan. The divergencies between Second Plan projections and the results of the Third Plan manpower survey are considerable and disclose a growth in employment(3) considerably greater than anticipated. Thus the Third Plan survey reveals a category A employment 32% higher than the Second Plan Projections. Of this excess, 9% is accounted for by the employment of 538 more non-citizens than anticipated in the Second Plan, an interesting indication of the growing diversity of the economy. Ascertained category B employment is 12% higher than the Second Plan Projections and category C employment no less than 148% greater. In particular occupations the differences are also considerable. Only 58% of the projected veterinarians (other than university teachers) were in fact employed. On the other hand, 53% more professional accountants were in post in 1975 than envisaged by the Second Plan.
These figures illustrate the great difficulty of producing manpower projections with any pretensions for reliability, even in a comparatively simple economic structure, partly due to the known fallibility of economic forecasting, of foreseeing changes in employment patterns and of making estimates of productivity changes. In particular, they show how infirm is the basis they provide for educational planning unless checked and revised by trend studies and supplemented by information from other sources.
The Third Plan as a whole contains a large amount of interesting detail on the various sectors of the economy which cannot be appraised without much more information, or summarised in a short article. The total investment envisaged by the Plan over the five-year period is shs. 30,218 million (c. £2,158 million), of which shs. 26,604 million (c. £2,054 million) is for ‘national’ projects, that is, projects developed from the funds of the central government, or national parastatal bodies, and shs. 3,615 million (e. £258 million) is to be devoted to projects financed by the Regions. Of this total capital expenditure, some shs. 21,268 million are to come from the Treasury (including funds from external aid sources) and shs. 8,951 million from specialised domestic banking institutions and other non-governmental sources. So far as the Regional projects are concerned, these extraneous sources will in the main consist of the free labour and other contributions of the villagers themselves. Of the investment in Regional projects, 29% will go into productive enterprises such as village industries, 47% will be used to improve the social infrastructure and 24% to build up the economic infrastructure. The large preponderance of investment in the social infrastructure is mainly due to the national effort to provide primary education for every child reaching school age (7 years old).
This development plan is a remarkably thorough inventory of intentions. the fulfilment of which to a marked degree depends on world factors beyond the central of the Tanzanians. Nevertheless, it is not an unrealistic plan and it provides a framework for orderly progress based on a clear perception of priorities. It may appear that the list of projects in Part III of the Plan is bound to become increasingly unrealistic during the years of the plan due to implementation delays, changes of policy, new needs and opportunities and other influences. But in fact the government also publishes an annual plan in which such changes are recorded and the parameters of the Five Year Plan are updated. Thus, development planning in Tanzania is a continuing process based on a general stocktaking at five year intervals and annual adjustments to take account of changing circumstances. It is a sobering thought that even the complete implementation of this plan will not markedly close the wealth gap between rich and poor countries.
With such solemn considerations in mind, it is incumbent on the rich countries to do everything in their power by way of aid, and still more by way of trade on a rational basis, to help countries like Tanzania to reach their self-imposed targets.
J. Roger Carter
(1) Mpango wa Tatu wa Maendeleo ya Miaka Mitano ya Kiuchumi na Jamii 1 Julai 1976 – 30 Juni 1981. Kitabu cha Kwanza – Shabana na Maelekezo (Sehemu ya Kwanza), Mipango ya Mikoa (Sehemu ya Pili): Kitabu cha Pili – Miradi-: Kitabu cha Tatu – Mpango wa Maendeleo ya Watumishi (1975-1980) (Mpigachapa wa Serikali, Dar es Salaam, 1978).
(2) Unfortunately, the state of the world economy and poor prospects for market penetration do not encourage hope of implementation on such a scale.
(3) In this calculation, ’employment’ is assumed to be the number of people in post and ignores vacancies. It is true that vacancies represent not only transfers, but also advertised posts unfilled because there is no suitable person available. In the Third Plan, 31% of the Category A posts are shown as vacant, but this figure must include aspirations in addition to true vacancies, as it is hardly conceivable that the money could be made available to pay additional salaries on this scale.
The concept of family planning in Tanzania is not new. What is new are the contraceptive methods which are given as part and parcel of the Maternal and Child Health services in a medical setting. Child spacing, as we call it in Tanzania, has been practised from time immemorial throughout the length and breadth of Tanzania. Thus, traditional child spacing was practised to enable mothers to breast feed their babies over a long period of time (say, two years and over). This practice of breastfeeding was underpinned by the belief that if a mother conceived before her previous baby was two years old, the baby’s growth would be deterred and the mother’s health would be endangered. Breastfeeding was advocated among all the tribes because it was religiously believed that if a child continued to breastfeed when its mother was expecting another baby before the baby had been weaned, the baby was likely to fall victim to some incurable disease. Such beliefs were responsible for the evolution of instructions in child spacing knowledge and personal hygiene among many of the tribes before and after young people got married.
Most of the child spacing practice was done through abstinence among couples. In polygamous marriages, the gap between children was very often even wider. The traditional child spacing practice still exists among some of the rural population. This, in a way, has greatly helped the acceptance of modern child spacing practice. Thus, the older generation looks at UMATI (Chama cha Uzazi na Malezi Bora cha Tanzania), the Family Planning Association, as a movement which has been established to revive Tanzania’s old but good traditional practices.
Initially, the Family Planning Association of Tanzania, which is now known as UMATI, was started by a few individuals interested in the wellbeing of mothers and children and the nation as a whole. Among them were doctors, housewives and nurses. It was started as an Association for Dar es Salaam. It was therefore known as the Family Planning Association of Dar es Salaam until 1967 when the association was registered as a national organization. The Association was charged with the responsibility of supplying contraceptive materials and of providing family planning clinical services in voluntary agency hospitals and clinics. Today child spacing services are available to all women who attend MCH clinics throughout the country.
UMATI is a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (I.P.P.F.). Apart from subscriptions from its members and fund-raising efforts, UMATI receives most of its assistance from IPPF. As a voluntary organization UMATI depends on donations and voluntary support for the success of its activities. Much of what has been achieved is due to the voluntary spirit of many individuals and organizations such as IPPF and OXFAM. The Ministry of Health directive, issued in 1969 to the Regional Medical Officers requesting them to render child spacing services as part of Maternal and Child Health services, accelerated the demand for both contraceptive services and training of personnel to provide services. Most of the clinical services became the responsibility of the hospitals and clinics directly receiving both supplies and advice. This expansion of work brought about a new demand for skilled workers to manage child spacing clinics. The Association, consequently, found itself responsible for starting a training programme for paramedical personnel from government and voluntary hospitals and for the association’s own needs. The training programme was set up in 1971. Initially, it was only possible to conduct a two weeks in-service training course for nurse/midwives and medical assistants. Now such training takes four weeks, and only a limited number of trainees (9-12) can be taken at a time because of the limited facilities for theory and practical training activities. To train their students in these skills the Medical school of the University of Dar es Salaam and the School of Nursing (in Dar es Salaam) make use of the Association’s training programme facilities. Once a year, the Association conducts a training course for tutors from nursing schools in the country. The Association also works closely with the Institute of Social Welfare in training matters.
The extension of family planning work has been possible through the involvement of government and voluntary agencies in clinical services. The Association too has found it necessary to extend its educational programme to the remotest areas possible. This has been one of the main objectives since 1972 when the Annual General Meeting of the Association stressed the importance of the element of responsible parenthood. At that meeting the role of the Association was expanded to include spacing of births and caring of children, thus advocating and stressing the responsible parenthood element as well. Since then the name of the Association, Chama cha Uzazi Bora, had to be changed to Chama cha Uzazi na Malezi Bora. In implementing and stressing responsible parenthood other aspects had to be included in the day-to-day activities of the Association’s staff as in the teaching/training material. Advice on nutrition, breast feeding, immunization, personal hygiene, family welfare, sanitation and environmental care became important parts of the teaching of child spacing work in Tanzania. An integrated approach to family planning is therefore in practice in Tanzania.
In order-to create awareness throughout the country, the Association, over the past six years, worked hard to form branches all over the country to enrol volunteers (since the Association cannot afford to recruit enough paid staff) and supporters at grassroot level. Until December, 1977, there were about 60 district centres and more than 300 village branches. The Association has 22 UMATI educators (Walimu wa UMATI) in all the regions. The formation of branches has also created an understanding and appreciation of UMATI’s activities among the local communities as well as leaders at regional and national levels. Leaders and members at UMATI district, regional and national levels act as good ambassadors of the Association. These volunteers are supported by full-time UMATI educators in the regions. The educators conduct educational programmes as well as coordinating UMATI activities with those of the government, the party and other voluntary agencies. Much of the Association’s work very much depends on the hard work and dedication of volunteers at all levels as well as the support and understanding and appreciation by both the government and the party.
In 1973, UMATI went through a critical but important phase of development when it was severely attacked by the local press through ignorance. The Association was eventually saved by the then party’s (TANU) pronouncement at its National Executive meeting in September, 1973, when the party issued a directive that the work that was being carried out by UMATI was very important for the development of the nation and that it should be encouraged. The Ministry of Health was called upon by the party to help the Association in its endeavours as much as possible. Thus, following this party pronouncement in 1973, more and more of the child spacing clinical services became the responsibility of the Ministry of Health activities. For this reason child spacing services now are seen as vital services for mothers at their daily comprehensive MCH clinics. As stated earlier, after the government inclusion of child spacing services in their MCH programme since 1974, UMATI expanded its activities and acquired a new role in one way or the other by putting emphasis on education and training. The following are the main activities of UMATI:
(i) Information and Education to the general public; through seminars, printed material (leaflets, posters, pamphlets)radio and films.
(ii) Training of medical and paramedical personnel.
(iii) Distribution of contraceptive supplies and equipment (until such time that the government is able to get its own supplies).
Through its educators in the regions, UMATI plays an active part in training Maternal and Child Health Aids in the 18 national training centres of the Ministry of Health established throughout the country. The training is given to primary school leavers and lasts 18 months. The training instructions include antenatal care, immunization, family planning, nutrition evaluation, general health education, simple deliveries, malaria chemo-suppression and simple treatment of disease. The main objective of this kind of training is to equip trainees with knowledge and skill that will enable them to provide basic health primary care in villages. In this way UMATI’s work is a necessary input in rural development which is Tanzania’s main development strategy in her war against poverty, disease and ignorance among her people. UMATI is therefore playing her part in our national development effort.
UMATI provides services that are not readily available and therefore supplements and catalyses the nation’s effort to eradicate these important enemies of the nation which militate against the improvement of the quality of life among our people. UMATI, therefore, is seen as an important agent for our national socio-economic development effort.
Christina M. Nsekela
January to June, 1978. Compiled by Graham Mytton.
The University
Students in Dar es Salaam held a demonstration in March in protest at the pay increases and fringe benefits awarded to M.P.s and Ministers. The pay increases which came into effect on January 1st were not officially announced for two months. M.Ps’ salaries went up to She 3,000/- per month. In addition, M.Ps who retire or are defeated after a five-year term are now entitled to a Sh. 45,000/- tax tree gratuity. Those who serve for two or more terms will receive a government pension. Ministers are now exempt from water and electricity bills, and get a house servant paid for by the state. The students objected to all this and marched carrying banners. The demonstration was reported to be peaceful, but the police used batons and tear gas to break it up. Students were arrested for organising an illegal demonstration. They said they had been refused a permit. President Nyerere had offered to meet the students but they decided to go ahead with their march. 367 of them were arrested and sent home. They included Emmy Nyerere , an engineering student and son of the President. In May, 327 of the students were allowed to return to their studies; 19 of the others will be allowed back next year. The remaining 21 “ringleaders” will be barred from further education for five years.
Release of Detainees.
On 26th April President Nyerere ordered the release of 13 detainees to mark the 14th Anniversary of the Union. They included Mohammed Babu and three others who, like him, had been condemned to death in absentia for their alleged part in the killing of Sheikh Karume in 1972. The other three were Capt. Hemed Hilali Mohammed, Col. Ali Mahfoudh and Mrs. Tahir Ali Salum. Their release was widely welcomed in Tanzania. After his release, Babu denied vehemently that he had anything to do with Karume’s death. He said there was no plot. The killing was the sole responsibility and action of the man who fired the shot, who wanted to avenge the death of his father.
Over the next two weeks 30 other detainees were released, including some members of Southern African liberation movements. 10 prisoners on Zanzibar sentenced during •the treason trial for their alleged part in Karume’s death were released. 14 others had. their sentences cut. Earlier, three men under sentence of death on Zanzibar had their sentences commuted.
Major Appointments.
The names of the secretaries-general of the newly restructured national organisations were announced in February:
Alfred Tandau – Union of Tanzanian Workers.
Rajabu Heri – Youth Organisation.
Maimu Hassan – Union of Tanzanian Women
Athumani Juma Mhina – Tanzania Parents Association
Daniel Makemba – Union of Cooperative Societies.
All the above are automatically members of the National Executive Committee
of the Party (Chama cha Mapinduzi, CCM).
Following these appointments there was a minor Cabinet Reshuffle:
Alfred Tandau – Minister without Portfolio
Daniel Makemba – Minister without Portfolio
Samuel Sitta – Minister of Works.
Other junior appointments were also made on 27th February.
Transport.
Continued port congestion in Dar es Salaam has been a major headache and has contributed to certain strains in Tanzania’s relations with Zambia. In March 35,000 tonnes of Zambian imports were said to be blocked. No-one seemed to agree who was responsible. Zambian sources said that the fault lay with Tanzanian dock workers. Tanzanian sources blamed poor documentation and even a deliberate usage of port facilities for cheap storage. Zambia has been getting special concessionary rates for the use of Dar es Salaam and the Transport Minister, Mr Jamal, announced that these concessions would be withdrawn, an announcement that caused anger in Lusaka. Meetings at a high level seem to have been going ‘on almost continuously since February. It seems that much of the cause of the delays is Tazara’s limited capacity. More rolling stock is needed.
Meanwhile, improvements to the rest of the railway system go ahead. Britain has made a grant of a further £4 million (£2 million last year) to help improve railway facilities. The Tanzania Railway Corporation has ordered 400 wagons, 13 coaches and 14 locomotives. The Corporation has also ordered new ships for Lake Victoria.
The Budget.
For many wage earners, the main interest in this year’s budget was the reintroduction of tax relief for families with children. The Tanzanian Government plans to spend She 12,300 million in the year 1978-9. She 6,700 of this is on recurrent expenditure and She 5,600 is for development. 37% of the development budget will go on economic infrastructure, 29% on productive capacity and 29% on social infrastructure.
Commercial and Industrial News.
At the beginning of June, the Government announced the expulsion of Lonrho because of the company’s activities in Rhodesia and South Africa. Lonrho’s activities in Tanzania have been cut down over the past eleven years due to nationalisation, but its involvement in tea, cotton and beer production and vehicle distribution contributed £1 million of the company’s £90 million profits last year. Announcing the expulsion of Lonrho, the Tanzanian Government made an outspoken attack on “Tiny” Rowland, Lonrho’s chief executive, who pretended to be a friend of Africa while he meddled in Southern African affairs. Lonrho is to receive £1 million in compensation for the assets of the Central Line Sisal Estates, nationalised in 1967.
Reports from the Tanzanian news agency say that the country’s sisal industry is threatened with collapse because of excessive administrative costs. Reports say that the Tanzanian Sisal Authority was paying some salaries up to one month late and had large outstanding debts to some suppliers.
The newly constructed Kibo paper mill has started production. Radio Tanzania announced in May that the mill would use as much as 90% recycled waste paper and 10% imported pulp. It would save the country an estimated She 7 million foreign exchange per annum.
There has been growing concern about low industrial productivity in many sectors. Prime Minister Edward Sokoine announced that disciplinary committees would be set up in all places of work to try to improve output. New laws would be introduced to underline responsibility and discipline at work.
Education.
Parliament has called for Swahili to become the medium of instruction at post-primary levels of education. A committee has been formed to look into the possibilities of carrying out this policy. It met first in June. Swahili will be the medium of instruction in geography, history, arithmetic and domestic studies in Form 1 classes from next year. The plan is that the use of Swahili will gradually spread upwards to cover all subjects up to University level.
President Nyerere has called on school teachers not to overdo education for self-reliance. He expressed concern that in some schools the pupils’ work in the fields had caused classroom work to suffer.
Agriculture.
Zanzibar and Pemba are to expand clove production by 50% over the next three years. She 40 million is to be invested.
The current plague of locusts afflicting the Horn and parts of Kenya has also been reported in parts of Northern Tanzania.
There was a severe fall in tobacco production in Iringa due to heavy rain and labour shortages caused by the cholera outbreak. A one million kilogram shortfall led to a loss of She 25 million in foreign exchange earnings.
Corruption.
President Nyerere has made a number of important speeches on this subject. Speaking to police officers in January he said that 1978 would be a year to fight corruption in the country, especially in the administration of justice. The police and the courts had lost their good name by becoming involved in corrupt practices. He announced he was taking personal charge of an anti-corruption squad which would seek to root out corruption at all levels. In February he told a party rally that drastic measures were necessary because Tanzania had lost its reputation as a nation free from corruption.
Health.
Tanzania has been affected by a major epidemic of cholera which broke out last November. It is believed to have come from a pilgrim returning from last year’s Haj. In March all primary and secondary schools in Dar es Salaam were temporarily closed, as were all open-air markets. The brewing and selling of local beer was banned and severe restrictions were placed on movement outside the city. No-one knows for .certain how many have died to date, but the official figure of over 400 is thought to be an under-estimate. The latest area to be affected is Kigoma and the disease has spread across Lake Tanganyika into Zaire and also into Burundi. Mercifully, the Minister of Health has recently reported that the outbreak is now virtually over and that only a few cases remain.
Archaeology.
There was considerable excitement at the discovery by Dr Mary Leakey of a set of four million year old footprints preserved in some volcanic ash at Laetolil. They are thought to have been made by an ape-like creature about “four feet high with a small brain area and big jaws and big teeth”. In June, the Tanzania National Scientific Research Council announced the discovery by Dr Peter Schmidt of one of Africa’s earliest Iron Age industrial sites near Kemondo Bay in West Lake Region.
Geology.
Tanzanian geologist J.J. Mwabene announced that he had found a third deposit of natural gas in Tukuyu. The deposits he had discovered were commercially exploitable and were 98% pure.
Telephones.
Since the closure of the Kenya-Tanzania border and the break-up of the East African Posts and Telecommunications Corporation, most international telephone calls have still been routed via Nairobi. But now Tanzania is to buy a satellite communication station which will end the country’s dependence on Kenya for its external telecommunication services. The Government has signed a $3 million contract with a Japanese firm to build the station as well as a new telex exchange. Both will be operational next year.
Graham Mytton.
(First published in Polestar)
Agriculture is an integral part of each school day in Tanzania. Through it the children learn self-reliance.
At a signal from the headmaster the class stands up. It is Monday and about twenty e1even-year-01d boys and girls wait quietly in front of wooden benches. To one side maize cobs are piled high and I notice a bundle of white cotton. The children have grown these on the school “shamba” or plot of land.
The cotton will be sold to buy materials for the school and the maize will be eaten. There are no school meals provided by someone else. If the school. or village do not produce food, then there is none.
The children learn the skills of farming and gain experience by helping to decide how to use the money for the good of the school as a whole; for new writing books, pencils or pens, a coat of paint for a classroom, another blackboard or repairs to the roof.
Ninety per cent of these children leave school at the age of fourteen but they will face no gigantic leap into the world of work. They have been working as they learn and are familiar with the kinds of decisions they will have to make as adults.
Only the scale of those decisions will have changed. Proceeds of cash crops, which in this particular village of Lukobe are cotton, sunflowers and castor oil, may be invested in a well, or inoculation of the livestock against tsetse fly, or in improvements to a local road.
Ten days later, we are in the fertile North. Two secondary schoolboys have left their lessons to conduct us round their school farm.
The maize stands tall and green, quite unlike the parched, yellow stalks in the arid plains below. Coffee bushes are dwarfed by the peppering of giant shade trees needed, even in this lush hill district, to keep the fruits cool.
In an adjacent field is a small nursery garden where seedlings are nurtured. Many of these have died, explains one of the boys ruefully, because during the summer holidays no one watered them. Across the track, is a small herd of cattle, about half a dozen, and a wooden enclosure built by the pupils.
Like all secondary schools, this is for boarders. It lies in Lyamungu in the northern hills of Tanzania approaching Mount Kilimanjaro. The academic standards are high. All instruction is in the medium of the pupils’ third language, English (Swahi1i being the second language and a tribal tongue the first).
From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., apart from a break at 11 o’clock for porridge, a European style curriculum is followed. From 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. each day all pupils work in the farm.
They are fifteen per cent self-sufficient at present in terms of food production and cash income from the sale of coffee fruits, and are aiming at twenty-five per cent self-sufficiency in the near future.
School and work in Tanzania: a pile of maize and a bundle of cotton in a primary school classroom in the desperately dry interior; a fully-fledged coffee farm and small-holding at a secondary school in the fertile North. Both indicate a means of offering every child the dignity of work that makes an actual contribution to their country.
Sally Simpson.
Helge Kjekshus, ECOLOGY CONTROL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN EAST AFRICAN HISTORY – The Case of Tanganyika 1850-1950, Heinemann Educational, London, 1977, £2.80.
Rarely have I read a book on African history which has left me with such a feeling of new and refreshing awareness on matters of the rural environment. Have no doubts about it, Dr Kjekshus’s book is in every way a very important contribution to the debate on Tanzania’s pre-colonial past and the impact of colonial rule. Dr Kjekshus, a past Senior Lecturer in Political Science in the University of Dar es Salaam, has written a social history of Tanganyika from the middle of the 19th century, when European descriptive travel writing really got under way, to the post-World War IT period. ‘The study seeks to restore the people as agents of African initiatives. There will be no great men … focus is on man as a doer, husbandman, industrialist and trader. In these initiatives the individual takes on the anonymity of mere numbers … ‘ But it is not simply social history for its own sake, rather a treatise refuting with admirable style and startling evidence those hoary old sentiments about the parlous state of the African on his land and the sure benefits to be derived from contact with European enterprise and initiative, sentiments so beloved of early colonial administrators, settlers and missionaries alike, and still so prevalent as an attitude today.
Dr Kjekshus first considers population levels over the period from 1850 to 1890 and tones down the sensational reports of mass death resulting from internecine warfare and slave raiding. With a stable if not slightly increasing population over the period, he then shows how, by the 1880’s, if European accounts are to be accepted, the African had assumed virtual mastery over his environment through a very precise and profound knowledge of his surroundings. Strikingly, he had outwitted tsetse in a way no outside agency has yet achieved, tor all Europe’s scientific knowledge. The author states that ‘the pre-colonial economies developed within an ecological control situation – a relationship between man and his environment which had grown out of centuries of civilizing work of clearing the ground, introducing managed vegetations, and controlling the fauna. The relationship resulted in an “agro-horticultural prophylaxis”. (Ford 1971), where the dangers of tsetse fly and trypanosomiasis were neutralized and “Africa’s bane l1 (Nash 1969) was made a largely irrelevant consideration for economic prosperity. The contrast to the twentieth century, when the tsetse fly has been “one of the major obstacles to economic development” (Ormsby-Gore 1925), is clear’.
After examination of the ‘supports’ of the ecologically-controlled environment, both industrial (iron, salt and cotton manufacturing) and commercial (intra- and inter-tribe trade), Dr Kjekshus then most lucidly traces the break-down of this man-controlled system in the 1890s, from these causes: first, and in a devastating way, Rinderpest; then, in quick succession or concurrently, smallpox, a sandflea plague, red locusts, drought, and the advent of Deutsches Schutzgebiet, meaning food requisitions, constant warfare and the ‘scorched earth’ policy.
What did all this mean to the African husbandman? The loss of his ascendancy over the land and his submission, unwillingly-and with resistance, to colonial tampering with his way of 11fe on the land and on what and where he should provide his labour for the regime. The author only briefly deals with the effects of this tampering (which since Independence has expanded to become full-scale ‘social engineering’), but then the wealth of writing on this subject, from Ren6 Dumont to William Allan (1965) hardly necessitates detailed treatment in this book, though what has been done in case study form for Central and Southern Africa (ed. Palmer & Parsons 1977) should now be taken up for East Africa, with Dr Kjekshus’s treatise as a backdrop. From Richard Burton’s descriptions of ‘comfort and plenty’ in the l860s and l870s, we have come a century later to precariousness and uncertainty in man’s relationship with the land. In one decade, 1890-1900, ‘the conditions for economic life deteriorated and brought many tribes back to a frontier situation where the conquest of the ecosystem had to recommence’. In most parts of Tanganyika this reconquest has yet to begin, and, as Dr Kjekshus implies in passing, it may be that settlement in permanent villages, as it is now being furthered, will not achieve that reconquest.
Dr Kjekshus relies for most of his evidence concerning conditions in the last half of the 19th century on descriptive material from early European, especially German, travellers. As this material is central to his argument, it would be intriguing to know whether oral and archaeological research could help substantiate the evidence so that we have a more profound knowledge of the period with which to compare the later scene. Of equal interest would be to know how many of the causes of ecological collapse in East Africa in the l890s, and what other ones, were applicable to British Central Africa, Katanga and Portuguese East Africa, an area where European colonisation began in earnest at about the same time. An interesting comparison could be made between the extent of disruption caused on the one hand by Arab penetration from the northern east coast, Portuguese penetration from the southern east coast and Boer penetration from the south.
I commend Ecology Control to all concerned with rural development in black Africa – it should be required reading for anyone working in the rural field and especially those technical experts and their administrative counterparts in government who have tended to see ‘rural progress’ (and I do not absolve myself) as some inanimate scientific exercise, perhaps hedged about with doctrinaire ideological principles, and still too often larded with an intolerance of and arrogance at what is seen as the backwardness of rural peoples.
David Leishman.
References:
Ford, J. The Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971.
N’ash, TAM. Africa’s Bane: The Tsetse Fly, Collins, London, 1969. Report of the East African Commission, Cmd. 2387, chaired by W. Ormsby-Gore, HMSO, London, 1925.
Allan W. The African Husbandman, Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, 1965.
Dumont, R. has written numerous books and reports to Governments in Africa on the question of agricultural development, perhaps his most famous book being False start in Africa, Deutsch, London, 1966, and an important report on Tanzania’s agricultural development published by the Tanzanian Government in 1968.
Palmer, R. and Parsons, E.J. (eds.), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa, Heinemann Educational, London, 1977.