WHO ARE YOUR ROLE MODELS?
Asked, during an interview in AFRICAN CONCORD (February 1 1993) who were his role models, Chief M K 0 Abiola, one of the two candidates standing in the elections for the Presidency of Nigeria, selected two leaders. The first was John F Kennedy – for his charisma, his commitment and candour.

And second was President Nyerere. What qualities do you admire in him? he was asked. “His incorruptibility, his great belief in his ideals (although he hung on to them too long even when he knew that they were not working) … here is a President who would gladly fly in an economy seat, a man of God who believes that life should be a life of service. I met him at the summit of First Ladies in Geneva. He is a man of tremendous generosity. I will always remember him for the encouragement he gave me that day; he told me that I would soon not be just a chief but the most powerful of all chiefs. I am talking about someone whose attitude and whose policies to life and to people I want to emulate”.

‘IN A FEW YEARS DODOMA SHOULD BE A GREEN TOWN’
‘In 1973’ wrote Abdulrahman Said Mohammed in the April-June issue of the BBC’s FOCUS ON AFRICA MAGAZINE, ‘Tanzanians decided to move their capital inland from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma. But progress has been slow and not a single Embassy or High Commission had yet moved to Dodoma … The city is four times bigger than it was ten years ago and now boasts a population of 200,000 people … the Gogo people were the original inhabitants but few now live in the town centre. They have been displaced by the Chaga and Rangi, Indians and Arabs who dominate commerce and trade …. despite the Government’s apparent lack of enthusiasm, industry has been attracted to Dodoma. There are two bottling plants producing different kinds of wine, red port and Imaga brands. There are two printing presses … More than 5,000 new homes have been built … no buildings more than three stories high … emphasis on the use of burnt brick and tiles … and a modern sewerage system has been provided …. Millions of trees have been planted, creating a micro-climate, improving the rains and the scenery and reducing strong winds…. But, in spite of all this, Dodoma’s future is gloomy. As a new multi-party era dawns, more and more politicians contend that the transfer of the capital from Dar es Salaam is too costly for a country as poor as Tanzania’.

INDIRECT RULE
Reviewing a book called ‘Enigmatic Proconsul: Sir Philip Mitchell and the Twilight of Empire’ in the DAILY TELEGRAPH Elspeth Huxley wrote: It was in Tanganyika that (the Colonial Governor) Mitchell made his name as an exponent of indirect rule the system by which the colonial power governed through indigenous institutions such as chiefs, their councils of elders and so on. Education was his other priority. He concentrated on teaching an elite fitted to take over an eventual western-type democratic government. But when a hand-picked African elite did emerge, its members turned on their chiefs and elders and indirect rule passed into history’.

“TEA FORESTS RATHER THAN TEA BUSHES”
The problems involved in rehabilitating tea at the Eastern Usambara Tea Company’s Kwamkoro and Bulwa Estates were described by Judith Gerrardon in the CDC MAGAZINE No 2 1992. ‘During the 20 years prior to the Commonwealth Development Corporation’s arrival in 1988 the estates had been allowed to deteriorate. According to Estate Manager Chris Mselemu, during the period of parastatal management they had tea forests rather than tea bushes. The mountain road was impassable and the factories were run down. The workers were paid erratically. Now, four years later, it is hard to believe that so much has been achieved. virtually all the fields have been weeded and production has quadrupled ….. the road has been rebuilt … a satellite dish provides television for the first time in the workers recreation hall. … a government primary school is being built and a college for 400 was due to be opened in late 1992 ….. ‘but renovation is a slow process … it can sometimes be more expensive than starting again …. there were serious labour problems at the beginning, as, after 20 years of state ownership, the people in the area did not believe the new management would be any different from the old …… now 40% of the labour force is from the surrounding area ….. ‘

‘THIS MADDEST OF PURSUITS’
Martin Cropper, reviewing a book called ‘Hearts of Darkness’ by Frank McLynn in the SUNDAY TIMES had much to say_ Extracts:- ‘ … the pious and cyclothermic Livingstone; the brilliant melanothobe Burton; the height-challenged Stanley; the unspeakable John Hanning Speke who could hardly face dinner without first laying waste to the embryos of pregnant females he had slaughtered ….. What were these men doing in Africa? Suppressing the slave trade? But they inadvertently opened up new routes for the Arabs.: even the Royal Navy antislavery warships in the Zanzibar roads were supplied by slave labour. Spreading Christianity? But “Saint David” Livingstone himself never made a single permanent conversion. Spreading civilisation? Well, yes – civilisation as understood by the purveyors of firearms … The sheer captiousness of the great explorers, exacerbated by paranoia-fomenting malaria, beggars belief … (the book) concentrates on the pre-colonial actualities of this maddest of pursuits …. ‘

PRIVATE INITIATIVE, PUBLIC APATHY
Under this heading AFRICA EVENTS (March 1993) wrote about the ‘accelerated pulse of private activity in Tanzania pounding the economic arteries of the country …. on a scale unheard of six years ago’. ‘A mushroom carpet of new up-market houses is sweeping across empty lots of land around Dar es Salaam. Two-legged mobile stalls, in the shape of teenage boys, parade the streets, their outstretched arms each carrying half a dozen shirts of so on steel wire hangers, looking like walking urban scarecrows … 3 , 500 vehicles are imported every month, the bulk turning into taxis, minibuses and light goods transporters: …. in the outskirts of the town, drive-in roadside market gardens vie with developers for vacant niches of land: … the unemployed and the underpaid and the budding entrepreneurs are all jostling for release and fulfilment. It is no easy task. It would have been a damn sight easier if government played its part … but …. poor roads, telephones not good enough.. erratic power supply, suicidal Bank credit (30% interest) ….. and the most damaging aspect of official lethargy is the heightened intensity of bureaucracy and behind it the corruption … ‘.

TURNED INTO SEMI-DESERTS
Efforts over many years to curb environmental degradation in the Bariadi district of Tanzania have failed and some areas have turned into semi-deserts according to an article in DOWN TO EARTH (December 1992). They failed because they ignored the traditional knowledge of the people. The authors of the article praised what they described as the former sophisticated system of governance in the villages: one institution was the dagashida – a men-only community assembly that meets once or twice a year to formulate customary laws and to settle issues. The colonial state and later, the independent government, brought about a diminution in the authority of the dagashida but it survived because it retained power in two areas the state did not control – regulating the occult and organising defence against cattle raiding. At recently revived meetings of the dagashida the district authorities were called on to stop issuing permits for charcoal makers to cut trees, ensure that the people collaborated in the digging and maintaining of wells, restricting bush fires and so on. However, the authors noted that village leaders and petty politicians were beginning to show resentment. The author of the article concluded that we do not know where all this will lead to’.

CURBING THE PRESS
NEW AFRICAN (April 1993) quoted President Mwinyi as stating that “All the newspapers are against us. They have been calling us names until they have exhausted their bad vocabulary. We won’t tolerate further invective”. Shortly thereafter the Swahili newspapers MICHAPO (Palaver) and CHEKA (Laughter) were banned.

“CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN IS THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO”
The son of the mountaineer Chris Bonnington was recently found not guilty of a £10,000 burglary (DAILY TELEGRAPH January 12). Speaking of his vast relief Mr Bonnington (Sen.) said that he had taken his son, on bail awaiting trial, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. “It is technically an easy mountain … but it was a rich and very good experience. Having something like this hanging over you is not pleasant … climbing a mountain is the best thing you can do. It focuses your mind on getting to the top” . The son is a musician with the pop group ‘Puro Sesso’ (Italian for ‘Pure Sex’) .

DOCTOR OF LAW FOR AN ALUMNI OF MAKERERE
President Museveni of Uganda awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) on Mwalimu Nyerere at Makerere University on January 29 1993. He gave five reasons for the award Nyerere’s support for the liberation struggles in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the welding of Tanzania into one united people, his clean leadership, his crusade for human development in the Third World and, of course, as most Ugandans remember, his being instrumental in the removal of Idi Amin Dada in 1979. But, as AFRICA EVENTS (March 1993) pointed out, it was ironical that, of the two previous similar awardees, one was none other than Idi Amin himself!

TANZANIA WITHDRAWS FROM THE WORLD CUP
Tanzania has withdrawn from the World Soccer Cup because of financial problems. NEW AFRICA (March 1993) stated that the team had no hope of qualifying after its 3-1 defeat by Zambia. Most of the players in the Zambia team perished in an air crash off Gabon at the end of April on their way to play Senegal.

SMUGGLING
TIME MAGAZINE published a lengthy cover story under the title ‘The Agony of Africa’ in its September 7th issue. On East Africa it wrote ‘Trade between Kenya and Tanzania is supposed to be closely regulated. At Namanga on the border, there are police, customs and immigration posts on either side …. but the boundary does not physically exist. Tanzanian instant coffee is smuggled into Kenya. Tanzania produces fresh milk that is sold in sachets but it has a short shelf life so Kenyan ultra-heat-treated milk is smuggled into Tanzania. Tanzanian gold, diamonds and emeralds come across the line; state controls on mining in Tanzania have made smuggling the export route of choice ……’

WITH HINDSIGHT
Would he, now that he was in retirement, and with hindsight, have done things differently, Mwalimu Nyerere was asked in a lengthy interview published in Volume Number 1 of AFRICA FORUM. “In the basic things, I would not change anything” he replied. “I do not think I would change the Arusha declaration. With hindsight, I would have tried to implement it differently. On nationalisation, either I would have nationalised more carefully or taken joint ventures with the owners, rather than nationalise outright”. On rural policies Mwalimu would have toned down ‘Siasa ni Kilimo” (Agriculture is Politics), the rallying cry of the Iringa Declaration that led to villagisation. “I would have tried to develop agriculture differently. Agriculture is very difficult to communalise. I would have emphasised the family but encouraged the people to work together. We wasted too much energy trying to develop community farming. We could have been more relaxed about it… but the object would have been exactly the same….”.

In his retirement Mwalimu was said to go every day to his farm, to inspect his cattle (most of them retirement presents from grateful citizens), work with a hand hoe, keep fit by walking ten miles some days – he dislikes an unfit appearance and has often told off officials who developed beer guts ….

ZAMBIA PULLS OUT
After failing to take off as scheduled on April 1st this year as scheduled, African Joint Services which was being planned as the forerunner of a regional airline of the Preferential Trade Area (PTA) for Eastern and Southern African States, has received a jolt according to the October issue of AFRICAN BUSINESS. Zambia, which had been one of the founder members with Tanzania and Uganda, has withdraw because of economic constraints. New partners are now being sought.

TANZANIA COMING INTO ITS OWN
In a lengthy and well illustrated article in the November 1992 issue of its publication HIGH LIFE, British Airways gave an update on safaris in Africa. ‘Tanzania’ the author wrote, ‘for so long overshadowed by Kenya’s booming safari trade, is at last coming into its own. Certainly, there is nothing to beat the spectacle of the wildebeest migration in the vast Serengeti plains. The greatest wildlife show on earth. I was there in February at the start of the rains when the plains are green and the wildebeest – all 1.2 million of them – were massed in the south of the park. It is an extraordinary sight. Most of the calves are born in the space of a couple of weeks. The day I arrived I saw only a handful. By the end of the week the plains were alive with gangling new-born babies ….

TANZANIA PLANS AN ENVIRONMENT HOUSE
Tanzania’s Minister for Tourism, Natural Resources and the Environment was quoted in the January 1993 issue of AFRICAN BUSINESS as having announced that the government is planning to establish an Environment House to accommodate all non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) involved in conservation.
The aim was to ensure more efficient coordination and use of common facilities. He made the announcement when welcoming Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, founder President of the World Wide Fund for Nature, who was in the country to inaugurate Tanzania’s first forest park – the Udzungwa Mountains National Park in Morogoro Region.

TAARAB MUSIC
‘As the Kiswahili language links Uganda, Kenya and
Tanzania, the Taarab music of Zanzibar links ancient customs and modern behaviour’ wrote Graeme Ewens in a book quoted in the December issue of AFRICA LIFE. ‘The music grew from women’s wedding music (first recorded by Siti Binti Saad in 1928) to today’s large orchestras. The classic Swahili top song is ‘Malaika’ recorded by the singer Miriam Makeba. This aside, however, East African music has not spread like other styles. Instead, it has been dominated by waves of Zairean influence…..

SEED FROM THE LIVINGSTONE TREE GERMINATES
110-year old seeds from the tree under which the heart of the explorer David Livingstone was buried have been germinated at a school in Kent, according to the DAILY TELEGRAPH (October 5). The seeds were from among several brought to Britain as souvenirs by one of the parents in 1882 and stored in a cardboard box in the school’s archive room. The Scottish explorer had been found dead by his servants in May 1893 at Ghitambo in what is now Zambia. They removed his heart and viscera in order to embalm his body and buried them in a tin box under a mapundu tree. His body was later brought to England for burial in Westminster Abbey. Livingstone’s niece was a pupil at the school. The seeds have been planted in the school greenhouse and the ones which germinated were growing during the summer by six inches a month but the Headmistress fears that they will soon outgrow the greenhouse and she is looking for someone to adopt the trees.

NOT OVERLY PLEASED
According to an article by Hans Bakker in a recent issue of the JOHANNESBURG STAR the Tanzanian leadership is not overly pleased with the end of the cold war and the beginning of what is referred to as the ‘New World Order’. It quoted President Mwinyi as saying that Africa had become the loser. “To us it remains a new order. Order in the real sense of order. We have to obey orders. In the past, when we were given orders by one side we could always find refuge in the other. But now … we have to obey orders whether we like it or not. At present, with commodity prices continuing to fall, we have no alternative but to go with our caps in hand and ask for aid….”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Mwalimu Nyerere in an article he wrote in the GUARDIAN (November 16) ‘The market has become religion’ he wrote, ‘and the money speculators have become the leaders of the world. So we have a ‘New World Order’….. there are no signs of a (real) New World Order. What we have is a world dominated and ruled by the wealthy and the strong…. basically international affairs are conducted in accordance with the law of the jungle, where might is right….’.

FOOTBALL VIOLENCE WITH A DIFFERENCE
According to the DAILY TELEGRAPH (September 7) football violence took a new turn in Tanzania recently. Not fans v fans, not police v fans, but police v players. When Milambo players disputed a referee’s decision in the game against Simba, 50 policemen intervened, giving some of the footballers a severe pasting. The goalkeeper fractured his knee and a defender suffered a serious rib injury. An MP told Parliament that the players should be paid compensation for the ‘cruel’ actions of the police.

THE BIGGEST STEEL PILING JOB IN EAST AFRICA
The COURIER, in its September-October issue gave considerable prominence to an account of the many European Community projects in Zanzibar. These include a US$ 31 million project for rehabilitation of the ports of Malindi in Zanzibar town and at Mkoani, Pemba. The government hopes that the completed port works at Malindi, which include demolition of the old wharf, the construction of new west and north wharves and the construction of a new container storage area of 5,500 square metres, will facilitate plans to make it into a free port. The depth of water at Malindi after dredging is now from 7.5 to 11.5 metres compared with only 4 metres before the rehabilitation. For the first time, ocean-going vessels will be able to sail direct to the two islands thereby reducing transit times, eliminating lighterage charges and saving the expense of transhipment in the port of Dar es Salaam. A total of 543 steel piles were driven 60 metres deep through the ocean floor at Malindi. Each pile was filled with reinforced concrete and had to accept a theoretical load of 200 tons. This had to be done after a soil investigation revealed that it would be impossible to construct the deck by drilling boreholes into the ocean floor since the coral limestone would not be able to sustain the pressure. British contracts engineer, John Appleby, said that the works at Malindi represented the biggest piling job ever carried out in East Africa.

The EC has also financed the rehabilitation of the Mnazi Mmoja Hospital in Zanzibar (built in 1927) and Chake Chake Hospital in Pemba (built in 1914).

The EC has provided US$ 336,000 for urgent repairs to the House of Wonders (built in 1870) in Stone Town and the restoration of the Old Fort.

The EC has also financed (US$ 11.5 million) the rehabilitation of the north feeder road in Pemba which runs for 38 kilometres from Maili Tano to Konde.

COOPERATIVE ACCOUNTING
The journal of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants, CERTIFIED ACCOUNTANT, in its October issue featured Tanzania in text and illustration in recounting the experience of VS0 volunteer Aileen Lyon who worked for three years at ‘one of the largest cooperative colleges in East and Central Africa – the Cooperative College at Moshi’. Here she taught a tertiary course leading to an advanced diploma.

‘MIRACLE TREES’
The Editor of the TROPICAL AGRICULTURE ASSBCIATION NEWSLETTER (December 1992) has described a ‘treasure hunt’ under way at Mbeya for ‘miracle (coffee) trees’ that do not appear to suffer from two major diseases affecting coffee in the region – Leaf Rust and Coffee Berry Disease. One clue to the source of the disease resistance found in the miracle trees (some of which have been found on Kilimanjaro) is the elongated shape of the berries.

DAR ES SALAAM THE BASE?
Dar es Salaam was mentioned on the front pages of several South African newspapers almost every day during December 1992. This followed attacks resulting in the deaths of white people by what was described as the ‘Dar es Salaam based African People’s Liberation Army (APLA) – the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) which was believed to have associated itself with the attacks. The Johannesburg CITIZEN quoted the PAC as stating that APLA was controlled from Dar es Salaam. However, in spite of several attempts, South African journalists were unable to obtain a response from the PAC’s office in Dar es Salaam. The Johannesburg STAR subsequently reported that strong statements had been issued by the OAU, ANC, and SA Communist Party condemning statements reportedly made by APLA cadres, declaring war on whites.

WORLD CUP
The December issue of NEW AFRICAN gave the latest results in the preliminary rounds of the 1994 World Cup. There were some surprises. Burundi beat Ghana 1-0. Niger held the African champions Cote d’Ivoire to a goalless draw and, in group H, ‘Tanzania and Madagascar slugged out a dour 0-0 draw’.

‘MISSIONARIES WILL ALWAYS BE NEEDED’
When I asked Archbishop John Ramadhani if missionaries were still needed in Tanzania he replied that they will always be needed because Christians need to be constantly reminded that they are a worldwide Church and, as partners, have much to learn from one another”. So wrote Andrew Ashton in the GUILDFORD DIOCESAN HERALD (November) after a visit he paid to St Raphael’s Hospital in Korogwe.

STAYING TRUE TO PRINCIPLES THAT INSPIRED A CONTINENT
Writing in a ‘Tanzanian Special Report’ in THE GUARDIAN (May 21 1992) Brian Cooksey pointed out that Tanzania is one of the last four counties in the world to retain socialism as its official creed. Although the National Assembly had recently passed legislation for multi-party government, proposals to remove all reference to socialism from the constitution had been roundly defeated. A decade of pressure from the World Bank and Western donor nations had so far failed to persuade Tanzania to ditch former President Nyerere’s collectivist ideology. For years his distinctive brand of African socialism had inspired millions of the continent’s poor and oppressed. One of the ironies had been that, until the early 1980’s, Western donor policy advice – the World Bank included – had been almost entirely supportive of the statist policies of the Nyerere years. With capitulation to the Bank and the IMF, Tanzania’s radical international reputation had declined and interest in Tanzania’s development model had waned.

AN OVERSEAS BRANCH OF THE CCM?
AFRICA EVENTS (July 1992) quoted CCM Party Secretary General Horace Kolimba during a speech given on June 11th at the Tanzanian High Commission in London as saying: “The work place must remain a place of work , Including this mission”. In the past, he said, the High Commission had been considered as an overseas branch of the (CCM) Party. “Not any more, from July 1st” he went on. “No party will be allowed to have any branches in any place of work” .

TWO FREE PORTS
Zanzibar President Dr Salmin Amour was reported in the August issue of AFRICAN BUSINESS to have announced that the islands are to establish two free ports – one on the West coast of the main island and the other at Micheweni in Pemba, two sites where virtually no economic activity is going on at present .

IN THE BEST SENSE UNIQUE
‘This novel (whose Swahili title is ‘Bwana Myombekere na Bibi Bugonoka na Ntulanalwo na Bulihwali’) is in the best sense unique, Never before was a novel of its kind been written in Africa and never again can such a book be written.’ With these words the WESTDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK (West German Radio) revealed that a novel about early life in Ukerewe written by the late Aniceti Kitereza and already published in Swahili and English (the latter by the Tanzania Publishing House) has now been published in part (the first of two volumes) in German. (The remarkable story of how the book came to be written and the large number of persons and agencies involved was given in Bulletin No 14 in 1982 – Editor).

THE ONES THEY LEFT BEHIND
In introducing to its readers a new African-Russian Society designed to help the children of African fathers and Soviet mothers who are still in Russia (the oldest are 26 because the Soviet Union began a large scale scholarship programme in the early 60’s) the BBC magazine FOCUS ON AFRICA recently featured 13 year-old Maria Ferdinadova Balige. Her Tanzanian father had eventually been deported from the Soviet Union to Tanzania for having overstayed on a vacation in Sweden. He had spent a clandestine year in Leningrad with his Soviet wife and baby. Maria, a promising athlete, had had to be withdrawn from her gymnastics school complaining that her fellow Russian pupils had begun to hate her when she started coming top in most of the exercises. “They called me names” she said. “Obeziana (monkey), black paint, chocolate, black sea …..”

TANZANIA AND SOUTH SOUTH COOPERATION
Pointing to recent visits to Tanzania by Indonesian President Soeharto and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, AFRICA ANALYSIS in its June 12 issue reported on Tanzania’s ‘dynamic policy to reactivate Afro-Asian solidarity … The new South South focus is expected to result in joint ventures . . .. already Malaysia is helping with a palm tree project in Kigoma and discuss ions are under way with Indonesia on gas exploration’. President Mwinyi was said to be taking a keen interest also in regional conflict resolution. Because of its relative political stability and geography” Mwinyi had been able to successfully mediate between Burundi and Ruanda and between Kenya and Uganda and had played a pivotal role in efforts to revive East African economic cooperation.

NOT GEARED TO TOURISM
“I travelled around Pemba in the local covered, but open sided ‘buses’• wrote Frank Nowikowski in a full page art1cle on Zanzibar in the BUENOS AIRES HERALD (March 1 1992). “I asked for directions to a nice sandy beech … but such a concept did not seem to be understood …. In the main town Chake Chake there is one small hotel with five rooms . In the other two settlements on the island there are identical hotels, even down to identical wall clocks in identical positions, behind identical reception desks ….. Pemba is not geared to tourism” .

BELIEF SYSTEMS OF THE TANZANIAN PEASANTRY
As part of a supplement on Human Development in the June 1992 issue of AFRICA EVENTS Prof Sulaymen Nyang, Director of the African Studies Centre of Howard University, Washington DC, gave his views on what he described as the’total failure’ of Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa policy. ‘I am inclined to make a tentative conclusion’ he wrote ‘that a significant part of the failure was the coerced villagisation .. Unwilling to pay adequate attention to the belief systems of the diverse ethnic groups of Tanzania … President Nyerere’s ilks wittingly or unwittingly committed a serious blunder … the separation from their (the peasant’s) ancestral lands could not be compensated by creature comforts identified with this illusive stage called development … perhaps the fate of Ujamaa could have been very different .. . if a programme of effective social psychological mobilisation (had been) mounted by the government ‘.

COFFEE TO JAPAN
Reporting on a recent visit to Japan by members of the Tanzania Coffee Marketing Board the JAPAN TIMES recently explained that Japan is ranked second to Germany as far as the trade value of coffee imports from Tanzania is concerned. Demand for Kilimanjaro coffee was stable in spite of increasing imports from other countries such as Kenya.

IS KAMBONA TANZANIAN?
‘It is ludicrous for anyone inside the Tanzanian ruling elite to suggest that (former Tanzanian cabinet minister) Oscar Kambona should be any other than a Tanzanian by birth’ wrote a reader in the June issue of NEW AFRICAN replying to an ellrl1er article 1n which a Tanzanian had been quoted as saying that he was originally from Malawi. ‘Mr Kambona, who was once the number two in the Tanzanian leadership hierarchy and a crown prince to Dr Nyerere, had dedicated his early political life to the fight for Tanzania’s independence. How can anyone doubt such a man’s patriotism? .. The Government should rehabilitate Mr Kambona and incorporate his party into the new political life of the country’ the reader concluded.

The LONDON EVENING STANDARD (August 14) published a letter from Mr Kambona in which he stated that he wished to join those paying tribute to the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Sir Robert Muldoon, who has just died. Kambona wrote that it was Sir Robert, in a humanitarian act, who had used his influence to bring about the release from detention in Tanzania in 1978 of his two brothers, Otini and Mattiya.

MONEY RELATIVELY WELL SPENT
Writing in a recent issue of the IRISH TIMES Peadar Kirby criticised in some detail Ireland’s aid programme in Tanzania – a programme which takes a quarter of Ireland’s total aid budget. During recent years the Kilosa District Vocational Training Centre at Mikumi had taken 40% of this annual budget which, last year amounted to £2. 4 million. ‘It is an impressive campus of which any Irish town would be proud’ he wrote. 73% of the first output of trainees have been placed in employment which is good by Irish standards …. Compared to larger aid programmes Irish taxpayers’ money seems relatively well spent … but what isn’t disputed is that the Irish Aid Programme is now left with a Centre too costly for Tanzanians to maintain themselves. A plan to get the Tanzanians to cover 60% of the costs by 1993 has been shelved in favour of 1996 . … the haphazard nature of the Irish Aid Programme and the mistakes made with Mikumi point to a major weakness – it is administered by diplomats who are rarely left long enough to build up expertise in development issues …’

DEBTORS TO THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
An article in MOSCOW NEWS quoted in the July issue of ‘ New African’ described how the Russian Federation, groaning under a huge external debt, is demanding payment of some 14 billion convertible roubles (£804 million) owed to the former Soviet Union by various African countries. A table listing 32 African debtor countries had Tanzania in the sixth position (after Angola, Algeria. Zambia, Libya. and Mozambique) with debts of 295 million roubles for military assistance and 34 million roubles for economic assistance.

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE IN SHINYANGA
In one of a number articles on the Rio Earth Summit in the May issue of AFRICA EVENTS Belinda Coote quoted a Shinyanga social worker as explaining the role of cotton in degrading the soil. ‘When people first started growing cotton it was relatively well paid. They were able to buy cattle with the proceeds but this led to overgrazing. Then they began to use tractors to prepare the land for cotton. This meant that larger areas were cleared and trees uprooted. Now there is less rainfall 1n the area. Farmers can no longer grow maize so have switched to sorghum. Because there is little wood left for fuel they have to use cow dung and cotton stalks which would otherwise be left to fertilise the land. The result is severe soil erosion and declining soil fertility’. Thus, the author wrote, Shinyanga’s farmers were caught in a vicious circle. ‘Cotton production is one of the very few ways they have of earning money, yet by growing it they further degrade the area’s fragile soils . As a result, yields decline . . . Shinyanga’s cotton industry illustrates the complex link between trade, poverty and environmental degradation.’

THE LAST GREAT UNTESTED NICKEL BELT IN THE WORLD?
In what was described in the July issue of AFRICAN BUSINESS as a milestone in Tanzania’s drive to secure foreign investment the magazine revealed that the government had signed an agreement with Kagera Mining Company, a subsidiary of Sutton Resources of Canada which would provide mining exploration and development options to the company for an area of 25,400 sq kms in the Kagera Region . The agreement represents a follow-up to exploration in a corner of the region, Kabanga, where the nickel deposit is estimated to contain 40 million tonnes, grading 1.05% nickel, and also cobalt and copper.

MAANDISHI YA KIAFRIKA (AFRICAN WRITING)
This is what its inventor, Shiyana Saleh Mandevu, a 58-year old peasant, poet and former truck driver, calls his new Swahili script according to an article in NEW AFRICAN (July). His writing was said to be rather like Pitman’s Shorthand with Arabic influences. It was his collection of ancient objects bows, arrows, clay pots and other handicrafts – which inspired him to devise the new script. Two horizontal bows with their strings facing upwards mean ‘baba’ (father), two traditional stools read ‘mama’ and so on.

NYERERE ATTACKED
Anthony Daniels (the author of the book ‘Filosofa’s Republic’ based on his experiences as a doctor in Tanzania and reviewed in Bulletin no 36) launched an unusually vitriolic attack on Mwalimu Nyerere in the DAILY TELEGRAPH on July 3, 1992. He wrote: ‘Present-day reality has an autosatirical quality about it. How else is one to account for UNESCO’s recent award to ex-President Nyerere of Tanzania of the Simon Bolivar Prize for services to freedom, independence and the dignity of peoples. (The award of US$25,000 was shared with Burmese Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi; the jury said in its citation that Nyerere had worked tirelessly in the struggle against poverty, disease and ignorance; it took note of ‘the ethical ideal of honesty that personifies Julius Nyerere’ – Editor).

Daniel’s article went on: ‘Nyerere strutted and fretted his hour (or quarter of a century to be precise) upon his own small stage (Tanzania) and forced millions of people from where they were living, herding them into collectivised villages so that they could come under the control of his Chama Cha Mapinduzi .. . . not only did the Swahili Stalin get away with it but he received the bien pensant of Europe even as the huts of the recalcitrant peasants were burnt down …. Nyerere was not entirely original in his ideas … he received a Fabian training at Edinburgh University but his road to Damascus was actually the road from Peking airport to Peking. Mao arranged for a couple of million helots of welcome to wave flags at him … it turned his head and all that was needed to complete the catastrophe were a few economic advisers from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University ….

…. AND PRAISED
AFRICA EVENTS Zambian reader Jimmy Mdluli in the July issue compared President’s Kaunda and Nyerere. President Kaunda had eliminated all opposition and the only people he had genuinely attempted to groom as his successors had been his own sons. By comparison, when Tanzania’s first President (Nyerere) stepped down, he had left a couple of obvious successors whom he had thoroughly schooled in politics and statesmanship.

ACHINGLY BEAUTIFUL
Writer Jim Berry used these words to describe the Selous Game Reserve in the DAILY TELEGRAPH ON July 25th. ‘ Much about the Selous is unexpected ‘ he wrote. ‘Despite being Africa’s largest wildlife sanctuary it is also one of the least known and least visited. Its 2000 sq miles make it almost the size of Ireland … within its perimeter there are three separate ecological entities whereas the – admittedly smaller – Serengeti National Park cannot accurately boast one …. this vast area was named after the celebrated Frederick Courtney Selous, a towering figure among early white hunters … he was killed by a German sniper near Beho Beho. One afternoon we walked the few miles to where he fell. Old cartridge cases and other rusted military paraphernalia still litter the overgrown trenches. Selous’ grave, marked by a marble plaque set in a simple concrete slab, stands nearby ….

LADY CHALKER FIRES BACK
Lady Chalker of Wallasey, Britain’s Minister for Overseas Development, replied robustly in the SPECTATOR (May 9 ) to an earlier article attacking foreign aid which had been sceptical about the reality of the southern African drought. The article had spoken about Tanzania earning twice as much through foreign aid as it did through exports and of the lack of incentive for Tanzanians to grow exportable crops in a hot climate – only to be paid a fraction of their worth’ when you can go to Dar es Salaam, sit in an air conditioned office and lay your hands on untold dollars by bureaucratic intrigue’. Lady Chalker wrote to the editor that she really could not decide whether it was his arrogance or ignorance which appalled her the more. She pointed out that the article was out of date and listed the numerous changes that had occurred during recent years in aid policy.

THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KARUME
In 8 cover story on Political Assassinations in Africa AFRICA EVENTS (August 1992) went into some detail about the assassination (while he was playing dominos) of the late President Karume of Zanzibar on April 7, 1972 . ‘By no means’ said the article ‘was the assassin, Lt Humud Muhammed Humud , a lone player. He had accomplices at the scene who were subsequently either gunned down by the security forces or committed suicide. Humud died on the spot in circumstances that are still not clear … the Government (had) insisted that the assassination was part of a plot to overthrow it. But Humud had had a personal motive … his father had been arrested a few months after the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 and, while Humud was training later in the Soviet Union he had been told that his father had been executed … he had vowed revenge ‘. But there had been political factors also. By 1972 the revolution hed degenerated into a tragic farce – gross abuses of human rights, political killings, a curious system of people’s courts, forced inter-marriages , a declaration by Karume that there would be no elections for fifty years …. Karume had become an embarrassment to Nyerere and a danger to the future of the Union .. . ‘ . The blood of Humud and his colleagues had not been shed in vain, the article concluded, as it had enabled Nyerere to subsequently consolidate the Union through the joining together of the TANU and CCM parties, the neutralisetion of those who considered themselves to be Karume’s legitimate heirs and the subsequent far-reaching constitutional changes and liberalisation which had followed under Zanzibar Presidents Jumbe and Mwinyi.

SOMETHING GOOD HAS HAPPENED
AFRICA EVENTS had a six-page special feature on Tanzania in its March 1992 issue. In the introduction it wrote that ‘Informed Tanzania watchers … point to fresh sprigs sprouting off the economy, distinctly hinting that a new spring of surging prosperity is finally approaching. Economic growth, for example, has regained its lead over population growth. Standards of living, long frozen, are stirring towards modest improvement. Record export crops are reaching outlets on upgraded roads. Donor confidence and foreign investor interest are both on a cheery upturn. Monopoly politics is giving way to reforms which should stiffen up the benefits of this economic change. In broad measure, the sense that something good has happened is fair enough. Equally fair must be the sense of optimism that tinges the future. However, Zanzibar might turn out to be a gadfly ….

TANZANIA LIFTS CURBS
The Johannesburg WEEKLY STAR (April 1, 1992) announced on its front page that Tanzania’s Foreign Minister, Ahmed Diria, had stated that Tanzania was to lift sanctions on air travel and sports relations in recognition of the changes brought about by President de Klerk. Economic sanctions would continue for the present he said.

LIVINGSTONE’S LAST RESTING PLACE
BRITISH OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT had an article on Bagamoyo in its January 1992 issue. It recalled how David Livingstone had died in 1873 in what is now Zaire. His heed had been buried in Africa end his embalmed body had been carried to Bagamoyo on a journey which took nine months. The last resting place of the body on the African mainland (before burial in Westminster Abbey) had been the Bagamoyo Catholic Mission. Britain is now paying for the restoration of the tower of the mission.

BASKING ON THE BEACH
The Johannesburg STAR gave publicity to a recent statement quoting Tanzanian Prime Minister John Malecela to the effect that South African tourists might soon be basking in the sun on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean beaches. “Don’t be surprised to see Boers coming here or Tanzanians going to South Africa” he had said in Parliament. Air Tanzania subsequently announced agreement on the start of a regular service to South Africa.

IMPORTANT DRUG SEIZURE
Tanzanian Customs authorities have seized 5.5 tons of illicit drugs according to AFRICA EVENTS (April 1992). The authorities in Dar es Salaam were said to be worried that Tanzanian drug traffickers might begin to play a role similar to that of their Nigerian counterparts in West Africa by acting as a conduit for drug transfers to Europe and North America. Police records showed that in the past six years more than 10,000 people had been arrested for alleged involvement in drugs.

A MEMORY OF LUSHOTO
In its series ‘A Memorable Wine’ the WINE SOCIETY’S BULLETIN for February 1992 contained a story by a Dr C. Granger in which he exercised some poetic licence in recounting a tale of many years ago. He had carried a quarter bottle of champagne in his rucksack – first by air (with the bottle in the decompressed hold), then across two frontiers by train, then by bumpy road for 18 hours to join his wife, who was working in Tanganyika, to celebrate their first anniversary of wedded bliss. The destination was Lushoto ‘a small verdant valley which the British Governor of the then Tanganyika had tried to buy (!) as a summer refuge from the heat’. ‘Our hotel’ he wrote’ overlooked the town, which, with its German missionaries and Bavarian churches, might have been in the foothills of the Alps. On the day of our thirteenth (month) anniversary we walked along the mountain crest to a spot known as ‘The View’ and sat on a rock overhanging a plunging cliff. Far below, the plains of Africa stretched away under the great sky …… I pulled the bottle from my rucksack triumphantly. My wife whooped with delight, I ceremoniously unwound the wire cage. Jill dug out our plastic mugs. I popped the cork. Only there was no pop, no bubbles. Just a hollow plop, and an evil smell. The champagne, like the anniversary, was overdue. It had probably undrinkable for a decade. (Thanks to reader Patrick Duff – Editor).

‘A PEARL OF MANY BRILLIANT COLOURS’
In a colour illustrated article in the April issue of NEW AFRICAN, the origins of Tanzania’s famous ‘Tinga Tinga’ paintings was told. Former fisherman Edward Said Tinga Tinge (who died in 1972) had started painting in his distinctive style using household gloss paint, rescued from abandoned tins, end commonplace surfaces such as hardboard, plywood or tin instead of costly canvas. The result? ‘A riot of multi-coloured images of African life; animals, birds, butterflies, flowers and tropical vegetation’. Now, one of the persons he taught, Rashid Bushiri, is teaching others in Swaziland under a project supported by the European Community; later this year, he has been commissioned to do murals on the wall of a hotel in Denmark.

POP FLOP
Many newspapers around the world catalogued the ill-fated visit to Africa of the American mega star Michael Jackson. For example, the BOTSWANA DAILY NEWS reported on its front page that Jackson had arrived in Tanzania on February 17th after visiting Gabon and Cote d’Ivoire where he had been greeted by tens of thousands but had upset Many of them. ‘On arrival in Dar es Salaam, the paper wrote, the singer ran to a waiting car, clutching his nose and hiding his face with a handbag, ignoring Tanzanian Foreign Minister Ahmed Diria who was waiting to welcome him’.

The DAILY NEWS in Tanzania gave many more details of the visit. Michael Jackson had visited the Sinza Centre for Mentally Retarded Children where he had left fond memories and had, later, met President Mwinyi who had asked him, after his proposed visit to the Serengeti, to become Tanzania’s envoy abroad and explain about the country’s tourist potential. However, the Singer suddenly cut short his visit and left for London, leaving thousands of admirers in Arusha and Kenya disappointed. The apparent reason was that he could not fly in any plane other than his own (which was too large for the Serengeti airstrip) and could also not drive in a car for more than one and a half hours. He was said to be allergic to dust.

The general response in Dar es Salaam was said to have been ‘good riddance’. Others agreed with earlier comments from Abidjan which had described Jackson as ‘a recreated being, bleached, neither white nor black, so delicate, so frail …’

A COUNCIL OF ELDERS
The London TIMES in its March 24th issue reported that former African Presidents had decided at a meeting in Tanzania to form a Council of Elders to tackle the continent’s perennial conflicts. The meeting was attended by former presidents Pereira of Cape Verde, Kaunda of Zambia, Obassnjo of Nigeria and Nyerere of Tanzania.

SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPHY TO MONITOR DEFORESTATION
WORLD BANK NEWS in its February 13 issue stated that Tanzania is to obtain an IDA Credit of US$ 18.3 million in support of a project to stop rapid deforestation through preparation of maps showing forests, agricultural areas and grazing lands and establishing a National Resource Information Centre to coordinate the collection of information on resources, land use and environmental conditions. The project would also support measures to improve land tenure systems, and, in the Mwanza and Tabora regions, help improve the management of 45,000 hectares of forest.

AIR TANZANIA SUSPENDED FROM MEMBERSHIP
Air Tanzania has been suspended from membership of the International Air Transport Association because of its financial problems according to the March 16 issue of the INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE. The paper said that the IATA members would not now honour Air Tanzania tickets. The Tanzania DAILY NEWS reported on February 22nd that the Government had ordered the Air Tanzania Corporation (ATC) to cancel flights to Europe and India following serious losses on these routes using a plane leased from Ethiopian Airlines. The newspaper reported that ATC had had to ground its planes on April 1st because it apparently could not renew its insurance cover. It is also understood that the Government has decided to privatise the airline.

DAR THE MOST SATISFACTORY
In an article on shipping services between East Africa and Europe the AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIGEST (February 24) quoted Steve Barlow, Commercial Director of the ZAMCARGO organisation, as saying that, of the East African Ports, Dar es Salaam generally gave the most satisfactory performance. “The port itself functions quite efficiently following recent heavy Investment” he said. Similar comments in AFRICA EVENTS (April 1992) which reported that Mombasa’s efficiency had somewhat slumped and That it was meeting robust competition from Dar es Salaam which was fast modernising.

CHEESE MANIA IN TANZANIA
In its February 15th issue the DAILY TELEGRAPH gave considerable prominence to an apparently insatiable appetite for cheese which had suddenly developed amongst Tanzanians and others. So great was this demand for cheese, in fact, that Dutch customs officers had become suspicious. Thousands of tons of Dutch dairy products had apparently been shipped outside the European Community but had later found their way back to traditional market such as Germany thus allowing certain persons, now being investigated, to obtain attractive export subsidies from the Community.

TANZANIA TO GET A REDUCED ALLOCATION
The first issue in 1992 of HABARI, the Journal of the Svensk-Tanzeniska Foreningen in Stockholm, revealed that Swedish aid policy is in the process of change. Tanzania, Mozambique and Vietnam have had their allocations reduced. A change in ideological course in Sweden was said to be plainly evident. In the case of Mozambique, the reduction was attributed to poor uptake capacity. The same was said to be true of Tanzania, which was considered to have had too large a programme. The reduction would be of the order of £5.5 million. The State Secretary responsible had said that in his opinion the whole Tanzanian aid programme had been too greatly dramatised. He dwelt long on the question of democracy. ‘The Government unmistakably equated democracy with a multi-party system irrespective of the considerable differences in historical, political, social and economic circumstances of the different countries’ the Journal wrote.

JUST A HANDFUL OF NUTS
NEW AFRICAN (March 1992) reported that drinkers in Dodoma are up in arms about a blanket ban on locally brewed liquors. The ban had been imposed following a cholera outbreak which had caused 200 deaths between November and January. Local producers of ‘Wanzuki’ – a fermented honey liquor – had got around the ban, however, by putting the liquor into commercial wine and beer bottles end pretending it was something else. This had confused the health inspectors (and presumably also the customers) for a time, but then the Police found out and began to seize illicit stocks. But the brewers showed considerable ingenuity. They started hiding the liquor in other ways. In one case alcohol was stored in a coffin. Customers were told to join the ‘funeral procession’. Others soaked nuts for a long time in illicit grain (gongo). It was said that people could get drunk on just a handful of nuts.

HYGIENE AT THE KIGMANBONI FERRY FISH MARKET
The SOUTHERN AFRICAN ECONOMIST in its December/January issue featured Dar es Salaam’s well known Kigamboni fish market. ‘The fish and food vendors have been supplying meals at the affordable price of Shs 70 for some time. But they noticed that their clients often had to go away to answer the call of nature, usually not to return. They therefore raised Shs 50,000 to build a latrine. At Shs 2/- per shot the clients were happy but the project lost money for lack of management’. Now the Tanzania youth Development and Employment Foundation has undertaken a feasibility study designed to improve overall hygiene at the Ferry Fish Market.

HOW TANZANIA LINES UP
NEW AFRICAN THE WORLDS’S MOST FAMOUS BEEKEEPER
In a lengthy article on the man it described as the ‘Einstein of bee breeding’ the SUNDAY TIMES

Tanzania figured prominently recently in two significant and totally contrasting broadcasts.

The first was a four-part weekly series of talks on BBC Radio 4 under the title ‘AFRICA: DEADLINE FOR THE DARK CONTINENT’ by the well-known presenter Michael Buerk in which one whole programme was devoted to Tanzan1a. Such was the interest in the series that the BBC received over 1,000 letters about it from listeners.

The second was a television programme broadcast on Channel 1 at the peak hour of 9.30 pm on April 17th 1992 which must have had an audience of millions. This was called ‘THE COMIC RELIEF SNAPPILY TITLED AND UTTERLY SPONDITIOU5 STAB OF EXPLAINING WHY SO MANY PEOPLE IN AFRICA ARE S0 DAMN POOR’. It turned out to be powerful advocacy of continued foreign aid and it was filmed in Tanzania. Christine Lawrence has reviewed it as follows for the Bulletin:

This BBC programme is a novel way of raising funds for needy causes. People who contribute wear absurd red plastic noses. The presenters of the programme play on our sense of the ridiculous and attempt to let nothing be boring. Their success last year raised £20 million, every penny of which has gone to deserving causes in the UK and in Africa.

The recent programme was a look ‘Behind the Nose’ and included a documentary on poverty in Tanzania. We followed Tony Robinson as he travelled from the slopes of Mt. Meru, through Arusha to the Maasai highlands, Ngorongoro, and then to a hot, dry village miles from anywhere”. In Meru there was the coffee market problem; in Arusha dreadful shanty town poverty; in Maasai-land permanently sick children and a school without books or pens; Arusha hospital lacking drugs and equipment; in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Maasai, suffering from hunger and their cattle dying but forbidden to grow crops on their traditional land; and, in the hot dry Village, a young man explained in beautiful English that all they could do was to sit and wait for the rain.

In between these scenes from Tanzania, we were returned to the UK first to witness farcical interviews by Peter Sissons (Newscaster) of a so-called British Government Minister (Kenneth Winelake), then to hear comments from a comfortably well-off family lounging in their sitting room guzzling chocolates. It certainly made one think. And ask why? Statistics of disasters in the Third World compared with those in the West had the same effect. How much is the West responsible for? Imposed terms of trade; misplaced loans and interminable interest payments; Western politics and the arms trade and big business all come into it and the’ trickle-down’ effect is felt by the poor who are not helped by corrupt and bad government.

In Tanzania, will multi-party elections give the poor more of a voice? Will they result in more justice for the oppressed? And how much more can we in the West do to influence our governments? Will the coming UN Earth Summmit help at all? I fear it 1s very much an up-hill struggle but I think that Comic Relief’s documentary must have had a more positive impact on viewers than the usual straightforward programme and so there should be more reaction.

The radio broadcast perhaps redressed the balance, as many felt that the TV programme had been biased in not paying enough attention to faults on the Tanzanian side. Both programmes had a point to make, however, and both tended to exaggerate in order to do so.

Michael Buerk’s contribution was much more serious, more specifically critical and more sophisticated. It was designed to ‘see how the First World’s solutions for the Third World’s problems are working out’.
The third paragraph of the transcript set the tone: Inside my African taxi the music’s jaunty, reassuring; outside it’s different. This is Dar es Salaam, the ramshackle capital of a bankrupt country, where Tanzania’s dream of African Socialism turned into a nightmare of economic collapse. In colonial times this city, with its wide harbour and palm-fringed beaches was one of the most beautiful in Africa, Now, my taxi picks its way through the potholes, down unlit streets, past dirty and decaying buildings; I sometimes think the most obvious difference between the First World and the Third is fresh paint. I remember, when I used to travel this region in the eighties, Tanzania, though not quite the poorest, was the most depressing place on the continent. No colour, no life, nothing in the shops, an epidemic of apathy. Two decades of defining profit as economic sabotage had destroyed all incentive. The slogan was self-reliance; the reality, the highest per capita dependence on foreign aid in the world.

Next we turned to the IMF and the World Bank. Tanzania had had to start running its economy on lines prescribed by these organisations. A quiet, undemonstrative Englishman was ‘now one of the most powerful men in Tanzania’ – Ian Porter, World Bank Representative. Not so, said Tanzanian Finance Minister Stephen Kibona – “There is no question about it – their (the Bank’s) approach is quite acceptable. We are not “going along” with the World Bank. Much of what we are doing is our own thinking. We want to liberalise the economy. We want to create new initiative. We want people to have ownership ……”

There followed a discussion with coffee farmers in which the pros and cons of foreign intervention were well explored. Populist Home Affairs Minister Augustine Mrema (‘a disconcerting figure, in his black suit and flat dog-toothed hat’) expressed his views as forthrightly as ever – “We are trying to implement the policies of the IMF and the World Bank ….. but the prices (of coffee) are determined by you. So things will never change. So long as you’re benefitting from our economy, so long as you’re getting what you want from us, we’ll remain your labourers really forever”.

Michael Buerk’s conclusions? “After six years of determined Western intervention the formal economy is only a little less hopeless than it was …. Down on Kongwa Street the black market is booming. It’s a neat irony that the World Bank’s most obvious success has been to promote an underground economy which can’t be recorded in its statistics. Tanzania is a good place to go, to realise how resilient Africans are, how what we see as the continent’s slow march to doom isn’t the whole picture, and how the West has never been able to remodel Africa into its own image – DRB.

GIVING UP MARXIST FANTASIES
‘At Tanzania’s National Museum in Dar es Salaam a mouldy exhibit depicts a 1958 speech by Julius Nyerere in which he proclaimed the birth of a new band of socialism’. So began an article in the October 10th issue of the INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE which went on to state that, nearly three decades later, socialism in Africa is all but dead, a victim of economic failure, abuses of power and political oppression. And with it an age of ideology appears to be dying as well – an impassioned era of dreams and promise … when socialism, Marxism and other leftist beliefs largely fuelled political thought and governance’ .

‘Today Africa is a far different place. Mr Nyerere now softly recommends that his people build a multiparty democracy on the wreckage of his socialist wasteland ….

THE BAGHDAD OF EAST AFRICA
In a recent full-page travel article in the SUNDAY TIMES under the title ‘Out of Slavery’ Anthony Sattin recalled Stanley’s description of Zanzibar as the ‘Baghdad of East Africa’. The slave trade had guaranteed Zanzibar a place in our collective memory…. ‘There is still the coronation portrait of Elizabeth II mouldering in the museum with the bones of a dodo and a milestone in town announcing ‘London – 8,064 miles …. ‘ ‘Later I came to the House of Wonders and the seaside gardens laid out to celebrate the silver jubilees of a British king and a Zanzibar sultan. This is a popular place at sunset … it was a likely place for a rendezvous or a chance meeting, and beside me, watching the sun go down, sat a Syrian trader, sipping sweet tea and smoking a chain of cigarettes. I asked him about his trade and he said that, as his ancestors would have done, he moved this and that between his own country, the Gulf and Zanzibar. The Syrian and I drank tea and watched the sunset; the Southern Cross in the enormous red sky, dolphins playing around the returning dhows, their sails barely arched before the slack breeze … it occurred to me that for thousands of years, from the ancient Egyptians to famous explorers and forgotten captains, people have looked out on similar views before leaving the safe harbour for the farthest flung parts of the world.

FAMILY PLANNING USER RATE
In a special report on German aid activities in Africa the September issue of NEW AFRICAN described ‘mother and child health services’ (MCH) in Zanzibar where there are now 88 MCH clinics. 85% of these offer family planning services but the user-rate of such services in rural areas is only 3% Research into the work of ‘Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA’s)’ showed that only 2% of those interviewed had attended primary school, only a third mentioned the importance of boiling their delivery equipment and 56% had never advised mothers on family planning. A training’ programme has now started.

A second article quoted the case of one woman in Bagamoyo who had been advised by a TBA, after her 5th child, to use a ‘ Pigi’ , one of the traditional contraceptive methods – a small piece of wood tied to a string and worn round the woman’s waist. The woman soon had her 6th and 7th pregnancies !

CHEAP DRINKS
Continuing its comparison of costs of products in different countries the October 1991 issue of BUSINESS TRAVELLER revealed that the price of an alcoholic drink at a bar is only some $2.41 in Tanzania which makes it the second cheapest place out of 36 countries quoted. Only South Africa had cheaper drinks. The most expensive drinks were are found in Sweden ($15 . 20). The November 1991 edition of the same publication dealt with the cost of a ‘business dinner’ and again Tanzania came out as one of the cheapest places in the world ($33). Pakistan ($15) was the cheapest and Japan far and away the most expensive ($136).

AIDS: AFRICA’S FAMILY DISEASE
Under this heading NEWSWEEK in its issue of September 16, 1991 pointed out that in much of Africa AIDS is a family disease. Sub-Saharan Africa has roughly equal numbers of men and women infected with the HIV virus. One of the illustrations was of a Tanzanian with his 13 grandchildren all of whose parents were said to have died from AIDS.

DOING THE RIGHT THING
Britain’s Overseas Aid Minister Lynda Chalker was the subject of a lengthy interview by Derek Ingram in the September 1991 issue of NEW AFRICAN. She commented on a number of places in the world where there had been problems with human rights (Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan) and was then asked, when it came to development, where in Africa was she most optimistic about. She answered that she was much more hopeful about Tanzania. President Mwinyi and his government were trying very hard to do the right thing. She was also hopeful about Ghana and Nigeria.

LUSHOTONIAN MEETING
The next 1942 1946 Lushotonian meeting will be held in Lugano, Southern Switzerland on August 22 , 1992. Whoever attended Lushoto School during those years please try to make it and contact Versa and Ursi Engler , Via Cattedrale 15, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland (Phone .. .. 91 23 36 79)

RECYCLING THE RUSSIANS
Under this heading the ECONOMIST in its August 24th issue wrote about recent changes in the Soviet embassy in Dar es Salaam. Once this large embassy was stuffed with technicians, doctors and students of Marxism/Leninism. That was when the dictatorship of the proletariat…. was beating back capitalist monopoly imperialism in the exploited Third World. These days Soviet diplomats have other concerns. “We are looking for profit making … and trying to set up joint ventures” said a spokesman. But profit making was proving harder than expected. The article went on to describe the ferry link for the forty miles between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar (‘but the Sea Express keeps on breaking down’), a transport company using 25 trucks imported from Minsk and a Latvian fishing boat with a few sailors• … ‘Cost cutting will be the next stop. Some Western embassies have been approached about employing Soviet technical advisers, paid a tenth as much as western expatriates’.

‘DANIEL’S DEN’
The DAILY TELEGRAPH published a lengthy obituary on Major-General Kenneth van der Spuy in its issue of August 17. 1991. The Major General, who had just died at the age of 99 and who, in his earlier years, had taken a prominent part in setting up the South African Air Force, was summoned to the Kilimanjaro area of Tanzania in 1916 and immediately found himself involved in a war on two fronts – one against the German enemy and the other against the climate. malarial mosquitoes and local wildlife. He operated from an airstrip which became known as ‘Daniel’s Den’ because of the large number of lions that roamed around it.

REFORMS IN THE FINANCIAL SECTOR
WORLD BANK NEWS in its November 21st issue stated that Tanzania has received an IDA Credit of US$200 million to ‘help in creating a financial system that operates on market oriented principles, is efficient in mobilising and allocating resources and fosters longer-term economic growth’.

“WE STILL SEE THE BONES OF THE BIRDS …
“We still see the bones of the birds when we mine the phosphates” said geologist Iryana Mwambete, working with the Minjingu Phophates Company some 100 kilometres south-west of Arusha and quoted in the October 1991 issue of NEW AFRICAN. The phosphate deposits are the remains of bird droppings and dead birds which lived in the area many. many years ago. There are 2.6 million tons of soft phosphates and 5. 2 million tons of hard phosphates in the area which surrounds Lake Manyara. The Minjingu phosphates were discovered in 1956 by an International Atomic Energy team while searching for uranium and the mining plant was installed with Finnish help. But today, according to the article, the Swahili saying ‘Ng’ombe wa masikini hazai na akizaa huzaa dume’ seems to be true of the Minjingu phosphates. The company employs 150 workers but had to stop production for two months due to lack of market. The plant has a capacity to 100,000 tons per annum but since its inception in 1983 has been producing only 20,000 tons each year. In 1990 however, for the first time, some 3,000 tons were exported to Kenya and large, but not small, farmers in Tanzania are now showing increased interest in using the fertiliser.

THE SERENGETI AND HOLLYWOOD
Hollywood’s finest were said, by the DAILY TELEGRAPH in early September (in an article headed ‘Animal Crackers’) to be off on safari to the Serengeti and Kenya for charity. It was to be an unusual melange. Roger Moore, actress Anne Jackson, George Hamilton and ‘that delicate conservationist Sylvester Stallone’ were to be joined by veteran US newscaster Walter Cronkite, fashion designer Pierre Cardin, the Duke of Northumberland, conservationist Richard Leakey and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. The fee paying members of the party would each be shelling out £13,250.

CHICKENS ON THE PILL
Dar es Salaam’s hospitals report that their shelves are being stripped bare of contraceptive pill s according to the December 1991 issue of NEW AFRICAN. ‘The story doing the rounds is that chickens grow faster if you add contraceptive pills to their food. According to distributors the pills are working wonders and every street now has its chicken and chip shop’ . .’

FREDDIE MERCURY
Tanzania, or at least its Zanzibar segment, achieved the unachievable as far as the British media are concerned on November 25th 1991. It found itself mentioned in huge full-page spreads in the SUN, DAILY MIRROR and STAR, repeatedly on virtually all channel s of TV and radio, and, in more sober style in the TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, INDEPENDENT, GUARDIAN, INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE and, no doubt, countless other newspapers and periodicals around the world . The occasion? The death (as a victim of AIDS) of Rock ‘Superstar’ Freddie Mercury. In every case considerable prominence was given to the fact that he had been born in Zanzibar under the name Frederick Bulsara. His father, who is of Persian origin, had been an accountant in the Zanzibar civil service.

PRESIDENT BANDA IN TANZANIA
AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL in its October 11th issue reported on President Kamuzu Banda’s first ever state visit to Tanzania from October 3 – 6 1991. ‘While it did not result in the sort of rapprochment that followed Banda’s triumphant appearances at Zimbabwe’s 10th Anniversary celebrations in 1990 progress was made on transport links’.

APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY FOR MOSQUITO CONTROL
Writing in a recent issue of MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL NEWS, Dr C. F Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stated that up to 70% of Tanzanian children have malaria parasites in their blood at anyone time and people receive up to four malaria infective mosquito bites per night. He then went on to write about the highly successful use of insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets and, in Zanzibar, of a floating layer of expanded polystyrene beads to prevent mosquito breeding in pit latrines and cess pits.

144 INVESTMENT APPLICATIONS
The November 1991 NEWSLETTER of the TANZANIA/UK BUSINESS GROUP in London reported on a speech given to the group on October 10th by Mr George Kahama, Director General of the Tanzanian Investment Promotion Centre. Mr Kahama had said that the Centre had become one year old in July 1991. It had compiled an investment register with profiles of some 90 companies and projects and had instigated investment promotion programmes in such countries as Thailand, Malaysia, Ghana, Kenya and the UAE. So far, 144 investment applications had been received and processed to a value of some 400 million US dollars. At the same meeting Mr Aziz Nasser was elected Chairman of the Group.

DROUGHT ON MOUNT KILIMANJARO
In its January 1992 issue NEW AFRICAN reported on the latest climb of Mount Kilimanjaro by Major-General Mrisho Sarakikya, Tanzania’s Ambassador to Nigeria. The Maj-Gen has climbed the 19,340 ft mountain 30 times. But for the first time he found that the ‘last water point’, a stream high up on the mount ain was dry. “There is serious prolonged drought on the mountain now” he said. Tanzanian hydrologists were quoted as saying that the cause of the reduced water flows was not climatic change but because of rapid run-off of water as t e result of the loss of trees and plants. Last season the staple maize crop was destroyed in parts of Rombo district by rainwater rushing down the bare mountain side.

UN PRETRE ‘UJAMAA’
URAFIKI TANZANIA, the journal of the Franco-Tanzanian Association in its issue No 49, wrote about the White Father Georges Paquet whom it described as a modest fifty year old full of drive. He was said to have two families: the White Fathers and the Tanzanian people – ‘those rare people in Africa who resolve their problems without violence’. The article went on: ‘That which attaches George to the Tanzanians, of whom 30% are Christians, is their spirit of solidarity, the way in which they use body language to express themselves and their ‘appetit religieux’. ‘ We have talked disparagingly about their traditional religion but these people do not love their traditional carvings any more than we love the statues in our churches’ the article said.

A SPARKLING ADDRESS
In what NEW AFRICAN (July 1991) described as a ‘sparkling address’ Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who was speaking as Co-chairman of a recent African Leadership Forum in Kampala, was quoted as having said that many African leaders had made serious mistakes in the past. “We thought that we could develop without involving the people” he said. He added however, that there was no need to be hard on ourselves. “Before independence we were thrown into jail for trying to form political parties – so what experience did we have of organising on a national level? Instead we tried to do what the Europeans did. We tried to build socialism without socialists; we tried to create capitalism without entrepreneurs! But we tried. The West should pay us reparations for all the harm some of their ideas have done to us” he said amid laughter.

A LONG WAIT
A recent issue of WORLD BANK NEWS, in an article headed ‘Long Waits for Telephone Service Put Some Countries’ Development Efforts on Hold’, gave some rather extraordinary figures about the length of waiting lists for the installation of telephones in various countries in 1988. The waiting time in Tanzania was said to be 10.9 years! But this was by no means the worst case. In Ghana it was said to be 30 years, in Argentina 21.9 years, in Jamaica 22.3 years and in Egypt 27.1 years. The source of the information was said to be ITU, Pyramid Research Inc.

ZANZIBAR FINDS A NEW SPICE OF LIFE
Under this heading the July issue of NEW AFRICAN stated that some 10,000 people, mostly women, were now making a living in Zanzibar from a new cash crop – seaweed. Some women were making up to US$100 per month. About 500 tonnes of dried seaweed have been produced in the past year worth US$150,000.
Industrialised countries use seaweed in pharmaceuticals, textiles, rubber, adhesives and various foods.
One Zanzibari, Mr Mwatum Ali, was quoted as having said that he had begun seaweed farming six months earlier and had already managed to buy a radio and seven pairs of shoes.

PRAISE FOR TANZANIA’S PROGRESS IN IMPLEMENTING ECONOMIC REFORMS WORLD BANK NEWS (June 27, 1991) stated that the Consultative Group for Tanzania comprising 14 aid donor organisations and nine international agencies had praised, at a meeting the day before in Paris, Tanzania’s progress in implementing economic reforms. There had been increased agricultural production, growth in the manufacturing sector, a larger volume of exports of non-traditional goods and an average growth rate of up to 5% during the past five years. Tanzania’s economic development and adjustment programmes would receive up to US$ 980 million in donor support in 1991 and 1992.

But AFRICA EVENTS (August 1991) in an article commenting on the same news under the heading ‘Billion Dollar Bail Out’ warned of the deepening structural crisis in the Tanzanian economy. Parastatal debts were increasing at US$ 3million per week, the marketing boards, cooperative unions and commercial parastatals were virtually all technically bankrupt and the Consultative Group meeting had grossly exaggerated the success of Tanzania’s economic performance. Agricultural exports were the same last year as in 1985, which had been the worst year to date, the trade gap had doubled from half a billion to one billion dollars per annum in the space of a decade and donor money was now paying for nearly three quarters of Tanzania’s imports.

THE DAY I MET MAO
In an article under this heading in the June 1991 issue of THE SALISBURY REVIEW (‘The magazine of conservative thought’) Mr Oscar Kambona wrote very little indeed about Chairman Mao but a great deal about Mwalimu Nyerere. The year was 1965 and Mr Kambona, who was then Tanzania’s Foreign Minister, was accompanying Mwalimu on his visit to China. They had visited ‘the same commune as all foreigners were taken to’, a hospital ‘where the doctors said that they knew that the operation they had just conducted would be a success because they had read Mao’s little red book before the operation’, the Head of Security, who had explained about the system of ten-house cells, and various other persons and places.

President Nyerere, as he then was, had been impressed. On his return he had ‘introduced the ten-cell system and detained those who resisted’, he had changed into Mao costume, had said that ministerial portraits in the ministries were confusing the loyalties of the civil servants and henceforth only his picture should appear; Nyerere had ‘launched an attack upon the peasant economy and…… had forcibly transferred them into new villages’ he had ‘abolished the democratically elected municipal, town and district councils… along with the cooperative movement’ he had nationalised thriving white-owned farms ……… The article concluded by referring to the national debate on the one party system and the setting up of the “Tanzania Democratic Front” an alliance of six exiled political groups.

GOOD GOVERNMENT
BRITISH OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT in its July issue announced that Britain had pledged a further £20 million in balance of payments support for Tanzania and was also providing a £2.0 million grant to help promote good government. ‘Good government’ was defined as sound economic and social policies including the introduction of market forces and competition, a strong private sector and individual enterprise as well as policies tackling poverty, illiteracy and disease…’governments should be open and accountable with pluralistic systems… military expenditure should not be excessive…there should be respect for human rights and the law with an open and fair legal system…”
The magazine quoted British Overseas Aid Minister Linda Chalker as having stated that the link between good government and development had been firmly established. Britain was leading the way in incorporating good government criteria into aid policy. “Some might call this conditionality’ she said. “I call it common sense. We are not using government as an excuse to cut the aid programme. We simply want to channel our aid where it will do most good”

A FAREWELL CLOCK
At the farewell party given to the Tanzanian Ambassador in Tokyo (who has now become the Tanzanian High Commissioner in London) Mr Ali Saidi Mchumo, he was given, as a token of gratitude by the Japan-Tanzania Association, a clock. He was also presented with a testimonial by the Japan-Tanzania Association from the International Garden and Greenery Exhibition in Osaka in which Tanzania had participated in mid-1990, This was revealed in the June 1991 issue of the JAPAN-TANZANIA ASSOCIATION NEWS (No 14) which also listed recent visits made to each country by senior persons from the other country. The then Prime Minister of Tanzania, Mr Joseph Warioba, had attended the State funeral of the late Emperor Showa in February 1989 and Second Vice-President and President of Zanzibar, Dr Salmin Amour, had been in Japan for the enthronement of the new Emperor in November 1990. Amongst visitors to Tanzania had been W Kensuke Yanagiya, President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
This issue also contained news of Japanese projects in Tanzania including the opening up of a large tract of land for macademia nut and other agricultural production and the completion of an agricultural storage and transportation project in the Iringa Region.

LEADERS FOR HIRE
A readers letter in the August issue of AFRICA EVENTS referred back to an earlier editorial in the magazine which had dealt with Nigeria’s problems. The letter recalled that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania had been cited as an example of a leader who could inject ‘some sense of national purpose, unity and stability into the rather – patchy and broken texture of Nigerian politics’. The letter went on to say, however, that the fact that a leader had performed certain feats in one country did not entirely mean that he would be similarly successful in another country.

300 VOLUNTEERS
Following a small advertisement in the Guardian, 300 young Britons between the ages of 13 and 28 had indicated an interest in working for three months in Tanzania. So reported the NURSING TIMES in its June 19th issue. It was describing a new charity called ‘Health Projects Abroad’ which had just sent its first group of volunteers (who each had to raise £2,000 towards the cost of the trip) to work on health projects in two remote villages in Tanzania.

A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
According to World Bank economist Darius Mans, quoted in a recent issue of the AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIGEST, there is a change for the better in the investment climate in Tanzania. He was speaking about the four-year-old African Project Development Facility (APDF) sponsored by the UNDP, African Development Bank, the International Finance Corporation and 15 donor countries which is designed to assist indigenous people to develop their businesses. APDF’s Regional Manager, Ignacio Maramba, revealed that the Facility had helped to prepare and raise funds for seven projects worth US$14 million including a tourist hotel in Kilimanjaro, a sisal estate in Morogoro and a pineapple farm near Dar es Salaam.

“SATAN WANTS TO SEE THE STRONG CATHOLIC CHURCH DESTROYED”
Reporting on what it said had become a state of turmoil in Tanzania’s Catholic Church NEW AFRICAN (July 1991) quoted a member of the laity as having expressed the above opinion in connection with the storm in the Church concerning the banishing of the old liturgy. The article went on: ‘In half a dozen parishes in Dar es Salaam, with over 500,000 Catholics, priests have physically manhandled the faithful worshippers who continue with the old tradition of kneeling to receive the Holy Communion. The so- called ‘moderate’ priests insist that their communicants should stand and stretch their hands out to receive the Body of Christ….”What is wrong with honouring the Holy Communion as we were taught by white priests…why are they now turning their backs against it” query some disturbed faithful……Surprisingly however, the Tanzanian Episcopal Conference is so far cool about the fuss’.

… AND A HEALER IS REJECTED
Continuing on the same page the magazine went on to state that Tanzanian Bishops have banned the Reverend Felicien Nkwera from conducting services saying that his faith-healing was nothing but witchcraft.’The priest is allowed to do nothing except read and pray. He is not even allowed to mingle with fellow priests and is confined to the Bishop’s House in Njombe…. Nkwera says “I suffer a lot to see hundreds, perhaps thousands of people with problems that God, through me, can cure, but now I am refused”… A year after his ordination to the priesthood in 1968 he heard a voice telling him “Felician, my son, I am the Heavenly Mother speaking. I have chosen you to help my sick children whom I will bring to you… you will pray over them … through your prayers God will heal them”.

A MISTAKE
According to the FINANCIAL TIMES (May 9, 1991) Ciba Geigy, the Swiss Chemical Group, had admitted to selling an insecticide containing what was described as ‘deadly DDT’ to Tanzania in violation of an international code of conduct and the company’s own internal rules. A Ciba Geigy spokesman was quoted as having said that the company had ‘made a mistake’ in delivering 450,000 litres of a product called Ultracide combi to Tanzania’s Cotton Marketing Board.

THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION AND A SMOOTHER TRANSITION FOR TANZANIA
Summarising recent economic trends in Tanzania the July 1 issue of AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIGEST pointed out that President Mwinyi’s reforms have permitted importers and exporters greater freedom, and reduced the economic role of the state. This is believed to have resulted in the growth of a substantial second economy. At the same time there had been political developments partly resulting from the events in Eastern Europe. ‘A number of regimes enjoying close links with Tanzania had been swept away. The destruction of the Romanian dictatorship was particularly influential as a senior Tanzanian ministerial delegation had been in the country at the time of the revolution’. One Tanzanian Minister was quoted as having said that the speed of Ceausescu’s demise had rung warning bells within Tanzania’s leadership about the need for reforms and greater political openness. President Mwinyi had subsequently sanctioned a national debate on the country’s political future.
The article concluded that this method of gradually opening up the political arena, freeing the press and guiding the process from within government and the CCM would be likely to ensure that the ruling party would retain power while opening the way for new political parties to form. Thus the debate could result in a relatively smooth transition to pluralism.

CLOUDS OF DISCONTENT
According to the August 1991 issue of AFRICA EVENTS the ‘crisis ridden’ University of Dar es Salaam faces another storm in October when it reopens after a six-month break. The removal of a very popular Vice-Chancellor in April had demoralised many ‘on the Hill’ and the attempt to transfer three senior academics at the beginning of June had added ‘new ingredients to perhaps an explosive brew’. The academic staff association had subsequently organised a seminar in honour of the ex-Vice-Chancellor, Prof Mmari, focussing on the role of the university in society and had launched a War es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom’.

ALL THESE BEFORE BREAKFAST!
‘The morning sun picks out the dense yellow flowers of the acacia trees and the craggy ridges of the upper slopes of Mount Meru. African pied wagtails and glossy, long-tailed, red-winged starlings perch, preen and strut on the hotel foyer roof. All scatter as five white-necked ravens, with bills like meat-cleavers, join them clattering purposefully and malevolently. Hadada ibis and augur buzzards flap overhead while other exotic birds animate the still sunlit trees – and all these before breakfast?’ So began an article in the July issue of WORLD WILDLIFE FUND NEWS which described WWF’s new education programme in Tanzania. At all levels there was an awareness that saving the Serengeti was as much about helping the Masai to resolve their problems as it was about giving direct protection to the elephants and rhinos.

NEW TRAVEL SERVICES TO ZANZIBAR
The Autumn issue of TRAVELLER magazine states that there is now a twice-daily hydrofoil service between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar (fares for non-residents US$ 20 one-way). There is also a boat service 5 times per week (US$ 10) and a new vessel, the ‘Canadian Spirit’, is now serving the southern ports as well as Zanzibar and Pemba.

There is no longer any requirement to cash foreign exchange at the point of entry into Tanzania.

TANGA-KAMPALA TRANSPORT CORRIDOR
Chinese engineers are back in Tanzania studying the proposed 1,000 – kilometre railway link between Tanga and land-locked Uganda according to the July 15th issue of the AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIGEST. The engineers were in Tanzania to discuss a contract for engineering studies on the proposed line.

CHIEF FUNDIKIRA FEELS HIS TIME HAS COME
70-year-old Chief Abdulla Said Fundikira who was at one time Tanganyika’s Minister for Legal Affairs and who has been in the political wilderness for 28 years now feels that his time has come. Writing in the INDEPENDENT (August 8 ) Richard Dowden quoted the Chief, who was visiting London, as having written as follows in 1963: “I am no supporter of your proposed one-Party system for which you have, even before obtaining a mandate for it from the electors, laid foundations….I therefore tender my resignation from the Party and its parliamentary association”. He had felt that the one-party state was never necessary in Tanzania because the country already had a de facto one-party state and there was a culture of tolerance.
After the one-party state had been declared Chief Fundikira became Chairman of East African Airlines and went to live in Kenya. ‘It was in no sense exile” he said and pointed out that President Nyerere had supported his appointment. They had remained on good personal terms but politically they remained deeply opposed. “Nyerere was vicious with his one-party state…the leaders of the small parties were detained, jailed or sent into internal exile. Everything was subordinated to the Party”. The article went on to state that Mr Fundikira was now Chairman of a Trust set up to launch a nationwide education campaign on multi-party democracy and a National Committee for Constitutional Reform had also now been set up.

58 NEW INVESTMENTS
The Tanzania Investment Promotion Centre (TIPC) had approved 58 projects worth Shs 19,300 million (US$ 98.5 million) by the end of December 1990 according to the AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIGEST (February 18, 1991). The TlPC had received 150 investment proposals and 310 investment enquiries since it s establishment in July 1990. Of the total velue of projects approved foreign sources will invest US$ 65.0 million.

BACK TO NORMAL AT THE UNIVERSITY
‘The University of Dar es Salaam – seven months after its closure by the Government – is back in business, hoisting its academic flag as it greets the new year.’ So began an article in the February issue of AFRICA EVENTS. The article went on: But neither the students, the lecturers nor the Government seem satisfied. The students came back minus 13 of their number (the Government expelled the 13 who had either been student leaders or had been the most vocal in the meetings during the crisis; eight other students were severely reprimanded); the lecturers were promised an incentive package which they have yet to see; the Government botched up the house-cleaning job by expelling the wrong students. The Mroso Commission of Enquiry (Bulletin No 38) named after its chairman, a High Court Judge, had completely exonerated the students. Some lecturers who proved ‘troublesome’ during the crisis were said to have been offered lucrative jobs outside the university. ‘However’, the article concluded, ‘the university seems to be going about its business, all calm and academic’.

RATIONALISATION AT DAR ES SALAAM PORT
In a major feature on road and rail transport in Africa the March 18 issue of the AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST described in some detail a new 12- point plan drawn up by the Tanzania Harbours Authority (THA) and the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) to streamline operations in the port of Dar es Salaam and on the TAZARA railway. Topping the list of improvement measures is the stoppage of demurrage or storage charges once clients have paid freight and port Charges. Secondly, once payments have been made, the process of planning the supply of wagons and loading equipment is done by TAZARA and THA respectively and customers will not have to simply wait for wagons and equipment to become available as in the past. Similarly, checking by the Customs Department will in future be done simultaneously as cargo is being loaded and not, as previously, before the loading has taken place.

DANTAN
KUMEKUCHA, the journal of the Denmark Tanzania Associati on (DANTAN ) published in its March 1991 issue the full text of the article headed ‘A Letter from Iceland’ published in Bulletin No 38. The Editor of Kumekucha wrote that it was always interesting to see how one is perceived ‘by the world around us – and, in this case, through the spectacles of our English sister organisation. ‘

HEALTHY GOATS, HEALTHY INCOMES
Under this heading the March 1991 issue of BRITISH OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT wrote about an ODA Goat Extension Project in the Newala District near the border with Mozambique. Researchers from Edinburgh University have recently visited the area to help farmers raise goat s more successfully than at present. One development has been the building of improved goat houses which not only protect the goat s better from hyenas and leopards but also keep them dry in the wet season, reducing the risk of foot rot. The goats have been given drugs to get rid of any parasitic worms infesting them and researchers and farmers have worked on improved methods of hoof trimming.

MALARIA GETTING WORSE
Medical researchers in Tanzania, according to a recent issue of AFRICA HEALTH MARKETLETTER, say the malaria situation is getting worse. Whereas, in the past, urban areas and highlands were regarded as free from malaria that concept has now been quashed. A study by the National Institute for Medical Research has stated that the main reasons for failure in malaria control in urban areas include financial, managerial, personnel and administrative constraints. Environmental degradation has been blamed for the upsurge in malaria in the Eastern Usambara mountains. A vector control Training Centre has been set up in Tanga.

On the subject of malaria parasite resistance the NIMR states that, provided a full dose is taken, chloroquine is still effective in treating most malaria attacks. Camoquine appears to clear the parasite better than chloroquine, although, on follow-up, parasites may reappear. Resistance to Fansidar is said to be extremely rare.

Meanwhile, according to the AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST (February 25) the Third Phase of the Malaria Control Project between the Governments of Japan and Tanzania was signed on February 11th. The US$ 2.34 million project is aimed at reducing malaria prevalence and improving environmental conditions and health education.

RECORD COFFFEE EXPORTS
The AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST (March 18, 1991) quoted the Tanzania Coffee Marketing Board as stating that the highest coffee exports in five years were achieved in the first four months of the 1990/91 coffee season when 326,075 bags of clean coffee were sold compared with 190,448 sold in the same period in the previous year. The International Coffee Organisation has reported that, during the first two months of the season (October-November last year), Tanzania’s coffee exports recorded the highest increase, compared to the previous two years, of all mild arabica coffee producers in the world.

STRENGTHENING THE PETROLEUM DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
WORLD BANK NEWS reports that a US$ 44 million IDA Credit recently made to Tanzania will help the Government to finance improvements to the petroleum distribution system so that businesses, farms and households in outlying areas will have better access to a reliable supply of petroleum products. Petroleum storage depots will be constructed, rail transport will be upgraded (the cost of using rail transport is about three times less then the present practice of using mainly heavy trailer trucks which damage the roads) an off-shore terminal will be built at Tanga and other distribution facilit1es will be developed. But one of the main contributions of the project will be to encourage the return of the private sector in petroleum distribution.

Years of neglect are said to have left a crumbling petroleum distribution system with little incentive for local subsidiaries of international oil companies to maintain or expand their facilities, of rundown roads, shortages of spare parts, dilapidated petrol stations and retail outlets and inadequate storage facilities. As a result, fuel shortages are common in Tanzania’s agricultural regions and in land cities and this is acting as a constraint on increasing agricultural production. The article went on to say that, although the prospects are good for finding oil in the Rift Valley and in the coastal basins, none has been discovered yet. In the meantime the country must import all of the crude oil needed.

IMPORTS OF BIRDS
Reporting on a campaign to ban the import into UK of exotic wild birds the SUNDAY TIMES (May 19, 1991) noted the sequel to the case which followed the death through suffocation of more than 1,000 birds, including flamingos, which were found dead on arrival in London from Dar es Salaam. The British government was said to have subsequently suspended imports of birds from Tanzania after the government there refused to allow British Ministry of Agriculture officials to inspect conditions in Dar. At a court hearing the airline carrying the birds, KLM, was fined £20,000.

PROPPING UP THE CLOVE PRICE
News from Indonesia in a recent issue of the INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE will cause further anxiety to the vital clove industry of Zanzibar devastated by the fall in prices. According to the article, Indonesian state banks have earmarked up to US$ 250 million to help boost local clove prices. A newly established Clove Support and Marketing Board has been given the monopoly to buy cloves from village cooperatives and sell them. mostly to makers of pungent, clove-flavoured Cigarettes.

200,000 BOTTLES PER DAY
Once production starts on a new production line at Tanzania Breweries it would be able to bottle 8,000 crates of 25 bottles each per day, enough to meet increasing beer demand in Dar es Salaam and neighbouring regions, according to the April 1 issue of the AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST. It is hoped that the beer brewed on the new line will replace Pilsner beer imported from Kenya. A second bottling plant was due to become operational by the end of April 1991. The cost of the new plants, imported from Czechoslovakia. was US$ 3.8 million. Due to severe leakages of filling machines in the old bottling plants the Breweries were losing about 20% of their output worth the equivalent of US$ 24.7 million annually.

SOUTH AFRICA AND TANZANIA
According to the French language magazine LA LETTRE DE L’OCEAN INDIEN (21/1/91) several South African businessmen have been visiting Tanzania recently to study the possibility of commercial exchanges between the two countries. Some of them have been authorised to invest in Tanzania but no official publicity has been given to this decision. Already numerous South African products are circulating in Tanzania. The Dar es Salaam Daily News was said to have reported that shops in Mbeya were ‘regorgaient’ with South African products. BMW and Mercedes cars assembled in South Africa were said to be in use in Dar es Salaam and the parastatal TAMEX in association with De Beers of South Africa was said to have concluded an agreement for diamond exploration near to Lake Victoria.

PRIVATE TUITION
AFRICA EVENTS (April 1991) has described the new government restriction on private tuition of school children as ‘bizarre’. The Tanzanian Minister of Education recently ruled that teachers must not hold tuition sessions after school hours in return for a fee. The Minister bases his argument on egalitarianism. In his view children whose parents are too poor to apply for extra lessons will be at a disadvantage and will be no match for their mates from more privileged homes. But, writes AFRICA EVENTS, this is a complex problem the Minister has sought to overcome with a simple solution.

Some students have to trudge five miles to school, are not sure to get a square meal when they get back home, have no privacy to do their homework and might have to miss evening study because their parents expect them to fetch water. Other students are dropped at school in a family car, have a nice working environment at home for private study and are never asked to do house chores because there are servants.

The article goes on: ‘Much as one might sympathise with the Minister’s concern for equality in the classroom, any effort on his part to tackle the larger question of inequality in society is bound to fly in the face of the new official mood for individual enterprise. The Leadership Code, a cornerstone of the Arusha Declaration, the ideological anchor of social and economic policy since independence, has just been scrapped. Is the Minister of Education on the same wavelength as the bigwigs in the ruling party and the Cabinet? ….

Getting the schools better equipped, improving the teacher/pupil ratio and motivating teachers would be a far more positive stab at the core (of the educational problem) than the nit picking and scratching on the periphery that he is currently tied down to’.

CHEAP SUITS
BUSINESS TRAVELLER has been advising its readers on where they can find
the most reasonably priced mens’ suits. Prices were given in US dollars and the average for UK was said to be $290. Tanzania came out as the second lowest (Ghana was the lowest). It was stated that a suit can be bought in Tanzania for $80. The highest priced suits were in Japan – $608 .

Tanzania also received prominence when it was found to be the cheapest place (36 countries were included in the sample) for the suit to be dry-cleaned. Taking 100 as the price of dry cleaning in Britain, the cost in Tanzania was estimated to be 16.5. Switzerland was the most expensive at 135.

WHO PAYS THE PIPER?
In issue no 37 of this Bullet in, under the heading ‘Tanzania in the Media’ we quoted from an article in AFRICA EVENTS under the heading ‘Plenty of Sulk, Little Bulk’ referring to dissident Tanzanian political groups in London.

In its February 1991 issue AFRICA EVENTS published a rejoinder which it stated had been published earlier in the September issue of Zanzibar Newsletter, an organ of the UK-based Zanzibar Organisation. The rejoinder stated that frivolity should not be a characteristic of a periodical claiming to report on events with a degree of seriousness. It went on ‘It is said that “who pays the piper calls the tune” and the magazine has of late been obviously extra cautious trying to avoid treading on the corns of the waning Mwalimu … . the subscription arrears blocked in Dar es Salaam have a sobering effect on Journalistic objectivity …. it is deplorable to see the first come-together of various political groupings dedicated to liberate Tanzania from a thirty-year dictatorship (being ridiculed) …. unless of course it is the writer’s intention to maintain the status quo in Tanzania when the whole world is moving towards freedom and progress …. the Tanzania Democratic Front has two aims: the democratisation of Tanzania and the liberation of Zanzibar . . . . pouring petty journalese cynicism on these laudable aims serves only to perpetuate dictatorship in Tanzania and to prolong the agony of occupation in Zanzibar ‘.

A NEW INTERNATIOINAL TELEPHONE EXCHANGE
Tanzania Posts and Telecommunications Corporation has announced that a US$ 6.0 million international telephone exchange, which will connect Tanzania with the outside world, began on February 12th 1991. This was stated in the March 4 issue of t he AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST. The new exchange has a capacity of 2,000 trunks compared with the previous capacity of 650.

ALL THE TRAPPINGS OF AN AMERICAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN
‘The bunting is out, the cheerleaders sing and the dirt roads have been specially graded’ . So began an article in the London TIMES (May 20, 1991) reporting on the visit to a project they are sponsoring at Mareu in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro by former President Jimmy Carter, father of the Green Revolution, 77-year old Dr Norman Borlaug and former Nigerian President Obasanjo who has submitted his candidacy for the post of Secretary General of the United Nations. Finance for the project comes from wealthy Japanese philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa.

The project’s implementation was delayed for three years until the government was able to guarantee fertiliser supplies and a change in its agricultural pricing policy. Starting with 67 management training plots in 1989 the project now administers 4,286 in 78 villages in the area around Mareu. Each participating farmer has a demonstration plot of one acre and yields up to 12 to 28 bags of maize are being achieved compared with a local average of 4 to 8 bags. The idea is for other farmers to copy the success of the demonstration plots.

BWANA MSA
‘Zanzibar has just lost one of the greatest treasures in the literary world. Few are those amongst Swahili readers who do not know of Bwana Mohamed Said Abdalla, Monsieur MSA – which is also the name of the main character in his crime novels’. So reported URAFIKI TANZANIA in its January-March 1991 issue. ‘The two personalities resembled each other and both were always found smoking their pipes…. Monsieur MSA had a remarkable ability in handling words and through his many books his name will live forever.’

TANZANIA TRIUMPHANT
This was the first time in over 15 years that any Tanzanian soccer team be it at national or club level had brought home some sort of silverware to the soccer-mad Tanzanians. So began AFRICA EVENTS’ account of the triumph of Tanzania in the East and Central Club Championship. It was the famous Simba Sports Club of Dar es Salaam that was crowned king of club soccer in East and Central Africa when they trounced the much feared Sports Club Ville of Uganda 3-0. Simba were the first winners of the trophy, way back in 1974, in an era when they provided strong rivalry to the other well known team Young African. Would, asked Africe Events, Simba’s win usher in a new ere of success for Tanzanian soccer?

INVESTMENT CODE IS NICE AS FAR AS IT GOES
Under this heading AFRICAN BUSINESS in its July 1990 issue stated that 1I1any businessmen in Dar es Salaam had welcomed the new Investment Code (analysed in Bulletin No 37). While many felt that it could have offered more carrots, it represented a crucial break with the past and thus an important beginning. The new code was said to have offered few new guarantees to investors but had restated the constitutional position that no property could be nationalised without compensation. Tanzania would be joining the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) as well as the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). A local business consultant was quoted as having said that potential investors had nothing to fear. Tanzania was undergoing fundamental changes.

THE GENESIS ARCHIPELIGO
‘One hundred years ago Baron Adalbert Emil Redcliffe le Tanneur von Saint Paul-Illaire, the Governor of German East Africa (later Tanzania) found a pretty blue-flowered plant growing around limestone out crops near Tanga … he posted some seeds to his father who grew the plant … and in turn sent some seeds to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Herenhausen. The first of those plants to flower were exhibited lit the International Horticultural Exhibition of 1893 in Ghent under the name Saintpaulia ionantha – the African violet.’ Thus began an article by Jonathan Kingdon in the May 1990 issue of BBC WILDLIFE.

The article went on to describe how the Tanga region was later taken over by estates and the plant became extinct in its original habitat. The wild Saintpaulia was then lost to science for several decades until , in 1985, it was rediscovered by John Lovett in the Uzungwa mountains 300 miles from the place where it had been found originally.

In October 1989 the Society for Environmental Exploration (Bulletin No 35) enabled Jonathan Kingdon to visit Tanzania and in particular the Matumbi range of sandstone hills close to the Indian Ocean. He found a second surviving population of African violets . He went on to explain why he expected he might find the violet there and compared and contrasted what he described as ‘stable’ as distinct from ‘fluctuating’ habitats in many other parts of Africa. He stated that about a quarter of Africa’s species are clustered in old enclaves with stable climates. He concluded by referring to the ‘profligate and irreversible waste’ now occurring in the Matumbi forest and the need for conservation of the remaining forest.

THE POPE IN TANZANIA
Commenting on the Pope’s frequent use of Kiswahili during his visit to Tanzania for three days from September 2, 1990 one local priest said he “sounded like a foreigner who had lived in Tanzania a long time” (UNIVERSE September 9, 1990).

This visit gave Tanzania much greater publicity in the international press than it is accustomed to.

The DAILY TELEGRAPH: ‘Pope’s Call to Shun Condoms Fuels AIDS Row’ According to the Telegraph the Pope had declared in Dar es Salaam that condoms would only encourage – the very patterns of behaviour which have greatly contributed to the expansion of the disease”

The French newspaper LIBERATION: ‘Jean Paul II Face a L’Afrique Qui Bouge’: ‘Addressing 80,000 people in Dar es Salaam yesterday the Pope ordained 43 new priests who would help to ‘prepare the African Catholic Church for the third millennium.’

The NEW YORK TIMES wrote of the Pope’s intention to prepare an encyclical reinforcing the Catholic Church’s hostility to all forms of contraception.

The London TIMES: ‘Pope Calls for Moral Drive Against AIDS.’ The Pope arrived at the Jangwani sports ground to the rhythms of Swahili hymns and traditional drums. As he drove through the crowd in an open black Rolls Royce the huge congregation rose to its feet , ululating, clapping and waving ….

UNIVERSE: ‘AIDS Cure Rivalry Must End’ . “AIDS brings a unique cultural unease because in it the life giving functions of human sexuality, and the blood which epitomises health and life itself, have become a roadway to death”. The Pope praised the rapidly growing Church in Tanzania for its ministry to the sick and needy and for its overall spiritual vitality.

The DAILY TELEGRAPH: ‘Africans Flock for Pope’s Blessing’. Father Giorgio Battifolo, an Italian who has been working In Tanzania for 36 years, said “I never thought to live to see this. It’s beautiful. This is a great reward for the early missionaries who had so many difficulties~

BUSINESS AS USUAL
Reviewing police efforts to deal with the problem of prostitution in Dar es Salaam during the last eighteen months, AFRICAN CONCORD in a recent issue, described how the Police had launched a major campaign at the end of 1989. About 100 prostitutes had been rounded up and within days some 50 had been sentenced to prison for six months. Several others were fined and the youngest and oldest were placed under the care of the social welfare services. But the nation, led by fervent feminist groups, reacted angrily, saying it was unfair for the Police to carry out a one-sided scoop, singling out women and leaving behind their male counterparts. AFRICAN CONCORD said that it believed that the women had eventually received a Presidential pardon. As one of them put it recently “it is now business as usual”.

NEW APPROACH TO CRAFTS PROMOTION
‘Almost everywhere in tropical Africa where there are ore deposits, iron ore is produced. The Negro possesses a marked talent for working iron. Reportedly, even entire rifles have been fabricated including the bores for the barrels’ . With this quotation from a 1910 document entitled ‘Handicraft and Industry in East Africa’ a recent issue of the German publication AFRIKA reviewed historically the work of craftsmen in Africa with particular reference to Tanzania.
‘Colonialism based on the primitive exploitation of men and raw materials afforded traditional crafts no new opening or markets … Liberation brought no improvement – traditional artisans ‘under a tree’ were viewed by the new elites as a sign of backwardness and underdevelopment …..

Far more than churches, schools, or health centres, the structures that Strike the eye in rural Tanzania are the water tanks. These are all so sophisticated in their design that maintenance and repair can only be carried out by specialists with modern equipment … hardly any system of water supply is today operational except where a new development project has been initiated to rehabilitate the dilapidated water tanks.

For years now efforts have been made to develop appropriate technologies for the Third World. The spread effect has remained minimal for various technical, economic and ideological reasons …

But in Singida, the Usambara mountains and Morogoro a new approach to craft promotion has begun in arrangements made in partnership with the churches. The key concept is that promotion should be directed at existing, local workshops … aid donors provide direct business consultancy in conjunction with credit facilities and flexible individual training of craftsmen. Particularly successful is the Crafts and Artisans Promotion Unit (CAPU) set up in Singlda. In the first phase the craftsman is provided with what he needs to fabricate axes, hoes, knives, spears, arrows etc with new tools in a more rational manner. In the second phase … a workshop is constructed and provided with manual machines … In the third phase new technologies are introduced.’

FOREST CONSERVATION MEASURES
The German publication AFRIKA (9-10/90) stated th8t Tanzania had launched ‘a fire and environment war’ to reduce the damage caused by bush fires and discourage firewood 8nd charcoal use. Tanzania’s trees, which supplied 90% of domestic fuel requirements, were being felled at an annual rate of 300-400,000 hectares and another 65,000 hectares were destroyed by fire each year. New planting accounted for only 20,000 hectares.

New measures included taking tax off electric, gas and solar stoves, a ban on charcoal exports, extra fire fighting units, more patrols and a public awareness campaign.

BODIES ROT
Under this heading AFRICA HEALTH in its September 1990 issue reported that in Bukoba, one of the districts worst affected by AIDS, a major problem has arisen in the disposal of bodies of people who have died from the disease. Relatives often do not come to collect bodies for burial. The Red Cross has provided 2,400 metres of shroud cloth to the Kagera Regional Hospital which has no cold room.

ANC EXILES STAY ABROAD
NEW AFRICAN in its November 1990 issue wrote that many South African exiles were having second thoughts about returning home due to the instability and violence there. In Tanzania, it stated, ‘where most of the exiles found refuge, about 50 school teachers are known to have applied for jobs … Over 200 South African students have just joined the Soloman Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania because there are no alternatives at home.’

HOMECOMING
The Tanzanian writer Adam Lusekelo has been spending a year working with the BBC in London. He wrote in the November-December 1990 issue of the BBC magazine FOCUS ON AFRICA about his ‘homecoming’:

‘Sweltering Dar es Salaam. The sun burns you as you walk down the busy Samora Machel Avenue – now avoiding a heap of rubbish, now making a minor Olympic record as you jump over a pot-hole. Pretty damsels walk the opposite way but you ignore them. AIDS. But you are home again. It feels good ….

A friend hails me from across the street. “I say. When did you come?” You tell him that you came back four months ago … “Have you been to the Kremlin?” he suggests. .. Kremlin?” “Yeah. In Moscow. It’s a nice place. You can get roast chicken. Goes down well with ugali. There are also some very cold beers there.” So you take a cab to Kinondoni shanty township – the people there call it Moscow. The cab would have made Peugeot manufacturers pleased with themselves – if that is, they are still alive …. the friend takes out a packet of cigarettes. “Don’t” yells the driver.
“Why?”
“This car will explode” he says. You agree from the smell of petrol that is getting increasingly intolerable. The Kremlin is full of youngish men and women …
“Back to TZ, eh? We’ll see about those fancy shirts you are wearing. They will fade. And that hair will turn red. You see, God has lowered the sun by an inch or two. And those nice smells you are wearing will disappear. You will end up smelling of good old Tanzanian sweat…

STATISTICS FOR 185 ECONOMIES
WORLD BANK NEWS in its September 26, 1990 issue compared and contrasted statistically the economies of 185 countries. Tanzania’s GNP in 1989 was given as US$ 3,079 compared with US$ 3,775 in 1988. Its growth rate for the period 1980 to 1989 averaged 1.8% (compared with a population growth rate of 3.5%). Tanzania’s GNP per capita was US$ 120 in 1989 – equivalent to a real growth rate between 1980 and 1969 of minus 1.6%. Tanzania came out at the very bottom of the list in terms of GNP per capita. Only Mozambique with a figure of US$ 100 came lower. Ethiopia was said to have had the same rate as Tanzania in 1989 – ie: US$ 120.

The United Kingdom had a GNP of US$ 834,166 in 1989 equal to a per capita GNP of US$ 14,570. The figures for the United States were US$ 5,237,707 or US$ 21,100. Other African country GNP’s per capita were given as: Kenya US$ 380, Angola US$ 620, Botswana US$ 940, Burkina Faso US$ 310, Cote d’ Ivoire US$ 790, Gabon US$ 2,770, Gambia US$ 230, Lesotho US$ 470, Malawi US$ 160, Nigeria US$ 250, South Africa US$ 2,460 and Swaziland US$ 900.

DEFICIT IN ACCOUNTANTS
A national campaign by the accountancy profession in Tanzania over the last five years has successfully resulted in the 460 parastatal organisations bringing their accounts up to date according to E. B. Mndolwa writing in the September 1990 issue of CERTIFIED ACCOUNTANT. At present Tanzania needs some 6,000 – 7,000 qualified accountants and 15 – 20,000 accounting technicians according to the article but the numbers available total only 1,000 and 3,000 respectively.

FIVE NEW WORLD BANK (IDA) PROJECTS
Tanzania has been receiving a record amount of attention in WORLD BANK NEWS in recent months as it has acquired a number of new IDA credits.

‘Tanzania Modernises Dar es Salaam Port’ (March 1990)- US$ 37.0 million designed to double the capacity of the port’s container terminal and improve other port services.

‘Tanzania Tackles Problems of Malnutrition. Ineffective Health Services’ (March 8) – a US$ 70.0 million project.

‘Tanzania Set to Revitalise Agricultural Sector’ (April 5) – an IDA Credit of US$ 200.0 million in which the emphasis is on reducing the Government’s role in marketing while encouraging cooperatives and the private sector.

‘Tanzania Rehabilitates Road Network’ (June 7) – a US$ 871.0 million project aimed at restoring 60% of the nation’s primary roads and 50% of the regional road network in 11 agriculturally productive regions.

ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE
In its item on a new Education Project (US$ 38.0 million credit) WORLD BANK NEWS described Tanzania’s Education sector as having deteriorated from ‘what was once an exemplar system to one that is now on the brink of collapse’. The article went on to state that primary school enrolment had dropped from 96% of all eligible children in 1979 to 78% in 1978. Secondary school enrolment was amongst the lowest in the world, with only 37% of pupils between the ages of 14 and 17 attending school. School buildings were dilapidated and there was no system in place to maintain them. The project includes construction and renovation of schools, more appropriate curricula and improvements in management of the system.

Roger Carter comments on the criticisms of the system as follows: Editor:
‘In 1974 the CCM Party resolved, in what came to be known as the Musoma Resolution, that by November 1977 every child of school age would receive an opportunity of enrollment in Std 1 of a primary school. As a result Std 1 enrolment grew from 433,000 in 1974 to 878,000 in 1977.

This figure included, not only children in the seven year age group, but also many older children who had missed an earlier chance of primary schooling. The subsequent percentage decline and reported deterioration in standards were largely caused by financial stringency. The original Party decision on Universal Primary Education (UPE) had been taken on the basis of a cost calculation made in 1969 and it is doubtful whether Tanzania could have withstood the burden of UPE, even in favourable circumstances, without a serious decline in standards.

In the case of secondary education the number of schools in the public sector remained almost constant from 84 in 1977 to 86 in 1985, reflecting in part the priority given to primary education. One consequence was the blossoming of the private sector. By 1988 the number enrolled in the private sector was 38% greater than in the public sector. Inevitably the standards in private schools in most cases were very poor owing to 1ack of resources and teaching skills’.

A TERRIBLE CONDITION
Under this heading AFRICAN CONCORD in its June 18th issue wrote that Tanzania’s President had kicked against a suggestion by Western nations to make the adoption of multi-partyism a condition for economic aid. President Mwinyi had told the Vice-President of the European Community Manuel Marin that this amounted to both political and economic blackmail of the poor. It is not proper for external powers to force their political standards on others.

TANZANIAN SCIENTISTS GENERATE ‘BIOFUEL’
Microbiologists at the University of Dar es Salaam have discovered a new way of converting organic matter into fuel according to USPG NETWORK, the journal of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel’.

The breakthrough came when they discovered how two micro–organisms affect each other in the mouth of the cockroach, which is famous for eating anything. As fossil fuel reserves decline they leave biomass as the most important potential resource for producing renewable energy. Until now the process – which involves the breakdown of cellulose – has been too slow for practical use. Now, thanks to Tanzanian scientists and the humble cockroach, natural systems may be developed which will speed up the process and give the world an alternative source of energy.

HOMAGE TO BLACK STARS
What entertainer hasn’t dreamed of seeing his or her name in lights asked TIME magazine in an article in its June 4th issue. It then went on to describe and illustrate in colour how Tanzania is now offering the ‘stellar names of the black entertainment world’ something different – their faces on postage stamps. Those featured included Makossa saxophonist Manu Dibango from Cameroon, comic actor Eddie Murphy and Singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder from the USA, South African singer Miriam Makeba and the late Sammy Davis Jr.

GFTTING TO ZANZIBAR ISN’T ANY FUN
The WALL STREET JOURNAL stated in a lengthy and highly critical
article in its June 18th issue that Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and the Hollywood movie to the contrary, there is no ‘Road to Zanzibar’.

Stating that the latest brochure on Zanzibar from the tourist office in Dar was printed in 1963 and speaks of up to four flights daily and several passenger ferries, the article went on to describe how the ‘Virgin Butterfly’ (Bulletin No 33) which had plied the seas in airc-onditioned style had had to be towed to Mombassa for repairs and had then ‘just disappeared back to Scandinavia’ from which it came. Next had come the ‘Dolphin’, a fresh-water ferry from the USA which had been made seaworthy for sea water. For several weeks it had chugged from mainland to island in about three hours until it had hit a reef about six miles off Zanzibar and still awaited repair.

‘For the truly desperate traveller there are the Arab trading dhows ….. if tile wind isn’t right to lighten the load the traders will first throw the tourist’s luggage overboard and then, if need be, the tourists themselves. “It happens” says a travel agent for the Tanzania Tourist Corporation. “Why not just fly?”

But, went on the article, ‘its not for nothing that the locals call the Air Tanzania Corporation “Any Time Cancelled”……

After some very unflattering remarks about the Bwawani Hotel – ‘a concrete monstrosity painted a garish yellow’ – and reference to a Zanzibar dissident in Dar es Salaam who had said that the authorities didn’t _want foreigners because the Zanzibari’s would inform them about ‘the situation’ the Zanzibar Chief Minister, Dr Omar Juma, was quoted as having hoped that a privately run airport, a private air service and with Stone Town in the hands of private owners who would fix up the
houses, Zanzibar’s tourist industry could be saved.

HISTORIC PLACES AND ELECTRIC FACTORIES
The thirteenth issue of the JAPAN – TANZANIA ASSOCIATION NEWS of June 13th reported on the State Visit of Tanzania’s President to Japan from December 17th to 22nd 1989. The President had attended welcoming ceremonies at the Akasaka Palace, a dinner at the Imperial Palace and had signed diplomatic notes for the extension of Yen 2.0 billion of Japanese grant aid. The Japan-Tanzania Association had sent more than fifty people to the welcoming ceremonies and had presented a Japanese doll to the President. In Kyoto the Presidential party had visited several historic places such as the Kinkakuji Shrine, Nijo Castle and, in Osaka, several electric factories.

A SILENT DISASTER
‘It is a typical day at the University of Dar es Salaam. Ernest Maganya arrives a little breathless for the class he teaches in Developmental Economics, for he has been getting his usual practical experience in the subject. His professor’s pay of US$ 75 per month is enough to feed his family for- about a week, and he supplements this by ferrying produce and chickens to market every morning in an old pick-up truck.

So began an article in a recent issue of the JAPAN TIMES quoting from the LOS ANGELES TIMES. ‘Down the hill from the classrooms’ the article went on ‘student President Matiko Matara arrives back in his office in the student center from which he was escorted at gunpoint two days earlier by the Tanzanian security police. The police had been questioning him about his role in fomenting an eight day student strike ….. they accused him of being on the US Central Intelligence Agency payroll.

There followed a paragraph about the closure of the university. This story could be written about any of more than forty institutions of higher learning on the continent of Africa …. the condition of African universities night be described as a silent disaster. There are no dramatic photos, no heart-rending personal histories. But the cradles of African leadership are almost uniformly victimised by physical collapse, a ‘brain drain’ fuelled by ludicrously low salaries and political unrest. Government hostility, donor neglect and decades of mismanagement and inept planning are helping them crumble’ … .

‘The library at the Dar university is useful more as a chronicle of the institution’s past than as a study tool. In the periodicals room scarcely any of the technical journals are up to date. The file of Psychological Abstracts stops at 1963. Current biography at 1977. The most recent World Almanac is 10 years old. Bound volumes of the Times of London Index stretch back 30 years but the most recent issue available is dated 1977 …. ‘.

TAFICO – A CHEQUERED HISTORY
In an article under the title ‘The Fisheries of Tanzania’ WORLD FISHING in a recent issue endeavoured, in two pages, to describe the whole of Tanzania’s fishing industry.

‘In 1974 the Government established a State-controlled fishing company TAFICO ostensibly to develop, manage and exploit all aspects of the marine fishery with particular emphasis on shrimps. TAFICO has had a chequered history since its inception. International aid donors with good, albeit misguided intentions, contributed vessels of varying designs ranging from 20m beam trawlers from Australia to 10m vessels from the UK, Finland and Japan …. the result was predictable: machinery of a multitude of origins and designs soon broke down with no provision for spare parts or other back up services. Boats became discarded with minor mechanical faults, to lie rusting on the beach in Tanzania’s humid climate. In essence, epitomising in microcosm what should not be done in developing countries which lack trained technical staff and support facilities.

Happily. in recent years. the Government has reviewed its policies. TAFICO is now being assisted by Japan which is providing technicians and operating new prawn-catching vessels of the very latest design. Prawns are caught, processed and packed on board, ready for export. Foreign vessels under license have also been allowed into the fishery thus sharpening the competitive edge. Earnings have increased dramatically.
Paradoxically, the local artisanal fishery is still the main producer of fish, accounting for some 85% of the total marine catch. It is a fishery that has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years ……. ‘.

ILL-CONCEIVED AID
‘By the year 2000 at the cost of US$ 1.9 billion of western aid Tanzania’s potholed road network will be restored to 70% of what it was in 1975. It is a damning assessment for a country which has consistently been ranked one of the world’s top aid per capita recipients’.

So began an article highly critical of aid to Africa in the August 11th issue of the FINANCIAL TIMES. The article went on: ‘Between 1970 and 1989 Tanzania received about US$ 9.5 billion of foreign assistance. Aid workers from Peking to Stockholm poured fistfuls of money into the country to shore up an African experiment in alternative development … Socialism and Self Reliance. But 20 years of self reliance have made Tanzania more dependent on imports and foreign aid, currently running at just over $1.0 billion a year, than almost any other country in sub-Saharan Africa. And, apart from the leaps forward in literacy and the provision of rudimentary rural health services, there is little to show for the massive handouts of assistance … there had been wanton mismanagement of the economy. But poorly designed and implemented development projects combined with bad advice from donors also contributed to Tanzania’s economic malaise’

The Swedish Ambassador was quoted as having said that “Tanzania came to symbolise our hopes in Africa. We supported a development policy we thought was correct and which appealed to the philosophy of our own country. But it was not successful. Sweden and others helped to drag Tanzania into the crisis”.

The article described the World Bank sponsored Morogoro Shoe Factory as a good example of an ill-conceived industrial strategy combined with very poor project design and the Norwegian sponsored Mbegani Fisheries Development Centre (Bulletin No 36) as a ‘hare-brained scheme’

WHY SHOULD AN ECONOMIC GIANT SWINDLE ONE OF THE WORLD’S POOREST NATIONS?
Under this heading the Japanese newspaper ASAHI SHINBUN reported recently that a Japanese dealer in second- hand cars in Nagoya had had printed a glossy circular offering refurbished Japanese cars at bargain prices on receipt of cash from Tanzania. The cars did not arrive as promised. The Japanese embassy in Dar es Salaam issued warnings through the newspapers that some 50 people had responded and had lost their money. In all a sum of US$ 170,000 had been lost. A Japanese businessman in Dar es Salaam had subsequently written to the ASAHI SHINBUN appealing to Japanese people to compensate those Tanzanians who had been exploited and for the government to stop such schemes. The car dealer has been expelled from the Nagoya Chamber of Commerce.

PLENTY OF SULK, LITTLE BULK
Sulk (Nuna) and Ire (Hamaki) sound rather bizarre as labels for political parties; but they are indeed the initials that stand for the names of two of the dissident political groupings that met in London recently as joint signatories to a challenging letter addressed to the Chairman of the sole and ruling party in Tanzania – the CCM.

So began an article in the July issue of AFRICA EVENTS. The article went on: The document welcomes ‘the initiative of the CCM Chairman in allowing the introduction of. … competing parties in the political system of Tanzania, suggests changes in the Constitution to allow for multi-party activity and asks for the elections to be postponed to give time for new parties to register and campaign.

‘Oscar Kambona who fell out with Nyerere in the sixties, and is now in exile in Britain, is the leader of one of the parties the Tanzania Democratic Front. The monarchist Zanzibar organisation, dual based in Portsmouth and Dubai. …. endorsed the petition. Hamaki, led by … .. .. Marxist ex-Umma Party activists based mainly in Copenhagen were also there…… The Tanzania Action Front, centering around the highjackers of a Tanzanian civilian plane a few years ago were not to be left out. There were also the Nuna and Tanzania Youth Democratic Movement parties.

Observers in London are … . rather at a loss to understand how such a …. combination could ever possibly have been achieved …… there is a common streak running through the leadership … most were once in senior positions in the cabinet, the civil service or the army … . they see a chance to snap back into the great whirlwind excitement of politicking in the centre rather than the outer wilderness of foreign lands’.

GOLD SALES START TO SHINE
In the June 25th Issue of the AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIGEST there was an article describing how the Bank of Tanzania had exported 196 kilos of gold worth £ 1.0 million In seven weeks since it took over responsibility for gold sales from private traders. This compared with 1,087 kilos exported over seven years between 1982 and 1989. 196 kilos were exported to the Bank of England for purification. Purity in gold content was rated at 84.7%

The Bank of Tanzania has ordered 24 weighing scales to expand its buying activities nationwide. Since its takeover of gold purchases, black marketeers have pushed prices up in an attempt to defeat the Bank. On June 16th therefore the Bank announced that it was raising the price from July 1st in on attempt to drive out the black marketeers.

WHY THE UNIVERSITY WAS CLOSED
AFRICA EVENTS in its August/September 1990 issue published a three page analysis aimed at determining the reasons for the closure of the University of Dar es Salaam by the Government on May 12. The Sokoine University in Morogoro remains open. The article concluded that there was still a lack of agreement about the real cause.

It traced the events: a 12 day ‘Baraza’ amongst the students, joined at one stage by some members of staff; a student delegation to the President to invite him to come to the university to ta1k to them about their grievances (the control of the student organisation by the youth wing of the ruling party; education cuts; shortages of space, books, medicines etc; cuts in their spending power for food and lodging); a promise by the President to do so after a forthcoming overseas visit; the refusal of the students to return to their classes; a strong ultimatum from the government; an eventual reluctant return to classes; return of the President and his refusal to meet the students because they had originally disobeyed his instruction to return to classes; the placing on walls of all kinds of filthy posters by the students. The government stated that it was forced to take action because of the d6ngerous security situation that was developing.

AFTER TKE RAINS
AFRICAN CONCORD wrote in its June 4th issue about the aftermath of the very severe flooding which Tanzania has suffered from this year.

‘It began as a trickle. But all too suddenly the heaven’s bowels opened and the rains came down in torrents. Tanzanian meteorologists have not seen such floods for more than ha1f a century. Worst hit regions were Lindi, Mtwara, Arusha, Dodoma, Tabora, Mara, Shinyanga, Morogoro and Kilimanjaro. 200,000 people have been displaced from their homes.

Tanzanians themselves raised some US$ 268,000 to help the victims and the country received foodstuffs, tents, medicines blankets, utensils and building materials as well as cash donations from foreign donors.

IT IS DEMOCRATIC
In a seven page article in the April issue of THE PARLIAMENTARIAN Tanzanian MP, Mr Philip S Marmo, compared aspects of democracy in Tanzania with democracy in certain other states. He pointed out that in the last 25 years, on average, more than half the incumbent members of Tanzania’s Parliament, including senior government Ministers had failed to be returned at elections. This meant a high degree of leadership circulation. Under one-party conditions elections tended to be much more unsafe for personal political careers than in countries where parties competed with each other’. Furthermore, the Tanzanian system allowed the electorate to choose the most competent persons as MP’s rather than having to vote for persons chosen by competing parties.