NYERERE AND THE WORLD BANK

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Extracts from a paper presented by Ron Fennell at a Britain-Tanzania Society seminar on Mwalimu Nyerere on March 11.
‘Confrontation’

An extreme version of the relations between the World Bank and President Nyerere might be:

Nyerere knew little about economics. He refused to address macro-economic policy issues, and failed to accept that state management was stifling growth. The Bank, on the other hand, did not appreciate the cost of nation building and the impact of external events. Since 1977 Tanzania had been battered by external events over which it had no control including in 1977 collapse of the East African Community (cost $100m) and collapse of the coffee boom (cost $100m); in 1979/81 the war against Uganda ($500m plus $100m assistance to Uganda);the 1979/80 oil price increases (cost $150m); the 1979 flood damage ($l00m) leading to imports of food (cost $50m).

While there is some truth in both viewpoints, they oversimplify the relationship between the World Bank and Tanzania, whose ultimate policy maker was Mwalimu Nyerere. We get a better understanding of the relationship if we look at the different phases through which that relationship passed:

1961 to 1967. Independence to the Arusha Declaration
During the first six years of independence relations between the Bank and Tanzania were cordial but low key. Good prices were obtained for export crops -sisal, coffee, tea and cashew nuts. Import capacity, measured in real terms by export earnings, reached its peak in the mid 60s. Industrial investment grew by 18% encouraged by government policies that safeguarded foreign investment and limited public sector involvement. The World Bank’s 1961 economic report outlined a strategy for the improvement of peasant agriculture. It had a significant influence on the first two five-year plans. Bank activity in Tanzania was influenced by the wish to establish a flourishing East African Community. Consequently, lending in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda was seen as a total package. Lending concentrated on infrastructure and education. There was less attention in the Bank to possible flaws in national economic policy because it was assumed that the three countries were moving towards a common monetary and fiscal policy.

The McNamara/Nyerere alliance 1968 to 1973.
In 1968 Robert McNamara became President of the World Bank. A close relationship developed between McNamara and Mwalimu based upon mutual respect. McNamara saw that Tanzania was a stable country in a huge continent that seemed to be dominated by Cold War rivalries and coups. Its leader was highly intelligent, honest and charismatic and there was a reasonable prospect of political continuity. Nyerere managed to charm people with very different political philosophies ranging from those of Henry Kissinger to Chairman Mao. The Arusha Declaration of 1967 was a major policy statement as well as a skilful piece of political propaganda. Many of the principles of the Declaration -rural development, equity through basic education.’ ­matched McNamara’s concern for basic needs and smallholder agriculture. McNamara’s determination to triple the Bank’s lending programme and give increasing emphasis to Africa was a significant change in Bank policy. Lending concentrated on development projects rather than budgetary support. However, there was insufficient emphasis on economic and sectoral analysis. So began a series of operations in Tanzania supporting integrated rural development and export crop parastatals. Between 1970 and 1980 the Bank (IBRD and IDA) provided $256 million for agriculture, mostly in support of crop parastatals. Unfortunately, a retrospective evaluation of these projects showed that they generally performed poorly. This was partly because of crop production failures and partly because they did not anticipate the full effects of the government’s villagisation and internal trade policies. The Bank channelled nearly half of its total commitments in the agricultural sector to parastatals thereby reinforcing their dominant position. Out of ten agricultural projects audited by the Bank’s own Operations Evaluation Department, only two had an economic rate of return of over 10 percent, one had a rate of return of 4 percent and 7 had negative rates of return. Projects sometimes failed to take into account the social structures in the rural community.

Thus, for a variety of complex reasons many projects failed to bring the production response which had been expected.

The National Industrial Policy. 1973 to 1979
In 1973 the government turned its attention to improving the industrial base of the economy. Its Basic Industry policy -to improve self-sufficiency -received the support of many donors, including the World Bank, Sweden and China. Investment in that sector increased by 11 % a year but the rate of growth of production was sluggish. The share of the public sector in industrial employment rose from 15 to 50 percent and the number of enterprises ­mostly parastatals -tripled between 1967 and 1979. The national leadership, after making decisions about industrial investment, failed to monitor implementation and find out how they worked in practice. Nyerere himself noted in 1975 that Tanzania Breweries was only using 65% of its capacity.

In the enthusiasm for investment in new factories and facilities many in the international development community lost sight of the continuing import requirements of factories and their recurrent costs. Nyerere said ‘we must run while others walk’, meaning there was much to be done to raise the standard of life. But the development community was enveloped in an atmosphere of hectic activity and failed to detect the warning signals or foresee obstacles. Five years later, in 1985, I visited the impressive Mufindi Pulp and Paper Mill which was considerably delayed in start-up and was yet to achieve any of its targets. Building the access road from the main timber source on the plateau encountered major technical problems because the European contractor failed to consult local geologists and went bankrupt. Failure to reach agreement on use of the TANZAM railway proved to be another impediment.

The Industrialisation Policy assumed a large regional market: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania as an economic community to provide a springboard for exports to more countries in the region. The East Africa Community collapsed in 1977. The efforts by each of the three countries to build their own industrial capacity after the collapse contributed to the poor rates of return of Tanzania’s new industrial enterprises.

Frequent changes in the organisation of rural administration were very disruptive. For example, the switch from district councils to regional Party structures, from cooperatives to marketing boards and back to cooperatives undermined the management capacity of Tanzanian officials. A concern for political correctness tended to undermine the freedom of senior bureaucrats to execute development projects. The increasing power of Party apparatchiks in the regions tended to divert resources to lower priority activities.

The nationalisation of the trucking fleet made evacuation of crops difficult and Tanzanians in the rural areas found it increasingly difficult to get essential goods from the government run stores. Before 1974 private truckers provided all the commercial freight haulage. By 1977 this share had declined to about half of the total market. Truckers left the agricultural industry and concentrated their operations in urban areas, leaving rural areas to parastatal trucking.

The collapse of the economy (1979 to 1982)
Between 1979 and 1982 the economy showed increasing signs of malaise but insufficient attention was given to macro-economic policy and balance of payments issues. Nyerere failed to appreciate that the overvalued shilling in the late 70s and early 80s and the inefficiencies of parastatal marketing were reducing farmers’ incomes. For example, coffee growers in Arusha were digging up coffee to plant tomatoes because the latter were more profitable.

Nyerere always had genuine difficulty in accepting the IMF’s draconian policies. This was partly a reaction to the Fund’s insistence on the inherent value (almost moral virtue) of devaluation and to the multiple conditionalities which he felt reflected arrogance.

Between 1981 and 1984 there was a prolonged debate in the Party about alternative economic policies -whether to go with structural adjustment and the IMF or to go it alone. This delay led to a further decline in the economy. Faced with no practical alternative from the Party hardliners, Nyerere, after three years trying to get consensus, reluctantly accepted that he had to deal with the IMF. The parallel economy -trading outside official channels at ‘black market exchange rates’ -was becoming essential for survival. The Economic Saboteurs Act of 1983 caused great resentment among small businessmen and among many senior civil servants who had started their own business to cover family expenditures. It was a clumsy attempt to stamp out survival entrepreneurship. The President realised that changes had to come.

The necessity of reform 1983 to 1985
When I was sent to Dar as World Bank Resident Representative in January 1984, Ernie Stem, the Bank’s Senior Vice President, made it clear to me that all Bank lending to Tanzania would stop after the approval of the Mtera Power Project in early 1984 unless the government entered into a more active dialogue with the World Bank on economic reform. Times were hard. People were suffering. The picking of tea in the Mufindi plantations fell behind because the women pickers were unable to get sugar to put in their own morning tea, which constituted their main source of energy in the fields. There was a severe shortage of basic consumer goods.

But there were some positive signs:
During the previous two years the Tanzania Advisory Group, an independent team of reputable international economists, financed by the World Bank and ably assisted by Tanzanians from the University of Dar es Salaam, had put together an action plan. This turned into the government’s Structural Adjustment Programme which Nyerere recognised as a necessary prerequisite for a dialogue with the IMF.

The government grudgingly agreed in 1984 to permit ‘own funded imports’-i.e. financing of imports from the proceeds of unofficial exports of gold and agricultural produce which found its way across the Kenya border. In the fITst year about $100 million dollars worth of essential goods (like salt and sugar) were imported.

Until 1984 a private individual was not permitted to carry more than two bags of maize in a vehicle. The Party hard-line ideologists thought that maize fanners had to be protected from rapacious traders who would offer them a low price and that farmers would end up starving in the hungry season. Prime Minister Salim successfully argued in Cabinet that the restriction on the movement in maize should be lifted in order to ease the food supply in the urban areas. People began to discuss reform more openly. The University arranged a public workshop in 1984 that gave people an opportunity for debate.

There were Tanzanians in the university and business who were capable of giving the government sound economic advice. Gradually the government took these people into their counsels, often against the wishes of the Party ideologues. The World Bank’s insistence that policy change should come before Bank funds were released weighed heavily on Finance Minister Msuya in his efforts to convince more conservative cabinet ministers on the need for reform. But measures which he had introduced in June 1984, particularly own funded imports (two years before the start of a Bank funded Economic Recovery Programme) brought improved supply of textiles, clothing, vegetable oil and pick-up trucks.

Conclusion
There is no doubt that mistakes had been made by both sides. The Bank itself went through major changes in its approach to development assistance over the period. There was a move away from project specific lending unless it was based upon a more thorough assessment of sector policies, incentive systems and financial performance. In the early 80’s the Bank recognised that budgetary support, based upon programmes of structural adjustment, was necessary to help economies hit by adverse terms of trade and external events. But these changes in Bank strategy and the time taken to agree on policy packages increased the uncertainty about overall donor assistance.

Nyerere himself was slow to recognise that parastatal inefficiencies were having such a detrimental impact on peasant farmers -his favoured beneficiary. The drive for villagisation was accelerated by over enthusiastic regional administrators competing against each other. Nyerere did little to slow the pace. He refused to accept the need to devalue the shilling until donor consensus and the parlous state of the economy made it unavoidable. Nyerere himself admitted: “There are certain things I would not do if I were to start again. One of them is the abolition of local government and the other is the disbanding of cooperatives. We were impatient and ignorant’.

Structural adjustment is a phenomenon in all societies but developing countries often lack the necessary financial resources to cushion society against the shocks. In Tanzania adjustment has gone on slowly ­probably too slowly at times Tanzania and the Bank continue to work together to strengthen government institutions and to assist the private sector to play a greater role in development.

The work of the World Bank: has been made easier by the friendliness of the people of Tanzania and a stable political environment -a rarity in Africa -and by a commitment to consensus building. All these are part of Nyerere’s legacy to Tanzania
R. Fennell

TANZANIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

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A wildlife conservation scheme started by an American conservationist and a professional hunter has brought benefits worth more than £50,000 to 18 villages according to an article in the DAILY TELEGRAPH (January 3) which explained that, when Tanzania banned game hunting from 1973 to 1983, there was no one in the reserves to police them against poachers. Maswa District lost 15,000 animals a year and long lines of snares would cover every gap in the bush. Now, local people are paid £3 for each snare and much higher rewards for help in the arrest of armed poachers. Hunting clients are invited to pay up to £2,500 on top of their bills to benefit the villagers who accompany game rangers on anti­poaching patrols. Long-line snaring has become a thing of the past.

In what the CHURCH TIMES recently described as possibly the largest wide span structure to be built by the local people, a new 20 x 45 metre cathedral is taking shape in Musoma -‘the fruit of a living link: between Tanzanian Christians and the congregation of st. John’s Church, Blackheath, London’. Last July 15 church members from Blackheath went to Musoma to help erect the first of the cathedral’s 11 seven-ton roof trusses. The arched Gothic window frames were made on site by gluing and clamping together 13 separate strips of wood (Thank you Ron and Liz Fennell for sending this item and the one above -Editor).

Asha Mtwangi writing recently in the BBC’s FOCUS ON AFRICA featured Dar es Salaam’s informal trade sector: ‘There is no escaping it. Or, rather there is no escaping the machinga, the energetic young hawkers who have overrun the streets of Dar. Their talents are remarkable. They know the tastes of different kinds of potential customers. How about a sleek cordless telephone, or a handy self-wringing mop with bucket or a Rado 21 jewel watch for your girlfriend? …. the Ministry of Labour and Youth Development says that it has the interests of the machinga at heart and promises to make soft loans available … but the machinga are not interested. They get all the loans they need from the Indian merchants who lend them fancy merchandise; no financial hassles, no paperwork, no demands for collateral. Just trust and confidence in the machinga’s innate trading nous … .it certainly feels that the machinga are here to stay. The word has been extended to all petty businessmen. And that’s a tribute to the enterprise of the original machinga from the south of Tanzania’ .

London’s TIME OUT magazine (March 22) published a critical review of the new play ‘The Man With the Absurdly large Penis’ showing at the Young Vic Studio. The reviewer said it was difficult to resist saying that it was ‘bollocks’. ‘The play is a fictional monologue from a man with a 102cm penis caused by Proteus Syndrome. The play’s author, Rob Young, was quoted as saying “I am always asked if it’s autobiographical. I based the play on a visit to Tanzania where some men had testicles the size of carrier bags, after malaria caused elephantiasis”

One of the participants in a group researching the rain forests in the Udzungu Mountains, Iringa is Jennifer Walker. Quoted in the NEWCASTLE JOURNAL (April 7) she said that the forests have exceptional bio-diversity value and her research will feed into a study to develop forest management based on active community participation
(Thank you Jane Carroll for sending this item Editor).

A 16-page supplement on Arusha (‘Tanzania’s most endowed region’) in THE EAST AFRICAN (March 27) included an article pointing out that the region had the largest variety (50 different kinds) of minerals including the famed Tanzanite which represents 80% of the region’s gemstones exports. Other minerals mentioned included decorative stones like anyolite, crystalline marble, aventurine and amazonestone. Other minerals include high quality graphite, kyanite, limestone, and phosphates.

A three page article in the April issue of NEW AFRICAN by Henry Gombya, a Ugandan, headed ‘How Uganda led to Nyerere’s downfall’ presents a new angle on the Uganda-Tanzania war of 1978 and its aftermath. Extracts: ‘The Tanzanian People’s Defence Force that assisted Ugandan exiles to attack the Amin regime was mainly made up of secondary school students, school dropouts and village militias. Having spent more than a decade living under Nyerere’s failed socialist system, their entry into Uganda, a capitalist state even under Amin, was to prove a cultural shock for them …. What they found was an affluent, well-dressed society living not in … mud houses but in concrete block houses with corrugated iron roofs … this shock was first translated into envy when the Tanzanians …. went on to raise to the ground any building or house that looked beautiful. One such was the Masaka Town Hall, the most elegant building in South Uganda ……(later) Nyerere perhaps made history when he became the only African leader ever to rule another independent African country ….. one of the most important things missed by the media in its adulation of Nyerere was the effect his interference in Uganda had on his own people. In 1985 the soldiers returned home with the spoils of war. These ranged from massive stockpiles of weapons to cars and trucks loaded with household goods and they returned with loads of money. Nyerere was soon to realise that he had made a mistake by sending a peasant army into another country. He knew they had been exposed to riches his polices could not give them. He decided to abandon his polices and eventually to hand over power to another leader …… ‘

’11-year old Ledida, went with friends to draw water from a local water point. On their way back home a rogue hyena suddenly appeared and attacked the children mauling them in turn. The children’s screams and their attempts to ward off the hyena made the beast more aggressive. Ledida’s face was particularly badly mauled and she suffered fractured upper and lower jaws. She was taken to Loliondo Hospital which called the FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE for a mercy flight to Nairobi. During the journey her face was all bandaged up leaving only a breathing tube. Ledida will be in hospital for some time to undergo all the phases of re constructive surgery’.

BUSINESS NEWS

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Exchange rates (April 10): £1 = TShs 1,271 $1= TShs 799

President Mkapa praised the willingness of the World Bank and the IMF to listen to Tanzania especially their willingness to be flexible with regard to the new thrust towards growth and broader-based poverty reduction. Speaking in Gabon on 19th January he said that Tanzania had, in the last few years, witnessed in a World Bank President, Jim Wolfensohn and IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus, an unprecedented willingness to listen to Africa.

EU Development and Human Affairs Commissioner Poul Nielson was quoted in South Africa’s BUSINESS DAY (March 3) as saying that Tanzania’s policies were hindering free trade in the region by unduly protecting domestic industry. “While the government’s commitment to the market economy is generally recognized it seems to be much less prepared to liberalize in the area of foreign trade” he said. He gave as examples Tanzania’s decision to pull out of COMESA and the fact that Tanzania was the most reluctant in the East African Community and in SADC to implement free trade protocols. Economists at the same event defended Tanzania saying that the country could not produce world class products due to poor infrastructure. Local manufacturers would be killed by free competition within the regions’ trading blocs they said (thank you David Leishman for sending this item -Editor).

Anglogold, the world’s biggest gold producer has taken a 50 per cent joint venture stake in Ashanti Goldfield’s Geita project in Tanzania. This followed the serious financial situation affecting Ashanti after the sudden rise in the price of gold in late 1999. Anglogold is paying Ashanti $205 million in cash for the 50 percent share and will procure or provide project financing to the Geita project totalling $130 million.

The Presidential Parastatal Reform Commission has been given four more years in which to divest l32 public corporations. 263 out of 395 corporations have been divested in the last six years. Those earmarked for early divestiture included TTCL, TANESCO, Air Tanzania, the National Microfinance Bank, the National fusurance Corporation and DA W ASA.

The 6,000 depositors in the failed Greenland Bank in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar are receiving back funds in their accounts which were frozen last year -Daily News.

‘Alliance Air’ was in danger of collapse as this issue of TA went to press. The South African parent company Transnet decided to pull out from April 7. The other shareholders -South African Airways, Uganda and Tanzania -were deciding what to do -East African.

Tanzania’s 19th commercial bank will be Barclays which was licensed in January to resume operations in the country -East African.

A Netherlands-assisted $423 million project for the widening to 140 m and the deepening from 7.0 m to 10.2 m of the entrance to Dar es Salaam Port has been completed.

After one year of difficult negotiations and much popular opposition, the agreement under which 70% of the National Bank of Commerce has been taken over by the ABSA Group from South Africa was finally passed by parliament. A reduced sum of $18.75 million was paid to the Tanzanian Treasury by ABSA on March 30.

AID

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Recent announcements on aid to Tanzania: CHINA -a loan of Shs 7 billion to TAZARA for equipment and spare parts for the Chinese-aided Tanzania-Zambia railway. LIBYA -assorted equipment including three tractors, an ambulance and medicine for Zanzibar. USA -$2.5 million to fight AIDS. FINLAND -Shs 3.1 billion for the Local Government Reform Programme and the National Forest Programme and Shs 1.2 billion for poverty eradication. SWITZERLAND -Shs 9 billion in budget support. KOREA -Shs 24 million for communication and agricultural equipment. The EU -Euros 42 million for roads in Mwanza and for tax administration; Euros 2 million over two years for training, equipment and support for the Prevention of Corruption Bureau’s public awareness campaigns and Euros 1.75 million for implementation of the Tourism Master Plan. JAPAN -Shs 66 billion for forestry in Lushoto district, Shs 3 billion in food aid (rice) and Shs 210 million for equipment for the Nattional Museum. DENMARK -Shs 1.7 billion for new transparent ballot boxes for the next elections.

MISCELLANY

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The Chumbe island (Zanzibar) Coral park has won the British Airways ‘Tourism for Tomorrow’ award (Southern region) for its concerted efforts in preserving the marine and coastal environment -Daily News.

Tanzania’s cashew nut producers did well in 1999. Exports reached 48,700 tons which brought in about $51 million -the export price has increased from $700 per tonne in 1997 to $900 per tonne in 1999.

There have been a number of serious accidents recently. Nine people were killed and 43 injured when a bus overturned in Handeni in January. On March 19 in Rungwe an oil tanker overturned and in the fire which followed 33 people died. A Sudanese owned Boeing 707 cargo plane on its way to Mwanza to collect 40 tons of fish for export to Europe crashed into Lake Victoria, four kms from the runway on February 13. The crew were saved. On March 19 five people were killed and 21 were injured when a bus overturned in Morogoro.

In view of the 52% failure rate in the treatment of malaria using chloroquine, Tanzania has cleared for use two new drugs, both derivatives of ancient Chinese medicinal plants. The new drugs are Arsumax (also recommended by the World Health Organisation -WHO) produced by a French manufacturing company and Beta Artmether from China -The East African.
At the meeting in Nairobi in mi-April of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) a worldwide ban on the sale of ivory was re-imposed for two years. Tanzania was one of the countries pressing for this decision -The Times.

The Ministry of Defence has issued a statement on the ‘streamlining’ of the Tanzanian army. No new recruitment was being carried out except for replacements following deatl1 or compulsory retirement -Daily News.

Public opinion aided by the press and the National Environmental Management Council with support from Vice-President Omar Ali Juma has been successful in causing the Ilala Council to remove a massive billboard advertising cigarettes which had been built at the Palm Beach end of the Selander Bridge in Dar es Salaam -Guardian.

Tanzanian Vice-President Dr Omar Ali Juma has appealed to donors to give maximum support to private institutions like the Hubert Kairuki Memorial University (HKMU) to enable them to provide better services to the people. He congratulated the university, which began in 1997 and whose Vice Chancellor is Britain-Tanzania Society member Professor Esther Mwaikambo, on being the first private university in the country to be given a certificate of permanent registration.

Over 6,000 reptiles were exported from Tanzania in 1998 -a tenfold increase compared with 1991. Three quarters were spiny-tailed lizards, geckos and chameleons. The Coordinator of the Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC) said that these exports were beginning to pose a danger to some species -Daily News.
The rule under which new recruits to the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces are expelled from the army if they marry within six years is to continue -Guardian.

Agreement was reached on a new policy on Non-Government Organisations (NGO’s) at a meeting of 150 participants in Morogoro in November. A new Act of Parliament is expected to streamline NGO registration procedures and to create a new co-ordination board and registrar to supervise registration. There will be a new code of conduct and an NGO data bank.

According to Radio Tanzania quoted in the Sunday Observer, two inmates of the Ngwale Prison in Chlmya District escaped recently. However, a few metres from the prison, which is surrounded by a dense forest, they suddenly came face to face with lions. They climbed a tree but the lions sat down under the tree. Eventually the prisoners managed to hail a passing vehicle carrying tobacco which rescued them. But as they were still wearing prison clothes the driver took them straight back to jail much to their chagrin.

Fast moving vehicles on a mile-long road stretch in Zanzibar’s Jozani Forest Reserve have killed about 150 of the endangered red colobus monkeys since 1996 according to an article by Simon Kivamwo in the Tanzanian Guardian. Quoting from the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY JOURNAL, he wrote that most of the monkeys were being crushed to death by fast cars when trying to cross the road to get to trees on the other side. But after the installation of bumps to check the speed of the vehicles only one monkey had been killed. Jozani forest reserve is home to the world’s remaining 2,000 Zanzibar red colobus monkeys.

The government has declared illegal the breakaway (from Pare Diocese) Mwanga (Kilimanjaro) Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT). There have been clashes between church followers.

1,900 local people with the help of environmentalists are suing the Irish investor in the proposed 10,000 hectare multi-million dollar prawn project in the Rufiji delta claiming that this would cause them to be evicted from their ancestral land. It appears that the prospective financiers have now lost interest -East African.

Uganda has paid Tanzania $64.39 million out of the originally agreed total of $132.3 million as compensation related to the war involving the two countries in 1978-79 -Daily News.

KILIMANJARO – MILLENIUM CLIMB

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Extracts from an article in The Times by Matthew Parris presented here with his permission.

Toilet paper festooned the poles supporting the makeshift canopy, in a gay new year display. Winding the rough, pink Tanzanian tissue neatly round and up the wood produces an effect of orderly merriment, like a barber’s pole. The ceremony for which these preparations had been made was our send-off on a millennial climb of Mount Kilimanjaro. We were at the Machame gate to the national park, on the edge of the forest at the mountain’s foot.

We nine were among the 800 expected on Africa’s highest mountain for the turn of the century. Our guardians, the Kilimanjaro National Park, would see us gathered at the gates to leave, and again when we returned a week later in a new century. In between, we would be throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the forests, tundra and snows.

We knew about the send-off party when we heard the drums. Labouring up the slope towards the gate in the Marangu Hotel’s Land Rover, followed (in a bus named the Mwika Express) by an embarrassingly large contingent of guides, porters, tents, equipment and food expertly organised by the hotel, we were overtaken by a fleet of top-of-the-range Toyota Land Cruisers containing men in suits, and police in uniform. The ladies wore expensive sarongs.

In the Congo they call them the waBenzi but here in rural Tanzania a new Toyota Land Cruiser is the more reliable indicator of membership of Africa’s ruling elite. The waToyota consisted of the Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, a Permanent Secretary, the Regional Commissioner, the District Commissioner and the chairman and trustees of the Board of the Kilimanjaro National Park. Reader, before you mock, remember the plumes and the memsahibs, and ask where these habits were learnt. True, for a fraction of the cost of the official procession, which had lurched here and there at the walking pace dictated by an atrocity of a road, that road could have been repaired.

But we were greeted with a warmth which no colonial administrators’ party would have extended. The lavatories, on the other hand, were incomparably worse. The ceremony was Africa in vignette. It was hours late. Half the climbers were too. But somehow everyone eventually turned up and caught the spirit of the occasion. This too is Africa.

Proceedings had been further delayed by the most appalling traffic snarl-up. You might think that in the East African plains, where there are few cars and much space, a traffic jam would be improbable. But the park authorities had managed to produce, with fewer than 20 vehicles, a jam of spectacularly neurotic quality. Manhattan could not match it. Everything happened -as everything around Kilimanjaro must -on a 30-degree slope. Nobody could turn round. The waToyota were trying to arrive, the climbers to depart, porters’ lorries to advance, escort vehicles to withdraw, and everyone else to park. There was nowhere to park. Vehicles trying to execute three-point turns -into the mud bank became stuck; and all this was serenely observed by the platform party slowly assembling beneath its special canopy. A ring of brightly robed African women danced around a man thumping a skin drum, a group of Maasai dancers leapt rhythmically as though from a trampoline, and Toyotas revved and hooted, wheels spinning in the mud.

Somehow the vehicles sorted themselves out. The last arrival contained a television crew. A loudspeaker system had been rigged up. Ladies in sarongs watched imperiously from the podium. There is something about an African woman of consequence, something about her bearing, the way she moves, that declares she’s of account. How do they do this? English women have to announce their importance by their hat.

“Distinguished guests, honoured tourists and climbers,” began a dignified looking gentleman, “may I say good afternoon?” He paused, then introduced the podium party. “And now” he continued, “for the chairman of the board of trustees: me.”

“You will notice” he went on, “that eminent colleagues have each brought a spouse. I have not. This is because I have a number of wives. In the spirit of Tanzanian democracy I asked them to decide among themselves, by voting, which should accompany me today. By the time I departed they had still reached no decision.” He looked a nice man, but we climbers were restless. If we left it much longer we might not make it up through the rainforest to the campsite above, before dark. “A little light music, please,” called the compere.

The regional commissioner spoke next, in Swahili. “A professor,” whispered my guide in tones of respect. We checked our watches. But the main event was still to come: A speech from the Vice-President of Tanzania, read by the Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism. Mrs Zakhia Meghij, a Zanzibari, was an imposing woman. The wife (I think) of the Permanent Secretary was European. Feelings of ethnic hostility are less marked in Tanzania than in much of Africa. The late Julius Nyerere may have almost wrecked his country’s economy with his dreams of village socialism, but no man in Africa ever did more to inspire a sense of co-operation in disregard of race or tribe. Tanzania is a good country and getting better.

The Vice-President’s speech was witty and well crafted. It mentioned the millennium bug. “Tanzania has worked hard to minimise this problem, and there is no worry for you climbers. Even our support services are free of computerisation.” We laughed at the joke but we were champing at the bit. And at last we were dispatched to the mercies of the mountain: “By a miracle of the Almighty, snow at the Equator,” said Mrs Meghij.

Balloons over the podium bounced and the toilet paper rustled in the afternoon breeze. Mrs Meghij shook many hands, including that of my niece, Christina, astonished that she was only 11. Christina became briefly a media sensation as local journalists dived to interview her. “I wish you all the best in the next century,” cried Mrs Meghij as we surged up the hill into the jungle. In the best political tradition, she accompanied us for the first hundred yards, wisely halting when the mud got deeper, and waving us cheerily onward.

“Every success,” she called again. The African women ululated, a feature sadly missing from official occasions in Britain. We disappeared into the undergrowth, observed by monkeys. Ululations died behind us as we were hit by the most monumental downpour.

Seven weary, happy days later we returned from the summit snows, Christina victorious, covered in mud. We slithered down through a sunnier rainforest through a different gate, Mweka, observed by different monkeys. Different women were ululating, a different drummer drummed, and there was even beer and t-shirts provided and a portable satellite telephone operated by batteries. The energy that had gone into our welcome was touching.

Sadly, the same energy had not been put into the organisation of our climbers’ exit register. The system was in complete chaos. The numbers had overwhelmed the single officer with an old exercise book, a ballpoint pen, and a pile of certificates. Nobody seemed to have anticipated this. Nobody had the nous to react to it and improvise.

After two hours we gave up. One alternates between hope and despair in Africa; sometimes before lunch.

It was another couple of miles walk down to our waiting vehicles. Some 20 lorries, Land Rovers, Toyotas and minibuses had parked along the rutted dirt road. But nobody was going anywhere. The blue lorry blocking the road at the head of the queue was driverless. Rage mounted among the rest. The driver of a minibus behind stormed off up the hill, accompanied by furious passengers, to seek out the truant driver. We sat.

A distant roar came from up the hill. The driver had been found and was being chased back. Down he sprinted, running for dear life, pursued by an angry crowd. As he passed, all the Africans waiting in the road yelled and kicked at him. He looked absolutely terrified. Had he stumbled, he might have been lynched or kicked to death by the mob. He really might, such was the mood; a flash-fury, frighteningly violent.

The violence passed. The driver made it to his cab and now another traffic drama, with much hooting, hysterical shunting and one collision, as vehicles tried to manoeuvre past each other to get away first.

And we were off -our open lorry bucking and rearing down the dreadful track, the wind in our faces. Behind, a struggle for precedence between a Toyota, a minibus and two Land Rovers, teetered on the edge of catastrophe. But the fragrant gardens and friendly staff of the Marangu Hotel -Tanzania’s welcoming face -beckoned.

It was Sunday. We passed a packed Lutheran church, doors open, the congregation all singing. Back at Marangu, the Minister had sent a medal for Christina.

Oh, Africa.

OBITUARIES

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JOHN CHRISTIE (69) died in Edinburgh on March 27. He was in the Tanganyika administrative service in Same, Lindi and Dar es Salaam from 1953 to 1959 (Thank you Brian Harris for this information -Editor)

PATRICK C DUFF CMG died in his sleep in Winchester on March 30 after a short illness. He had been in the administrative service m Tanganyika for many years and was a frequent contributor to TA.

During a long career in all three countries of East Africa DAVID HINES (83) strove to encourage subsistence farmers to develop cash crop farming. From 1947 to 1959 he helped to develop the rapidly growing agricultural cooperative movement before moving to Uganda to become Commissioner of Cooperatives (Thank you Ron Fennell for this -Editor).

DR. BARBRO JOHANSSEN (87) described in the Sunday Observer as educator, politician, emancipator, diplomat and tireless fighter for women’s liberation died in Sweden on December 12. She was the headmistress of girls secondary schools in Tabora and Kashasha in Bukoba many years ago; she became a Tanzanian citizen and was a Tanzanian MP for 11 years. She was an important instrument in setting up close relations between Tanzania and the Nordic countries when she was posted as Counselor at the Tanzanian embassy in Stockholm in 1970. She served on both university councils and was a force behind the 1971 Marriage Act which granted Tanzanian women full legal status.

PAT LEWIS MM who died on February 5 served as an agricultural Field Officer from 1948 to 1962 in Tanga, Moshi, Malya, Songea and Lindi (Thank you Bill Dodd for sending this information -Editor)

Former cabinet minister JOHN MHAVILLE (69) who died on March 16 was also a former Secretary General of TANU, and of the Cooperative Union of Tanganyika and recently a board member of the Tanzania Tea Board.

SISTER STELLA (101) died on February 2 having spent much of her life in Tanzania with the Community of the Sacred Passion serving the religious and social needs of the local population, for some time with Bishop Trevor Huddleston at Masasi and latterly in Dar es Salaam. She completed seventy years of service on January 1 last -John Budge.

Zanzibar’s fourth president, IDRIS ABDUL WAKIL (74) died of a heart attack on March 15 after a long illness. During a long life of public service President Wakil was Speaker of the Zanzibar House of Representatives for five years, occupied several cabinet posts in both the Zanzibar and Union governments, was Tanzanian ambassador in West Germany, the Netherlands, Guinea and China before becoming President of Zanzibar for five years from 1985. He was given a state funeral at his Makunduchi village which was attended by President Mkapa, many other leaders and thousands of mourners. In its obituary the Guardian said that President Wakil had been one of the architects of Zanzibar’s independence, was the only intellectual to join the African Association in the early days and then, in 1956, he joined the Afro-Shirazi Party. He clashed with his father who was a member of the Zanzibar Nationalist party.

REVIEWS

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TALES FROM THE KING’S AFRICAN RIFLES. John Nunneley Cassell & Company. £16.99 and THE AFRICAN RANK AND FILE. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF COLONIAL MILITARY SERVICE IN THE KING’S AFRICAN RIFLES 1902-1964.
Timothy H Parsons. James Currey (UK), Heinemann (USA) and other publishers. £15.95

“In dreams,” the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, wrote, “begins responsibility.” As a boy, John Nunneley, the author of Tales From the King’s African Rifles, sourced his dreams from the African stories of H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan, narratives of exploration, and the military history of the British empire, particularly those late nineteenth­century campaigns in the southern part of the African continent, the Zulu Wars, and the South African War of 1899-1902, in which his own father served. He read with, “bug-eyed enthusiasm”, of the heroism at Rourke’s Drift and Ulundi, as well as the appalling debacle of lsandhlwana and the personal disasters that, deservedly and undeservedly, fell upon Lieutenant Carey of the Royal Engineers who, in 1879, was given charge of the young Prince Imperial of France, the only son of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, and Lieutenant Hayward, whose charges were his own men. Both officers faced courts martial for abandoning those they had a duty to remain with after coming under attack from the Zulus. Nuuneley writes, “These were perplexing questions I wrestled with and I was coming to understand that duty is a hard taskmaster.” Other questions, such as “the rights and wrongs of Britain’s colonial policy” were left alone, being “too deep a subject for a 12-year-01d.” Dreams. Responsibilities.

In 1941, Nunneley was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry. He was nineteen years of age. His first experience under enemy fire, during a strafing attack on an airfield in the southeast of England, was “Boy’s Own Paper stuff’ and it was desire for more of the same that led him to seek a posting to the Middle East. Chance took him instead to service with a Tanganyikan battalion of the King’s African Rifles. Set to guard some of the large numbers of Italian military prisoners and civilian internees that had fallen into British hands following Wavell’s campaign in the Horn of Africa, he worked hard to turn himself into an officer equal to the responsibilities of command of the African soldiers he had been put in charge of, but all the time continued to hope for transfer to the Middle East and a hot war.
In the end, though, Nunneley got his war. The KAR were to see action again, not this time on their own continent, but in Bunna, where the Japanese, defeated at the battles of Imphal and Kohima, were in retreat. Following a period of training for jungle warfare in Ceylon, these African soldiers were committed to the field in Burma’s Kabaw valley, during the monsoon season; their task to pursue the retreating Japanese and prevent them reaching the Chindwin River.
Nunneley conducted reconnaissance patrols behind Japanese lines, his face blackened with a cream reputedly concocted by Elizabeth Arden, because the Japanese, once they had recovered from the shock of being attacked by black African troops, made a habit of shooting the white officers at the very earliest opportunity. One such patrol, when he led a string of his Tanganyikans out to establish the strength of the Japanese on a dominant hill, mixed farce with the terrors of combat. Nunneley decided that the information he required would be best gathered by killing a Japanese sentry with a burst of fire from his Sten gun, followed by “five rounds rapid” from the accompanying askaris. With the Japanese response thus elicited, it then remained for the patrol to extricate itself from the ensuing informative predicament. During the retreat, Nunneley was overcome by a searing pain between his legs, as if his genitals were on fire. Forgetting all about the pursuing Japanese, he sought temporary relief by, first, ripping open the flies on his trousers and emptying the contents of his water bottle over the affected parts of himself. The second time he was forced to stop, he lay down while two of the askaris emptied their bottles over him. The third time, while his soldiers provided covering fire, Nunneley immersed his afflicted parts in a stream, firing away with his Sten, until the pain was gone. The cause of the endangering discomfort turned out to be an insect repellent, aptly named Skat, which had leaked from its container down the front of his trousers. After the patrol got back to the British position safely, which, perhaps surprisingly, it did, Nunneley was known as Bwana Moto Sana, Mr Very Hot.

John Nunneley appears from his narrative to have been a very brave officer, one who had his own very clear and strong ideas of his duty and his responsibilities. It is a pity then that his writing does not give better testimony to his feelings for the soldiers he undoubtedly served so well. For this reader, at least, Nunneley’s sympathies are more clearly demonstrated when he writes of his brother officers and of his former enemies, the Japanese, rather than those he led. Even the element which is meant to serve as a unifYing element in this extremely episodic and often rudely disjointed narrative, Nunneley’s relationship with his personal servant, Tomasi Kitinya, a Luo tribesman from the Kenyan shore ofLake Victoria, is, for me, curiously flat.

John Nunneley’s name appears in the Acknowledgements of Timothy H. Parsons’ book, The African Rank-And-File. Parsons, an American university professor, presents British colonialism, as reflected in the KAR, as a thoroughly Bad Thing. The book takes as its central idea the contradictory nature of existence for those caught up in any authoritarian regime. In terms of the KAR’s askaris, this contradiction has to do with “… soldiers who were simultaneously coerced and coercing, who enforced the will of the elite yet made demands themselves.”

The African Rank-And-File covers its chosen field (covering mainly Kenya and Nyasa KAR battalions) with exhausting thoroughness. It presents a depressing and, for the British, a shaming argument; one that the example of John Nunneley can qualify but not, finally, refute.
Clive Collins

Other publications

THE SUCCESS OF NEWLY PRIVATIZED COMPANIES: NEW EVIDENCE FROM TANZANIA. A Temu and J M Due. Canadian Journal of Development Studies. XIX 2. 1998

Under pressure from the World Bank, the IMF and other lenders, Tanzania began to privatize in earnest in 1992 with the formation of the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission. Privatization was expected to reduce the huge state subsidies consumed by the parastatals, create additional revenue for the government and turn moribund enterprises into productive privately owned companies.

In this article, the authors explore the process, extent and success of privatization in Tanzania through the experiences of six agro-industrial enterprises in the Dar es Salaam -Morogoro region. Four characteristics were focussed upon: the identity of the majority stake holder, the source of the new management, the type of privatization and economic viability.
Access to capital is difficult and expensive in Tanzania, prolonging the length of the privatization process and favouring external buyers. Despite this, four of the enterprises in the sample were purchased by indigenous buyers (although non “indigenous African”). Management is entirely foreign for the sample, which is hardly surprising given the opportunities in Tanzania over the last 15 years to develop suitable experience. The type of privatization is mixed, and no specific conclusions are drawn from this.

Two interesting additional observations were made about the workforce: the former employees are a major source of recruitment for the new venture and privatization appears to have promoted gender equality

Economic viability is clearly subjective and based largely on interviews. The owners describe a harsh operating environment characterised by a lack of quality material and labour inputs, non or late payment by customers (often the government), and tax avoidance providing an unfair advantage to competitors. Despite this the authors have determined that the viability of the organization are, at the very least, fair.

Owners were also asked about the privatisation process: the length and complexity of the privatisation process was the biggest cause of complaint, with a key cost, both in terms of time and money, being cited as the International Accounting Firms. These firms are routinely commissioned by the PSRC to carry out pre-divestiture valuations of enterprises.

Findings are summarised below:

Enterprise | Majority Ownership | Management | Type of Privatisation | Economic Viability

Tanzania Cigarette Company Ltd. | Multinational | Expatriate | Joint venture | Good

Guled & Tanzania Shoe Co. Ltd. | Foreign private | Expatriate | Private sale | Fair

Africa Trade | Indigenous (Asian) | Expatriate | Joint venture | Partially in operation

New Msowero Farm | Indigenous (Asian) | Expatriate | Private sale | Fair

Noble Azania Food and Beverages Ltd. | Indigenous (Asian) | Expatriate | Lease | Leased enterprise not in operation

Bora Industries Ltd. |Indigenous (Asian) | Expatriate | Private sale | Fair

This paper undoubtedly adds to our understanding of privatization in Tanzania but the sample size is too small to generalise from. Valuations are difficult to make in the “developed” world, and much more so in the volatile and uncertain economic environment in Tanzania. This makes Tanzanian enterprises difficult to sell externally and makes the process more of a gamble than a calculated decision. Those that do enter the fray are either heroes, who risk great loss in order to establish productive and efficient enterprises in the most difficult of conditions, or opportunists who are eying the assets without any intent to operate a viable business. Time will tell who falls in which category, and will allow a fuller and more analytical debate on whether privatization has really proved of benefit to Tanzania.
Sam Baker

FREE COMPETITION WITHOUT SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT? TANZANIAN COTTON SECTOR LIBERALISATION 1994/95 to 1997/98. P Gibbon. Journal of Development Studies, 36, 1999,22 pages.

This is a thorough review of the impact of liberalisation on cotton in Western Tanzania with some general comments on the principle. Watson agrees with Gibbon’s findings and during a visit to Tanzania in late 1998 (after Gibbon’s data was collected), found the cotton industry in chaos with a shortage of planting seed, mixing of seed of different varieties, lack of insecticides and farmer loss of confidence. Two large ginneries had ceased buying seed cotton after local prices went above international equivalents (and were still closed in March 2000).
International pressure prompted some reforms from 1990 and full liberalisation began in the 1994-95 growing season when inputs distribution, seed cotton buying, ginning, sales of lint and seed were opened to private traders. From 1958 to 1990 the state Cotton Board had controlled seed cotton prices, input supplies and lint marketing but by 1990 was inefficient, with delays in paying farmers causing output decline.
The new liberalisation was far reaching. The existing co­operatives and emergent private traders took over exports, but all had difficulty in financing insecticides, so essential to productivity and fibre quality. By 1998 there were 33 buyers, with some villages served by more than 5 buyers. This proliferation of buyers had led directly to several ginnery take-overs and building of new ginneries, as the buyers needed guaranteed access to ginning. In consequence, by 1998 there was double the capacity needed to gin the quantity of seed cotton recently grown. Many ginneries were small and inefficient with only three new modern saw ginneries, of high capacity and high efficiency.
The 1997-98 crop was damaged by excessive rains and reduced to about 30,000 tonnes lint, less than half the previous season -which further aggravated competition between seed cotton buyers. This forced up prices and the ginneries had difficulty making a profit. The low crop led to seed shortages for the 1998-99 planting season, as some ginneries had sold all the seed for oil, and planting seed then had to be moved between districts.
Competition caused the buyers to abandon quality control and all seed cotton was bought as Grade A, whereas the lack of insecticide use had actually increased the proportion of Grade B. Lint quality was then low and export difficult and only at discounted prices. This contrasted with earlier years when good quality, hand-picked lint attracted premiums. A further deterioration in lint quality (noted during Watson’s visit) was caused by buyers visiting many regions and mixing varieties, previously kept in different planting zones and ginned separately.
Is such liberalisation sustainable? Will the target of higher seed cotton prices survive as the co-operatives withdraw and private operators take over completely? There is a limit on what producer prices can be paid, linked to quality and the world lint price, and there must surely be a need for increased scepticism of the principle of liberalisation, given these findings on the cotton sector.

Statistics (Tonnes):

Market Season Seed Cotton Lint
1995-96 250,000 85,000
1996-97 250,000 85,000
1997-98 190,000 65,000
1998-99 84,000 30,000
1999-2000 ? 34,000

The 1999-2000 market season is from the 1998-99 growing season. Similarly for earlier years.
Jim Watson

THE DAR ES SALAAM MILK SYSTEM: DYNAMICS OF CHANGE AND SUSTAINABLITY. J. Sumberg. Habitat International. 23 (2). 11 pages. 1999
This paper is concerned with the Dar es Salaam system for the production and distribution of milk for human consumption. It is presented as an example of urban systems in Africa against the background of current discussion in relation to poverty, the effects of economic and structural changes and the need for increased support to food production.
Economic hardship at national level has led to a programme of economic liberalisation. Structural adjustment, in parallel with falling incomes of urban middle-class residents, has led to a search for additional sources of income such as may be provided by milk production. Useful relevant information is provided in relation to land and population density, cattle distribution and characteristics, milk production, processing and distribution and upon the supply and consumption of milk.
Three systems of milk production are described:
-Small herds in urban or peri-urban areas where owners are predominantly middle-class and deliver milk directly to the consumer. Such suppliers are subsidised indirectly by the owners’ main employment and other related privileges;
-Larger specialised commercial herds; and, -Traditional cattle keepers such as the Maasai who sell their surplus milk.
The most important changes in the milk system are described as the large increase in the numbers of cattle kept in urban or peri-urban areas and the termination of direct government involvement in milk production, processing and distribution.
Attempts to increase milk production in peri-urban areas have failed due to diseases such as trypanosomiasis and to adverse climatic conditions which influence the quantity and quality of fodder. However, anticipated improvements in transportation may favour milk production in outlying areas. he author takes the view that support for urban and peri-urbanagriculture should not result in diversion of funds from agricultural activities which offer a greater long-term advantage. He concludes that neither the limited number of commercial milk producers in the peri-urban areas nor the recently expanded number of urban producers are likely to form the basis of sustainable locally based systems for the city.

Harnish Goalen EFFECTS OF AN ENTERTAINMENT-EDUCATION RADIO SOAP OPERA ON FAMIL Y PLANNING BEHAVIOUR IN TANZANIA. E. M. Rogers, P.W. Vaughan, R. M.A Swalehe, Nagesh Rao, P Svenkerud, and S. Sood. Studies in Family Planning. VoL 30 No. 3 September 1999.

Radio Tanzania had never produced a scripted serial drama before it undertook in 1993 the soap opera Twende na Wakati (Let’s Go with the Times). It found, says this detailed study, unique talents, and on meagre facilities and with a turnover of four producers, broadcast for four years a programme that significantly affected patterns of family planning. To an extent the progrannnes were about taking charge of one’s life. The message stressed control of family size by planning.
Listeners could identifY with positive, negative and transitional role models. Mkwaju, for example, is a promiscuous, alcoholic truck driver who steals to support his many girl friends. He lacks self-control and is punished by events. Many listeners identified with him at first, but then he develops AIDS. As one listener wrote: “Now I see the consequences … where will his seven children go? They will remain orphans. Who will take care of these children … ? You people with Mkwaju’s behaviour … change now.”
For listeners Mkwaju had become symbolic of a sexually irresponsible individuaL
The progrannne was first broadcast by seven mainland stations of Radio Tanzania in 1993 and from 1995-7 nationwide. It was highly popular and after a pause the series was resumed in 1999. The effects of the soap opera in its fITst years were gathered in five annual surveys of about 2,750 households and from a sample in 79 health clinics. They show, as this article explains in detail, that the progrannnes changed attitudes to family planning and encouraged listeners to talk about contraception.
They increased the ideal age at marriage for women, changed the ideal number of children and led to continuing planning visits to clinics. Word-of-mouth popularity of the programmes meant they reached less­educated, lower-income males -a prime target audience in Tanzania ­with a potential for high fertility and resistance to family planning.
The population of Tanzania was 27.4 million in 1992 -four times that in 1948. A growth rate of 3.5 per cent meant the population would double in 20 years. The 1992 fertility rate was 6.3 children per woman. In 1996 it was 5.8. The national population policy introduced in 1992 aimed to reduce population growth to less than 2 per cent by 2010.
The success of the soap operas was helped by the fact that the national programme was providing contraceptive service free in 2,700 clinics and 65 per cent of women lived within four kilometres of a family planning service provider.
Derek Ingram

ZANZIBAR AND THE GERMANS -A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP 1844-1966. Heinz Schneppen. Published by the National Museums of Tanzania 1998.

This book, according to a review by J P Mbonde in the Sunday Observer (February 13) covers relations between Germans and Zanzibar from January 7 1844 when, what the author believes was the date the fIrst German disembarked in Zanzibar harbour, to the troubled sixties when the two different German states were juggling for influence in both Zanzibar and Tanganyika. Zanzibar is described by the reviewer as the victim between British claims and German aims in the early years and it seems as though Zanzibar was the victim between the two halves of Germany in later years.

ENTERING THE FIELD: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON WORLD FOOTBALL. Oxford, New York: Berg. 1997. 319 pages.

Includes chapters on Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.

READERS LETTERS

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NYERERE’S ECONOMIC POLICIES
The letter on Nyerere’s Economic Policies (January-April, 2000) argues that they failed not because they were wrong but because they were poorly implemented.

Nationalization and putting the economy into the hands of parastatals failed, the letter says, because of “lack of attention,” “management inefficiencies,” an unfortunate need for imported inputs to production, “a severe lack of trained personnel,” and an excess of trnst in self-serving foreign sellers of technology and know-how.

The ujamaa villages were a good strategy for rural development, according to the letter, but failed because of “lack of attention” (again), elitist politicians who lacked respect for the rural people, and the failure of the central government to raise the prices for rural produce in line with inflation.

Anyone who has lived through the last decade should have learned that centrally planned and centrally run economies have failed everywhere. Perhaps it is because there can never be enough trained managers or because management inefficiencies creep into all governmental operations or because politicians are always elitist and disrespect the people being governed. Or perhaps there are other reasons.

I was present on the field in Dar es Salaam, heard Nyerere deliver the Arusha Declaration and had a certain amount of enthusiasm for the policies and great hope for the country. However, the lesson of this century has been that the economic policies that Nyerere chose have failed wherever they have been tried. They did not fail in Tanzania because of special circumstances or bad luck or bad timing. It would have been very hard to know it in the 1960s and 1970s, but they were just policies that don’t work.
Paul Sack, San Francisco

WILDLIFE
Can any readers of Tanzanian Affairs please tell me whether the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania is still functioning? I have been a member for the last ten years sending subscriptions and donations to their London bank account but have received no copies of their twice-yearly newsletter ‘Miombo’ since April 1998 and letters to the Society at P 0 Box 70919, Dar es Salaam have produced no reply. If you have any information please ring me on 01434 3445810r write to Primrose House, Bardon Mill, Hexham, Northumberland NE477HF.
M. H. Dorey