Agricultural Policies in Mainland Tanzania by Andrew Coulson:
Review of African Political Economy, No. 10, Sept. to Dec. 1977

Coulson’s article gives a thorough survey of the vicissitudes in agricultural production policies in the thirty year period 1946-1976. The article also contains some discussion, although with less comprehensive coverage, of agricultural marketing structures over the same period.

In choosing this period for study – a period which covers the last fifteen years of colonial rule and the first fifteen of independent government – Coulson is arguing a basic continuity in the assumptions underlying agricultural policies. Three such assumptions, which seem to me the most important emerging from Coulson’s article, are:

(i) a belief in the necessity for government intervention in agriculture. Coulson argues that this was stimulated by the command economies of World War II and by the acceptance of keynesian economic theories;

(ii) a goal of increasing the agricultural surplus. This has taken either or both the forms of seeking to raise output of export crops, or increasing the production of food crops to supply the non-agricultural population;

(iii) the assumption that in agriculture the initiation and implementation of policy had to be carried out by government officers, because the African population was ignorant and backward.

Coulson describes various forms which agricultural policies assumed against the background of these assumptions. His description is particularly clear for the colonial period, rather less so for the fifteen years after Independence. It is useful to list the main features of successive policies.

Up to the mid 1950’s three different approaches are identified:

(i) encouragement of white settlers who were expected to introduce large-scale ‘modern’ capitalist agriculture;

(ii) the groundnut scheme- intended to produce supplies of oils for Britain by establishing modern, large scale, but state owned estates.

(iii) the ‘Land Development and Soil Conservation Scheme’. This was intended to introduce ‘modern’ methods to African peasant farmers by dint of by-laws and legal sanctions enforcing specific, and very detailed, farming methods.

None of these schemes were long-lived and all failed. The settlement of white farmers met successful resistance by African farmers to the appropriation of land; the groundnut scheme was technically ill-founded; whilst African farmers met the strict control of their farming practices with passive resistance. As Coulson points out, the failures of the latter two policies were not only organisational and political, but also technical. Grounded in a faith in western methods, the techniques invoked were generally wholly inappropriate to Tanzanian, or peasant farmer, conditions.

From the mid 1950’s up to the late 1960’s there was a shift in attention towards those African farmers who individually or collectively appeared likely to develop modern, westernised agriculture. In the last years of colonial government and early years of independence the ‘focal point’ approach channelled advice, equipment and credit towards the more successful and wealthier individual African farmers. The nebulous belief behind this approach was that others would copy the methods of the successful. In fact this approach exacerbated the inequalities in land holding and access to other resources, and appeared likely to lead to a polarisation of the rural population into capitalist farmers and landless wage labourers. Opposition to policies which thus encouraged inequality caused a shift within the same ‘focal point’ approach towards groups of farmers rather than individuals in the post-Independence ‘settlement schemes’. These aimed to re-settle groups of farmers on new land, make available the tools of modern farming and await a transformation in agriculture, which would again trigger imitation by other groups.

Coulson argues that during this period agricultural production did increase. He ascribes this to the emergence of some large scale African farmers and to the expansion of the area of individual peasant farms. He notes the agricultural failure of the settlement schemes; and also argues that the intervention of agricultural ‘experts’ had little to do with the growth of production. As in the previous period, many of the approaches canvassed by the extension service were inappropriate or incorrect, whilst in addition the size of the service meant that few farmers had much direct contact with extension advice in any case.

Since 1967 agricultural policy has again taken a mass, rather than a selective approach, first with the encouragement of ujamaa villages then with the villagisation programme. In both the voluntary formation of ujamaa villages and the wider and compulsory villagisation scheme, emphasis has been placed on the resettlement of population into villages rather than the scattered settlements of individual households and farms, which had been common in many areas.

In discussing this latter phase of ujamaa and villagisation, Coulson deals more with the political and administrative aspects of the policies than with the agricultural. Had he looked in more detail at the production policies which villages are encouraged to follow, he would have seen an extension of several aspects of plans developed, and abandoned earlier. The Ministry of Agriculture, together with aid bodies – notably the World Bank – have sought to expand cash crop production by peasant farmers by encouraging the cultivation of at least one cash crop in each area of the country. This encouragement has ranged from the minimum acreage by-laws mentioned by Coulson to credit and input packages which seek to schedule and direct production of crops which have been chosen for the area by planners and administrators.

Coulson states in a resume of the article that “a general conclusion is that those who controlled the State consistently misunderstood fundamental aspects of peasant agriculture and over-estimated what the use 0f State power could achieve in rural development”. This he certainly shows in the case of policies up to the latest phase. However, he has not been able to show conclusively that in the case of villagisation the State has over-estimated what it ~an achieve, since he has come to no clear conclusion about the State’s goals in villagisation; nor, as he makes clear, are the results of villagisation fully evident in any respect yet, be it political, agricultural, or social.

More generally, Coulson appears to hold doubts on the viability of any government intervention in agriculture. This is suggested by brief references to the success, in ecological terms, of pre-colonial agricultural systems and the repeated reference to the localised successes of the ‘focal point’ approach, where individuals were motivated by ‘the possibility of getting rich’. Since this individualistic approach cannot be compatible with any socialist system, it would be interesting to know whether Coulson perceives any forms of government intervention in agriculture compatible with both socialist aims and success. A quick answer to this might take the form of the need for involvement of farmers in formulating plans and policies. Whilst this broad statement is unexceptionable, there are enormous problems in conceiving, let alone implementing, structures that would involve the mass of farmers in a real, not a nominal, way; and in reconciling the contradiction between an economy in which commerce and industry are dominated by the State and agricultural production by small-scale peasant producers. In the post-Arusha Declaration period, this is maybe the central problem of agricultural policy in Tanzania.

Jill Shankleman
(The reviewer has recently returned from Tanzania, where she was working as an FAO adviser. Ed.)

Tanzania’s Ujamaa Villages: the implementation of a rural development strategy by Dean E. McHenry Jr.: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Discussion of Tanzania’s rural development policies is an ideological battle ground where the contenders whether seeking to defend Nyerere’s policies or attack them from the left or the right are too often content to collect and present only the evidence that supports their case. The size and diversity of the country make genuine research difficult and expensive and there is a tendency for articles to quote the same references, comments and conclusions. It is not surprising that views on ujamaa villages and villagisation have become polarised and stereotyped. There has been a deplorable absence of hard facts and unbiased analysis.

In marked contrast to most published work, Dean McHenry has provided an invaluable dispassionate study of the context within which the ujamaa village policy was formulated, the methods by which its implementation was attempted, the extent to which the efforts have been successful and the lessons for Tanzania and countries with similar problems.

McHenry undertook most of his research while teaching at Dar es Salaam University and he clearly has a profound basic sympathy for Tanzania and Nyerere’s policies and a wide understanding of the issues. He makes extensive use of published information and speeches, but he has also done his own researches at village level.

The study begins with the necessary reminder that neither the problems identified in the Arusha Declaration, nor the solutions proposed, were new. In ‘Ujamaa – the Basis of African Socialism’ Nyerere linked the cooperative aspects of traditional African society with his ideas for reviving rural communities. To emphasise the new approach represented by Arusha, no reference was made to the efforts made during the colonial period to resettle and concentrate peasants first as anti-sleeping sickness measures and later to open up new ground and crops. Emphasising new approaches made political sense, but colonial settlement schemes are part of Tanzania’s history remembered by the peasants, even if the lessons had to be relearnt (largely at the peasants’ expense) by a new generation of politicians and administrators. Colonial officials had also to face the practical and moral problems of implementing policies which were not understood, or resisted by those who were supposed to benefit. If the politicians and administrators of independent Tanzania had had the time and inclination to study the recent history of their country, they would have been better prepared to face the problems posed by the vastly more ambitious policies for the creation of ujamaa villages and then total villagisation.

There had been little change in the social and economic conditions nor in the administrative resources available. The new factors were the enhanced powers of the Government and the existence of a national political party and great reliance was placed on the ability of the Party to inspire and mobilise popular support for the new policies. In a detailed examination of the structure of the Party, its membership and operation, McHenry identifies some of weaknesses as an instrument for mass political education. Similarly, he demonstrates that the Government machine was no more effective than its colonial predecessor in establishing genuine popular involvement in decision making.

The ujamaa villages were expected to make possible the provision of basic services to the rural population, increase agricultural production by the introduction of improved farming methods and move society decisively in a socialist direction. The political initiative for this new approa.ch to development in the post-Arusha period was born of frustration at the failure of officials, experts and extension workers to produce any perceptible progress towards rural transformation, stimulate stagnant agricultural production, or deal with the disarray of the cooperatives.

The objective of moving peasants into villages was achieved, but it was not done by political inspiration, nor the complex of material and status incentives, which the Government machine could offer. The mass movement of the reluctant was eventually achieved by force or the threat of force and McHenry plots the shift in policy, resulting from the conflict between ideology and the practical problems of its implementation, by which first the objective of communal work was abandoned and then the way opened for force to be employed. Although the Government never specifically authorised force and denounced cases where it was used in excess, there is no doubt that local politicians and administrators were under pressure to produce results and no guidance was given on the alternative methods which were permissible. McHenry rejects the official defence that force was never policy and that its use was rare; the stories of the occasions when it was used spread rapidly and provided a powerful incentive to those who were resisting other arguments.

The variety of methods used to induce people to move into villages inevitably resulted in a wide range of motivations and confusion of ideas as to what ujamaa entailed. McHenry’s personal research involved collecting information from ujamaa villages in four Regions on how much and what kind of work was being done communally and who participated. The conclusions indicate that a small proportion of food was being produced communally possibly because there was too much risk in leaving such a necessity to a new and untried method. In non-agricultural activities communal work was much more common possibly because it was practical and permissible to enforce participation.

The unresolved question remains why did Tanzania’s leadership expend so much effort on achieving villagisation? They must have known that the provision of the promised basic services could not possibly keep pace with the creation of new villages, thus inevitably producing disillusionment. Implementing the policy strained the Party’s principles, but produced meagre material gains; indeed agricultural output may well have fallen. Was it simply a method of ensuring greater Party and Government control over the peasants, or are there long term gains still to come?

As well as presenting a coherent and carefully documented account of Tanzania’s rural development policies, McHenry’s book is an invaluable work of reference containing more than 60 tables of informaticn. Anyone engaged in teaching the politics or economics of Tanzania should ensure that their students do not see this book first unless they are already certain that they are quite clear on the composition of the National Conference, National Executive Committee and Central Committee, or are quite familiar with ‘number of inhabitants per agricultural officer by Regions and years’.

One word of warning. Skip the first chapter, which contains a valiant attempt to define ‘development’, ‘policy’ and ‘implementation’, but becomes hopelessly bogged down in statements such as: ‘Other ends which are sometimes used to define this non-choice orientated conceptualisation of development include …’. Presumably this is for the benefit of his sponsors, because once McHenry actually begins writing about Tanzania he presents the complexity of facts and opinions with splendid clarity.
John Arnold

Short Notice

A Modern History of Tanganyika by John Iliffe: Cambridge University Press, African Studies Series No. 25, 1979, Paperback f7-95. 616 pp.

All friends of Tanzania will welcome the appearance of John Iliffe’s great work: ‘A Modern History of Tanganyika’. This book was researched during the 1960’s when John Iliffe taught at the University of Dar es Salaam and was written in the 1970’s while he was teaching at the University of Cambridge. It is a fundamental contribution not only to the history of Tanganyika but also to the overall understanding of the history of Africa. It will undoubtedly go down as one of the great publications of this decade. The first quarter of the book deals with the nineteenth century and with the crisis of the colonial advent and the coincidental ecological catastrophe of the early twentieth century. The remaining 450 pages are concerned with the twentieth century up till 1961. The Bulletin hopes to carry a full review in its next number. Meanwhile at under £8 for the paper back this must surely be one of the best buys on any member’s shopping list.

David Birmingham

Helge Kjekshus, ECOLOGY CONTROL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN EAST AFRICAN HISTORY – The Case of Tanganyika 1850-1950, Heinemann Educational, London, 1977, £2.80.

Rarely have I read a book on African history which has left me with such a feeling of new and refreshing awareness on matters of the rural environment. Have no doubts about it, Dr Kjekshus’s book is in every way a very important contribution to the debate on Tanzania’s pre-colonial past and the impact of colonial rule. Dr Kjekshus, a past Senior Lecturer in Political Science in the University of Dar es Salaam, has written a social history of Tanganyika from the middle of the 19th century, when European descriptive travel writing really got under way, to the post-World War IT period. ‘The study seeks to restore the people as agents of African initiatives. There will be no great men … focus is on man as a doer, husbandman, industrialist and trader. In these initiatives the individual takes on the anonymity of mere numbers … ‘ But it is not simply social history for its own sake, rather a treatise refuting with admirable style and startling evidence those hoary old sentiments about the parlous state of the African on his land and the sure benefits to be derived from contact with European enterprise and initiative, sentiments so beloved of early colonial administrators, settlers and missionaries alike, and still so prevalent as an attitude today.

Dr Kjekshus first considers population levels over the period from 1850 to 1890 and tones down the sensational reports of mass death resulting from internecine warfare and slave raiding. With a stable if not slightly increasing population over the period, he then shows how, by the 1880’s, if European accounts are to be accepted, the African had assumed virtual mastery over his environment through a very precise and profound knowledge of his surroundings. Strikingly, he had outwitted tsetse in a way no outside agency has yet achieved, tor all Europe’s scientific knowledge. The author states that ‘the pre-colonial economies developed within an ecological control situation – a relationship between man and his environment which had grown out of centuries of civilizing work of clearing the ground, introducing managed vegetations, and controlling the fauna. The relationship resulted in an “agro-horticultural prophylaxis”. (Ford 1971), where the dangers of tsetse fly and trypanosomiasis were neutralized and “Africa’s bane l1 (Nash 1969) was made a largely irrelevant consideration for economic prosperity. The contrast to the twentieth century, when the tsetse fly has been “one of the major obstacles to economic development” (Ormsby-Gore 1925), is clear’.

After examination of the ‘supports’ of the ecologically-controlled environment, both industrial (iron, salt and cotton manufacturing) and commercial (intra- and inter-tribe trade), Dr Kjekshus then most lucidly traces the break-down of this man-controlled system in the 1890s, from these causes: first, and in a devastating way, Rinderpest; then, in quick succession or concurrently, smallpox, a sandflea plague, red locusts, drought, and the advent of Deutsches Schutzgebiet, meaning food requisitions, constant warfare and the ‘scorched earth’ policy.

What did all this mean to the African husbandman? The loss of his ascendancy over the land and his submission, unwillingly-and with resistance, to colonial tampering with his way of 11fe on the land and on what and where he should provide his labour for the regime. The author only briefly deals with the effects of this tampering (which since Independence has expanded to become full-scale ‘social engineering’), but then the wealth of writing on this subject, from Ren6 Dumont to William Allan (1965) hardly necessitates detailed treatment in this book, though what has been done in case study form for Central and Southern Africa (ed. Palmer & Parsons 1977) should now be taken up for East Africa, with Dr Kjekshus’s treatise as a backdrop. From Richard Burton’s descriptions of ‘comfort and plenty’ in the l860s and l870s, we have come a century later to precariousness and uncertainty in man’s relationship with the land. In one decade, 1890-1900, ‘the conditions for economic life deteriorated and brought many tribes back to a frontier situation where the conquest of the ecosystem had to recommence’. In most parts of Tanganyika this reconquest has yet to begin, and, as Dr Kjekshus implies in passing, it may be that settlement in permanent villages, as it is now being furthered, will not achieve that reconquest.

Dr Kjekshus relies for most of his evidence concerning conditions in the last half of the 19th century on descriptive material from early European, especially German, travellers. As this material is central to his argument, it would be intriguing to know whether oral and archaeological research could help substantiate the evidence so that we have a more profound knowledge of the period with which to compare the later scene. Of equal interest would be to know how many of the causes of ecological collapse in East Africa in the l890s, and what other ones, were applicable to British Central Africa, Katanga and Portuguese East Africa, an area where European colonisation began in earnest at about the same time. An interesting comparison could be made between the extent of disruption caused on the one hand by Arab penetration from the northern east coast, Portuguese penetration from the southern east coast and Boer penetration from the south.

I commend Ecology Control to all concerned with rural development in black Africa – it should be required reading for anyone working in the rural field and especially those technical experts and their administrative counterparts in government who have tended to see ‘rural progress’ (and I do not absolve myself) as some inanimate scientific exercise, perhaps hedged about with doctrinaire ideological principles, and still too often larded with an intolerance of and arrogance at what is seen as the backwardness of rural peoples.

David Leishman.

References:
Ford, J. The Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971.

N’ash, TAM. Africa’s Bane: The Tsetse Fly, Collins, London, 1969. Report of the East African Commission, Cmd. 2387, chaired by W. Ormsby-Gore, HMSO, London, 1925.

Allan W. The African Husbandman, Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, 1965.

Dumont, R. has written numerous books and reports to Governments in Africa on the question of agricultural development, perhaps his most famous book being False start in Africa, Deutsch, London, 1966, and an important report on Tanzania’s agricultural development published by the Tanzanian Government in 1968.

Palmer, R. and Parsons, E.J. (eds.), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa, Heinemann Educational, London, 1977.

Dr Leader Stirling, Tanzanian Doctor, with an introduction by President Julius Nyerere, C.Hurst and Co., London, 1977.

Leader Stirling’s discursive tale of his forty years in Tanzania is both an important historical document and entertaining reading. In 1935 he went to Tanzania as an expatriate missionary doctor and ended up as a citizen and the Minister of Health. Tanzanian Doctor describes how this metamorphosis took place.

The book is full of striking anecdotes about long journeys through tropical forest and scrub land on foot, wild animals, muddy roads, and the characters of his early missionary days, such as Edith Shelley who did so much towards integrating leprosy into other medical work. Inevitably, there is much about medicine and some of the details may be a bit vivid for the squeamish.

As Mwalimu Julius Nyerere points out in his Introduction (which is in fact a far better review of the book than I can attempt) Leader Stirling and his fellow missionaries in southern Tanzania worked very hard to provide and improve both preventive and curative medical services in the rural areas – a field in which independent Tanzania – has gained a considerable and well earned reputation. Dr Stirling does not attempt to hide his pleasure in ultimately finding himself holding the reins of this work in the Ministry of Health.

I found much of this book compulsive reading and was only sorry to see that it was so expensive – £5.50. Unfortunately, too, the photographs do not come out very well, but perhaps they bear mute witness to the unbelievably simple and primitive conditions in which Leader Stirling and his colleagues laboured for the health of the people in those early days.

Jill Everett

RELIGION AND POLITICS IN TANZANIA

Vision and Service – Papers in Honour of Barbro Johansson – Editors Bengt Sundkler and Per Ake Wahlstrom, September 1977, Uppsala.

The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies and the Swedish Institute of Missionary Research in Uppsala have published this delightfu1 collection of papers to mark the 65th birthday of a very remarkable woman, Swedish by birth, Tanzanian by adoption, who is both a committed Christian and an African Socialist. It contains not only the reminiscences and tributes of old friends and members of the family, some of whom are distinguished scholars and statesmen, but also papers by a wide range of academic writers which together make an original contribution to the recent history of Tanzania and throw a ray of light on the role of the Christian church in a one-party state and in Africa as a whole. We are given glimpses of Barbro Johansson’s warm personality but also of the country and the people she loves so much.

Bengt Sundkler in his recollection of ‘First Steps in Bukoba’, where he became the bishop of the Lutheran Church and where she arrived as a missionary teacher in 1946, remarks that she was following in her father’s footsteps. Anders Johansson had been a primary school teacher and headmaster and later became a city councillor of Malmo in Sweden. His daughter, Barbro was in the same way, first a teacher and later a politician.

Barbro Johansson began work at the Kigarama Teacher Training College (which was then only for boys) and in 1943 re-opened and rebuilt the Girls School at Kashasha, Bukoba. At this time Tanganyika was still a British Trust Territory. President Julius Nyerere, in his foreword to this little volume, recalls how he first met Barbro when she was a head-mistress. Later the party he led invited her to stand for the Legislative Council when – according to the constitution of the time – it was necessary for TANU to support one African, one Asian and one European candidate in each constituency. She was elected then and re-elected in 1960 to the Parliament which was to take Tanganyika through Responsible Self Government to Independence and to Republic status. In 1962 she became a Tanzanian citizen.

Later, on President Nyerere’s request, she became Principal of the Girls Secondary School, Tabora. From 1970 to 1972 she served as a diplomat in the Tanzanian Embassy in Stockholm. The present Ambassador, Mr J.E.F. Mhina, traces the friendly relations between Tanzania and Sweden back to Barbro’s initiative in 1960 when she introduced Julius Nyerere to the political leaders of Sweden at her sister’s house.

[PAGES 7 and 8 ARE MISSING]

[jumps to review of book about history of medicine in Tanzania ?]

One of the earliest preventive schemes was soon after 1891, when 5 German military surgeons arrived in the country to establish a medical department. The chief medical officer noted that smallpox lymph vaccine from Germany and South Africa had lost much of its potency by the time it arrived in Tanganyika. He arranged for manufacture of vaccine and made it available to the local African prpulat1on. The vaccine was produced in Dar es Salaam until the British took over the administration in 1916.

In 1877 the first hospital and training school for the non-European population was opened in Dar es Salaam. This was through the generous donations of Sewa Haji, a wealthy Indian merchant. The Sewa Haji Hospital continued to function for 67 years and there is now a Sewa Haji Ward Block at Muhimbili Hospital.

In the 1920’s hospital and dispensary services and also environmental health services were developed and the beginning of a maternal and child health service was established. The missions were also making a valuable contribution to services. During the thirties with world recession the health services of Tanganyika suffered accordingly, although there were important developments in the training of medical auxiliaries. The authors devote a chapter to the development of university medical education and there is also a summary of the history of Makerere Medical School.

The second world war put a strain on an already overburdened service but some light was thrown on the health of the adult male population since about 250,000 African recruits were examined by the medical department during the war years. Out of one batch of 4,000 recruits one third were pronounced unfit and only one third were fit for Active duty.

In 1942 the Government appointed a medical officer exclusively for the health of the labour force whose primary duty was to advise employers on promoting the health of their workers and make recommendations to the labour beard.

There was steady improvement in the health service after the war with a new medical director and an expanding budget and staff. The new director was the first to prepare an objective long-term plan for the future development of health services.

The authors consider in some detail the first and second five-year development plans and consider the 1973 review proposals for health development which deal with decentralisation of the service, organisation and plans for training personnel.

This is a fascinating little book on the history and development of Tanzanian health services, full of interest for the lay reader. Health service personnel and in particular those planning and organising services will find this book valuable.

Peter Christie

Approaches to the analysis of Tanzanian Socialism: A Review of:

John Hatch, Two African 5tatesmen – Kaunda of Zambia and Nyerere of Tanzania, Secker and Warburg, London, 1976, 6 pounds.

Cranford Pratt, The critical phase in Tanzania. 1945 – 1968. Nyerere and the emergence of a socialist strategy, Cambridge, 1976, 7 pounds 50.

Issa G Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania, Heinemann, London, 1976, 4 pounds 50.

These three books, published within months of each other, provide three strikingly different ways of looking at the socialism of contemporary Tanzania. John Hatch approaches Tanzanian socialism by means of biography. In his view the socialist ideology in Tanzania is the product of Julius Nyerere’s role as ‘philosopher king’, and in order to understand the ideology one has to understand Nyerere’s origins, education and experience and the character which they have shaped.

Cranford Pratt, by contrast, approaches Tanzanian socialism by means of political history. He sees developments of thought in Tanzania as ‘to a remarkable extent the work of one man’. But he sees as the crucial determinant of Nyerere’s own responses the particulars of post-independence politics. In Pratt’s eyes it is a matter of the choice between ‘political strategies’ and he traces the development of a socialist programme by means of a detailed narrative account of political events.

Issa Shivji, finally, approaches Tanzanian socialism by means of class analysis and the theory of class war. He cites with approval Carr’s belief that ‘the facts of history are indeed facts about individuals, but not about the actions of individuals performed in isolation, and not about the motives, real or imaginary, from which individuals suppose themselves to have acted. They are facts about the relations of individuals to one another in society and about the social forces which produce from the actions of individuals results often at variance with and sometimes opposite to the results which they themselves intended(1). His book is intended to constitute ‘a fundamental break’ with the emphasis on ‘the committment of individuals’. Accordingly Nyerere is hardly discussed; no biographical data is given: he is cited occasionally merely as representative of the regime and of his ‘class’. Nor is a detailed political narrative given. The policies pursued by Nyerere’s government are seen as resulting from its perception of its class interest.

These three contrasting approaches result in, or perhaps imply from the beginning, three equally contrasting judgements of the reality and success of Tanzanian socialism. Hatch’s book is written in almost hagiographic style, seeking to present a new and saving doctrine to a vexed world. For him the personal achievements of Nyerere’s life are inseperable from the achievements of Tanzanian socialism. Nyerere is ‘the most radical socialist leader in the world’, and his ideas will ‘profoundly influence the development of society in Africa, ideas in the third world and perhaps the future of human society’.

Cranford Pratt is more cautious. If Hatch echoes the high aspirations and hopes of the immediate independence period, Pratt echoes the more sombre realisation of the continuing poverty of Tanzania and of the ambiguities within its ruling party. For him Tanzanian socialism is a ‘political strategy’ in the process of working itself out: faced with great and continuing difficulties; making many mistakes: but nevertheless a genuine and valid option, striking more or less the right balance between the thrust to equality, the need for efficiency and the desire for participation.

Issa Shivji sees current Tanzanian socialism as an ideological cover for the interests of the ruling class, the ‘bureaucratic bourgeoisie’. They have used its slogans to validate their dominance of economic resources through nationalisation; their destruction of the rival commercial bourgeoisie; and their undermining of the kulak class in the countryside. In this clearing of the board they have served a progressive function, and their use of the slogans of socialism has allowed a more radical debate to begin. But Shivji believes that the progressive function of current Tanzanian socialism has ended. Today the conflict of interests between the bureaucratic elite on the one hand and the workers and peasants on the other has become obvious: class war between them will result in a genuine socialism.

The three books abound in explicit and implicit condemnation and contradiction of each other. Shivji attacks the ‘liberal academics who would only want to see celebration of the so-called Tanzanian experiment’. He writes of ‘an intellectual climate where celebration and occasional criticism, rather than consistent explanation,• are the order of the day’. There is little doubt that 5hivji would regard Hatch as a celebrator; Pratt as an occasional critic; while he seeks himself to provide consistent explanation. Hatch does not mention 5hivji – nor indeed any recent academic work – but he makes it plain that he does not agree with the assumptions of the left criticism. ‘In Tanganyika’, he writes of the period just after independence, ‘there were no classes’. As for Pratt, he is familiar with the earlier work of Shivji and very much concerned explicitly to refute it.

Hatch’s book seems to me to be unconvincing on contemporary Tanzania. It offers an interesting account of the odd combination of intellectual influences operating on Nyerere under colonialism. It balances the stereotyped and appalling image of African leadership associated with General Amin by presenting an attractive and persuasive counter picture of Nyerere as ‘philosopher king’. But the tone of the book is too unconditionally approving. At a time when Tanzania faces severe economic crisis; when her domestic policy is under sustained attack from radical intellectuals both inside and outside the territory; when her policy towards southern Africa is under attack from elements in the liberation movements; it does not serve merely to ignore these difficulties and this criticism. Both have to be met.

Hatch was close to Nyerere in the years leading up to independence, as he reminds us in his book. But it is perhaps significant that it is Pratt, with his much less celebratory approach, who has recently been much closer to the Tanzanian situation and to Nyerere’s own thinking about it. Pratt is of course very much his own man and his book is in no sense an ‘authorised’ account. But it does reflect the facts and the moods as they are seen and expressed in Dar es Salaam. It is an attempt to produce a consistent explanation in contrast to the radical consistencies of Shivji. Hence to read these two books is to enter into a debate which is going on in Dar es Salaam and among academic Tanzanianists elsewhere; a debate which is sometimes artificial and abstruse but which is essentially relevant to the present and future of Tanzania.

Within the confines of this Bulletin it is not possible to do more than to sketch the outline of Shivji’s critique and Pratt’s reply to it, but it may be useful at anyone to do that.

Shivji focusses on some of the most celebrated achievements of Nyerere’s government and interprets them in different and disconcerting ways. Many commentators have regarded Nyerere’s victory over the ‘racialists’ in TANU as opening the way for a socialist option; still more commentators have regarded the Arusha Declaration as heralding a break through to a socialist austerity, equality and self-reliance. Shivji does not see these episodes as landmarks on the road to a true socialism. He sees them instead as landmarks in the victory of what he calls the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, a new class which has successfully employed the slogans first of liberalism and then of socialism to entrench themselves in power and to undermine their rivals. How can such a case be argued?

5hivji begins with an analysis of the various classes and their interests in the last stages of colonialism. These classes had been called into existence by the needs of the colonial economy, which had extracted a surplus from Tanzanian agricultural production for the benefit of the metropolitan bourgeoisie, who were absent from Tanzania but nevertheless securely at the top of its hierarchy of classes. Below them came a series of classes necessary in one way or another to the functioning of the system. Most prosperous was what 5hivji calls the ‘commercial bourgeoisie’, whose role it was to cream off the agricultural surplus through trading operations and who were also allowed to accumulate some capital locally. The existence of this class as a class has been obscured, Shivji argues, by the fact that it was ethnically distinct. The commercial bourgeoisie consisted of Asian entrepreneurs, professional men and business men. Partly for this reason and partly because it profited from the colonial system this local bourgeoisie offered no challenge to colonialism.

Other classes called into existence by colonialism were less contented. Shivji distinguishes four broad classes – the petty bourgeoisie, the kulak farmers of the rural areas, the workers and the peasants. The petty bourgeoisie was a varied grouping of educated, trained and entrepreneurial Africans – teachers, clerks, traders, ‘intellectuals’, men serving in the police and army. The kulak class was made up of successful cash crop farmers who employed paid labour. The mass of the population had been defined as workers or peasants by the pressures of colonialism. All these groups were discontented with latterday colonialism; the workers and peasants because of low cash rewards and demands for increased output; the kulaks because of the authoritarian and limiting control ‘ over agricultural production; the petty bourgeoisie because traders resented the privileged position of the Asian commercial bourgeoisie and other elements wanted political and economic power.

Ordinarily, says Shivji, a petty bourgeoisie is not destined to play a significant role in history nor to acquire power in the state. But this petty bourgeoisie was compelled to oppose the c610nial state because it could not overthrow the commercial bourgeoisie without also overthrowing the state which supported them. This petty bourgeoisie was also bound to take command of the movement for independence. The kulak class was too small to be able to do so; so also were the working class. So the independence movement arose out of a conjunction of interest between the petty bourgeoisie and the broad mass of the people. The independence movement took on an ideological character appropriate to these origins. It was nationalist rather than radical; the workers were not thought of as a crucial element and there was no proletarian ideological influence; in so far as TANU was thought of as a peasant party this came to mean the employment of the sheer weigh~ of the peasants in a non-violent pressure on the colonial state, before which it succumbed.

Shivji remarks that to a limited extent this movement served a progressive role, but from his point of view it was already severely flawed. The petty bourgeoisie had very limited economic ambitions; they wished to overthrow the Asian commercial bourgeoisie but they had no wish to break away from Tanzania’s subordinate role in the world capitalist system; they had neither the means nor the consciousness to play the historical role of national bourgeoisies in Europe. The peasants could not introduce into the party any revolutionary element, since Shivji declares that a peasantry can only be revolutionised through the use of proletarian ideology.

Hence politics after independence was bound to be limited to the working out of the interests of the different elements of the petty bourgeoisie. Now, the traders had played a particularly important role in TANU. After independence they and others looked for a rapid Africanisation of commercial opportunity. But, so Shivji asserts, the traders and other African entrepreneurs were not nearly so prosperous or influential as such groups were in Kenya. In Tanzania the real power fell into the hands of the intellectuals and managerial petty bourgeoisie who gained control of the machinery of the state. These men chose another strategy – namely to undercut the commercial bourgeoisie, and to a lesser extent the kulaks, by use of the power of the state. In such a situation they could do so while at the same time appearing to be above class struggle and acting in the national interest and with a liberal ideology. In this way Shivji sees the defeat of the ‘racialists’ as a victory for one element in the petty bourgeoisie over another.

The victorious element was the basis of the new bureaucratic bourgeoisie, keepers of the national conscience, denouncers of private entrepreneurial ambition, trade union selfishness, etc. Shivji sees the Arusha Declaration as the master-stroke of this class. And here it is necessary to quote:

‘While the members of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie had made some inroads into the economy, they had not been successful in developing a substantial economic base. This could not go on. The only alternative, both for further struggle against the commercial bourgeoisie and for further penetration of the economy was state intervention … It was thus that the Arusha Declaration was born in 1967. It marked the end of one phase of struggle between the petty bourgeoisie and the commercial bourgeoisie and the beginning of the second, probably the decisive stage. It also marked an important historical turning point in the development of the “bureaucratic bourgeoisie … Moreover, by using the rhetoric of socialism it marked the beginnings of debate and discussion of the proletarian ideology as well.’

To Shivji, then, ‘the Arusha nationalisations constituted the first open attempt on the part of the bureaucratic sector of the petty bourgeoisie to carve out an economic base for itself’. As for the leadership code, which other commentators have interpreted as an attempt to prevent the rise of a privileged bureaucracy, Shivji remarks that ‘the code was the first act of class self-restraint imposed on the individual members of the class in the long-term interests of the class as a whole’. ‘Individual members of the class cannot be allowed to accumulate’, he writes later, ‘because it is the function of the state to accumulate on behalf of the class as a whole’.

Shivji makes a similar analysis of the other Arusha policies. ‘The very policy of Ujamaa Vijijini reflects its petty bourgeois class character … (its) objective effect … is to integrate the non-monetarised sector within the cash economy (and) this means integration within the world capitalist system’. ‘The implicit aim of the whole strategy is to raise production for the world market … The policy paper says hardly anything about a programme for simultaneous industrial development … but then the production of agriculture as the dominant economic sector and the peasantry as the numerically dominant class is precisely one of the most marked characteristics of underdevelopment’.

Thus Shivji sees ‘Socialism and Rural Development’ as showing ‘a complete lack of understanding of capitalism as a system’. In fact Nyerere’s policy is carrying out the historic mission of integrating Tanzanian cultivators more fully into the world capitalist system than the colonial state was able to do. In domestic terms, the policy is an attempt to continue the alliance which brought about independence. The peasantry, firmly under the control of the bureaucratic-elite, are to provide the mass base. The bureaucratic elite, says Shivji; have a horror and fear of an industrial working class and hence have no plans for industrialisation.

Plainly he does not see this collection of policies as socialist in any true sense. However, he sees a series of developments since the Arusha Declaration as clearing the way for a further class struggle which may bring about a truer socialism. The immediate aftermath saw the attempted resistance to the Arusha policies born by the commercial bourgeoisie and by the other elements of the petty bourgeoisie. This resistance has been in effect defeated. Hence there has been a clearing of the ground. ‘The very class struggle between the petty bourgeoisie (led by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie) and the commercial bourgeoisie was not only inevitable but historically necessary a such as political independence was necessary for the conduct of this class struggle. In a way, this struggle is helping to clear the way for further struggles unencumbered by the obfuscation of the racial divisions The most important role played by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie has been in the sphere of ideology. The vigorous “anti-imperialism” and support for the liberation movements have had their effects on the internal dynamics of the country … Thirdly, the historical necessity for expanding the public sector through the Arusha Declaration put socialism on the agenda for the first time in a concrete way. Discussion and debates about socialism are bound to contribute to t he consciousness of the people.’ But ‘whatever progressive role this class may have played politically at a particular juncture, it is being fast exhausted as the contradictions with the exploited classes, the workers and peasants, intensify’.

Shivji in fact detects in Tanzania since 1967 ‘the beginnings of proletarian class struggle’. He does not argue, of course, that there is yet a large or clearly defined proletariat. But he emphasises strongly the key role that can be played by proletarian ideas emanating from a radical working class, however small. He argues that there has been plenty of evidence of the” development of such a proletarian consciousness in the worker take-avers of factories, just as there has been plenty of evidence of a bureaucratic backlash.

Now here Shivji has some more re-interpreting to do. The workers were acting in terms of the Mwongozo document, which after all was promulgated by TANU and which some have interpreted as evidence of Nyerere’s desire to ensure participation rather than bureaucratic dominance. Shivji sees this pronouncement as forced upon the government because of its fear that the ‘right wing’ opposition from the defeated elements of the petty bourgeoisie and the commercial bourgeoisie might gain foreign support. The government needed to appeal for popular support and thus gave an opening for worker assertion. But ‘Mwongozo acted like a vehicle to carry the contradiction between the workers and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie to the fore. Immediately following … there was a spate of workers’ strikes’. Shivji’s account of these ‘post-Mwongozo proletarian struggles’ is in many ways the most interesting part of the book, but this already long summary must be brought to a close.

Shivji concludes: ‘The fundamental contradiction between the exploiter and the exploited … is going to be the dominant one henceforth. True, the workers’ struggles we have described have been sporadic and not necessarily couched in conscious class ideology. The reaction of the workers has been more a consequence of their class instinct, rather than because of definite class consciousness. But class consciousness does not come spontaneously. It is the role of proletarian ideology to develop class instinct into class consciousness. Meanwhile the workers have definitely declared that the stage of history in which they were used as cannon fodder in the intra-petty bourgeois struggles to be fast coming to an end. This time it will be their own struggles – their own class war – and the struggle of their fellow exploited class, the poor peasants, that they will fight, not to replace one exploiter with another but’ to begin to replace the very system of exploitation’.

How does Pratt respond to this analysis of Tanzanian socialism? In essence he does so by allowing that a development on the lines suggested by Shivji might perhaps eventually have taken place in Tanzania but that the policies of the Arusha Declaration and of Mwongozo have been successfully launched specifically to halt such a development before it becomes dangerous. Before the Arusha Declaration Pratt gives away a good many of the points made by Nyerere’s critics. Yes, he agrees that Nyerere was at first happy enough to continue with British development policies, or lack of them. Yes, he agrees that there was drift and lack of decision up to 1967. Yes, in some ways Tanzania in those years was a classic neo-colonial state. But for Pratt none of this had the inevitability of the working out of the imperatives of international capitalism or of the class war. The pressures upon Tanzania from outside were not so great that it was impossible for the Tanzanian government to choose its own policy of internal socialism, however unpopular it might be with the capitalist world. The rise of a Tanzanian bureaucracy had not hardened into a class. There was time to change. And for Pratt, the Arusha Declaration was a real change; the announcement of a genuine, progressive and valid Tanzanian route to socialism. Two passages in Pratt’s account merit quotation as a direct riposte to the 5hivji-style analysis, though it must be said that these are in a way incidental to Pratt’s own narrative purpose.

‘By 1967 there was real class stratification within Tanzanian society. The Tanzanian government was hardly a government of working people and Peasants. It was a government of ‘politicians and civil servants whose incomes … were vastly higher than the incomes earned by ordinary Tanzanians. Some commentators have seized upon these facts as being of central importance to an understanding of the politics of independent Tanzania. They identify the new civil service in particular as the new class enemy of the workers and peasants of Tanzania … Arguments of this sort are oversimplified and unrealistic. In the period under study the African bureaucracy and the political leaders in Tanzania had not become a narrowly selfish oligarchy. They were not primarily concerned with the advancement of narrow class interests. There was, for instance, no upward revision of the salary scales for middle and upper civil servants after 1961 despite the steady rise in the cost of living. A continuing nationalist commitment, sustained professional standards, democratic pressures from within TANU, the leadership of Nyerere and the comparative weakness still of this elite as a socio-economic class all checked with the emergence of a crass and self seeking oligarchic rule … The politicians and civil servants were still able to respond to a variety of professional, national, democratic and ideological considerations and motives.’

So Pratt concludes that in 1967 the bureaucrats ‘were not using the instruments of power in any serious or sustained way to perpetuate themselves as a ruling class’. Yet ‘nevertheless, they did constitute an economic elite with aspirations, with a standard of living and with a style of life which set them apart from their ordinary fellow Tanzanians’ . It was for this reason that the Arusha Declaration was essential. Pratt takes very seriously its professions of austerity and egalitarianism. He stresses that the ruling elite was open enough to accept them. Pratt discusses the view that ‘Nyerere ought rapidly and thoroughly to have subdued the “politico-bureaucratic bourgeoisie” or indeed even to have replaced it by appealing to the workers and peasants. He shows that Nyerere rejected this advice as ‘adventurism’, determined ‘to advocate that Tanzania advance as a united society towards socialism’. The bureaucracy could be won for socialist values; socialism needed their efficiency. ‘This strategy involves an effort to walk a narrow path between a too vigorous equalising policy which would undermine morale and produce declining efficiency if not more forthright obstruction, and a too timid policy which might result in an entrenched and self-perpetuating new political and bureaucratic class.’

In Pratt’s eyes the narrow path has been successfully walked in this and other ways. In the second passage which merits long citation he writes:

‘Marxist commentators tend to identify the bureaucracy as the source of the major threat to the achievement of socialism in Tanzania … This study would seem to suggest that there are two continuing threats to a successful transition to socialism in Tanzania which, though more traditional sounding and less sophisticated in conception, are nevertheless at least as serious as any that may emerge from the bureaucracy. The first of these is the tendency to authoritarian rule that still persists in the middle and senior ranks of TANU … The second is the threat of economic and administrative failures of such an extent as finally to alienate mass support … These variations in the judgement of commentators about the main threats to Tanzanian socialism are, unfortunately, not merely of academic consequence. They lead to different and in part contradictory policy recommendations. Marxists emphasise the need for a vanguard party and the liberate intensification of mass antagonisms towards the bureaucracy and the successful peasant farmer. These two recommendations, if pursued, might well help to check the emergence of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie but they would also be likely to increase the risk of authoritarian rule and of serious economic and governmental failures. A parallel point is equally .valid. The policy recommendations which are implicit in the identification of authoritarian rule and governmental and economic failure as the immediate major threats are, if implemented, likely to increase the risk of the entrenchment of the bureaucracy as a ruling class …

The strategy for the transition to socialism which emerged after 1967 cannot be dismissed as an intriguing mutation, an odd and unique consequence of the particular set of intellectual and ethical influence~ which shaped Nyerere’s political values. The emphasis in that strategy on equality, on self reliance, on-democracy and on a unity which includes the bureaucrat and the cash crop farmer rather than on a unity which is sought in opposition to them, entails an effort to hold in check all three of the central threats to the success of Tanzania’s transition to socialism … It is thus fair to suggest that however difficult and precarious its pursuit, the strategy for the transition to socialism which was initially largely shaped by Nyerere, was a subtle and realistic response to the complex set of challenges which face Tanzanian society.’

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I have sought in this review to present readers with an abbreviated introduction to the debate between 5hivji and Pratt, rather than to seek to conclude between them. It is necessary to say that both books have weaknesses. Shivji’s is often longer on assertion than it is on evidence; he sometimes descends to the impressionism of the untrained observer, and there is a great need for some firm statistical evidence. Moreover, one cannot help but find the rapidity of the working out of the various stages of the class war a little unconvincing. Pratt also sometimes allows his hopes to overcome his scepticism. Shivji hopes for a militant and conscious working class and on the basis of that hope really rather than the basis of the evidence predicts it. Pratt hop~ that Nyerere remains committed to a participatory socialism into which people grow by persuasion , and on the basis of that hope he rather unconvincingly dismisses the recent enforcement of villagisation as ‘nationalist coercion’ rather than ‘socialist coercion’. Maybe it is even true that the technique adopted by each author – assertion rather than demonstration of class identities by Shivji, political narrative by Pratt – is by definition incapable of demonstrating the truth of their analysis: But the books are both important and the discussion initiated by Shivji is evidently regarded as sufficiently vital inside Tanzania for his book to be distributed there by the official Tanzanian Publishing House. Members of the Society might perhaps give John Hatch to a friend worried that Africa is descending into barbarism or that Tanzania is a puppet of the Chinese; but they should perhaps buy or borrow and read Pratt and Shivji for themselves.

Terence Ranger