RECENT DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

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Compiled by Hugh Wenban-Smith

This is the summary report of development research in Tanzania, culled from journals in the library of the London School of Economics. It covers the period July to December 2011. The format is: Journal title; Volume and issue number; Author(s); Article title; Short abstract (in square brackets, sometimes abbreviated but otherwise as published).

Transport workers in Dar es Salaam
Development and Change, Vol 42(5) – Rizzo, M ‘Life is war’: Informal transport workers and neoliberalism in Tanzania 1998-2009”. [This article analyses how informal labourers fare under flexible labour markets and economic liberalization, through a case study of transport workers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It highlights the mainstream conceptualization of urban informality as self-employment and its influence on policy. The article stresses the importance of class differentiation in the Dar es Salaam transport sector and the predominance of informal wage employment, the uneven degree of power commanded by bus owners vis-à-vis informal unskilled wage workers and the pernicious consequences of the lack of regulation of the employment relationship on the workforce itself and on society. It then interrogates the criminalization of the workforce and shows how labour over-supply, the fragmentation and geographical dispersion explain workers lack of response to their plight. The longitudinal study of the rise and fall (1998-2005) of a labour association within the sector further highlights the tension among the workforce and the forms and limits of solidarity. The conclusion of this study suggest some policy implications.]

Poverty assessments
Development Policy Review, Vol 30(1): Shaffer, P “Demand-side challenges to monitoring and assessment systems: Illustrations from
Tanzania”. [Over the past decade, considerable attention and resources have been directed at Poverty Monitoring and Assessments Systems (PMASs), a core problem being the limited demand for, and use of, the data they generate. The article discusses the sources of these demand-side problems and explains the difficulties in trying to address them via PMAS-related processes, arguing that both institutional factors and design features have contributed to the disappointing performance of these systems … Tanzania’s PMAS experience is used to illustrate the argument.]

Revenue allocation
Journal of Development Studies, Vol 47(12): Allers, M A & Ishemoi, L J “Do formulas reduce political influence on intergovernmental grants? Evidence from Tanzania”. [Sub-national governments usually depend on the central government for a large share of their revenues. Therefore, a fair allocation of inter-government grants is essential for financing vital local services like education and healthcare. In Tanzania, and many other countries, regions that are better represented in the national parliament receive significantly more funds than others. Recently, Tanzania replaced the previously existing discretionary method of grant allocation by allocation formulas. We study whether this has reduced the effect of malapportionment on grant allocation. Surprisingly, we find that formula allocation does not significantly change this effect. This has important policy implications.]

Access to urban land for farming
Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol 49(4): McLees, L “Access to land for urban farming in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Histories, benefits and insecure tenure”. [People in sub-Saharan Africa rely on a variety of informal mechanisms to gain access to land for urban farming. However, the literature on land tenure focuses on gaining access to land for housing, whereas farming, which is highly visible in the urban landscape of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, requires farmers to negotiate their access in ways distinct from housing. A close examination of four open-space farms in Dar es Salaam reveals that there are different methods of gaining access to land for farming as opposed to housing. Additionally, theorizing this access reveals that the landowners who allow farmers on their land for food production also derive benefits. This can provide a framework for current efforts to integrate urban agriculture into city zoning plans.]

Labour market statistics
World Bank Economic Review, Vol 25(3): Bardesi E, Beegle K, Dillon A & Serneels P “Do labour statistics depend on how and to whom the questions are asked? Results from a survey experiment in Tanzania”. [Labour market statistics are critical for assessing and understanding economic development. However widespread variation exists in how labour statistics are collected in household surveys. This paper analyses the effects of alternative survey design on employment statistics by implementing a randomized survey experiment in Tanzania. Two features of the survey design are assessed – the level of detail of the employment questions and the type of respondent. It turns out that both features have relevant and statistically significant effects on employment statistics.]

REVIEWS

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Edited by John Cooper-Poole

BODIES, POLITICS AND AFRICAN HEALING: THE MATTER OF MALADIES IN TANZANIA, Stacey A. Langwick. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, November 2010. 304 pp. ISBN 9780253222459 £16.99

Langwick’s rich ethnographic analysis of ‘traditional’ healing in South-Eastern Tanzania depicts a terrain of “ontological politics” where post-colonial contestations over the “matter” of healing reveal clefts of power as healers and oth¬ers engage in struggles to determine objects of therapy and sites of expertise. Theoretically influenced by anthropological and historical studies of African medicine, Science and Technology Studies, and critical post-colonial scholarship, Langwick’s account renders ‘traditional’ medicine a distinctly ‘modern’ category. Langwick draws a picture of ‘traditional’ medicine which is (in)formed as much by Tanzania’s colonial and postcolonial history, as by its relationships to ‘biomedicine’ and ‘witchcraft’, and through meetings between patients, healers and nonhuman actors such as mashetani and majini, who “climb upon the heads” of healers and engage them in relationships of therapy.

The first part of the book deals with the way in which the boundaries around the category ‘traditional medicine’ emerged and stabilised through the colonial and post-colonial periods. The second part focuses in detail upon the practices of healers who have been labelled as ‘traditional’ within the categorisation set out in the first section. The focus here is on the healing techniques of con¬trasting types of healers; including the predominately male faraki healers who use a range of techniques glossed locally as “medicine of the book”, and the predominately female healers whose “medicine of the bush” produces a healing potentiality located primarily in the power of the healer and her relations with nonhumans, rather than in the material properties of particular herbs. In the third section, Langwick looks in more detail at the intersections, gaps and frictions created through the juxtapositions of different forms of healing by focusing upon the ways in which the divergent therapeutic practices employed in this region bring objects of therapeutic intervention into being.

Although the blurb on the back cover describes the book as an examination of “African healing and its relationship to medical science”, Langwick’s analysis points towards the denial such a bifurcation in simple, unproblematic terms. ‘Traditional’ medicine as described by Langwick is a category partly defined by global connections, meetings and translations, for example in the movements of young medical students from Tanzania to China, and back, and in the jour¬neys of Chinese entrepreneurs to Tanzania. Later, she describes how normative understandings of ‘African communities’ and ‘traditional midwifery’ underpin¬ning WHO recommendations and ensuing interventions of the Tanzanian state were central to the configuration of an interpellation within which some women positioned themselves in a new hybrid role, the “Traditional Birth Attendant”. This category, Langwick maintains, did not exist prior to the development of these international interventions. These global connections undermine an easy alliance between the categories local/African/traditional which can be positioned against a globalised biomedicine.

The intimate and detailed descriptions of healing practices in this book form valuable ethnographic artefacts in and of themselves. However, it is in her analysis of the intersections between divergent therapeutic practices and the enactment of therapeutic objects that Langwick makes her most important contributions. Although the reader is left with the sense that Langwick’s research relationships to her ‘biomedical’ informants lacked the depth and intensity of those she formed with ‘traditional’ healers, she nevertheless presents a well-argued account of biomedicine as much more than a mere foil to ‘traditional’ medicine. For example, we see how biomedicine, too, “matters” through its locatedness when Langwick describes nurses who recommend ‘traditional’ healing to patients for whom biomedical treatments do not appear effective, or when ‘traditional’ healers “close” the body as a precursor to biomedical treatment for malaria. In her attempt to move beyond pluralism as a way of understanding African healing, Langwick resituates relationships between symptoms, diagnosis and treatment by reconfiguring these as entities which emerge through therapeutic practice. Langwick shows how this emergence creates a politics of therapeutic knowledge where practices do not fall easily into fixed categories, but are employed across existing matrices of power in ongoing attempts to delineate ways of knowing and intervening upon the world.

Hannah Brown

TANZANIA IN TRANSITION: FROM NYERERE TO MKAPA. Kjell Havnevik and Aida Isinika (eds), pub Mkuki wa Nyota, Dar es Salaam, 2010

Between Nyerere, the first President and founding father of Tanzania, and Mkapa, its first President under multiparty democracy, there was a major shift in policy, from socialism as political rhetoric and socioeconomic reconfiguration, to the embrace of neoliberalism and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs). This shift began before Mkapa took office and continued after he handed over to Kikwete in 2010, so he cannot be associated with this phase in Tanzania’s ‘transition’ as the title of this book implies. Nor do the editors want to claim neoliberalism itself as a progressive ‘transformational outcome’ of ‘transition’. Rather they reach for a broader definition of ‘transition’ which includes ‘genuine participation of citizens’ and the ‘creation of space for human agency’. They are equivocal as to whether any such ‘transition’ has taken place, and do not identify Mkapa as its champion. The title thus sets up an incoherent subject, and operates more as a research question than as a statement.

The articles that follow focus on various aspects of Tanzania’s changing political economy – its reliance on foreign aid, corruption, agrarian transformations and the implementation of multi-party democracy. Disappointingly, it has no analysis of Tanzania’s attempts to industrialise. In a rather uneven collection, and marred by poor editing, it contains some very useful overviews of development in the political economy as well as delivering a strong dose of realism about Tanzania’s limited progress towards limiting poverty or extending political participation. It is very useful to be reminded of the contradiction between Tanzania’s socialist call for ‘self-reliance’ and its heavy and continuing dependence on foreign aid, amounting at times to half the budget of the state. Simensen’s telling account illustrates the extent to which ‘socialism’ was funded by external backers, especially from Scandinavia, who in a period of economic collapse in the late 1970s were then able to put pressure on Tanzania to accept IMF terms of neoliberal economic reform as the condition for con¬tinuing aid.
Bryceson, Skarstein and other authors look at the checkered career of agrarian socialism as the cornerstone of Nyerere’s policies. On the one hand, agrarian livelihoods are still foundational and ‘agriculture provides a vital subsistence fallback for the poor and a common cultural frame of reference’. But collective production long ago fell by the way-side and the buffeting of world markets and withdrawal of state subsidies have forced peasants to look for non-agricultural incomes and wage labour to supplement farming. And land has become a commodity, albeit largely outside the formal system of registration. Additionally, gold mining (with its ‘exploitative labour practices’, in Bryceson’s terms) now contributes more to exports than Tanzania’s traditional cash crops. Bryceson offers some rich ethnography drawn from two villages, whilst Skarstein, in an excellent and informative piece, concludes that economic liberalisation has had a negative impact on food grain production and productivity and that real returns to peasant producers have declined. Deriding the promise of economic liberalisation, he calls for the reinstatement of an ‘accountable and determined developmental state’ willing to intervene in the agricultural sector. Isinika and Mutabazi’s chapter on land conflicts brings a welcome gender dimension, showing that women have begun to assert rights allocated to them both under customary law (which retains a strong place in Tanzanian legal system) and statutory law (which has extended additional rights to women over time). Sadly, many women are unaware of their rights at the same time as population growth has rendered land scarcity and resultant conflicts more common. A few more detailed case histories of court proceedings would have added more depth to these conclusions. A bleak picture is painted of the forestry sector by Monela and Abdallah, with degradation of the forest reserves and limited success of sustainable management initiatives. However commercial and especially illegal logging barely figured in this account, which was unexpected – as well as a bid for yet more donor aid to make forestry successful. Wangwe’s chapter, though heavy on the acronyms, concludes with a significant point: that deepening aid dependence is not sustainable for Tanzania and that ‘an exit strategy should be part of the dialogue between development partners and government’. How this might be achieved is left vague, however, given the ‘rent-seeking’ tendencies of corrupt state officials. Cooksey provides a schematic account of grand and petty corruption which shows that this tendency has not been stemmed by Mkapa’s claim to end corruption. Several authors note the lack of judicial proceedings brought against perpetrators. Finally, in a careful and comprehensive account, Ewald looks at the interaction between economic policies and the democratisation process, noting the limited level of political participation belied by a rhetoric of citizenship. ‘Poverty’ is still pervasive, despite a plethora of poverty eradication strategies and initiatives. It is worth noting that relative poverty is integral to capitalist development (which requires exploitation of the many to extract a surplus for the few) – and Ewald notes the political questions raised: ‘how long can the majority of the people endure a situation of little economic progress and poverty?’ They endure because the majority are still content with small advances in their conditions of life and unwilling to vote out the party – the Chama cha Mapinduzi – which has at least delivered peace and stability to Tanzania, resting on Nyerere’s inspirational legacy. No other party has been able effectively to challenge CCM, which is of course in a position to muzzle or interrupt challenging voices.

This book is a useful antidote to uncritical claims that Tanzania, with its currently high growth rates and adherence to programmes of structural reform sponsored by the IFIs, has become a model for other developing countries to emulate. It sets out candidly the gap between this model and the kind of society that Nyerere had in mind – independent, relatively egalitarian and non-exploitative, but it also allows for analysis of the very real barriers that lay in the way of achieving such a ‘transformational outcome’.

This review also appears in the Review of African Political Economy
Janet Bujra

TALES OF ABUNWAS AND OTHER STORIES. Suzi Barned-Lewis. ISBN 9789987080434. Available from African Books Collective. £15.95.

Reviewed by the pupils aged 7-11 at Taliesin Junior School, Shotton, Deeside. The Headmistress read the story of ‘How the turtle got his shell’ to the school this morning. All the children enjoyed this story and especially liked discussing the message behind the story. A number of the children related this story to other proverbs they knew. On discussing the book with other members of staff they commented that a number of the stories were exciting and entertaining but some were over complicated and would be suited for the older child. The stories vary in length and some were a little too long to hold the concentration of some of the younger children. The pictures were fantastic, bright, colourful and stimulating for some art work.

AFRICA’S ODIOUS DEBTS, by Leonce Ndikumana and James K Boyce. Zed Books, London and New York, 2011. xiv + 135 pages. Paperback £12.99, hardback £60.00.

Tanzania has few mentions in the text of this academic book which is, on balance, good as the publication deals primarily with the negatives of the continent as regards debt, outflow of funds by capital flight, round-tripping or money laundering, and downright fraud. The book is essentially a study of 33 African countries for which basic figures are available, by two professors of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the first-named in the summary above hailing from Burundi.
Some tables put Tanzania in a good light. Though external debt of US$5.9bn is 29% of GDP, compared with Kenya’s 22% and Uganda’s 17%, the authors’ estimate of capital flight from Tanzania is put at $6.7bn as of 2008, compared with $7.1bn from Kenya, $13.9bn from Uganda and monumental levels of $71.5bn from Angola and $296bn from Nigeria! Tanzania’s infant mortality is less than the continent’s average, even though public health expenditure per capita is likewise less than average. Success in reducing deaths from malaria by some 50% in Tanzania, and some other countries, is an indicator of properly invested funds.

Published in Zed Books’ African Arguments series, the book’s thrust, however, is at linking debt, and hence the cost of servicing that debt, with capital flight in all its definitions, and in drawing attention principally to the huge levels of odious debt. This term, first coined in 1927, has some protection in international law but the authors maintain that more could be done, to the betterment of populations. Not the easiest book to read, given its academic and painstaking approach, but some countries suffering under high debt servicing costs could at least consider the options laid out.
David Kelly

BETWEEN SOCIAL SKILLS AND MARKETABLE SKILLS: THE POLITICS OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN 20TH CENTURY ZANZIBAR. Roman Loimeier. Leiden: Brill, 2009 (xxxi + 643 pp.). ISBN 9789004175426. 199Euro, US$ 295.

This is an enormously useful, scholarly and at times engrossing book that synthesises a great deal of hard-to-access published sources, such as locally-published biographies of Zanzibari scholars, with findings from British and Zanzibari archives. As the length of the tome indicates, it is very clearly in the continental tradition, in the sense that it intersperses its arguments with long narrative passages, including summary biographies of a number of scholars.

Nevertheless, some important points emerge quite clearly. There is, firstly, Zanzibar’s pre-colonial legacy as a maritime location of ‘peripheral’ (in Michael Lambeck’s phrase) Islam: a place where Islamic education was valued greatly and at the same time perceived as a scarce good in need of fostering and protection. This view conditioned a great deal of concern among scholars about any attempt to legislate on education. Still, to varying extents all branches of Islamic scholarship, rational as well as revealed, from Quran recitation to legal interpretation, were being taught. Next, there is the ambivalent influence of colonial policy on Islamic education in Zanzibar. British officials felt that they did not really know what they were dealing with and were sceptical of the value of established educational methods. They sought to ‘modernise’, but to do so with the approval of the Sultan and the scholarly establishment.

This was not made easier by the fact that the networks of scholars in Zanzibar were quite diverse, with ‘Alawi, Qadi ri, Salafi, Ibadhi and Shi’i scholars from a number of ethnic backgrounds. In effect, officials had no choice but to, in some sense, choose sides by cooperating with certain individuals, without being quite aware what the sides they chose stood for to the minds of Zanzibaris. Moreover, they did not control the way Zanzibaris perceived British officials and their policy. As is documented also for other parts of colonial Africa (most prominently in Louis Brenner’s study on Mali), forms of schooling that escaped community control were viewed with a great deal of concern, as potentially failing to instil essential moral values. Ultimately, the Islamic schooling provided was more limited and less carefully thought through than either the British or the Zanzibaris involved would have wanted, if in different ways. Although Loimeier carefully sets out the political context of late colonialism, he does not always explicate the political and increasingly racialised subtexts of different interest groups’ stances on education and community politics. To complete the picture, his book would profit from being read alongside Jonathon Glassman’s War of words, war of stones.

That this era of colonial schooling is today sometimes remembered with nostalgia is indicative of a further point: the massive impact of the 1964 revolution and its aftermath. Here, in particular, Loimeier documents processes which so far were accessible only through oral sources and guesswork. What becomes clear is that the marginalisation of religious education during the first couple of decades after the revolution was not merely an effect of the move into exile of numbers of scholars and a general attenuation of religious life, but the object of explicit government policy. Although this policy is no longer in place, it has not been possible to restore the status quo ante; textbooks have been simplified and content has changed. Nor would Zanzibaris necessarily want a previous state restored: one of the ramifications of the marginalisation of Islamic education in the early years of the revolution has been a raised interest in scholarship that positions itself explicitly as purist and fresh from the Arab centres of Islam.
Felicitas Becker

BIOFUELS, LAND GRABBING AND FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA. Ed. Prosper Matondi, Kjell Havnevik and Atakilte Beyene. Zed Books in association with Nordic Africa Institute. 2011. ISBN 978 84813 878 0. p/b. pp230
All too often the debate over large scale foreign direct investment in agriculture in African countries tends to focus on what is increasingly referred to as “land grabbing”. So when a book title sandwiches “land grabbing” between biofuels and fuel security I am not surprised but perhaps somewhat frustrated that this pejorative term is now being used as a “useful and generic concept which (the editors) define to include exploration, negotiations, acquisitions or leasing, settlement and exploitation of the land resource, specifically to obtain energy and food security through export to investors’ countries and other markets”. The title notwithstanding, this is an important book that brings to the “land grabbing” and biofuels debate detailed case studies from many countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Chapter 6 provides interesting insights into what really goes on when a foreign company attempts to invest in large-scale land acquisitions. In painstaking detail the authors explore how the compulsory environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) was undertaken when SEKAB, a Swedish company was looking to invest in biofuel production in Tanzania. The chapter focuses on the process of anticipating the environmental consequences of the planned biofuel investments, and in doing so it provides an account of why large-scale land acquisitions and the requisite demands on water for irrigation are so tricky in many sub-Saharan African countries. A key issue in Tanzania and elsewhere is conflicting demand over natural resources that provide multiple “ecosystem services”, combined with complicated overlapping land institutions. The authors focus both on the many imperfections of the process of undertaking the ESIA, and the flaws of the proposed investment, which appeared to involve converting important miombo forests, over-exploiting water resources, and dispossessing smallholder farmers. Given that SEKAB is a Swedish municipal company, we are left wondering about their side of the story. From SEKAB’s perspective why did their intended investment in Tanzania go so wrong? Can large-scale foreign investments in biofuels, or agricultural crops in general, ever work in Tanzania, and if so, what lessons have been learnt from the SEKAB experience? These questions remain unanswered.
Elizabeth Robinson

LETTERS

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Service in Tanganyika
Trevor Jaggar in his review of Charles Meek’s delightful book “Brief Authority” may perhaps have unintentionally misled your readers when he wrote, “Several (of those who ruled Tanzania while it was administered by Britain) felt moved to record their experiences. First there was Randall Sadleir in 1999…”

Your readers may wish to be reminded that Randall Sadleir was by no means the first to publish the story of his service in the district administration of Tanganyika in the years before Independence. The earliest of the series on my bookshelves is John Cairns who published his experiences in “Bush and Boma” in 1959. He was followed by E. K. Lumley with “Forgotten Mandate” in 1976, J. A. Golding with “The Golden Years” in 1987, Frank Burt with “Nakumbuka” in 1989, William Helean with “Bed in the Bush” in 1991, Tim Harris with “Donkey’s Gratitude” in 1992, and John Lewis-Barned with “A Fanfare of Trumpets” in 1993.
Then after Randall Sadleir’s admirable publication, there came Michael Longford with “The Flags change at Midnight” in 2001 – the fattest of all the books with some beautiful illustrations, and Donald Barton with “An Affair with Africa” in 2004. No doubt there are others, and together they demonstrate a deep love of the country and a profound commitment to its welfare in the years before Independence.
Dick Eberlie

Trevor Jaggar comments: ‘Excellent. I am delighted to learn about all these other books. In the time left to me, I must try and read some of them.’

Low birth weights
I appreciated No 101 Tanzania Affairs received today. Shedding light inter alia on Julius Nyere’s firm position re Whitehall policies towards independence movements in Southern Africa.

Addressing electricity deficits in Tanzania justifiably is well covered in your current issue. Less is generally known about the impact on low birth weight (LBW) of electricity black outs, reference abstract of paper below. LBW predicts subsequent short stature (stunting and underweight) and inferior adult productivity. Stunting for several reasons remains too high in Tanzania.

Abstract of paper on Transitory Shocks and Birth Weights: Evidence from a Blackout in Zanzibar. October 7, 2011: Do transitory economic shocks affect health? I show that an unexpected, month-long blackout in Tanzania caused a temporary drop in work hours for workers in electricity-dependent jobs. Using records from a maternity ward, I document a reduction in birth weights for children exposed in utero to the blackout, and an increase in the probability of low birth weight. The reduction is correlated with measures of maternal exposure to the blackout. Blackout-induced declines in maternal nutrition and maternal stress are the most likely causes. The blackout also increased births, but selection into pregnancy cannot fully explain the drop in weights.
Per Eklund (from Sweden)

A little comfort
My wife and I enjoy reading about Tanzania but feel that your scribes, mainly experts in their subjects, often forget, or do not appreciate, that the UK and Tanzania are essentially different. In the UK we are self-seeking individuals, even when trying to help others, while Tanzanians are members of groups; clans, tribes. They owe loyalty to others. Frequently we in the West complain about corruption, forgetting that in the Tanzanian culture the “big man” owes a debt to his supporters, what some writers refer to as “the politics of the belly”. The interesting discussion is as to the level at which this politics becomes genuine cor¬ruption. However after reading Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, and various books by Alexander de Waal I am increasingly concerned about the effectiveness of large scale aid which provides much money but fails to ensure that local people are involved and trained.

On a recent visit I had the privilege to attend a child welfare clinic at a rural dispensary. The mothers, all of whom had been in their fields earlier, had been home, washed and changed themselves and the children and it was a delight to see the toddlers walking to the dispensary proudly carrying their medical records in plastic bags. While the checks were being made I wandered into the village. It was 11 am but the men of the village were already gathered around the beer pot, cheerfully solving the problems of the world. I was kindly invited to join them. During the course of our chat I remembered that local courts had been abolished after uhuru. I enquired as to how they solved disputes about field boundaries or repayments of dowry. I was interested to be told that they had three elders who dealt with such matters and that if they needed to appeal, there was another senior man who dealt with such matters for a larger area. And I did not have time to ask the next questions. How were they chosen? For how long did they serve? How were they remunerated? Were there similar groups in other areas? Would they be useful leaders in DEVELOPMENT situations where too often projects fail for lack of influential leadership.
Mention of development leads me to note that in the last two years the Tanzania Development Trust has supported a number of initiatives. I wonder whether it would be possible to review some of the earlier projects to see if they achieved their objects or what were the reasons for their failure.
Robert Wise

Professor Kim Howell (Dept of Zoology and Wildlife Conservation, University of Dar es Salaam) writes to inform readers that the journal “Tanganyika Notes and Records” which later became “Tanzania Notes and Records” is now available online at www.tanbif.org The project to make the journal available was funded by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), and is dedicated to the memory of Alan Rodgers who worked tirelessly to document Tanzania’s flora and fauna as well as serving on the editorial board of Tanzania Notes and Records.

Thomas Molony at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, is looking to get in touch with anyone who personally knew Julius Nyerere during the period up to when he was teaching at St Francis College, Pugu. He is interested in the period when Mwalimu was in the United Kingdom (1949-1952), and before he left Tanganyika in 1949, and is restricting his research up to 1953. Please contact him at Thomas.Molony(AT>edac(DOT)uk, or leave a message with Seona Macintosh on XXXX, or write to Centre of African Studies, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15A George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD.

MORE VOLUNTEERS PLEASE

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TA readers will have noted the recent increase in the number of regular volunteer contributors so that we now have quite a large editorial team. This is helping us to cover more adequately news about various areas of development in Tanzania and is also relieving the strain on me as editor. May I say how much I appreciate what you are all doing.

We now need one or two more volunteer reporters to cover other areas which are likely to be of interest to readers. The work involved is not unduly onerous. We need, from each volunteer, three contributions of about 1,000 words (two pages) each year. However, volunteers will need to be already engaged in the area selected or be able to refer to the media, professional journals, contacts or friends who can supply relevant information.

We urgently need contributors to cover the following areas:
• Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries,
• Health, and
• Leisure – music, art, sports or part of these.

We also need a Deputy Editor for Tanzanian Affairs. This would naturally lead on to the job of Editor as I wish to retire in the fairly near future. If anyone is interested but doesn’t want to commit immediately, please contact us.

TA ISSUE 101

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Cover for TA 101 shows Prime Minister Julius Nyerere leaving Karimjee Hall in Dec 1961.

Contents
50th Anniversary of Independence
Ambitious Plans to end Energy Crisis
Bumpy Ride for the Constitution
Big Gold – Thankyou & Goodbye ?
Education – New Developments
VSO – 50 years of Partnership

A pdf of the issue can be downloaded here

This issue is dedicated to Letsopa Knight, born on 25th November 2011, and to the memory of his mother Kelebogile who sadly passed away on 1st December. Letsopa is a Setswana word for a clay used for making pots, but traditionally it can also be used to describe something beautiful, tough and resilient, which rather than being broken by fire becomes stronger. Jacob Knight

TANZANIA IS FIFTY – EVENTS IN 1961

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The new National Anthem in 1961 (although then it referred to Tanganyika not Tanzania)


The last strains of the new national anthem die away. And across the dark bush and towering palms, over the roofs of clustered villages, even to Dar es Salaam, a blaze of coloured light four miles away echoes the triumphant roar with the incessant rumbling cries of Uhuru coming out from underneath. This is Tanganyika’s finest moment. A fragment of time to be savoured, treasured and stored in the memory. An experience, emotional … and unique. Tanganyika is independent; a nation is born …

So wrote Graham Hulley in The East African Annual 1962-63

Lieutenant Alexander Nyirenda lights a torch (mwenge) on Mount Kilimanjaro in 1961


‘Climaxing a feat which caught the imagination of the world, Lieutenant Alexander Nyirenda climbed to the summit of the mighty Mount Kilimanjaro and lit a symbolic torch next to the new Tanganyikan flag.

The Prime Minister said: Tanganyika wanted to light a torch which would ‘shine out beyond our borders giving hope where there was once despair, love where there was hate, and dignity, where before there was only humiliation.’

The scene at the Independence ceremony in the National Stadium as the Duke of Edinburgh handed over to Prime Minister Julius K Nyerere the Constitutional Instruments which formally granted independence.

Prime Minster Julius Nyerere leads the Governor, Sir Richard Turnbull back to the Royal Box after the raising of the new flag.

Many thanks Jim Watson for making available to us this publication with its excellent photos dating back to 1961 – Editor.

TANZANIA IS FIFTY – EVENTS IN 2011

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President Jakaya Kikwete hands over the Uhuru Torch (mwenge) to the Chief of Defence Forces, General Davis Mwamunyange, at the end of the countrywide Torch race in Dar es Salaam. Gen Mwamunyange later presented the Torch to a team that took it to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Photo – State House.

In Dar es Salaam, the celebrations started in earnest in July. Ministries took turns to showcase their activities at the Mnazi Mmoja grounds.

Then on 9th December, over 40 Heads of State, Government and other dignitaries attended the main celebrations which included a guard of honour by the country’s armed forces and a 21-gun salute to the Commander-in-Chief.

Display of army equipment


There was a display of the army’s equipment ranging from tanks, armoured vehicles to trucks and other vehicles used in warfare. A number of fighter jets were flown in synchronized formations over the stadium. Some 4,500 children from primary and secondary schools entertained guests with a mass performance followed by traditional dances by four different traditional groups, hand-picked to proportionally represent Tanzania. The dances included Selo from Coast Region, Ngongoti from Mtwara Region as well as Msewe and Bugobogobo from Zanzibar and Mwanza respectively.

President Kikwete’s speech
President Kikwete said that some historical factors were to blame for the country’s failure to attain higher levels of development as many people would have wished. He said that when Tanganyika gained independence from Britain in 1961, it was a very poor country with poor infrastructure and a relatively small pool of skilled manpower. “We had only twelve university graduates when we got independence and some people feared it would be almost impossible to attain reasonable levels of development,” the President noted, adding: “With the cooperation amongst leaders in all phases of the government since independence and the general public, our country is where it is now…we have made big steps.”

The colonial government, he explained, had no intention of developing the country but just wanted to exploit its resources.

“But Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and his colleagues vowed to fight for our independence and help Tanzanians climb out of abject poverty.” The President also pointed out that many big challenges lay ahead.

Britain’s congratulations
Queen Elizabeth II congratulated Tanzania on the 50th independence anniversary. She wrote that the 50 years had been characterized by peace and stability, a rare thing to find in many other parts of the world. “It gives me great pleasure in sending your Excellency and the people of Tanzania my warmest congratulations on this very special occasion,” she said.

“The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have told me how much they enjoyed your hospitality during their recent visit to your country as part of the celebrations for this special event. I wish Your Excellency and the people of Tanzania, my best wishes for growing prosperity in the coming years.”

Fifty years ago HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, representing the Queen, was in Dar es Salaam at the ceremonies connected with the handing over of power from Britain to the new country, then known as Tanganyika. Fifty years later in November 2011 his son Prince Charles was in Dar es Salaam to join in the 50th anniversary of those momentous events.

Security
Tanzania tightened security to guarantee the safety of 14 foreign Heads of State and Government who came to mark Tanzania Mainland’s 50 years of independence. Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda, said the government had upped the security profile as a precaution against threats from the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terror group.

The costs
Many people complained about the cost of the celebrations in view of Tanzania’s shortage of funds for all kinds of development projects.

According to the Citizen the government spent a total of TShs 64 billion to facilitate the celebrations. Some TShs 8 billion was allocated to local governments. Regional administrations and local government authorities organised celebrations in all of the mainland’s 21 regions, and 136 district councils.

Major items of expenditure included preparatory logistics, fuel, per diems for civil servants and printing costs for leaflets highlighting achievements that respective districts and regions had registered over the 50-year period.

About TShs 213 million was given to Tanzania Trade Development Authority to finance ministerial exhibitions as well as those of state agencies and the private sector, at the Mwalimu Nyerere exhibition grounds along Kilwa Road in Dar es Salaam.

The Ministry of Industries, Trade and Marketing reportedly received TShs 30million. Each of the nearly 5,000 youngsters who participated in the mass display was reportedly paid TShs 40,000 (£16).

Ubungo MP John Mnyika (Chadema) said the money should have been channelled into development projects. The Uhuru anniversary would have been more memorable if the money had been spent on settling teachers’ debts, as well as those of other public employees. “We could also have spent the money on building feeder roads in Dar es Salaam, to ease congestion on the few major roads… people would have remembered that for a long time,” he said.

PHOTOS FROM 1961

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Then and now - aerial photographs of the Dar es Salaam harbour in the 1960’s compared with a more recent shot. Further construction work is currently underway (photo (r) Michuzi)

Arusha clock tower in 1961 - Alan Pollard http://www.panoramio.com/photo/38080166

Askari Monument, Dar es Salaam, 1961 - Alan Pollard

Arusha Safari Hotel, 1961 - Alan Pollard

Dodoma Railway Station, 1961 (advertising bus service to Arusha and Iringa ?) - Alan Pollard

Prime Minister Nyerere, Independence Day 1961

Tanganyika Independence Day 1961

Tanganyika Independence Day 1961

Tanganyika Independence 1961

Tanganyika Independence 1961

Tanganyika Independence 1961

Prime Minister Nyerere and Sir Richard Turnbull 1961

Tanzanians in 2011 look at photos of 1961 as part of the Anniversary celebrations

THE NYERERE STYLE

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President Nyerere meeting with VSO volunteers in 1977 - see article on VSO in Tanzania later in this issue

President Nyerere gave hundreds of interviews before, during and after his terms of office. We are grateful to Peg Snyder/Paul Bjerk/Juhani Lomppololle/ Aili Tripp for digging out and transcribing an interview given by Mwalimu in 1971 to a Finnish journalist. Extracts:

Nyerere: … In 1961, what was our major ambition? Our major ambition was obviously to survive as a nation. We have survived as a nation, we have consolidated ourselves as a nation, and we have consolidated our independence. I suppose really, quite frankly, this is our biggest achievement. Only as an independent country could we do such things as raising standards of living, increasing education, and so forth. Well I can’t say we have achieved all we would have liked to achieve.

Questioner: You place a very heavy emphasis on rural development… but in this report, you say, “indeed more money has in fact been spent on urban developments, industrial and business development, than on rural areas, in this post-Arusha period”. So what could, in your opinion be the reason for that?

N: One is habit. The other is the ease. It’s easier to invest in urban areas than to invest in rural areas. Simply habit. Habitually this is what happens, you establish a habit where investment flows into the urban areas because it flows there habitually. And apart from habit you have certain facilities which have been put in urban areas, and if you are going to use these facilities properly, really you are forced to put something in … And I say secondly, it’s easier to plan a textile factory than to plan a village. A village of three thousand workers, three thousand peasants requires a great deal more, more innovation if you like. We are less used to this. Basically I think, habit. We have to break the habit of thinking in terms of employment. Because even if, now, if we want to build a school, if we want to build a secondary school, …the majority of the students who go into this secondary school are from the peasant areas, peasant sons and daughters. But we will have by habit put the school in an urban area…

Q: What are your reservations about foreign development corporations?

N: I think reservations would be quite normal. Quite normal. It is always a matter of judgment what country we are dealing with. Very often rich countries use their ability to assist poorer countries in order to dominate these poorer countries, to build spheres of influence, to keep other competitors, other nations out. And they regard them as competitors. A kind of jealousy develops. I want to build a railway, and I try to get some money from the Western world; if I don’t get that money then I try to get it from China. The fellows do not want to give the money, and then they ask why? why? This is introducing the Chinese to Tanzania. There is kind of feeling… keep the Chinese out, Tanzania is our sphere of influence. You know the Chinese should be kept out. It becomes a kind of instrument. Aid becomes an instrument of imperialism. And this is really the first reservation. Secondly, aid should help us to do what we want to do. It’s no use some country coming here with some brilliant idea that they want to do xyz. And in our own priorities we don’t want to do xyz, it is something that can wait until the 2000s.

Q: Do you see anything remarkable in the Chinese assistance causing any changes in the non-alignment policy?

N: I don’t see why it should. Non-alignment has never meant that a non-aligned country should have nothing to do with an aligned country. This has never been a definition of non-alignment. It has the meaning that we must never behave in our relations with aligned powers as if we belonged to their blocs. We don’t. And we have relations with China just as we have relations with the Soviet Union or relations with the United States. We see no reason why it should affect our nonalignment. Actually we feel it is an expression of our non-alignment. We would find it ridiculous that it is not alright for us as a non-aligned country to ask the Soviet Union or the United States to build a railway for us. But somehow it becomes wrong for our non-alignment if we ask China to build a railway for us (laughter).

Q: Your views of the present dispute between Tanzania and Uganda amidst reports of border clashes. Do you think there will be a danger of war?

N: Well, what you really want one never knows. I mean it takes two, to bring about war. But actually it doesn’t take two, it can take only one. So in that sense, if one side decides to be foolish, this foolishness can lead to a dangerous situation. But frankly, I don’t believe that these troubles on the border can cause, can be developed into anything more than troubles on the border.

Q: What is your comment on the British Foreign Secretary Sir Douglas Home going to Salisbury trying to negotiate a settlement to the Rhodesia problem.

N: Our views have been very clear for years and they’ve not changed. It was Sir Alec, when he was Prime Minister of Britain, who formulated the so-called five principles. And it was while he was Prime Minister that we said we don’t accept these principles as a basis of granting independence to Rhodesia, because they mean granting independence to a country on the basis of minority rule. And we don’t accept this. And it is really this which he’s going to negotiate with the Rhodesians. He’s going to negotiate with the White Minority there. To hand over to them the government, the same thing that they did in South Africa. They want to create a second South Africa. This is really the whole basis of these talks, to create a second South Africa, and we’ve always said we can’t accept this. What are we expected to say? ‘This is fine’?

Q: Is there any settlement which you would not consider to be a sellout?

N: Any settlement. Any settlement on that basis would be a sell-out. Handing over five million people to the good will of a tiny minority, and believing that this minority at some future date will hand over power to the majority. It doesn’t happen.

Q: You said in September this year in this report, Tanzania has paid a heavy price in economic aid for her stand on these matters. But neither in relation to Britain nor any other country have we wavered on the policies we believe to be right because of our desire to develop our country at maximum speed. Have you ever doubted?

N: Have I ever doubted our policy? Never.

Q: But you have paid a price?

N: Well surely you must pay a price for your freedom, if it is really freedom. If we wanted to remain a colony we could have remained a colony. As a colony our responsibilities wouldn’t hold. I got my grey hair in our second year of independence. My hair was black, completely black when we became independent, and in two years it had gone grey, because of some of the problems of independence. If you don’t want the problems of independence don’t become independent.

Q: Do you think that the freedom fighters will succeed?

N: Why not? If we didn’t believe they will succeed then there is no point in fighting is there? There’s no point in the struggle is there? Unless it is a kind of religion. There’s no point in struggling for freedom unless you believe you are going to win. And if we believed these people are wasting their time, why should we be working to get support for them throughout the world. We are trying to get the world to understand this problem in southern Africa, and to understand that these people are struggling for human rights, and they must be helped until they win. If we didn’t believe they have a chance of winning there is no use helping them, or trying to get their world to help them.

Q: Now this is the last final question. Mr. Karalov has suggested that you have been translating William Shakespeare into Swahili. Have you yourself been writing any poems?

N: No. Not poems in that sense, not poems in that sense of William Shakespeare. Everybody. Every literate person has written some verse. So that’s all. This question of Shakespeare is really you have read Shakespeare, so have I. Some. I have not read Shakespeare, I have read one or two books, not more than one or two books. And then sometimes I, because of my interest, not so much because of my interest in Shakespeare, but in Swahili. I have translated some bits of Shakespeare into Swahili because of my effort to learn Swahili rather than to translate Shakespeare.

AMBITIOUS PLANS TO END ENERGY CRISIS

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The East African and other media outlets have been reporting on the ambitious new investment plans being drawn up which should fairly soon see a dramatic improvement in production of energy – and hopefully an end to the energy crisis.

In what African Report described as the largest ever single Chinese investment in Tanzania, an agreement worth $3 billion (about TShs 4.8 trillion) has been signed to develop the Mchuchuma coal and Liganga iron ore projects (The Citizen). The NDC will hold a 20% stake with the Chinese firm holding the remaining 80%. The projects will be implemented in two phases – the first phase will entail laying the groundwork at Mchuchuma and eventual mining of coal to be used in generating electricity, while the second phase will involve exploration and extraction of iron ore from Liganga.

Symbion is set to supply 205 MW to the national power grid in support of the government’s emergency power plan. Under the firm’s expansion plan, Symbion would import more than 205 MW of generating equipment, adding new power to the grid incrementally from October, and the full 205 MW capacity will be available to Tanesco by the end of the year (The Guardian).

The country has borrowed $63.4 million from the Export Import Bank of Korea which will help to build a power transmission line which will link future sources of electricity in the south of Tanzania with the north of the country.

Plans are being drawn up for a huge 2,100 MW new electricity plant at Stiegler’s Gorge in the Rufiji River Basin. It will be built using Brazilian technology and will be developed by Brazil’s Odebrecht company.

A Norwegian power engineering company has signed an agreement for a 100 MW turnkey project at Ubungu (using natural gas) in Dar and another at Nyakato near Mwanza (using heavy fuel oil). Finance totalling $530 million is coming from HSBC in Norway to support 15% from the government. Power is due to be switched on by June 2012.

Tanzania has also secured a $250 million dollar loan from a consortium of local and global financial institutions, including the Standard Bank of South Africa, to fund rural roads and production of electricity.

Finally, Tanzania has signed production sharing agreements ($75 million) with two oil companies to explore for oil and gas at Lake Rukwa and Nyuni East Songo Songo.

The blame
Rice farmers in the Ruaha River Basin have been blamed for the ongoing power crisis. The principal engineer at the Mtera Dam has claimed that uncontrolled rice farming is behind the decreased water flow into the dam.

Judie and Thomas Mwarabu have sent us the following weather warning published by the Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) in Mwananchi in September which was partially vindicated by a week of early and heavy rain in mid-October:

TMA predicted that several areas of the country could face serious disasters such as floods, soil erosion and major damage to the infrastructure and environment during the short rains (vuli) between October and December. Other areas, which would not suffer from the effects of flooding, are expected to be faced with food shortages and perhaps famine due to insufficient rainfall. TMA has for the first time not only published this information in a highly professional way, but has also made clear which areas are threatened and gone on to make recommendations to deal with them. The government was advised to prepare itself thoroughly by designing strategies and creating new ways of protecting the economy of the country, by putting pressure on the Disasters Corps to ensure the preparation of sufficient and up-to-date supplies of all kinds, including air, road and waterborne transport, tents, blankets, medicines and rescue equipment.

People complain that Tanzania has repeatedly suffered from such disasters but they come again and again because the government has not learned from them.

The Tanesco monopoly on power production might be abolished, according to a report in Tanzania Daima. The government was said to have plans to amend current electricity laws to allow private companies to produce and supply. Minister of Finance Mustapha Mkulo said that “Currently we have power producers who remain with excess energy but they cannot sell it on to neighbouring communities. The new amendments will allow them mechanisms to sell it”.

The dependence of energy supplies on rainfall was demonstrated once again by the following report (slightly abridged) from The Guardian of 7th October before the very heavy rains mentioned above. By early October, hydropower generation at the major dams, Mtera and Kidatu, had been drastically reduced as water levels dwindled even further, President Kikwete admitted. This was after the President was informed that the Kidatu plant, with a capacity to generate 200 megawatts, was producing only 40 MW and the Mtera plant was generating only 30 MW while it has the capacity to produce 80 MW. The Kihansi plant was producing 90 MW against 180 MW, Nyumba ya Mungu 3.5 MW against 8 MW and New Pangani 20 MW against 68 MW. The country was relying on electricity from Songas – generating 182 MW, Ubungo 100 MW, Tegeta 45 MW and Symbion 70 MW.