Tanzania:
An African country
on the up
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
April 16, 2005
LONDON - Tanzania has re-invented
itself twice - the first time in 1964 after a bloody
revolution had overthrown the Omani-descended Sultan who
ruled the neighboring spice island of Zanzibar.
Tanganyika, as it was then, persuaded the successful
African-led rebels to join their island with the
mainland, and Tanzania came into being. This union
remains precarious because of latent Zanzibari
nationalism after too many years of misrule.
The second time was when Julius
Nyerere, the founding father of independence, stepped
down in 1985 and two successive presidents over the last
twenty years have ushered in free market reforms,
fundamentally altering the direction of a once moribund
socialist economy.
But the legacy of the Zanzibari
revolution of 1964 and of Nyerere still hang over the
country. Nyerere, who died four years ago, had been a
teacher and he became what was in fact Tanzania's
headmaster. He was incorruptible, unpretentious but
totally authorative if not authoritarian. His great
accomplishment was that he inspired his people to resist
the tugs of tribalism and pull together as one people.
Nyerere's Christian socialist
ideology led him to dream of new ways of organizing
society, even though there were barely the rudiments of
modern structures. Tanzania became riddled with loss
making state industries, banks and plantations. His
biggest mistake of all was what he called "ujamaa" - a
kind of collectivization inspired by the Israeli kibbutz.
It was momentous exercise uprooting people whose families
had farmed the same scattered plots for hundreds of
years. It is not surprising that it totally failed having
consumed enormous resources and alienated the aid donors.
The country fell into increasing disrepair as the economy
plunged downward.
The president today is the
unassuming Ben Mkapa, once Nyerere's press secretary.
Later this year he will step down, having completed two
terms in office, leaving the country transformed into a
possible capitalist success story, but perhaps with
Zanzibar's volatile politics still murmuring and mumbling
off shore.
Although Mkapa's ruling party
dominates Tanzanian politics he encourages internal
debate and multiple rival candidates in elections. The
press is free, although not particularly vigorous. Death
sentences have been suspended and thousands of prisoners
pardoned whilst he has been in office. Security at his
residence is barely visible.
When I asked him what Nyerere would
say if he could revisit his country he replied that "he
would be uneasy that I have given away too much of what
was publicly owned and he would probably be upset that I
had built up such a prosperous middle class".
But no one I talked to, either in
the ministries or the villages, wants to unwind the
clock. The free market and privatization reforms have not
only propelled the country out of its economic lethargy
with a handsome growth rate of 6% year upon year and
burgeoning tax revenue it has enabled the Mkapa
administration to make sure there is a primary school in
every village and to start to dramatically expand
secondary education and health centers.
When I visited the villages in
Iringa eight hours by road from Dar es Salaam I could
barely believe my eyes. When I worked here as an
agricultural extension agent 40 years ago there used to
be in the market place just a few heaps of vegetables.
Now there was a cornucopia of produce - courgettes and
pineapples, aubergines and guavas, fresh peas being
podded and a truckload of fresh cabbages being unloaded.
Where once you could only buy maize corn now there were
sacks of rice from local paddies and Nile perch from Lake
Victoria. There was sunflower oil, brought in from the
fields that dazzle the countryside with their yellow
flowers among the green maize. And everywhere tomatoes:
enormous baskets of them, with a local sauce factory
consuming the surplus. All this is quite new, as are the
cell phones that reach 90% of the villages in Iringa
district, enabling traders and farmers to cut out the
middlemen and find the best price on their
own.
Can this continue? Tanzanian
economists and the president speak of growth rates of 8
or 9%. World Bank and IMF officials are more cautious.
But no one thinks that it will fall much below 6% -
unless Zanzibar, with its evenly balanced two party
struggle, explodes.
After the ruling party has selected
its presidential candidate in May, Mkapa says he will
spend a good deal of time talking to the militants on
both sides in Zanzibar to diffuse the talked-about
confrontation at the coming general election in October.
If the country can get past that
milestone then we can start to believe that Tanzania,
maneuvering at the end of the runway, is ready to get in
line for take off.
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Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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