LeiLani Dowell of FIST, Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor of the Pan-African News Wire and Monica Moorehead, Managing Editor of Workers World Newspaper, at a study forum on African history in New York City on July 11, 2008. (Photo: John Catalinotto).
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
Assessing the Tanzanian experience 10 years since the passing of Mwalimu
by Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Commentary
A decade ago on October 14, 1999, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere passed away in his East African nation of Tanzania. Nyerere was one of the leading political figures to emerge during the post World War II era of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles that swept through Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Nyerere was born in Butiama near Lake Victoria on April 13, 1922. Trained as a school teacher he became involved in the independence movement during the 1950s and later headed the Tanzania African National Union (TANU) which transformed into the Chama Cha Mapenduzi (CCM) in the late 1970s. He was the contemporary of other liberation movement leaders such a Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Gamal Abdel Nassar of Egypt, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau, Eduardo Mondlande of Mozambique, Kenneth Kuanda of Zambia, among many others.
It was Germany that initially colonized Tanganyika during the late 19th century. It was known at the time as German East Africa and grew out of the European drive towards the imperial takeover of the continent as a whole. The British had control of neighboring Kenya, Uganda and Nyasaland.
After the conclusion of World War I when Germany faced defeat and the loss of its colonies in Africa, the British took control over the area and renamed it Tanganyika. However, the resistance to the imposition of British rule gained momentum during the 1920s with the formation of Tanganyika African Association (TAA).
As a result of the economic crisis of the 1930s and reliance by Britain on the cotton produced in the colony, there was limited economic development in the country. During the 1950s a mass cooperative movement arose which sought to organize against the exploitation of Africans within the agricultural industry.
The cooperative movement took on a political character and led to the transformation of the TAA into the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) under the leadership of Julius Nyerere. TANU was formed in 1954 as mass political movement seeking independence for the colony. The movement was eventually banned by the British who saw the potential for an effective anti-colonial struggle that would displace the Europeans from political control.
Known by Tanzanians and people all over the world as “Mwalimu” (a Kiswahili word for teacher), Nyerere became Prime Minister and later president of the Republic of Tanganyika at its independence on December 9, 1961. Some three years later in the aftermath of the revolution in neighboring Zanzibar Island, the two territories merged and became the United Republic of Tanzania on April 26, 1964.
In 1967 the ruling party issued the Arusha Declaration which sought to articulate a program for the construction of socialism in Tanzania. The document was assailed by the imperialist politicians and their allies inside the country and throughout the African continent. During this period tremendous political and ideological debates were taking place over the question of which social system would lead Africa towards economic and social development.
Even prior to the publication of the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere had wrote on the role of political parties in fostering genuine democracy in a post-colonial society. In 1963, Nyerere wrote that "Where there is one party and that party is identified with the nation as a whole, the foundations of democracy are firmer than they can ever be where you have two or more parties, each representing only a section of the community." (Speech delivered on January 14, 1963)
In a press conference held on January 23, 1962, Nyerere stated that "a strong political organization active in every village, which acts like a two-way all-weather road along which the purposes, plans, and problems of the Government can travel to the people at the same time as the ideas, desires and misunderstandings of the people can travel direct to the Government. This is the job of the new TANU." (Tanganyika Standard, 1962)
With specific reference to the Arusha Declaration, the document initially lays out fundamental principles of beliefs and convictions embodied within a socialist party and state. The tenets uphold the notion of equality among people, the right to freedom of expression, just compensation for labor, the total liberation of Africa and public ownership of the wealth within the society.
The document states that "A truly socialist state is one in which all people are workers and in which neither capitalism nor feudalism exists. It does not have two classes of people, a lower class composed of people who work for their living, and an upper class of people who live on the work of others. In a really socialist country no person exploits another; everyone who is physically able to work does so; every worker obtains a just return for the labor he performs; and the incomes derived from different types of work are not grossly divergent.
"In a socialist country, the only people who live on the work of others, and who have the right to be dependent upon their fellows, are small children, people who are too old to support themselves, the crippled, and those whom the state at any one time cannot provide with an opportunity to work for their living.
"Tanzania is a nation of peasants but is not yet a socialist society. It still contains elements of feudalism and capitalism--with their temptations. These feudalistic and capitalistic features of our society could spread and entrench themselves."
Therefore, the Tanzanian government and party during this era understood the necessity of having people who work in control of the economy and the state. This process of building socialism cannot take place in isolation from other developments in the international community. In Tanzania relations were established between other African states and liberation movements organizing and fighting to reclaim their independence and sovereignty.
Tanzania and the Liberation of Southern Africa
From the earliest days of independence, Tanzania under TANU, served as a base for various liberation movements fighting against colonialism and settler-colonialism. Particularly after the reactionary and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coup against Nkrumah's Convention People's Party (CPP) government in Ghana, Tanzania became a focal point for various movements to receive training and organizational support for their ongoing political activities.
The Organization of African Unity (OAU) Liberation Committee was based in Tanzania. This body supplied material aid to the various mass organizations and independence movements. Liberation fronts from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, etc. had bases of operations in Tanzania. This effort by TANU under Nyerere was key in the process of defeating classical and settler colonialism in the southern Africa region.
Tanzania and its Implications for Socialism in Africa and the Developing Regions
The Tanzanian government during the 1980s and 1990s was forced to compromise with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank by accepting the Structural Adjustment Programs(SAPs) that became so prevalent during this time period. The role of the socialist countries in support of the national liberation movement and progressive governments in Africa was not adequate enough to prevent the ideological and political assault on the movement towards socialism in Tanzania and other countries on the continent.
Tanzania had developed close links with the People’s Republic of China during the post-independence period. Since both countries relied on the peasantry as the principal base of support in their respective development processes, TANU and later the CCM saw China as providing an effective model for fostering economic progress.
In fact one major project, the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, was built with Chinese assistance and support during the early 1970s. With the advent of the Sino-Soviet Dispute during the 1960s and 1970s, competition became fierce between the two major socialist states for influence in Africa and other developing regions.
After the U.S. shift in foreign policy towards China after 1971, through the overtures of the Nixon administration and the eventual establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States in 1979 under Carter, the U.S. sought during this period to enhance dialogue and relations with Tanzania. This was done in part in an attempt to counter Cuban influence after their intervention in Angola and Ethiopia during the period between 1975 and 1978. The Cuban internationalists were instrumental in the consolidation of Angolan independence in 1975-76 and the defeat of the U.S.-backed invasion by Somalia into Ethiopia in 1978.
Nyerere maintained the commitment of TANU/CCM in providing maximum support for the liberation movements still waging struggles in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. The ruling party never allowed the relations between the Soviet Union and China or the United States and China to influence its policies towards national liberation in Africa and socialism in Tanzania.
Within intellectual circles in Tanzania these issues were debated with vigor during the period of the 1970s and 1980s. African Guyanese historian Walter Rodney taught at the University of Dar es Salaam off and on between 1966 and 1974. His essay entitled “Tanzanian Ujaama and Scientific Socialism” published in the inaugural issue of African Review in 1972 generated fierce discussion inside the country and internationally.
Rodney maintained that despite the unique character of TANU’s interpretation and implementation of socialist policies, the process in essence represented a progressive force within Tanzanian history and held broad implications for Africa as a whole. However, others inside Tanzania held different perspectives on the character of the Ujaama process.
According to Yash Tandon, a scholar teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam during this period, the debate over the character of socialism in Tanzania culminated between 1976-78. In Tandon’s article entitled “Arguments Within African Marxism: the Dar es Salaam Debates”, “The 1976-78 phase of the debate generated a good bit of discussion on the character of the present international conjuncture. The focus of the discussion was the General Line of the International Communist Movement as enunciated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China during its polemic with the CPSU in 1960-63, and the four fundamental contradictions identified by the General Line.”
Tandon continues by saying that “Whereas one view held that the principal contradiction in the present epoch was between imperialism and the oppressed nations, the other view held that all four contradictions were fundamental to the epoch and that it was metaphysical to isolate one of them as principal. The latter view held that some people confused the distinction between fundamental and principal contradictions. A contradiction was fundamental when it was inherent in the capitalist production itself, and cannot be done away with until capitalist production is no more.” (Tandon, Journal of African Marxist, Issue 5, February, 1984).
Nonetheless, with specific reference to the African continent, the shift inwards in China as it relates to the international class struggle after 1972 and the collapse of Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries between 1989-1991 had a profound impact on social processes on the continent. When Namibia and South Africa gained national independence in 1990 and 1994 respectively, the socialist alternative to capitalist development models had been severely weakened.
Tanzania and other countries on the continent seemed to move away from the open advocacy of socialism. However, the contradictions between the imperialist states and the developing regions intensified. In the 21st century, these contradictions have manifested themselves in a greater reliance by imperialism on Africa for the supply of raw materials and cheap labor and at the same time the world economic crisis that erupted in 2007 is having a profound and detrimental impact on the African continent throwing tens of millions more into poverty.
Consequently, despite the apparent setbacks in the movement towards socialism in Africa and other geo-political regions, the application of anti-capitalist theory is as valid, if not more so, than during the immediate post-colonial period. If Latin America is an indication of the future of the developing regions, the nations there are moving in the direction of socialism and the necessity of continental unity in opposition to the increasingly aggressive character of U.S. imperialism.
In regard to Tanzania, Nyerere resigned as president in 1985 and as leader of the ruling CCM party in 1990. Democratic elections have maintained the control of the CCM since the departure of Nyerere. Ali Hassan Mwinyi served two five-terms, followed by Benjamin Mkapa and the current head of state President Jakaya Kikwete, who will seek re-election in 2010.
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