Socialism in Tanzania

African Socialism
• African Socialism Stresses African Traditional Values
• Describing African communities as classless, communal, egalitarian
• African socialism is an attempt to recover these values and combine them
with modern technology and modern state institutions
• Diverge from Karl Marx scheme
• Skip capitalism
• Marx theory of historical evolution
• Primitive socialism
• Slave Society
• Feudalism
• Capitalism
• Socialism
• Central Role of the state in economic and political life
• Establishment of one party system
 African Socialism: Ujmaa in Tanzania
• Nationalism in Tanzania
• It was a German Colony called Tanganyika
• Came under British trusteeship
• Nationalist movement was led by Tanganyika African National Union
(TANU)
• Led by Julius Nyerere
• Born in 1922
• Educated at Makerere College in Uganda, and then worked as a teacher at a Catholic
school between 1946-1949
• He went to UK and got an MA in history from the University of Edinburgh in 1952
• Influence of Fabian socialism
• In 1954, he founded Tanganyika African National Union (TANU)
• Tanganyika became independent in 1962
• In 1964 annexed the Island of Zanzibar to form United Republic of Tanzania
 Social Composition of Tanzania
• Inhabited by over 120 ethnic groups
• Racial divisions: Africans, Asians, Arabs and few Europeans
• Religion: Islam, Christianity, and African religions
• Importance of unity
• Nyerere urged his people to think first as Tanzanians
 Economic development
• Few natural resources and relied heavily on agricultural production
• Main task was to increase production to generate surplus that could be
invested
• Nyerere’s rejection of capitalism
• He embraced socialism
 Nyerere African socialism
• Ujamaa (familyhood)
• It was critical of individualism associated with capitalism
• Advocated social equality and public ownership of means of production
• He believed that Soviet-style socialism would not be suitable for Tanzania
• “Africa’s conditions are very different from those of Europe in which Marx and Lenin wrote and worked. To talk as if
these thinkers provide all answers to our problems, or as if Marx invented socialism, is to reject the humanity of Africa and the
universality of socialism…….But socialism did not begin with him, nor can it end in constant reinterpretation of his writings”
• Thus ujmaa was not imported ideology but a philosophy that aimed to
address African conditions and African needs
• Democracy and socialism have deep roots in “our past”
• African socialism was inherent in the notion of extended family and
mutual cooperation
• Adoption of Ujmaa at Arusha Declaration in 1967
 Arusha Declaration
• Objectives: “create a society based on co-operation and mutual respect and responsibility, in which all
members have equal rights and equal opportunities, where is no exploitation of one person by another .”

• Identification 4 issues to be addressed:

• Potential inequality between state employees and civil society
• Capital may come at the expense of human-centered development
• How to make private investment benefit all
• How to prevent imbalance in urban-rural development
 Implementation of Arusha Declaration
• Prevented government employees and leaders from taking additional jobs,
renting out property
• Keep salaries of bureaucrats down
• Nyerere himself lived and worked in a village for a time
• Human-centered development: introduction of education, literacy
campaigns, nationalization of private firms both local and foreign
 Rural Development
• Majority of Tanzanians lived in rural areas
• Priority should be given to the rural sector
• Challenge: Most rural folks were smallholding peasants who were mainly concerned with
their own subsistence
• Villagization solution: bring the majority of them into “model” villages that would act as
collective units of production
• Achieve more production when all villagers would work together on common land
• Central idea: combine tradition of village culture of mutual assistance with modern methods
of agriculture
• Government officials would teach peasants modern agricultural techniques
and to supply them with modern machinery
• The majority of schools and health services were built in these villages
• Villages served as centers to practice local democracy
• Community members make decisions for themselves
• By 1977 over 13 million Tanzanians lived in Ujamaa villages
• It failed to achieve economic expansion to cope with population growth
 Assessment of Ujamaa
• Failure of the state and its ideology to motivate villagers
• They were attracted to several aspects of Ujmaa, but did not adopt the modern
agricultural methods
• They were not used to collective farming
• Peasants did not have capitalist orientation and were not concerned with need for
surplus
• 10 years after Arusha declaration Nyerere admitted that “the truth is that the
agricultural results have been very disappointing”
• Peasants farmed common land after they attended their own individual
plots
• Working in collective farm was supplementary
 Role of the state in the failure of Ujamaa
• On occasions people were settled in unproductive areas
• Lack of infrastructure to transport harvest
• Government bureaucrats resorted to coercion in the face of peasant
reluctance
• Local administrators began to develop patron-client relations with
villagers
• Administrators using funds to build their own enterprise
• Tanzania’s economy was growing at the rate slower than its population
growth
• Persistence of state management of the economy until the 1980s
• It succumbed in 1986 when it accepted Structural Adjustment Program
involving liberalization of the economy
• Nyerere and his government administered a stable and equitable society
• Remarkable improvements in education and health care
• Erosion of these achievements with SA free market policies
• Economic growth accompanied by concentration of wealth
• Multi-party system and political violence
• Ujamaa produced welfare and significant degree of social cohesion
• Liberal policies created wealth and less cohesion