‘Almost an Oxfam in itself’: Oxfam, Ujamaa and development in Tanzania

Abstract

This article examines how Oxfam came to forge an exceptionally close relationship with the Tanzanian state during the 1960s and 1970s. Oxfam, an organization that sought in this period to build and strengthen grassroots participation in development planning and implementation, participated in a development programme in Tanzania that, during the 1970s, actually withdrew power from the peasantry. The government shifted ever more towards an authoritarian position, and forced the relocation of upwards of six million people into newly established villages. Yet Oxfam seemingly was blind to the realities of what was going on, maintaining throughout this period that the development programme was oriented towards the creation of communal production and grassroots democracy Oxfam's definition of Ujamaa. The article argues that Oxfam came to this position through its involvement in a rural development project in southern Tanzania in the 1960s. The Ruvuma Development Association became, for Oxfam, its touchstone for interpreting and defining what Ujamaa meant. Having erected a prism through which to understand Tanzanian development, Oxfam failed to perceive the growing divergence between the state and itself in objectives and strategy in the implementation of a rural development strategy. IN 1976, AN OXFAM CONSULTANT WROTE: 'Tanzania seems to engender a characteristic socialist enthusiasm in almost all who work there. Nearly everything one reads about projects in Tanzania from people working there has that special youthful buoyancy about it.'1 It was not just those who worked there who appeared to possess a close affinity for Tanzania. It seemed that Oxfam's supporters those vital donors without whom Oxfam could not have operated were similarly afflicted with Tanzaphilia. The Oxfam Field Director wrote in 1975: From a crude fund-raising point of view we would probably benefit in view of the esteem with which Tanzania is held in Britain in some quarters. At the moment the supporters of Tanzania may not be our richest contributors -but since they are mostly young, they could be long-term ones.2 Michael Jennings is a Research Officer at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford. This article is the result of work for his Ph.D. thesis. 1. Some of the Oxfam staff quoted or referred to in this article will not be named. PD to BIP, December 1976. Oxfam Archives (OxA), Oxford, Tan 80, v. II. 2. AM to MH, 27 August 1975. OxA Tan 64.