Christianity and socialism in Tanzania, 1967-1977

Abstract

assistance are all taken as evidence of the of socialism in Africa. For those who take socialism to be primarily concerned with egalitarianism and individual liberation, to be achieved through education and cooperation, the modest results of Tanzania's socialist villages and the occasional use of coercion in resettlement programs are taken as evidence of the of socialism in Tanzania. And for those who scoff at efforts to make a transition to socialism without intensified class conflict, Tanzania's emphasis on education and ideology and its apparently slow pace prove their initial skepticism to be correct. Perhaps they are all right, but not yet.1 It would be easy to elaborate on many other factors which have contributed to the failure of socialism in Tanzania, for example the breakdown of the East African Community and the costly invasion of Uganda, but this will not be done here. The above quotation is primarily intended to show the present pessimism of many Western intellectuals, some of whom have previously suffered from a romantic Tanzaphilia. J. Samoff still seems to be cautiously optimistic about the prospects for a long-term success of Tanzanian socialism or ujamaa; others seem to have lost much of their interest in this 'alternative' political model. It should be stressed at this point that ujamaa is a kind of superimposed socialism, a socialism from above. It is a political theory which has been elaborated particularly by President Julius Nyerere. Due to the great problems of implementation it has to a large extent remained a theoretical ideology. Its kernel of rural