President Nyerere Research Articles

Tanzania and the 1976 Anglo-American Initiative for Rhodesia

ABSTRACTAs southern Africa became deeply embroiled in the Cold War after the decolonisation of Angola and Mozambique in 1975, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania emerged as a key actor in the international diplomatic efforts aimed at bringing Rhodesia to independence. This article, based on Tanzanian, British and American archival sources, analyses the role played by President Nyerere within the context of the Anglo-American initiative for Rhodesia of 1976. In doing so, it sheds new light on the ambiguities surrounding Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in southern Africa and the factors that brought about the failure of the Geneva Conference (October and December 1976). Furthermore, the article also argues that Nyerere introduced important changes to the diplomatic initiative for Rhodesia set in motion by the British and American governments with the cooperation of South Africa. Afraid of a repetition of the Victoria Falls fiasco and fearing a civil war among the liberation movements, Nyerere insisted on the need for the British government to call a constitutional conference and to play an active role during Rhodesia’s transition to independence. However, together with Great Britain’s hesitancy, a leadership crisis within the Zimbabwe African National Union took Nyerere by surprise and delayed the negotiations in Geneva. When, finally, the British government advanced new proposals for Rhodesia’s transitional government, the parties refused to support them, sealing the fate of the Geneva Conference.

Detention Without Trial and Constitutional Safeguards in Zimbabwe

There comes a time during the life of almost every nation when situations arise which threaten its peace and security. At such a time the government may need to acquire certain additional powers to help it combat the danger and this is frequently achieved by the declaration of a state of emergency. This enables it to utilise wide-ranging emergency powers and in this situation national security and public order considerations are placed above the constitution. As a result, among the first casualties of an emergency proclamation are the guarantees of personal liberty and protection of the law which are often abrogated or at least severely curtailed.The use of detention without trial during periods of emergency has now become commonplace, particularly in developing countries, a point which is defended by President Nyerere of Tanzania on the grounds that:“Our Union has neither the long tradition of nationhood, nor the strong physical means of national security, which older countries take for granted. While the vast mass of people give full and active support to their country and its government, a handful of individuals can still put our nation in jeopardy, and reduce to ashes the efforts of millions.”The need for a nation to protect itself in this way cannot be denied and this is widely recognised. For example, Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) recognises the rights of governments

Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanzania and the Needs of the Rural Poor

Therefore, the Union of Tanzanian Women will be: (a) An organization which will unite all Tanzanian women and enable the revolutionary ideas of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi on Socialism and Self Reliance and the liberation of women to reach them and be understood wherever they are (Kazuni Za Jumuiya Ya Wanawake Wa Tanzania, 1978). First, you must intensify the struggle against us for the purpose of doing away with loopholes and laws that prevent equality between men and women. Second you must overcome mental attitudes imposed on women by social orders. As a result of social systems, women have become either slaves or flowers (Nyerere, 1976). Men will have to learn to accept women as equals in social production and women must cultivate a new personality, a new consciousness of freedom and rebellion against male exploitation and domination (Tanzania Daily News, 29 Oct., 1976). One of the greatest weaknesses of the UWT … is the incompetence of its leadership to penetrate to the grassroots level. … (Madabida, 1974: 18). As the first three quotations with which this paper begins suggest, the rhetoric of “women's liberation” became quite acceptable in Tanzania during the 1970s with President Nyerere himself taking the lead in identifying existing inequalities between men and women as an impediment to socialist transformation. At the international level as well it had become clear–with the declaration in 1975 of a “UN Decade of Women” as the most obvious rhetorical gesture–that the neglect of women as objects of, much less as actors in development projects and programs was seriously undermining the success of such efforts, with negative consequences for development in general and devastating consequences for women in particular.

Third world prize 1981

The Third World Foundation for Social and Economic Studies instituted the Third World Prize in October, 1979. The Prize, which is awarded annually, is$ 100, 000and a Medallion. The first Selection Committee (1980-82) is Shridath S. Ramphal (Chairman), Robert KA Gardiner, Enrique VInglesias, BKNehru andAzimHusain. The Prize is conferredon individuals or institutions, regardless ofrace, nationality, creed or sex, for outstanding contribution to Third World development, particularly in the economic, social, political or scientificfields. The Selection Committee invited nominations from a large number of individuals and institutions. The nominations received coverednearly allfields ofactivity, political, social, economicandscientific. The prize will be presented in February 1982 when President Nyerere will deliver the annual Third World Lecture. Azim Husain 19 November 1981 Member-Secretary

Productive Activity in the Curriculum: changing the literate bias of secondary schools in Tanzania

Abstract This paper offers an analysis of the attempt in Tanzanian Secondary Schools to alter the conventional academic school curriculum by the inclusion of productive work. It describes the broad aims of the policy of education for self reliance as a text, focussing in particular on those elements in the policy which imply a redefinition of the relationship between the dominant literate curriculum and the productive, or essentially practical, projects carried out by the schools. The paper includes some research evidence which suggests that, in practice, teachers have been unable to adopt the ‘unified’ approach advocated by President Nyerere. The paper outlines different practices carried out by teachers in response to the policy imperatives and presents three critical factors affecting teachers’ actions. These are the relationship between schools and the division of labour, the difficulties of specifying what ‘unity’ may mean in terms of pupil action and the problems of school organisation related to th...

Sources of Material Inequality in Lushoto District, Tanzania

Anthropologists have long been interested in the sources and consequences of material inequality among African peoples. Societies in which such inequality existed during pre-colonial times have been investigated (cf. Maquet, 1970; Cohen, 1970; Hoben, 1970) but, especially since the close of the colonial era, attention has been directed toward societies originally without significant material wealth differences that have become internally differentiated due to exogenous social and economic forces. Emergent wealth differences have been related to a number of causes, including differential participation in labor migration (Mitchell, 1970; Watson, 1970; Wilson, 1977), differential incorporation into trade networks (Levine, 1962; Cohen, 1966; Mascarenhas and Mbilinyi, 1971), differential participation in ideological systems (Allan et el., 1948; Long, 1968; Barrett, 1974), and, especially, differential control over the factors of production (representative are: Ruthenberg, 1968; Vincent, 1971; Hill, 1972; Parkin, 1972; Feldman, 1974; Rald and Rald, 1975). In East Africa today there is cause for particular concern regarding the extent to which differential access to land, labor and capital is generating patterns of rural inequality in which a few fortunate households are elevated while the majority remain poor. The concern exists not only because maldistribution of wealth and material well-being implies widespread suffering in rural areas, but because concomitant circumstances such as unequal educational opportunities (Sheffield, 1967; Court and Ghai, 1974), unequal access to development funds (Hyden et al., 1970; Heyer et al., 1971), and unequal nutritional intake (Gerlach, 1961, 1964; Dema, 1969; Kraut and Cremer, 1969), can lead to social, economic and physiological polarization of the rural population.' In Tanzania, official recognition of the problem of inequality has been especially strong since President Nyerere's Arusha Declaration of 1967; ujamaa rural development policy is meant to remove inequality in rural districts through the communalization of land tenure and through encouraging cooperation in production and distribution (cf. Nyerere, 1973). Ujamaa policy is not being applied with uniform success throughout Tanzania; the highly-commercialized, high population density areas such as Kilimanjaro, Bukoba, Rungwe and Usambara have been particularly resistant to this policy-and it is in just these places where material

The politics of education in the people's republic of China

James J. Doughty College of Education Central State University Wilberforce, Ohio D uring the month of June, 1978, thirty American educators, official guests of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, visited eight major cities and two rural communes. We observed schools at all levels, participated in some classroom activities, and had lengthy dialogues with leading members of the Ministry of Education, Pu Tung-Hsiu, vice minister of education and several members of the Shanghai Education Bureau. We visited a geographical cross-section of schools. The diversity of group interests gave us an opportunity to experience the vitality and texture of Chinese life and culture. Considerable time was spent at T'ien An-Men Square, Chairman Mao's Mausoleum, the Feng Shang Neighborhood Committee, the Central Institute of National Minorities, the Great Wall of China, the Ming Tombs, a performance of the Shenyang Acrobatic Troupe, a Korean Nationalities Commune, the Peking Zoo, the Summer Palace, Yenan-the birthplace of the Chinese Revolution, the Pan P'o Museum, the Plum Hill Project, the Yangtze River Bridge, the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, the Shanghai International Gymnastic Meet, and a basketball game between China and Senegal. Chinese people seem to be hard working, dedicated, peace loving, friendly, and future-oriented. They value life-long learning opportunities, leisure time activities, and the continuation of strong family units. These impressions of Chinese education are limited to the small part of China we visited. However, we did see programmatic models of what education had been, is, and will be in the not too distant future. The thoughts of Julius K. Nyerere in Education for Self-Reliance seem to embrace the essence of the Chinese educational experience. President Nyerere says:

The Role and Responsibility of the United States in South Africa and Rhodesia

The Honorable Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, visited the United States in early August, 1977, as part of a diplomatic offensive being conducted by the black states and black liberation forces in Southern Africa. President Nyerere made two major addresses during his tour, one at Howard University and one at San Francisco, the latter at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, on August 6. The address was sponsored by the Mayor's Office, the Commonwealth Club, the Council of World Affairs, the NAACP and the Afro-American Historical Society. Given before an audience of 1200 people, the entire address was 30 minutes long. It was interrupted by applause 27 times. We are pleased to present here the complete text of President Nyerere's San Francisco address.

The unsteady state: Uganda, Obote and General Amin

It would be incorrect to see in the replacement of the colonial state by the post‐colonial state merely a distinction without a difference. The colonial state provided imperialism with a quite direct and unmediated instrument for control in the interests of ‘accumulation on a world, scale’ within the colonial social formation. The post‐colonial state, while prone toplay a similar role tothat played by its predecessor, is something more of an unpredictable quantity in this regard. Unpredictable, because of the greater scope for expression given to indigenous elements who now find in the ‘independent’ state a much more apt target for their activities and a potential instrument for the advancement of their own interests and concerns. In theory, such unpredictability might hold the threat of challenges to the structures of continuing imperial domination arising either from the left (socialism) or from the right (a burgeoning and competitive locally‐based capitalism), with indigenous classes attempting to use the state in order to realize independent national projects of their own. However, under African conditions, these have been much less prominent than a third, more ironic, kind of ‘threat’ to imperial interests: the crystallization in many African settings of a state too weak and too internally compromised to stabilize society and economy and thereby effectively guarantee the on‐going generation of surplus and accumulation of capital. Such weakness, when it evidences itself, certainly reflects economic contradictions as well as specific attributes of the class forces at play in contemporary Africa. Nonetheless, it is a brand of weakness which finds its primary expression in the political sphere and, as we shall see, only a proper understanding of that sphere can shed real light on the problems involved. Unfortunately, it must also be noted that neither bourgeois political science (as exemplified in the work of countless ‘Africanists') nor the work of those few Marxists who have undertaken analyses of African politics, have yet taken us very far towards such an understanding. Uganda provides an example of these several points and will be explored in this article in order to illustrate them. Here is the ‘unsteady state’ par excellence—a dependent social formation which has not given rise to a revolution, but which has nevertheless failed to produce a state adequate to the task of guaranteeing the stable environment necessary for on‐going imperialist exploitation.At its most extreme, this has meant ‘Aminism’, a state ‘unhinged’, representing a situation so unpredictable that it has led, at least in the short‐run, to a particularly dramatic disruption of the production process‐a situation very far, it would seem, from servicing imperialism's most basic interests. At the same time, it must be emphasized that this bizarre denouement of Uganda's development is consistent with problems and possibilities present within Uganda from a much earlier period, problems which haunted General Amin's predecessor, Milton Obote, and problems which will not necessarily disappear with the passing of Amin himself. Nor has the nature of such problems been well understood. Not, certainly, by those racists of all colours who either parody or praise Amin with little genuine concern for the havoc he has wreaked—most notably among his own African brothers and sisters. Not by President Nyerere and his advisors, whose ill‐fated support for Obote's post‐coup adventures served only to set back the emergence of a genuine resistance movement in Uganda. Not by the many western scholars interested in Uganda, even though they have provided a wealth of data on the various permutations and combinations of factional politics there. And not by Mahmood Mamdani; even though his recent pioneering work (both in a recent article in the Review of African Political Economy(No. 4) and in his soon‐to‐be‐published book‐length manuscript) does represent an important contribution to the Marxist study of Uganda‐and of Africa. In short, much remains to be learned—not least by Marxists—about the nature of African politics. What follows is intended, therefore, to suggest some possible directions which further discussion might take.

Books and Ujamaa: The Tanzania Library Service: its Problems and Prospects

Since independence in 1961 the Tanzania Government has recognized the important role books and libraries play in economic and social development. Indeed, education is a basic investment for development and books in turn are a basic tool of education. At the opening of the National Central Library in Dar es Salaam in 1967, President Nyerere stressed the role of books when he said “…books are a very, important way to knowledge, and to self-improvement; from them we can learn new ideas, new techniques of working and new methods. We can learn about the development of man in all its different aspects; we can broaden our understanding of other peoples and even of ourselves.”

Taining for rural health in Tanzania

Following President Nyerere's Arusha Declaration in 1967, which set out the path towards a socialist and self-reliant society, the Tanzanian government has clearly shown its commitment to a socialist plan by giving priority to the development of rural areas, where 95 per cent of the people live. Accordingly, it has change its health policy, more than any other African country, to give it a rural bias. Thus, it has altered the country's first health structure, which was largely an urban-based hospital system, in four ways [2]. First, by emphasizing the training of rural staff, particularly the medical auxiliaries. Thirdly, by establishing village health services especially in ujamaa vilages [3] (communal villages) where part-time personnel knwon as village medical helpers (similar to some extent to the Chines barefoot doctors) provide simple medical and public health care. And, fourthly, by introducing mobile health teams consisting of health workers of alll institutions, with the aim of extending their outreach to remote areas.

The Tanzanian State: Who Controls It, Whose Interests Does It Serve?

In submitting the following article, the author wrote to MR's editors: conclusions of this article will provoke many into furious comment. But to them we can only say, in the wise words of President Nyerere, convince but do not force; argue but do not shout. And to those who might concur with the views expressed here, we say that the task is to change society, not to interpret it. Haroub Othman is a member of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam. The paper is an abridged version of one presented to the Development Studies Staff Seminar on October 23, 1973. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be taken to reflect those of the IDS or the University of Dar es Salaam. - THE EDITORSThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Malawi—Tanzania Boundary Dispute

Since Malawi became independent on 6 July 1964 diplomatic relations with her eastern neighbour, Tanzania, have been almost permanently strained. Differences between the two states have focused on three sets of issues: contrasting attitudes and policies towards the white minority régimes to the South, President Banda's suspicion that Tanzania was aiding and abetting the attempts by certain prominent Malawi exiles to subvert his régime,1and a dispute over the de-limitation of the boundary between the two states along Lake Malawi (Nyasa).These issues are not easily separable: for if it had not been for Banda's outspoken policy towards the white South (which led him alone amongst African statesmen to establish diplomatic relations with South Africa), there would have been no compelling grounds for Tanzania, which opposed this policy, to offer asylum and support to his political opponents; and if it had not been for Tanzania's confrontation, not only with South Africa but also with the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique (with whom Malawi also maintained close relations), it is doubtful whether President Nyerere would have been provoked during May 1967 into bringing the Lake dispute into the open. There is no doubt also that Malawi exiles in Dar es Salaam were actively campaigning against Banda's régime, at this time, over the whole range of his policies, including the question of the Lake.

The Left and the Super-Left in Tanzania

The politically effervescent Frene Ginwalla has had to relinquish the editorship of The Standard in Tanzania, sacked by President Nyerere. The revolutionary wing of the student body of the University of Dar es Salaam has had its political claws blunted. Militantly zealous expatriates in Dar es Salaam have declined in influence. And those who used Uganda's problems following the January 1971 coup as an additional excuse for radical slogans have now been forced to cool down following the official rapprochement between the Governments of Tanzania and Uganda.

General Amin and the Indian Exodus from Uganda

During the first week in August 1972 General Idi Amin Dada, President of the Second Republic of Uganda, announced the mass expulsion of Asians over a period not to exceed three months. Thus began the final chapter in the story of the Indian presence in Uganda. General Amin had once again made newspaper headlines all over the world. While press coverage had not been favorable to the General, it became particularly scathing in October when he expressed his views on Hitler and the Jews. What began as consternation quickly turned into intense vitriol against Amin, and newspapers throughout the world reflected this change. With the exception of a few papers in West, East, and Central Africa, however, most of the African press did not comment on the General's pronouncements. Black African leaders — with the notable exception of President Kaunda of Zambia and President Nyerere of Tanzania — adopted a curious attitude of non-interference.

A Perspective on Tropical Africa in the 1960s

It is no parody to say that many Western observers in 1960, the author included, viewed the achievement of independence primarily in terms of a transfer of power from a benevolently minded colonial power to an educated and nationally minded elite. The members of the elite, we assumed, were committed to the rapid development of their country, were anxious to rule through the constitutional system transplanted in their country by their colonial rulers, and intended to remain in a close and dependent relationship with those rulers. It was expected that the influence of the nationalist leaders would no longer be ranged against the government but rather would be mobilized in its support. Independence would therefore lead to a more effective and more popular pursuit of government policies as they had already been conceived. This was the perspective also of many African leaders when they themselves first came to power. President Nyerere of Tanzania, who was to develop more subtle and perceptive views in the several years after 1959, initially urged that the primary role of the nationalist party was to win popular support for the policies of the government, a government which at the time was still very much dominated by British officials. This, the typical liberal perspect ~n 1960, has proven hopelessly inadequate: the elites were not as united, as secure, or as idealistic as we assumed; a close continuing involvement with the erstwhile imperial power proved more complex and its advantages more dubious than we expected. Anyone who persists in viewing developments in independent Africa primarily in terms of democratic and modernizing elites being helped and aided by benevolent Western powers must long ago have lost all capacity to judge events shrewdly and must surely also have passed from an initial naive optimism to an equally shallow pes-

Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central, and Southern Africa

The dissolution of the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central, and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) and its replacement by the Committee of Nine, decided upon at the Addis Ababa Conference, was agreed upon by President Nyerere of Tanganyika and Mr. Kenneth Kaunda (Northern Rhodesian Minister of Local Government and Social Welfare) at discussions held in Dar-es-Salaam on September 24, 1963. PAFMECSA had been founded in September 1958 under the leadership of Mr. Nyerere and Mr. Tom Mboya (now Minister of Labor in Kenya) as a movement comprising, at that time, African nationalist parties from British territories in east and central Africa. The movement was subsequently enlarged in February 1962 following the entry of African nationalist parties from southern African countries. Its long-term objective had been an economic association of independent African states.