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3. Commanding Heights and Failed Promises
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52 chapter three Commanding Heights and Failed Promises Composed of two formerly independent entities, Tanganyika and Zanzibar , the United Republic of Tanzania is a state wracked by contradiction, fraught with multiple cleavages, and characterized by a condition of what can only be termed “consistent inconsistency.” kelly askew 2002:5 Throughout much of Africa one also finds a widespread and profound sense of foreboding, a perceived crisis in the fundamental conditions of social production and reproduction brought on by neoliberal policies and market orthodoxies. From Angola to Zanzibar, people are confronting the restructuring of global capital in terms of an economics of impossibility that renders daily life ever more precarious. william bissell 2005:222 Promises In August 2000, the political atmosphere in the village was tense. Rival party leaders and representatives were making political speeches in a large open space close to the marketplace late into the evening hours. The two rival political parties were the CCM and the CUF. Tanzania, which was until recently a one-party socialist state,1 was in the middle of the second parliamentary elections when I started my fieldwork in Temeke district. Bi Mwanakombo, my research assistant, warned me to be extremely careful about what I said to whom in the politically charged atmosphere, at least until the elections were over. I appreciated her advice. In any case, given my limited linguistic competence at the time, I could barely muster the courage to engage in any serious political conversation in Kiswahili. The usual elaborate and formulaic exchange of greetings was followed by the three-stage handshakes that are characteristic of East Africa. I Commanding Heights and Failed Promises · 53 could sense that the village leaders, who had invited me to the CCM office, were sizing me up. After I had handed over my research permit and ethics clearance papers, Mzee Chautundu, the village executive officer , told me that I was most welcome to do my research in the village. The CCM party chairman, Mzee Kingwandala, joined in the welcoming statements—and added: We are a peaceful country. We are not like out neighbors. Yes, we fight, but only with our words. No guns, and we don’t kill each other. Mwalimu (Julius Nyerere) was an intelligent man, he knew what he was doing. He united us with our language—Kiswahili. Welcome, welcome to Tanzania (Karibu sana, Karibu Tanzania). I sat through the discussion that followed out of politeness, wondering about Mwalimu’s legacy. In the famous Arusha Declaration of 1967, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, Tanzania’s first president and Baba wa Taifa (Father of the Nation) guaranteed the people of Tanzania, among other things, access to health as a basic right. His philosophical and ideological commitment to the people of Tanzania was embedded in his version of African socialism—ujamaa. As Todd Sanders has recently noted, “Nyerere was widely admired and respected, both nationally and internationally, for his ujamaa vision. However, for a range of reasons the experiment eventually went sour, negatively affecting all sectors of the Tanzanian economy. In the end, Tanzania’s particular form of African socialism failed to deliver what it promised: a modern, self-reliant socialist nation” (2008:30). Tanzania’s failure with socialism was to be expected; it was a fait accompli , given the momentous political changes that were taking place in the other socialist countries (especially the Soviet bloc) at the time (see Verdery 1996). My aim in this chapter is to briefly examine what went right and what went wrong with the ujamaa experiment, and the factors that led to the ultimate derailment of one of the greatest experiments in social engineering on African soil. In conjunction with the previous chapter, the material discussed in this chapter sets the stage for a better appreciation of why a nation that was once a net exporter, with a positive foreign exchange balance sheet, soon became one of the most aid-dependent countries in the world. The country’s agricultural production dramatically declined, and its foreign debt reached $8 billion, leading the World Bank to declare Tanzania as the second poorest nation in the world in 1993.2 The information I provide in this chapter is cursory; it is neither original nor new, [44.192.132.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:56 GMT) 54 · Global Discourses but is essential to my analysis, and to the reader who may not be familiar with Tanzania’s political economy and political history. I have synthesized the relevant literature, which sets the stage...