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CHAPTER TWO A HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSING CURRENT TANZANIAN TRANSITIONS: THE POST-INDEPENDENCE MODEL, NYERERE’S IDEAS AND SOME INTERPRETATIONS Kjell Havnevik Introduction This chapter will identify and analyse perspectives, ideas and processes that are important for understanding the historical framework for current Tanzanian transitions. This is done in terms of identifying a post-independence model and the important political and societal compromises that underpin it. The analysis of the historical framework has to go beyond economic issues and include political, social and cultural aspects. Tanzania and most African countries have emerged from a long period of colonisation . The constraints of the colonial legacy for the range of political options at hand for the post-independent state are important parameters for assessing and understanding the post-independence development path. Tanzania is special for its attempt to change the course of its development path. The ideas and perspectives around influencing and implementing such a change are in important ways related to Julius Nyerere, the former president (1961-1985), who subsequently became the official “father of the nation”.1 His perspectives became strong inputs for modifying the post-colonial model, partly because of the resonance of the ideas themselves, but partly because Nyerere at the time held executive power as president of the country. The chapter will also analyse how Nyerere’s ideas and philosophy were translated into politics and policies. Different interpretations of Nyereres’s contributions will be put forward in order to 1 Julius Nyerere was one of the few high level politicians in Tanzania who was considered “clean”, i.e. who had not appropriated wealth illegally. This had created an important moral example for at least part of the younger generation. However with Nyerere’s death in 1999, his role as moral example weakened and corruption in high government circles seemed to increase from 2000 onwards, as revealed by the recent disclosures during 2008. Being “Father of the Nation” meant that Nyerere received an income that prevented him and his family from being exposed to poverty. It seems evident that lack of social and economic safety nets for government employees after retirement is an important driving force for rent seeking and corruption. This structural cause for African corruption tends to be overlooked in the moralistic analysis of the north of the state in Africa in general. 20 Chapter Two show the varying understandings of the ideas, their impact and potentials. In combination these will provide a historical framework that may help us understand better the pre-conditions for the current transition in Tanzania and how or whether they relate to transformational outcomes. The Post-Independence Model Background The emergence of a post-independence model is intimately tied to the rise and struggle of the nationalist movement in the 1950s which emphasised independence, unity and equality. In this section I will identify, describe and analyse briefly the major elements and trade offs of the post-independence model during its first phase prior to the proclamation of the Arusha Declaration in February 1967. The major pre-occupations of the postindependent state during this period were modernisation of the economy and consolidation of the state. My argument is that the economic, social, ethnic and regional structures and imbalances that had developed in Tanganyika before independence must provide the backdrop against which to understand the social forces and processes that influenced and were influenced by the nationalist movement. In addition they provide a background for understanding the economic and political choices that the leaders of the post-independent state made as regards the nation’s development path. The room for manoeuvre of the nationalist movement was constrained both by the colonial legacy, the character of the nationalist movement itself and its leadership and the challenges encountered in creating nationhood. It is, in my assessment, possible to distinguish a single basic post-independence development model, resting on a number of central trade-offs or compromises, that undergo modifications over time in response to economic, political and social pressures. A model, however, is always a simplification of reality. Its relevance will depend upon how it is able to capture central issues, processes and relationships based on knowledge and insights of a wider societal context. Joan Robinson in her treatise on economic heresies, states that, “It is easy enough to make models on stated assumptions. The difficulty is to find the assumptions that are relevant to reality”.2 The understanding of this post-independence model in turn rests on the conceptualisations of a set of basic...

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