Failure of ujamaa policy

Foreign capitalist powers were hostile to the plan because it had socialist interests. At the end Tanzania remained politically dependent on the developed countries.
 
The food crisis of 1975 was a big blow to the policy. Peasants refused to produce cash crops on empty stomach. This therefore, affected the economy of Tanzania.
 
The policy was sound in theory but in practice it had no clear plan of socialist development. Exploitation and inequality were not completely wiped out
 
The government plans didn't consider all the village needs. Government support to Ujamaa villages was either too late or too little and at times forceful. A life of poverty remained the experience the majority of Tanzanians.
 
Government leaders hijacked the democratic participation in the villages and imposed indirect state control.
 
Ujamaa was based on wrong policy that African rural areas were classless. In 1973, the state abolished the Ujamaa village system when a real socialist revolution had not taken place.
 
There was consistent shortage of essential goods especially in the remote areas of the country because of the tough policies on investment.
 
There was a problem of corruption among senior officers that hampered the rate of development.
 
Loss of land among peasants discouraged some people to work hard.
 
People were forced to leave their fertile land to occupy dry zones.
 
Peasants were not willing to give out their land School going children were retained at home to provide labour.
 
Environmental degradation became a problem due to massive opening up of the land for national development.
 
Tanzania lacked capital inflow from developed countries to provide employment.
 
The quality of goods produce from Tanzania was poor due to lack of competition.
 
There came a period when capitalism defeated Ujamaa before Nyerere retired in 1985.
 
"Ujamaa socialism in Tanzania was a miserable failure". Discuss
 
Approach:
  • Identification of Ujamaa socialism and its aims.
  • Show its failures and achievements.
  • Standpoint required.
 
Ujamaa means togetherness or neighbourliness. In 1967, TANU begun to seek other ways of development aiming at developing Tanzania into a true socialist state in which all people would be workers, in which neither capitalism nor feudalism exist, where the interests of the village people would be brought in line with those of the town dwellers. The development policy statement was adopted at Arusha by TANU between 26th and 29th January 1967. A big programme was launched to gather scattered homesteads into Ujamaa villages.
 
Failures
 
The policy of voluntary transfer of the masses failed. This implied that they did not welcome the policy. People had strong cultural attachment to their ancestral lands and did not want to leave such places where they had grown crops for generations. Therefore, on 6 November 1973 Nyerere had to give an order for people to live in villages. Force had to be applied especially by TANU officials to the effect that by 1976 about 13 million peasants had been forced into 8000 villages.
 
Death and destruction of property was witnessed. The use of force to effect the policy led to loss of lives; families were moved with considerable loss of property and this had a disastrous effect on agriculture for many years. Since the people had been forced into villages against their will, it became probable that they would return home; government acted quickly by destroying their homesteads!
 
Nationalisation of enterprises was a failure. Most of the state parastatals and government departments were corrupt; officials embezzled/ misappropriated state funds for personal benefits; parastatals became inefficient. No doubt, within a decade after the nationalisation policy many state enterprises had collapsed. Moreover the policy of nationalisation had its greatest adverse impact on the Asians who were mostly entrepreneurs and had invested a lot of their surplus in private houses, which the government took over. Nyerere intended the policy to be racially non-discriminative but since it involved radical restructuring of the economy it was to be expected that the private entrepreneurs would bear the loss; the Asians happened to be the most affected.
Tanzania remained a victim of neo colonialism. The policy failed to achieve self-reliance. Tanzania continued to import goods especially food stuffs/ consumer goods, it also remained dependent on exporting agricultural raw materials ie coffee, sisal, cotton etc, whose prices were externally determined, in exchange for expensive manufactured goods. Tanzania mainly traded with big powers like USA and Britain. Scandinavian countries and other Western donors gave financial aid to Tanzania estimated to be $ 10 m. By the time Nyerere retired, Tanzania was one of the highest receivers of aid.
 
Ujamaa led to population explosion. A large population was pushed into Ujamaa villages to the effect that by the 1970s there were over 7000 villages with over 13,500,000 people. This made provision of social services difficult eg water, power supply and education.
 
Environmental degradation was witnessed. Due to population explosion, land conservation became difficult; there was over cultivation, deforestation in the search for land and the resultant soil erosion. All these created a threat of aridity.
 The poor execution of the policy led to famine in 1974. There was more emphasis on cash crop production than food crops. Additionally, some people had been moved from good lands to poor infertile areas; this meant that the rate of food production would be relatively lower in the respective Ujamaa villages than the overall peasant production previously. Furthermore there was a serious drought from 1973-74 all of which plunged Tanzania into a deep food crisis; the government had to come to their rescue by importing foodstuffs. Tanzanians began lining up for food while some others perished.

There was decline in production. This arose from the low industrial productivity and the low prices for producer crops that discouraged farmers. The resultant shortage of consumer goods made inflation inevitable; the masses in turn resorted to smuggling of goods. Tanzania began to suffer from adverse terms of trade, steep rises in prices of oil. These setbacks were worsened by the world recession and many development projects had to be abandoned.
 
The policy was imposed from above; there was neither a feasibility study carried out before its implementation nor consultation of people [they did not participate in decision making]. As a result, Ujamaa socialism failed to comply with African culture. Nyerere had erred when he claimed that socialist principles of communal production were the basis African traditional economies; Ujamaa villages were government villages as against the means of production in traditional Africa that were under ordinary people who voluntarily worked together in their communities. In addition, people were moved to Ujamaa villages before roads, markets and public welfare facilities were ready. As such there was severe shortage of basic commodities eg paraffin, soap, sugar, health centres, etc,
 

 Mwalimu Julius Nyerere with his family
 
The policy failed to bring about equality. In 1971, during a review of Tanzania's scene, Nyerere pointed out that since independence there had been an increase in the level of inequality among citizens; that Tanzania was beginning to develop an economic and social elite "whose prime concern is profit for themselves and their families and not the needs of the majority for better living standards." Indeed the elite were gaining at the expense of Tanzanian peoples; accordingly, critics of the policy argue that Ujamaa created state capitalism in favour of the elite.
 There was too much bureaucracy in the country. Nyerere and the TANU National Executive Committee became increasingly concerned at what they identified as "the dominance of the government bureaucracy," and in the 1970s took steps to reduce it. Structural changes in TANU were designed to improve the party's ability to secure its socialist goals. TANU executive committees at various levels were to oversee the activities of all government departments in their areas. However, bureaucratic dominance at regional and district levels was not thereby reduced. Corruption became the order of the day among party officials and Ujamaa was becoming unpopular.

The policy brought Tanzania into conflict with the capitalists. It should be noted that Tanzania's socialist outlook meant that the government's attempts to follow the idea of Non Alignment were not successful; moreover there was vast influence from the capitalist West and opposition from capitalists from within the country. Additionally, an ideological conflict between Tanzania and Kenya broke out; Tanzanians looked at the Kenyan society [which was based on capitalism] as a 'man-eat-man' society while Kenyans looked at the Tanzanian society [based on socialism] as a *man-eat-nothing' society.
Finally, Nyerere himself admitted that his move to create a socialist state had failed; he retired in 1985 and left the task of economic recovery to his successor Ali Hassan Mwinyi.
 
The institution of a one-party system promoted dictatorship. It created a situation where the opposition could not thrive; power was left with Nyerere and his CCM while most of his opponents were arrested and Jailed. In 1979, Tanzania's jails held more prisoners than South Africa though more than 6000 were freed late that year and a further 4400 the following year. In this case, Nyerere could be compared with presidents Tombalbaye of Chad, Obote of Uganda and Nkrumah of Ghana. This not only undermined democracy but also had the impact of making Nyerere's government unpopular. It was no surprise that when Nyerere stepped down from power, his opponents felt relieved.

A weak education system was introduced in the Tanzanian society. The system in the first place did not recognise gender balance ie the ratio of boy to girl- child enrollment in school was not in balance. Classes were mainly dominated by boys while most of the girls were left out; they mainly stayed at home doing housework. Even the scope of the education system remained questionable; education was so strong at primary level beyond which its emphasis lost significance. This meant that higher education could be attained elsewhere outside the country.
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National Movements and New States in Africa