Session III: Socialism and Development

Leander Schneider ( Concordia University )

Over a period of more than three decades John Saul’s contemplations have been a reliable, insightful, and always provocative companion to the history of socialism and development in Tanzania .¹ Just in the last two years, he has again taken up this experience and sought to extract from it some, occasionally - he says - hard-learned, lessons for the socialist project. It is in this light that tracing and commenting on some of the still very much alive debates about socialism in Tanzania (my focus will be on rural socialism in particular) might make a small contribution to this session’s discussions, as well as to the general occasion.

If development fell short of expectations in Tanzania , as appears now generally agreed, what is to blame? Too much socialism, or too little? Cranford Pratt, one of John’s long-time interlocutors, has recently suggested the former.² Essentially agreeing with the arguments of Jonathan Barker’s ‘production liberals’, ³ the argument is that socialism, and especially its rural variant in ujamaa vijijini, failed economically because it attempted to introduce communal production that, in historical hindsight, turned out to be incapable of delivering success.

John, of course, has registered his objection. Something that was never seriously tried, and this goes especially for communal production in the villages, cannot have failed, he has rightly argued. And he concludes that not too much, but too little socialism was at fault in Tanzania .⁴

So far so good. But what precisely is the nature, and what are the implications, of the conclusion that Tanzania ’s developmental shortcomings – in the economic and the important political sphere – were due to a lack of socialism? Where exactly does this conclusion, which John broadly shares with many other critics on the left, leave us in terms of an assessment of the socialist experience in Tanzania , and in terms of the lessons this experience might be able to offer? Here it seems to me that what we are left with is at least tendentially an argument that has gone in for the swift and - for the socialist - comforting strategy of disowning this experience. (John has, of course, recently engaged in some very important public self-criticism, and, because in it he provides an excellent starting point for a more serious critical engagement with this, in my opinion, very much socialist history, I will return to what he says later in this paper.)

Issa Shivji, for one, was never willing to count what was going on in Tanzania as ‘socialist’ in anything but - propagandistically and demagogically deployed - name. The Arusha Declaration, the nationalizations, Mwongozo, the policy of ujamaa/villagization, these were all merely rhetorically socialist guises under which the ‘bureaucratic bourgeoisie’ consolidated its self-interested control over surplus.⁵ (Whether the thesis, repackaged and repeated in the 1980s by rational choicer’s such as Robert Bates, that ‘exploitation’ was in fact either the strategic goal, or the effect, of any of these moves can withstand any but the crudest analysis is very much in doubt.⁶) From this vantage point, the problem in Tanzania was indeed not ‘not enough’, but rather no ‘real’ socialism at all. John, who criticized Shivji for his inability to see actually existing fluidity and possibility through the prism of his rigid and deterministic class analysis, was at least into the early 1970s more hopeful. To him and many others there appeared to be at least the possibility that critical parts of Tanzania’s ‘petty bourgeoisie’ might go the route envisioned by Cabral, and in their commitment to the cause of peasants and workers commit ‘class suicide’.⁷

Subsequent developments through the middle of the 1970s disappointed such hopes. By the time Henry Mapulo had documented the quashing of workers’ initiatives following Mwongozo,⁸ and especially when the policy of ujamaa vijijini began to morph into increasingly coercive villagization campaigns, most observers seemed to conclude that Shivji, if somewhat prematurely, had in the end put his money on the right horse (class). The reason for the disappointment that Tanzania was becoming to many was seen to lie in the fact that the socialist project was being usurped and ‘distorted’ by entrenched conservative elements especially in the administrative parts of the state apparatus. Nyerere, and the few other good socialists around him, were increasingly overridden and undercut by those elements who never had had an interest in socialism, and who in fact feared it because it would erode their privileges.

Several key moments in Tanzania ’s experience with rural socialism in particular were interpreted in this fashion. The shutting down in 1969 of the Ruvuma Development Association, a critical inspiration behind ujamaa vijijini, by the Party’s Central Committee was one such moment. Andrew Coulson has retold the story (and others have similarly pointed to it) of Nyerere, who, outnumbered by his own appointees on the Committee, bowed to the majority that acted to kill an organization that threatened their material class interest because it held out the promise of peasants achieving control over surplus and production.⁹ This story was to be repeated on a much grander scale in the way the whole policy of ujamaa vijijini was allegedly ‘distorted’, ‘high-jacked’, and maybe deliberately ‘sabotaged’, to become what we came to know as compulsory villagization.¹⁰ The explanation? Griff Cunningham nicely brought to a point the reigning consensus when I asked him about the role and motives of Peter Kisumo, then Nyerere’s Minister of Regional Administration and Rural Development and a key player in these events: “Oh, he was not a socialist!” ¹¹

And maybe he was not; yet, this strategy of distancing Tanzania’s experience from anything that can rightfully lay claim to the label ‘socialist’ is in my opinion too quick and too easy.

Among other things this argument is premised on the assumption that there was a truer kernel to these socialist endeavors. To many this truer self was, and continues to be, personified by Nyerere. Although the President’s grasp of Marxist theory and, as a result, his abilities as a grand strategist in Tanzanian class struggles, have been identified as his weak points (‘a good man fallen among Fabians’ - as John put it a while ago), few would question the seriousness of his commitment to socialist goals. So to distance Nyerere from ‘policy outcomes’ in Tanzania has been a critical pillar in the move to distance this experience from (‘true’) socialism.¹² But can this kind of argument be sustained? I don’t believe it can, and for the simple reason that as much as he was critical to the formulation and adoption of the Arusha Declaration in 1967, Nyerere was similarly central in intentionally and actively pushing for the country-wide and compulsory villagization of Tanzanians, in his view as an indispensable and no-longer-to-be-delayed first step toward rural socialism. I have documented his centrality in this process elsewhere,¹³ but suffice it to say here that the impetus for almost all the early regional campaigns was direct presidential directives to the regional authorities, and that it was the President’s declaration, “To live in villages is an order”,¹⁴ which prompted the countrywide campaign of 1973-5. Once one goes in for such declarations, occasional ‘excesses’ cannot be counted as ‘distortions’ of some notional and much nicer ‘real’ policy: compulsion with its very predictable rough sides was an accepted parts of the bargain.

It would in any case be hard to call those who are supposed to have been doing the distorting reactionary elements. Here it is instructive to listen to what Abdul Babu had to say about the rather dramatic reshuffle in the ranks of the state apparatus, to which he also fell victim, just before the time when Tanzania is finally supposed to have lost its socialist credentials under the onslaught of (anti-Nyerere) reaction in 1972:

In our place were appointed some very junior and inexperienced ‘technocrats’ whose only qualification for such senior appointments was their total and uncritical loyalty to President Nyerere personally. They were all ‘yes-men’, described by Nyerere as the ‘believers’, as in religion (waumini in Kiswahili). […] Nyerere was getting impatient with the slow movement of the people of the new Ujamaa villages […]. Without the restraints of the senior erstwhile colleagues, he immediately abandoned the previous principle of voluntary moves and embarked on a policy of forcefully evicting reluctant peasants from their old villages […].¹⁵

Incidentally, the aforementioned Peter Kisumo (Griff Cunningham: ‘Not a socialist’; John Saul: ‘right [wing]’¹⁶) was banished to Pwani Region in the same move, and later unceremoniously dropped from prominent government service. All in all a period that does not appear to have been characterized by a reactionary internal coup.

But be this as it may, more critical than such points about persons and personnel must ultimately be the fact that such moves as the disbanding of the RDA and the adoption of an increasingly forceful, frontal approach to ujamaa/villagization were backed up by good, socialist reasoning. Let’s take a look, for instance, at the way in which the shutting down of the RDA was almost seamlessly tied into the reasoning that also underlay the adoption of a frontal approach to the promotion of ujamaa at the same time. Here is how the government controlled Nationalist glossed the move, in phrases that almost verbatim repeated how the Central Committee’s (secret) minutes recorded the discussion of the meeting that sealed the RDA’s fate (no coincidence there: Benjamin Mkapa attended Central Committee meetings as the then-editor of The Nationalist and Uhuru).¹⁷ Under the heading “TANU To Run All Ujamaa Villages”, the Committee was reported to have felt that “[t]he Party should involve itself in all development projects in the country instead of leaving other Ujamaa Villages to private organizations” ¹⁸ and a lengthy column under the heading “Correct Guidance” further explicated the reasoning behind this:

Ujamaa is Tanzanian Socialism, based on the principles acknowledged by all Tanzanians, for goals cherished by all Tanzanians. As an ideology it must evolve uniformly throughout the country as a condition of unity and correct development. And it is to the Party that one must look for direction and guidance. [...] Now before this analysis and detailing of the path which rural people should follow to socialism [in the Arusha Declaration and Nyerere’s paper ‘Socialism and Rural Development’], some people had got together and set up communities on socialist lines. Through practice if not definition they were evolving their pockets of socialism in a wilderness still not impelled on to socialist transformation. The Party gave such associations its encouragement. […] But the Party now has defined the idea of socialism and it’s preparing the mechanism for implementing it in rural areas. The ujamaa village is a model of socialism in rural areas and the Party and its government has arrangements in hand for the development of these villages politically, socially and economically. There was thus clearly the danger that if matters continued as they were we would have a mushroom[ing] of ‘Ujamaa’ villages representing at the most extreme, every shade of [the] idea of socialism. Already some regions were talking of starting their own Ujamaa village development associations. [...] But they can only prosper if they are TANU communities, inspired by its principles, politically guided by, and looking up to TANU for assistance. The decision by the Party to take charge of all Ujamaa villages was a correct, logical, political and ideological necessity.¹⁹ [My emphases.]

Now, let me attempt to be charitable, and at the same time a ‘good socialist’, with these arguments. The need for centralization, and Party and government control, was a natural outgrowth of socialist concerns for ‘social control’ of production and surplus. And indeed, was statism and centralism not in fact a necessity? A statement by Nyerere in his preamble to the 2nd Five-Year-Plan, dating from 28 March 1969 , can certainly be read to be offering such an argument. Expressing his concern for equality in development and arguing against a ‘selective approach’ to ujamaa, Nyerere declared: “We have rejected the idea that we should concentrate all Government assistance on the development of ujamaa villages in certain Regions or Districts, and have decided that we must make a wide-spread frontal attack on this problem.” ²⁰ Because the RDA villages clearly had been afforded an exceptional position, this sentiment might have cut against continuing this exceptionalism, and to some more zealously ‘socialist’ officials it might indeed have made the Association’s disbanding an imperative (note: the villages were not dissolved, but put under Party control).

There were also other important concerns, connected to a history of suspicion of prominent foreign, and especially British (neo-colonial?), involvement in the RDA. Joan Wicken has commented on this:

The influx of people from Europe and America was one of the background elements which indirectly led to the killing of the RDA. […] [I]n addition to Ralph [Ibbott] […] they did get more British, and then some Americans - leading members of NATO alongside Portugal , and being apparently sympathetic to it. […] Anyway, the suspicions were there then.²¹

This was not an issue that ended with Ruvuma ’s proximity to Mozambique . More decisive was a sentiment to which a 1969 article in Kivukoni’s magazine Ujamaa attests: the Association’s foreign advisor did “not do any work”, and he (and others like him) “used our villages as a means to further his own ends.” ²² And the author warned his readers: “All this is a capitalist ploy to spoil our policy.” ²³ Important people apparently shared such sentiments, an example being Second Vice-President Kawawa, to whom is attributed the following July 1969 outburst: “The development of this country will be brought about by the people of this country, and no foreigners! The RDA will disband itself!” ²⁴

For these socialists, control, both economically, as well as ideologically and politically, was a critical condition for eventual success of socialism in one country, and especially if success across the whole of that country was to be assured. (Few commentators asked probing questions about the perilous political, rather than the potentially material/exploitative, implications of pushing for control by the state.²⁵) Similar, good ‘socialist’, arguments for compulsory villagization were much in circulation, too. On the one hand, and at that time many academic commentators agreed, more forceful measures were called for as resistance by ‘kulaks’ and ‘proto-capitalists’ became more apparent (clearly a new point in the ‘struggle’ had been reached when Regional Commissioner Klerruu was fatally shot by a farmer on 25 December 1971).²⁶ And when the existence of this ‘class enemy’ in the rural areas was no longer sufficient to account for the widespread reluctance and resistance with which villagization was greeted, it did in the end not matter a great deal whether one chose to call the peasantry ‘backward’, ‘conservative’, and ‘stubborn’, or whether one employed the more sophisticated vocabulary of false consciousness: either way the point was that peasants were not capable of seeing the advantages of socialist life, and so they would have to be pushed into it - as indeed Nyerere had foreseen already in his 1968 paper Ujamaa Vijijini: “only experience will convince them [peasants], and experience can only be gained by beginning.” ²⁷ Authoritarianism had at least some of its roots in fervent socialism, too.

The point of this rather lengthy discourse being, that, it seems to me, a history that many socialist commentators are unhappy about cannot simply be disowned by them. Instead, it seems to hold some vital lessons about the dangers and pitfalls of a certain kind of attempt to build socialism, while, at the same time, also offering a few positive pointers for more successful, alternative, strategies. This is where I want to get back to John’s aforementioned exercise in self-criticism. The key problem with Tanzanian socialism was, he says, its increasingly undemocratic edge; and he wonders whether it was “a kind of paternalism, or perhaps a certain kind of residual Stalinism, that made it so difficult for many on the left to take full account of the importance of such actions.” ²⁸

There is a hint here, then, that perhaps the problem was not simply ‘not enough socialism’, but a socialism of the wrong (paternalistic, Stalinist?) kind. But the implication of this is, I believe, that it is not sufficient (although it is necessary) to say that ‘next time’ socialists must take greater care to safeguard meaningful democracy (as an add-on, so-to-speak). Pointing to the importance of democracy alone hardly advances us beyond the status quo of, say, 1969 when the treacherous nature of the leadership/participation equation was very much on leaders’ (or just Nyerere’s?) and perceptive commentators’ (e.g. John Saul’s)²⁹ minds, and when, nonetheless, history unfolded as it did. What is then called for is a hard and more penetrating analysis of the fact that it was precisely its socialism, albeit a socialism of a particular shape, that undermined both democracy and development in the Tanzanian project. Socialism was not so much defeated from without: a particular version of it proved ill-fated. What I am suggesting, then, is that there needs to be some hard thinking about the precise contours of a socialism that will avoid these dynamics and pitfalls.

Programmatically: the following factors were critical in shaping Tanzania ’s socialist endeavors, and channeling them into the kind of authoritarian directions that tragically undermined them as a project of liberation both in the economic and the political sphere. There was a great deal of focus on making society as a whole socialist, to the neglect of building on smaller-scale, existing possibilities: indeed, as the case of the RDA illustrates, neglect was in fact not the only thing to which this led. One critical and related effect of setting one’s eyes firmly on (and being impatient about) making everybody a socialist, was the necessary centrality in such a big project of the state as a pro-active and militantly activist player. This became especially problematic because Tanzanian socialists imagined themselves in a Manichean world, which focused them more on the need to confront the enemy (the struugle), than on the necessity of facilitating in pragmatic ways the growth of the socialist project among its friends. The combination of this way of thinking about the socialist project with a firm belief in the necessity of the state as the lead actor had critical implications that became most starkly apparent in villagization. The needs of friends were steamrolled over (witness what happened to many a fledging ujamaa community with the influx of large numbers of new ‘members’ due to villagization)³⁰; and at the same time the many who might have been susceptible to joining the socialist project (the successful example of the RDA had been spreading in 1969) were treated like, felt treated like, and - if through nothing else - were thereby duly turned into, antagonist of that project. I believe that these are the broad contours of the internal logic, and the failings to which it led, of what we might call capital ‘S’ Socialism: playing first on a big, societal, scale (and rarely devoting much intelligent thought or energy to anything below that level); acting through the state as the lead-player; focusing on class struggle, rather than the concrete working out and facilitation of socialist life and production; ideology and revolutionary consciousness-raising over pragmatism.

What might be an alternative vision for socialists? Here I want to return to the experience of the RDA, a successful episode in rural development, which was socialist (but in a different way), and which inspired many, including several here present. How was its success achieved? According to Ntimbanjayo Millinga, leader of the Association, the socialist pioneers of the Association in fact did not start out in 1960 thinking in terms of socialism at all. The Association’s ‘socialist’ attributes, ‘social control’ over means of production, the pooling of income and labor, its particular brand of grassroots deliberative democracy, evolved instead as pragmatic solutions to concrete practical problems.³¹ More than any amount of ‘consciousness raising’, the concrete demonstration, that there existed solutions to the problems of poverty, political powerlessness, and alienation, created communities whose members Nyerere judged to be the true socialist vanguard in Tanzania. (And - one is heartened to hear - Millinga continues this kind of project today, under a new acronym for ‘Ruvuma Development Association’ (RUDA), much in the same spirit, and with new successes - yet, with hardly a mention of ‘socialism’.)

If one is to learn from this example, this model might be called lower case ‘s’ socialism. Grassroots-level, concrete situations of life and production are primary. The focus is on working out pragmatic solutions to concrete problems (the RDA, for instance apparently managed to tackle the issue of incentives, maybe the major stumbling block for state-enforced socialism in the villages). Grassroots democratic organization is a critical factor in nurturing and releasing the human energy, enthusiasm, and commitment that are central components of the better life socialist envision, as well as necessary factors in the production of the material conditions of such a life. The state and other macro institutions can have a positive role, but as facilitators and nurturers, not as lead-actors or ‘promoters’. Simultaneity, integration, and holism, not ‘temporary’ trade-offs, of economic and political strategies and objectives.

But what about the larger picture, what about reach? Such a strategy will tackle neither the strictures of global capitalism, nor the structure of any particular society shaped by global capitalism. Even forgetting about reach and scale: can socialism be viable, now not within the proverbial ‘one country’, but indeed in one village, among a group of people, or within one factory?

How serious an objection one judges this to be will in part depend on whether one sees any concrete alternative strategy: and as things stand, few are likely to expect the revolution anytime soon. But scaling back socialist macro-expectations and revolutionary strategies is not merely an act of capitulation in the face of a lack of realistic alternative options. Working out meaningful ways of approaching socialist objectives in concrete, people-centered, grassroots settings is also an imperative because socialist success will slowly have to be built up, rather than swiftly be decreed down (especially given today’s credibility gap). But, most importantly, if socialists are to take seriously John’s concern with meaningful democracy as an essential political part of socialism, and if they want to confront the hard lessons of socialist economic and developmental shortcomings in Tanzania, they need to grapple hard with a history that shows Tanzanian style, capital ‘S’, socialism to be a project imbued with perilous dynamics leading to fateful consequences on both the political and the developmental front. It’s better to bake small cakes, than to make a big mess.

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NOTES:

¹Saul, John S.: “African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania ” In: Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul: Essays on the Political Economy of Africa . New York , Monthly Review Press, 1973. Saul, John S.: “The State in Postcolonial Societies: Tanzania ” and “ Tanzania ’s Transition to Socialism” In: John Saul: The State and Revolution in Eastern Africa . New York , Monthly Review Press, 1979. Saul, John S.: “Julius Nyerere: The Theory and Practice of (Un)democratic Socialism in Africa ” In David McDonald and Eunice Sahle (eds.): The Legacies of Julius Nyerere: Influences on Development Discourse and Practice in Africa. Africa World Press, 2002. Saul, John S.: “Poverty Alleviation and the Revolutionary-Socialist Imperative: Learning from Nyerere’s Tanzania ” International Journal, Spring 2002.

² Pratt, Cranford : “Julius Nyerere: Reflections on the Legacy of his Socialism” Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 33(1), 1999.

³ Barker, Jonathan: “The Debate on Rural Socialism in Tanzania ” In Bismarck Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt (eds.): Towards Socialism in Tanzania . Dar es Salaam, 1977.

⁴ Saul, John S.: “Poverty Alleviation and the Revolutionary-Socialist Imperative: Learning from Nyerere’s Tanzania ” International Journal, Spring 2002.

⁵ Shivji, Issa G.: “ Tanzania : The Silent Class Struggle” (1970) In Lionel Cliffe and John Saul (eds.): Socialism in Tanzania , Volume 2 (Policies) . East Africa Publishing House, 1973. Shivji, Issa G.: Class Struggles in Tanzania . New York , 1976. Shivji, Issa G.: “Introduction: The Transformation of the State and the Working People” In Issa Shivji: The State and the Working People in Tanzania . Codesria, 1986.

⁶ Among the contributions that have raised similar doubts are: Saul, John S.: “African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania ” In: Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul: Essays on the Political Economy of Africa. New York , Monthly Review Press, 1973. Raikes, Philip: “Ujamaa and Rural Socialism” Review of African Political Economy 3, 1975. Bienefeld, Manfred: “Analysing the Politics of African State Policy: Some Thoughts on Robert Bates’ Work” IDS Bulletin, Vol.17(1), 1986. Cliffe, Lionel: “Political Struggles Around the Adoption and Implementation of the Arusha Declaration” In Jeannette Hartmann: Re-Thinking the Arusha Declaration. Centre of Development Research, Copenhagen , 1991. Jamal, V., and J. Weeks: Africa Misunderstood or Whatever Happened to the Rural-Urban Gap ? ILO, 1993. Leys, Colin: The Rise and Fall of Development Theory. Indiana University Press, 1996. See, for an extensive discussion: Schneider, Leander: Developmentalism and Its Failings: Why Rural Development Went Wrong in 1960s and 1970s Tanzania . Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University , 2003, pp. 32-106.

⁷ Saul, John S.: “African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania ” In: Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul: Essays on the Political Economy of Africa . New York , Monthly Review Press, 1973.

⁸ Mapulo, Henry: “The Organization and Participation of Workers in Tanzania ” The African Review, Vol. 2(3), 1972.

⁹ Coulson, Andrew: Tanzania - A Political Economy . Oxford University Press, 1982. And his “The Ruvuma Development Association 1960-1969.” Utafiti (Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, University of Dar es Salaam ) VI(1), 1984.

¹⁰ The danger is spelled out clearly in: Saul, John S.: “African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania ” In: Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul: Essays on the Political Economy of Africa. New York , Monthly Review Press, 1973. Its consummation is postulated especially forcefully in: Mapulo, Henry: “The State and the Peasantry” In Issa Shivji: The State and the Working People in Tanzania. Codesria, 1986.

¹¹ Personal communications, New York , 13 February 2002 .

¹² This kind of argument can be found in most important book-length discussions. Claude Ingle (From Village to State in Tanzania - The Politics of Rural Development . Cornell University Press, 1972, pp. 97-9, 105) is exemplary in spelling out ambiguities in Nyerere’s thinking, but concludes - writing, of course, in 1972 - that Nyerere had decisively disavowed compulsion in 1969. Dean McHenry ( Tanzania ’s Ujamaa Villages: The Implementation of a Rural Development Strategy. Institute of International Studies, University of California Berkeley , 1979, p. 115) valuably documents Nyerere’s different pronouncements and shifts in policy over time, but he does not interrogate the decision to go in for compulsion that he attributes to the (anonymous) “central organs of the party and government”. Andrew Coulson’s (Tanzania - A Political Economy. Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 255; my emphasis) suggestion that “(b)y allowing villagization Nyerere maintained the unity and loyalty of his ruling class” does not adequately reflect Nyerere’s active push for villagization, nor the great likelihood that most members of the ‘ruling class’ would probably have been all too glad not to have to go through the exercise at all. (Compare the wording of the question Lionel Cliffe (“Political Struggles Around the Adoption and Implementation of the Arusha Declaration” In Jeannette Hartmann: Re-Thinking the Arusha Declaration. Centre of Development Research, Copenhagen , 1991, p. 112; my emphasis) asks about “Nyerere’s role: why did he make this U-turn by allowing … the abandonment of voluntarism, and the switch to villagization?”) Michaela von Freyhold (Ujamaa Villages in Tanzania: Analysis of a Social Experiment. New York , Monthly Review Press, 1979, p. 120), while mostly concerned with the sub-national level, contrasts the ‘authoritarian bureaucracy’, represented by “the dominant groups in the Party and the state”, and “the plea of the President for democratic communalization.”

¹³ Leander Schneider: “Freedom and Unfreedom in Rural Development: The Theory and Practice of Julius Nyerere’s Rural Socialism.” The Canadian Journal of African Studies, 2004 (forthcoming).

¹⁴ The Daily News , 7 November 1973 .

¹⁵ Abdul M. Babu: “Memoirs.” Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 69, 1996, p. 330. Two months after Babu’s dismissal in February 1972, Sheik Karume was murdered; Babu was arrested and thrown into prison for six years without trial - ostensibly for his own protection from the Zanzibaris (ibid: 331-2).

¹⁶ Saul, John S.: “African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania ” In: Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul: Essays on the Political Economy of Africa . New York , Monthly Review Press, 1973, p. 331.

¹⁷‘Kumbukumbu za Mkutano wa Kamati Kuu Uliofanyika D’Salaam Tarehe 20th September, 1969 na Kuendelea 24/9/1969’ [Nyaraka za Chama, Dodoma , File 3/115].

¹⁸ The Nationalist , 25 September 1969 .

¹⁹ The Nationalist , 26 September 1969 .

²⁰ United Republic of Tanzania : Tanzania 2nd 5 Year Plan for Economic and Social Development . Dar es Salaam, 1969, p.xvii.

²¹ Joan Wicken, personal communications, 29 April 2002 .

²² I.G. Binamu: “ Wataalamu Kutoka Nchi za Nje na Ujenzi wa Vijiji vya Ujamaa Tanzania .” Ujamaa - Gazeti la Wajenga Taifa (the Swahili-Language Journal of Kivukoni College) # 13 (n.d., but second half of 1969), 1969: p. 49.

²³ Ibid.: p. 52.

²⁴ Quoted in David M. Edwards: Matetereka: Tanzania’s Last Ujamaa Village. Centre of African Studies Edinburgh University , Occasional Paper No. 77, 1998, p. 15.

²⁵ Especially, but not just by Shivji, the greatest danger was seen to be the degeneration of an etatist approach into an “exploitative system in its own right” (Saul, John S.: “African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania ” In: Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul: Essays on the Political Economy of Africa. New York , Monthly Review Press, 1973, p. 242). Although see, for the onset of doubts about the problematic political dimensions of control, Saul, John S.: “The State in Postcolonial Societies: Tanzania ” In: John Saul: The State and Revolution in Eastern Africa . New York , Monthly Review Press, 1979, p. 191.

²⁶ The Daily News (14, 15, and 19 September 1972) covered the trial of the farmer who was sentenced to hang (The Daily News, 3 October 1972).

²⁷ Julius K. Nyerere: Freedom and Socialism: A Selection from Writings and Speeches 1965-1967. Oxford University Press, Dar es Salaam , 1968, p. 357.

²⁸ Saul, John S.: “Julius Nyerere: The Theory and Practice of (Un)democratic Socialism in Africa ” In David McDonald and Eunice Sahle (eds.): The Legacies of Julius Nyerere: Influences on Development Discourse and Practice in Africa. Africa World Press, 2002.

²⁹ Saul, John S.: “ Tanzania ’s Transition to Socialism” In: John Saul: The State and Revolution in Eastern Africa . New York , Monthly Review Press, 1979.

³⁰ See, for an excellent analysis: David M. Edwards: Matetereka: Tanzania’s Last Ujamaa Village. Centre of African Studies Edinburgh University , Occasional Paper No. 77, 1998.

³¹ Interview with Millinga, conducted with Edwards, Dar es Salaam , October 2000.