Political Developments to 1954
The territorial authorities, having rejected the initiatives of the Colonial Office, did institute a number of changes in local govern ment, sometimes in response to local discontents and sometimes in response to its own conception of what increased efficiency entailed. In the late 1940s the authorities increased the number of unofficial members of the Legislative Council with the informal understanding that the four new members would he Africans. Two chiefs were in fact appointed, hut other appointments did not for several years, on the grounds that appropriate persons with adequate English were not available. It is not dear whether persons other than chiefs were considered at the time. Such persons were, however, appointed later.
The colonial authorities, although prepared to make changes in local government, seemed to be unsure of what they wanted to do and in any case tended, to proceed very gradually and without reference to the wishes of the local people unless, as in the Chaga and some other instances, they were pressed very hard. In general the emphasis was less on representation of the peasants than on efficiency, and there was still a reluctance to depart swiftly from the notions of indirect rule.
In the towns and administrative centers the African Association, hitherto primarily a social and welfare organization for the more educated African, began increasingly to involve itself in political matters. At a March 1945 conference in Dodoma, it criticized the government for its educational and agricultural policies, opposed white settlement and closer union with Kenya (in which white settlers were entrenched), and argued that government salaries not be based on race. In 1948, after a split with the Zanzibar group with which it had been affiliated, the group became the Tanganyika African Association (TAA) and its activities even more intensely political.
TAA's headquarters were in Dar es Salaam, but local branches had a great deal of autonomy; their activities were often directed to such local issues as controversy over the role of chiefs and agricultural rules. The TAA did take general positions on a number of national matters, however, among them the continuing de facto racial discrimination characteristic of the territory despite the legal banning of the color bar in 1947. Moreover the national group commented on the report of the Committee on Constitutional Development, established in 1949 and composed of the unofficial members of the Legislative Council (including two African chiefs), the Attorney General, and the member for Local Government; it also submitted its views to United Nations Visiting Missions.
By the early 1950s a substantial number of educated Africans were members of the TAA. A few of the more educated chiefs had joined it, and there were also a number of businessmen, often Muslims, in the group. Nevertheless it lacked a mass base, and it had not developed a strong national leadership or organization.
In 1953 the government, reacting to the active participation of civil servants (including teachers) in what was increasingly nationalist politics, forbade them to join any political movement, let alone hold office or play an important part in such a movement. Given the high proportion of educated Africans in the civil service this prohibition, in Prates words, -robbed the TAA and later TANU of the participation and leadership of that most important stratum of the African community. Native Authorities were encouraged to follow the central government's lead. and a number of missions also forbade those who worked for them to join TANU (or similar organizations). Workers at any level of government who wished to he politically active had either to resign their posts or keep their involvement covert.
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