Assumptions - From Self-Government to the Arusha Declaration
Both Great Britain and Nyerere expected that links between the former colonial power and Tanganyika would persist for the foreseeable future and that Tanganyika would depend heavily on Great Britain for help of various kinds. Sonie TANU leaders did not accept this view but, in the beginning at least, Nyerere's position prevailed.
As Pratt has it, there were six elements in the British and Tanganyikan understanding of what continuing relations entailed. It was assumed, first, that there were not enough educated Tanganyikans to provide an adequate civil service, especially at the senior levels, and that substantial numbers of British officials would therefore have to be retained or recruited. A second assumption, in a sense a corollary of the first, was that, although the cabinet would be political (as in all parliamentary states), the senior civil service — almost entirely British — would prepare and implement the details of policy.
The third and fourth assumptions were also related. It was urged that the minorities, having given up claims to political power and special privilege, could nevertheless make valuable contributions to the nation and that it ought, therefore, to be made clear that their contributions would be welcomed. A related proposition was that private investment, foreign and domestic, was essential, The chief sources of domestic private investment were likely to be Asian and European individuals and companies.
The emphasis on private entrepreneurship was not restricted to foreigners and minorities. It was assumed that development in the rural areas was most likely to occur by carrying forward what had in theory been the policy of the colonial government: progressive farmers were to be encouraged in the hope that their success would persuade others. Progressiveness presumably entailed both an openness to innovation in farming and entrepreneurial elan. It may be recalled that Nyerere was not prepared to ignore what was thought to he the expertise of colonial agricultural specialists, even in the face of peasant recalcitrance.
Finally TANU was to have two tasks: it was to prevent outbreaks of antiminority racialism, if only because such outbreaks might well lead to the resignation of British civil servants and cuts in private investment, both local and foreign. Second, TANU was to be the instrument for getting the people to support national development policies.
By 1962 some of these understandings and assumptions had begun to break down, particularly those entailing such heavy reliance on Great Britain and British expatriates and the passivity of TANU members. By the mid-1960s other assumptions were also under critical examination. In the 1950s and early 1960s Nyerere's speeches and writings were concerned with democracy, equality, and socialism, but socialism seems to have been made a concrete goal only in response to developments in the 1960s. In early 1967 he was prepared to offer a different approach to Tanzania's economic, political, and social problems. Some elements in that approach had already been formulated and, to a degree, implemented, but the Arusha Declaration of February 1967 and related statements articulated it fully for the first time.
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