Early Years of Self-Government
As self-government was established and independence approached all but a few senior civil servants (ranging from the permanent secretaries in each ministry and professional specialists to provincial and district commissioners) were non-Africans, chiefly British. Rapid change in this situation was unlikely if the system and the formal standards of recruitment remained unchanged, so small was the number of secondary school graduates, let alone those with university training. The numbers in secondary and higher education began to rise as independence approached and immediately thereafter, but the process would take time.
The system instituted in Tanganyika at independence was outlined in a constitution drawn up in Great Britain and accepted, for the time being, by Nyerere and other leaders of TANU. That constitution provided for a parliamentary and cabinet government modeled on that of the former colonial power and implied a heavy dependence on a permanent civil service for the details of policy construction. Nyerere, in his appointments to the Council of Ministers (after independence, the cabinet) in the period from 1960 to 1962 chose Africans who had some experience of interaction with the British and could he expected to get along with their permanent secretaries and other senior officals.
Moreover not all ministers were Africans; some were local Europeans and Asians. The most influential of them was Sir Ernest Vases, not a Tanganyikan, brought in by Governor Turnbull as minister for finance in early 1960 and reappointed by Nyerere when he became prime minister in September 1960. Vasey had been minister of finance in Kenya and was sympathetic to African goals there. His responsibilities in Tanganyika were much wider than those ordinarily assigned a finance minister. Specifically they included economic policy, development planning, and its inevitable concomitant, foreign aid.
The detailed planning for the Three-Year Development Plan (1961-64), drawn up in 1960, was done by expatriate civil servants in each ministry and cleared through the Ministry of Finance. The policies and projects embodied in the plan had sources external to Tanganyika: the views of the civil servants in the various ministries, particularly the finance ministry and the recommendations of a report by a World Bank (see Glossary) mission. Other policy recommendations had similar sources. The cabinet had its say only after detailed plans developed by non-Africans reached it for final decision, and TANU was represented only in the persons of those ministers who were its members. At this time, indeed, Nyerere's statements accorded TANU a subordinate role both in government and in economic development.
In order to retain the British civil servants the Tanganyika government found it necessary to take responsibility for their pensions, including the part earned before independence. At British insistence Tanganyika was also to pay the pensions of those who retired even if asked to continue. Although Tanganyika was given loans and grants to cover much of these obligations, it had agreed to the burden on the assumption that Great Britain would keep its part of the implied bargain by providing substantial aid. That assumption was made not only by Nyerere and other African leaders but by Vasev who had based the final formulation of the Three-Year Development Plan on it.
In July 1961, six months before independence, it was learned that Great Britian's independence settlement would in fact contribute very little to the realization of the development plan. It was only after a bitter protest from Nyerere and further negotiations that a grant meeting some development costs and a further small loan to cover pension costs would be forthcoming.
Perhaps more important than the hard bargaining with Great Britain over pensions and aid as an impetus fin- change was the growing reluctance of TANU's more active members to tolerate a situation in which the British retained their elite status, not only politically but also socially. Pratt argues further that the paternal (and superior) attitudes of many British officials persisted, even in relation to the ministers who were constitutionally their masters. The social tensions that may have arisen as a consequence were only part of the picture. More important in Prates view was the reluctance of the ministers to take initiatives and to respond to African pressures when these seemed to run counter to proposals and practices formulated by British experts.
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