Domestic Affairs 1963-67
In 1962 the constitution of TANU, first promulgated in 1954, was revised to accord with Tanganyika's independent status. On that occasion TANU included among its goals a socialist society. but its list of specific aims did not go much beyond that found in African declarations elsewhere. It included the promotion of cooperative activities in connection with production and distribution and referred to collective control of land, water, transportation and, significantly, the media for disseminating and receiving information. In 1965 further amendments to the TANU constitution were somewhat more socialist in tone, hut they did not significantly affect actual government policy or practice. Nyerere had recommended them to the party, and they were accepted, hut they were a stage in Nyerere's education of his colleagues rather than a program.
In agriculture the emphasis was on increased technical and other aid to enable the individual peasant to operate more efficiently. Among the policies pursued were the expansion of local commercial outlets and more effective distribution of goods on the assumption that the availability of more desirable consumer goods would spur production. In fact the policy had some success: from 1962 through 1967 the quantity of export crops produced, generally by peasant smallholders, and their aggregate value rose despite decreases in their unit value on the world market.
In the commercial and industrial sectors private domestic and foreign investment was still invited. The processing and marketing of agricultural products by cooperatives was encouraged, however, partly as a matter of principle, partly because the encouragement of private domestic investment in such enterprises would have been seen by the ordinary African as an opportunity for Asians to extend their economic power. In any case there was some success in developing import substitution and agricultural processing industries. Moreover resources were found, often through foreign aid, to develop Tanganyika's social infrastructure, particularly secondary and higher education.
In the period between the establishment of the republic and the Arusha Declaration, a number of political developments with long-term consequences occurred. The first of these was the army mutiny of January 1964. Apparently based on the discontent of the military with respect to wages and other benefits and the continuing importance of expatriate officers rather than a desire to seize power, it was put down only with the embarrassing aid of British troops. In the end the army got much of what it wanted, but it was also reorganized. In this case the army was supported by the Tanganyika Federation of Labour, which led in February 1964 to the latter's reorganization into the National Union of Tanganyika Workers (NUTA).
A second important event, although its long-run effects were uncertain at the time, was the union in April 1964 of Tanganyika and Zanzibar as the United Republic of Tanzania. The process of union and its aftermath took some of the energies of government and meant the introduction of Zanzibaris into the National Assembly and the cabinet but did not significantly affect matters on the mainland because Zanzibar maintained almost complete political and economic autonomy for more than a decade after the union.
Perhaps the most significant political development was the introduction of the Interim Constitution in 1965, interim because its central rcatures applied to the mainland despite the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar. The most important change was the establishment of a de jure one-party state on the mainland; Zanzibar's party, the ASP, like the islands themselves, retained its autonomy; and the situation was not to change until 1977.
Nyerere had been wrestling with the idea of democracy for some time and had come to the conclusion that the kind of parliamentary system bequeathed to Tanganyika by the British-made constitution at independence was not suitable for an African state. In his view the model for a democratic society in an African state was the traditional community (as he understood it) in which decisions were reached by a consensus of equals concerned for the welfare of all. The transformation of such a pattern to the level of a complex state was, however, a problem. He acknowledged the likelihood that members of parliament might pursue their own interests and those of their supporters, but he thought that the governmental system should nevertheless be organized on the assumption that decisionmakers would look to the public welfare.
He further held that those in government should he freely elected by the people who, knowing their (presumably) true interests, would choose representatives who genuinely represented those interests and would deny their votes to those who failed to do so. Because by definition multiple parties represented multiple and conflicting interests, a single party oriented to the people was more appropriate in an African setting.
In 1964 Nyerere appointed a presidential commission to look into the formal establishment of a single party. Tanganyika had in fact been a one-party state despite the provision for several parties in the independence constitution. During Kawawa's term as government leader in 1962 he had managed to eliminate in one way or another such budding rivals its there were.
Nyerere carefully framed the terms of reference of the commission. Ile referred first to the need to conform to what he considered the national ethic, defined as a commitment to individual liberty, social justice, democratic participation, and racial equality. He also added a set of detailed questions in which, amomg other things, he stressed the need to find ways to maintain "full expression of the people's will ... and untrammeled free choice of the people as regards their President and their Representatives in the Legislature."
It should be emphasized that Nyerere appointed commission in the context of a growing insistence by leading members of TANU that a one-party state he established and an increasingl tendency toward elite rule and authoritarianism with which many leaders felt quite comfortahle. Having lived under a colonial regime with many authoritarian features, and certain of their rightness in having fought that regime and of their continued right to represent the nation, these leaders found it easy to consider their critics disloyal. Moreover many higher level and middle-level TANU officials, having "fought the good fight," considered themselves entitled to their posts.
Nevertheless Nyerere felt very strongly that officeholding for financial reward was not desirable. Even more strongly he considered the people to be the final judges, and he insisted on elections and the commission's report provided for them. Candidates, however, had to be members of TANU, a requirement that gave TANU not only the right to approve the candidates initially but to decide whether they ought to remain in the National Assembly: if TANU expelled a member from the party he was also expelled from the legislature. These and other weaknesses of the assembly led in the next few years to a situation where the de facto governing body was the party.
Associated with the emergence of Tanzania as a single-party state was the growing tendency to restrict the autonomy of institutions whose actions might run counter to policy decisions made by party and government and, perhaps more important, might serve as power bases for dissidents. More positively Nyerere and others saw the principal function of such organizations to be that of mobilizing the people in support of government and party initiatives.
The most important of these institutions were the unions and the cooperatives. After the Tanganyika Federation of Labour was transformed into the NUTA in early 1964, it was affiliated to TANU, and its secretary general (Kamaliza, already minister for labor) was appointed by Nyerere. The NUTA was required to promote TANU policy and to urge its members to join the party.
Cooperatives had been much encouraged by TANU—they had nearly doubled in number from more than 800 in 1960 to more than 1,500 in 1966. Given the role as exclusive marketing agents for export crops grown by peasant smallholders, their efficient operation was crucial to the economy. Moreover they held a substantial amount of capital in reserve, and the government wanted a control over the way in which it was invested.
Efforts to maintain the autonomy of cooperatives had little success. All were included in the Cooperative Union of Tanzania and their leadership, like that of the labor unions, made part of the National Executive Committee of TANU. Rules intended to ensure their honesty were established.
By 1966, however, there were a number of indications that the cooperatives and the NUTA were not functioning as the TANU leadership had hoped, and commissions were established to look into their operation. The commission's findings with respect to the NUTA were, in Pratt's summary, that it was "unpopular, ineffective, out of touch with its rank and file and corrupt." A second commission investigated the cooperatives. In addition to finding extraordinary mismanagement and corruption in specific cooperatives, it found significant shortcomings throughout the cooperative movement, and it emphasized that the peasant growers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied. In short the expectations of TANU and particularly Nyerere, that NUTA and the cooperatives would both support government and TANU policies once established and would enlist the participation of the rank and file member in political discussions before final decisions were made, were not realized.
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