POLITICAL EVOLUTION IN TANZANIA
[The following article has been translated by World Outlook from the June 15-30 issue of IV Internazionale, the biweekly informational bulletin of the Fourth International in Italy.]
* * *
On February 5, Julius Nyerere, the president of Tanzania, read the Declaration of Arusha before 100,000 people at a meeting held in Dar es Salaam; it had been adopted a week previously by the National Executive Committee of TANU (Tanzania African National Union) in the town of Arusha in the north of the country near the Kenyan border. The object of the Declaration of Arusha was to "define the bases of a socialist state and the measures necessary to establish it." It was followed by a series of nationalizations in the primary sectors of the Tanzanian economy.
This declaration goes a great deal further than a great many similar documents adopted in the other African states which have taken anti-imperialist and even anticapitalist measures in the past. The preamble of the Declaration of Arusha states:
"Every person in a leadership position in TANU and the government must be a peasant or a worker and cannot partic— ipate in any way in capitalist or feudalist activity.
"No person in a leadership position in TANU or the government can own stock in a company.
"No person in a leadership position in TANU can draw two or more salaries.
"No person in a leadership position in TANU or the government can hold a leading position in a private enterprise.
"No person in a leadership position in TANU or the government can own a house rented to a third party.
"The designation ‘persons in a leadership position' used in the resolution comprises: the members of the National Executive Committee of TANU, the ministers, the members of parliament, other paid officials of organizations affiliated to TANU, high functionaries of state enterprises, all those nominated or elected within the framework of the TANU statutes, the council members, the intermediate and higher functionaries (in this context ‘person in a leadership position' means a man, or a man and his wife; a woman, or a woman and her husband).
"(The National Executive Committee) together with the government takes prifie in the measures taken up till now in the realization of our socialist policy.
"It appeals to the government to take new steps to realize our socialist policy as laid out in the second part of this document, without waiting for the opinion of the Presidential Commission on Socialisn."
The second part of the Declaration, which is devoted to the "policy of socialism," states that the principal means of production are to be “owned and controlled by_the peasants and the workers themselves through their government and their cooperatives" and adds that a state "cannot be called socialist just because all the principal means of production are controlled or owned by the government. The government must be elected and guided by the peasants and workers."
The Nationalizations
The Declaration of Arusha was followed by the nationalization, announced in a February 6 Ministry of Finance communiqué, of all the commercial banks in the country. These banks include the Barclays Bank, the Standard Bank, National and Grindleys Banks, the National Bank of Pakistan, and the Bank of India.
Shortly thereafter, the Tanzanian government announced the nationalization of eight large food-producing concerns, five of which were owned by citizens of Asian countries; moreover, the insurance companies are to be merged into a single nationalized concern and, finally, seven additional industrial concerns were also nationalized: three breweries, the British- American Tobacco Company, the Bata Shoe Company, the Metal Box Company, and the Tanganyika Extract Company.
The sweeping character of these important measures poses a series of questions which must be answered: Are key sectors of the economy involved (we have already answered this in the affirmative)? Are these real expropriations (i.e., without compensation)? How will the imperialists react? Finally, what is the character of the Tanzanian state? Is it a capitalist state or a socialist state? In other words, has Tanzania as a whole set out on the road taken by Zanzibar in 1964?
The influence of the Zanzibari revolution has indeed been the subject of much discussion. Zanzibar joined Tanganyika a few months after its revolution. However, in Tanganyika, the Tanganyikan African National Union, a movement founded in 1955, initially supported by the Cath-
olic missions in Tanganyika, and led by Mawalium Julius Nyerere from its inception, was primarily distinguished by its moderate character up till the time of the Tanganyika troop mutiny of 1964.
But in January 1964, scarcely a month after independence, revolution broke out in Zanzibar. It was led by John Okello and directed against the Arab feudalists on the island. It installed a Revolutionary Council which included Sheik Abdullah Hanga, pro-Soviet in orientation, and the pro-Chinese Mohamed bu.
A few days after the Zanzibari revolution, while Nyerere in Dar es Salaam was still declaring his opposition to hasty "Africanization," the army in Tanganyika mutineed against its British officers. The revolt was crushed by British troops shipped in from Aden. Chou Enlai cancelled his scheduled visit to Dar es Salaam. A single unified trade union was established, led by the Minister of Labor in person. In brief, three years ago there seemed to be nothing to indicate these subsequent developments.
On April 26, 1964, the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar (later called Tanzania) was created and five Zanzibari ministers entered the unified cabinet. Relations with Peoples China improved. On the other hand, relations with Great Britain were broken off in December 1965 as a consequence of the evolution of the Rhodesian question. Internally, however, the Zanzibari revolution seemed to be at a standstill. But the status quo could not be maintained indefinitely: either Tanganyika would dominate Zanzibar, or Tanzania as a whole would follow the road of Zanzibar where the most important concern, Clove Growers, was nationalized.
The Zanzibari Road
The Declaration of Arusha is unquestionably a step along the Zanzibari road, the road of socialism, since it pronounces itself in favor of control over the nationalized means of production by the worker and peasant masses.
The nationalizations have hit the European and Indian sectors of the economy, the eight important export-import concerns, the mills, and all the foreign panks. Moreover, the government controls more than half the stock in many concerns (cement factories, canning plants, insecticide factories, breweries, etc. ). In a speech recently made in Dar-es Salaam and reported in the April issue of Africa and the World, President Nyerere stated a choice must be made "between foreign private ownership and collective native ownership. *
But at the same time, the president of the poorest republic in the world, a country continually neglected by the occupying powers while it was under colonial rule, first by the Germans and then by the English, promised to respect all current contracts and to pay compensation to the companies whose holdings were nationalized.
"Full compensation has been pronised," commented Africa_and the World in its March issue.
In general, comment in the capitalist press has been moderate. The London Economist, for example, made the following observation:
"President Nyerere still hopes to attract private investment to Tanganyika in the sectors untouched by collectivization. But this cannot be achieved immediately. In order to cut short the period of suspicion, he must see to it that the indemnity is fixed as soon as possible and that it is just and full compensation"!
Thus the imperialists have taken an attitude of cautious waiting.
In the speech cited above, Nyerere declared that there would be no further nationalizations. Also, in a press conference following the TANU congress, Press Secretary F.S.Masha stated that cooperation with Kenya and Uganda would in no way be interrupted. Moreover, the private sector, which as Robert Cornevin indicated in Le Monde Diplomatique (April 1967), is to furnish more than half of the investment in the development plan, holds the trumps. Thus the most important struggle has not yet taken place; but it must take place.
The future will show whether TANU and the Green Guards, which have more than a half million formal members, can serve as the instrument for effectively mobilizing the masses. This question still has not been answered (there was talk of transforming TANU into a "workers and peasants party"at the annual congress last February). The congress confined itself to amending its statutes "in the light of the Declaration of Arusha," which states that "it must always be remembered that TANU is a workers and peas-— ants party," without making any important changes.
Only the broadest mass mobilization can guarantee that the Declaration of Arusha, and especially its preamble against the privileges of the ruling stratum, will be put into practice. Only such a mobilization will guarantee that a revolution will be carried out. The first steps of such a revolution would merit support, "critical"
of course, but at the same time concrete, and the workers movement in the imperial-
ist countries would have to give it their
attention and sympathy.