Ujamaa

". . . It is particularly important that we should now understand the connection between freedom, development, and discipline, because our national policy of creating socialist villages throughout the rural areas depends upon it. For we have known for a very long time that development had to go on in the rural areas, and that this required co-operative activities by the people . . .

"When we tried to promote rural development in the past, we sometimes spent huge sums of money on establishing a Settlement, and supplying it with modern equipment, and social services, as well as often providing it with a management hierarchy . . . All too often, we persuaded people to go into new settlements by promising them that they could quickly grow rich there, or that Government would give them services and equipment which they could not hope to receive either in the towns or in their traditional farming places. In very few cases was any ideology involved; we thought and talked in terms of greatly increased output, and of things being provided for the settlers.

"What we were doing, in fact, was thinking of development in terms of things, and not of people . . . As a result, there have been very many cases where heavy capital investment has resulted in no increase in output where the investment has been wasted. And in most of the officially sponsored or supported schemes, the majority of people who went to settle lost their enthusiasm, and either left the scheme altogether, or failed to carry out the orders of the outsiders who were put in charge - and who were not themselves involved in the success or failure of the project.

"It is important, therefore, to realize that the policy of Ujamaa Vijijini is not intended to be merely a revival of the old settlement schemes under another name. The Ujamaa village is a new conception, based on the post Arusha Declaration understanding that what we need to develop is people, not things, and that people can only develop themselves . . .

"Ujamaa villages are intended to be socialist organizations created by the people, and governed by those who live and work in them. They cannot be created from outside, nor governed from outside. No one can be forced into an Ujamaa village, and no official - at any level - can go and tell the members of an Ujamaa village what they should do together, and what they should continue to do as individual farmers . . .

"It is important that these things should be thoroughly understood. It is also important that the people should not be persuaded to start an Ujamaa village by promises of the things which will be given to them if they do so. A group of people must decide to start an Ujamaa village because they have understood that only through this method can they live and develop in dignity and freedom, receiving the full benefits of their co-operative endeavor . . .

"Unless the purpose and socialist ideology of an Ujamaa village is understood by the members from the beginning" at least to some extent it will not survive the early difficulties. For no-one can guarantee that there will not be a crop failure in the first or second year - there might be a drought or floods. And the greater self-discipline which is necessary when working in a community will only be forthcoming if the people understand what they are doing and why . . .

"The fact that people cannot be forced into Ujamaa villages, nor told how to run them, does not mean that Government and TANU have just to sit back and hope that people will be inspired to create them on their own. To get Ujamaa villages established, and to help them to succeed, education and leadership are required. These are the things which TANU [Tanzania African National Union] has to provide.

". . . The Arusha Declaration and the actions relating to public ownership which we took last week were all concerned with ensuring that we can build Socialism in our country. The nationalization and the taking of a controlling interest in many firms were a necessary part of our determination to organize our society in such a way that our efforts benefit all our people and that there is no exploitation of one man by another.

"Yet these actions do not in themselves create socialism. They are necessary to it, but as the Arusha Declaration states, they could also be the basis for fascism" in other words, for the oppressive extreme of capitalism. For the words with which I began my pamphlet Ujamaa in 1962 remain valid; socialism is an attitude of mind. The basis of socialism is a belief in the oneness of man and the common historical destiny of mankind. Its basis, in other words, is human equality.

"Acceptance of this principle is absolutely fundamental to socialism. The justification of socialism is Men; not the State, not the flag. Socialism is not for the benefit of black men, nor brown men, nor white men, nor yellow yellow men. The purpose of socialism is the service of man, regardless of color, size, shape, skill, ability or anything else. And the economic institutions of socialism, such as those we are now creating in accordance with with the Arusha Declaration, are intended to serve man in our society. Where the majority of the people in a particular society are black, then most of those who benefit from socialism there will be black. But it has nothing to do with their blackness; only with their humanity. . . .

"The Arusha Declaration talks of Men, and their beliefs. It talks of socialism and capitalism, of socialists and capitalists. It does not talk about about racial groups or nationalities. On the contrary, it says that all those who stand for the interests of the workers and peasants, anywhere in the world, are our friends. This means that we must judge the character and ability of each individual, not put each person into a pre-arranged category or race or national origin and judge them accordingly. Certainly no one can be a socialist unless he at least tries to do this. For if the actions taken under the Arusha Declaration are to mean anything to our people then we must accept this basic oneness of man. What matters now is that we should succeed in the work we have undertaken. The color or origin of the man who is working to that end does not matter in the very least. And each of us must fight, in himself, the racialist habits of thought which were part of our inheritance from colonialism.

"It is not an easy thing to overcome such habits. But we have always known that it is necessary, and that racialism is evil. We fought our independence campaign on that basis. And the equality of man is the first item in the TANU Creed. For in our constitution we say 'TANU believes (a) That all human beings are equal; (b) That every individual has a right to dignity and respect.'

"If we are to succeed in building a socialist state in this country it is essential that every citizen, and especially every TANU leader, should live up to that doctrine. Let us always remember two things. We have dedicated ourselves to build a socialist society in Tanzania. And, Socialism and Racialism are incompatible."

To reconstruct Tanganyika's economy (the country had been a low priority' under British rule) was not easy. Nyerere, who was elected President declared a one-party State in 1965 and embarked on a policy of African Socialism which culminated in the 1967 Arusha Declaration which set the principles of Ujamaa: collective production, equal opportunity and, above all, self-reliance.

This original form of development was to be carried out in Ujamaa Villages which regrouped farmers in specific areas for specified types of production. The policy was successful with more than 8000 villages created by the mid-1970s, but traditional resistance and a difficult economic environment led to the breakdown of this idealistic social programme.

This district town, 100 miles south of Arusha, is the centre of a large Ujamaa (agricultural co-operative) village scheme.

Dodoma's main modern importance came with the reform plans of Julius Nyerere, the father of Tanzanian independence. He used Dodoma as a pilot program for his concept of communal village life, which had three phases. First, Nyerere attempted to create self-reliant agricultural socialist villages whose residents held their property in common and worked together for the good of the village. Though remaining traditionally African in some respects, the villages were in large part modelled on Chinese communist villages. The African village unit was called the Ujamaa (Swahili for "family" or "brotherhood"). When this scheme resulted in the enrichment of some farmers at the expense of others, a second phase began under which the state assumed direct control and attempted to resettle most of the people living in rural areas into planned villages with modernized services. But this latter scheme proved to be too expensive and also failed. Finally, the African villagers were encouraged by economic incentives to amalgamate small farms into larger units whose success would be determined by the dedication and hard work of those who lived there. The whole rural population was regrouped into these larger units through a compulsory policy which came to be known as "villagization." This process resulted in the elimination of traditional tribal rule, with predictable resentment. Villagization was ruthlessly enforced, and in the long run might still prove to be beneficial.

Villagization may have been partly responsible for my difficulty in matching Burton's place names to those on modern maps. I was beginning to fully understand what Rennie Bere meant when he wrote in The Way to the Mountains of the Moon, "Throughout Africa, of course, place-names have the disconcerting habit of moving with an individual or an event." The impact of villagization on tribal practices and the effect of widespread political change would also have influenced place names.

What is UJAMAA?

For decades Tanzania has enjoyed an unparalleled live music scene, despite the paucity of its recording facilities. Whether playing traditional drums, songs and dances (ngoma) or the latest styles (mitindo) of dance bands, music groups enjoy many opportunities to perform. Tanzanian musicians have drawn a regular salary as employees of the state-sponsored organizations which buy instruments, run nightclub establishments, and oversee general business management. In Dar Es Salaam, bands rotate through the suburban circuit, offering live music entertainment on a near-daily basis in the various districts.

In the 1940's Tanzania, along with its neighbor Zaire, responded enthusiastically to the influx of Cuban music hitting the market. These recordings, released on heavy, shellac 78's bearing the imprint of HMV's "GV" label, introduced music lovers across Africa to the classic sounds of sones, rumbas and boleros from legendary Cuban groups like Trio Matamoros and Sexteto Habanero. Tanzanian groups of the 1940's, Mogoro and La Paloma, clearly showed this rumba influence which was to continue unabated through the 1960's. La Paloma, formed in 1948, went on to become Cuban Marimba Band which ruled as one of Tanzania's most popular bands until its leader, Salim Abdullah's, death in 1965.

The year 1961 marked "uhuru" (freedom) as Taganyika gained independence under the leadership of Julius Nyere. A few years later, in 1964, Taganyika merged with the island of Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanzania. A policy of "ujamaa" or togetherness, was established to help build and coalesce national identity. This included the establishment of KiSwahili as a national language to unite Tanzania's 120 ethnic groups, and, for similar reasons, in 1973 state radio station Radio Tanzania Dar Es Salaam, (RTD), banned all foreign music (with the exception of Zaire) on national programs. Due to a severe lack of studios and production equipment, RTD became the main supporter and chief promoter of the country's musicians and helped to foster the growth of Tanzania's music scene. A national music council BAMAUTA (Baraza la Muziki la Taifa), was created in 1974 which coordinated all official national music policies, including regulation of musical instrument imports and discotheque licenses.

In addition to Cuban Marimba Band, other groups such as Kiko Kids Jazz, Western Jazz Band and Dar Es Salaam Jazz Band played their guitar-oriented music through the 1960's, (the "jazz" moniker inspired by seminal Congolese-Zairean bands of the same epoch). 1965 marked the emergence of what would become Tanzania's longest-running band- NUTA Jazz. Named after the National Union of Tanzanian Workers, Nuta changed their name in 1977 to the Swahilized Juwata Jazz, and continue strong today. The 1970's in general saw an explosion of talented groups including Orchestra Maquis Original (originally from the Lubumbashi region of Zaire), Orchestra Mlimani Park and individual musicians like Mbarka Mwinshehe (known as the "Franco of East Africa"), and Remmy Ongala. By the end of the decade, statistics indicated that Tanzania had 6000 ngoma (traditional groups), 120 Swahili jazz bands, 60 taarab groups, 50 choirs and 30 brass bands.

Dance bands in Tanzania are distinguished by their trademark dance style or mtindo (plural: mitindo). Juwata Jazz is known for msondo, Maquis for zembwela and sendema and Mlimani Park for sikinde (proudly blazoned across their tour bus). Mlimani Park is one of Tanzania's most loved bands, revered for their lyrical poetry and cohesive instrumental arrangements. For years their musicianship was particularly distinguished by lead guitarist Michael Enoch, a graduate of Dar Es Salaam Jazz. Like many music scenes, bands in Tanzania tend to grow off-shoots or spawn other incarnations. Mlimani itself was an outgrowth of Juwata Jazz and in 1985 six members defected to form International Orchestra Safari Sound (IOSS).

The Tanzania music scene since the 1970's has included many Zaireans who adapted readily to the East African idiom by forgoing their Lingala in favor of Kiswahili lyrics. Remmy Ongala is a Zairean-born singer who has achieved great fame in Tanzania and internationally. After a stint with his uncle's band Orchestre Makassy, Ongala formed his own group Super Matimila where he focused on social and political issues confronted by the poor. In songs like "Mambo kwa soksi" he has addressed forthrightly such subjects as AIDS and condom protection. Ongala has toured Europe with British rock artist Peter Gabriel's WOMAD festival and recorded two albums, Songs for the Poor Man and Mambo for Gabriel's UK-based Real World label. For more complete information on Tanzania and Dar Es Salaam's music industry see Werner Graebner's articles in The Rough Guide to World Music (Penguin / Rough Guide, 1994). And we recommend the following CDs:

Recommended CDs:

Various, Dada Kidawa, Sister Kidawa- Classic Tanzanian Hits from the 1960's (includes Cuban Marimba Band, Kiko Kids, NUTA Jazz, Dar Es Salaam Jazz), (Original Music)
Mlimani Park Orchestra, Sikinde (Africassette)
Various, Musiki wa Dansi- Tanzanian Hits vol. 2 (includes Maquis Original, Juwata Jazz, IOSS) (Africassette)
Remmy Ongala, Songs for the Poor Man (Real World)

William Shakespeare, the man Nyerere loved to translate, once described life as a fool that 'frets and struts upon the stage to be heard no more.' In Nyerere's death, Tanzanians too have found an eloquent soliloquy to express their deep loss: What next? It is as if a part of their very existence had died with him.

In his death, Nyerere defies Shakespeare's graphic description of mortality. Two aspects of Nyerere's public life, his intellectual pursuits and political leadership, stand out as icons of the Mwalimu legacy.

Prof Ali Mazrui, the Kenyan academic who disagreed with Mwalimu on practically everything - from the merits of Ujamaa to Mwalimu's vision of an East African federation, recently described Nyerere as 'one of the most eloquent voices of the 20th century a combination of deep intellect and high integrity.'

Mazrui also said that Mwalimu translated Shakespeare 'partly to demonstrate that Kiswahili was capable of carrying the complexities of a genius of another civilisation.' There was another reason, perhaps more engaging. Mazrui thinks Nyerere's translation of two of Shakespeare's plays (Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice) was done 'not because he loved Shakespeare less, but because he loved Kiswahili more.'

Like most East Africans, Mazrui believes that Nyerere's decision to make Kiswahili a national language deepened the country's national consciousness and cultural pride. Perhaps so, but this land of 120 ethnic groups and 164 dialects needed more than just a unifying language to stay at peace with itself and its neighbours.

To date, Tanzanians probably speak more dialects than all their immediate neighbours combined, so only history will decipher how Mwalimu's leadership infected everyone with such a massive dose of 'Tanzaphilia,' as Mazrui once described it.

Those close to him would attest that Nyerere was an avid student of botany, and that a disproportionately large part of his life evolved around trees and other gifts of Mother Nature than other intellectual pursuits.

Nyerere had the capacity to engage in the finer details of taxonomy, the biological classification of the plant kingdom, better than the average forester. As Chancellor of the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) soon after his retirement, Mwalimu had this singular dream of establishing a botanical garden at SUA's Morogoro campus along the lines, if not on the scale, of the London Botanical Gardens at Kiew.

KENYA COULD end up losing 80 per cent of its wildlife species in protected areas bordering Tanzania to hunters licensed by the Tanzanian government.

The hunters have been operating for about a decade in a section of the migratory route south from Kenya to Tanzania's Serengeti National Park.

They shoot large numbers of animals as they move into the park during the big zebra and wildebeest migration between July and December.

There are fears that the Maasai Mara National Park and most of Kenya's wildlife areas bordering Tanzania could lose much of their wildlife population, threatening the country's Ksh20 billion ($256 million) a year tourism industry.

Kenya banned Hunting in 1977 but the sport is legal in Tanzania, where it is sold as "Safari Hunting."

"The product sold is really the experience of tracking and killing animals, the services that go with this and the prestige of taking home the trophies," says a policy document from the Tanzania Wildlife Corporation (Tawico).

Tanzania wildlife officials said wild animals that cross over from Kenya are hunted along their migratory routes in the Loliondo Game Controlled Area in Ngorongoro district of Arusha region, 400 km northwest of Arusha. The area was designated by the British colonial power as a sports Hunting region for European royalty.

The officials said the area is now utilised by a top defence official from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), trading as Ortelo Business Company (OBC), through a licence issued in 1992 by former Tanzania President Ali Hassan Mwinyi. The permit allows the company to hunt wild game and trap and take some live animals back to the UAE.

Safari Hunting earns big money for the Tanzanian government, which charges each hunter $1,600 a day to enter the controlled area.

A hunter is also required to pay fees for each kill, with an elephant costing $4,000, a lion and a leopard $2,000 each and a buffalo $600. The document has no quotation for rhinos.

The sport is organised in expeditions lasting between one and three weeks in the five Hunting blocks of Lake Natron Game Controlled Area, Rungwa Game Reserve, Selous Mai, Selous U3 and Selous LU4.

For the period the hunters stay in each of the Hunting blocks, they pay between $7,270 and $13,170 each. Part of this money is shared out among the many Ujamaa villages, the local district councils and the central government.

Although Tawico restricts the number of animals to be culled by species, poor monitoring of the activities has meant indiscriminate killing of game.

"Some of the animals are snared and either exported alive or as meat and skins to the United Arab Emirates and other destinations," local community members told The EastAfrican during a recent trip to the area.

They claimed the hunters were provided with "blank Hunting permits," giving them discretion over the number of animals to be hunted down. Kenya wildlife conservation bodies are concerned that big game Hunting in the Ngorongoro area is depleting the wildlife that crosses the border from Kenya.

"Kenya is losing much of its wildlife to hunters licensed by the Tanzanian government," the chairman of the Maasai Environmental and Resource Coalition (MERC), Mr Andrew ole Nainguran, said. MERC was set up in 1999 to sensitise members of the Maasai community in Kenya and Tanzania to the benefits of wildlife conservation.

Kenya and Tanzania wildlife authorities have regularly discussed the problem of security and poaching in Arusha. However, the KWS acting director, Mr Joe Kioko, said legalised Hunting has never been discussed in any of the meetings.

The hunters are said to fly directly from the UAE to the area using huge cargo and passenger planes which land on an all-weather airstrip inside the OBC camp. The planes are loaded with sophisticated Hunting equipment, including four-wheel drive vehicles, weapons and communication gadgets.

On their way back, the planes carry a variety of live animals, game trophies and meat. Employees at the camp said the hunters are sometimes accompanied by young Pakistani and Filipino women.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare regional director, Mr Michael Wamithi, said Kenya and Tanzania should discuss the negative impact of the sport Hunting on Kenya's conservation efforts.

"The two neighbours have a Cross-Border Law Enforcement Memorandum of Understanding where such issues could be dealt with."

Kenya seems to be alone in adhering to strict protection of wildlife, a policy famously demonstrated by President Daniel arap Moi's torching of ivory worth $760,000 in 1989.

Although the country has made significant progress in securing parks from poachers, it is yet to embrace a policy on "consumptive utilisation" of animals advocated by Kenyan game ranchers and Zimbabwe, which wants the international trade ban on ivory lifted.

The animals in the Hunting block have been reduced to such an extent that the OBC camp management has been spreading salt and pumping water at strategic places to attract animals from Serengeti and the outlying areas.

"We will not have any animals left in the vicinity unless the Hunting is checked," a local community leader, Mr Oloomo Samantai ole Nairoti, said, arguing that the area's tourism economy was being jeopardised.

Mysterious fires in the area to the south of Serengeti have also forced animals to seek refuge in the Hunting blocks.

Locals said the camp is exclusively patronised by Arab visitors. The camp is usually under tight security by Tanzanian police.

The permit granted by Mr Mwinyi has raised controversy in Tanzania and was at one stage the subject of a parliamentary probe committee because members of UAE's royal family were not entitled to the Hunting rights in the country.

"Only presidents or monarchs are entitled to hunt in the area," an official said, adding that the UAE royal family had abused their permit by killing animals outside their given quotas or specified species.

The government revoked the licence in 1999 after realising that OBC was airlifting many wild animals to the Middle East, only to renew the permit in 2000. The current permit runs until 2005.

The withdrawal of the permit followed the recommendations of a 1994 parliamentary probe commission set up to "investigate the Hunting behaviour" of the UAE company.

Sources said permanent Hunting is prohibited in the Loliondo Game Controlled Area for fear of depleting animals from the four parks, which host the bulk of the region's tourist resorts.

The area is in a natural corridor where wild animals cross while roaming between the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and Maasai Mara Game Reserve and Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

The late founding president of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, took to himself the powers to issue Hunting permits for Loliondo when Tanzania became independent in 1961, but he never granted any.

After obtaining the permit, the UAE hunters created Hunting blocks in the area covering over 4,000 sq km.

No other Hunting companies have been granted permits, the source said.

The UAE royal family has donated passenger aircraft to the Tanzania army and a number of vehicles to the Wildlife Division.

The 1974 Wildlife Act set up five categories of wildlife conservation areas.

These are national parks, game reserves, partial game reserve, open areas and Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Hunting is prohibited in the national parks and Ngorongoro Conservation Area, but allowed in other areas during the seasonal Hunting period from July to December.

Additional reporting by Apolinari Tairo in Dar es Salaam