| JULIUS NYERERE: A SAINT OR A KNAVE?
George B.N. Ayittey, Ph.D., a Ghanaian and Associate Professor of Economics at American University, Washington, DC.
Ludovick Shirima, a Tanzanian and Research Assistant at The Free Africa Foundation, Washington, DC.
An FAF Publication in The Wall Street Journal (Europe), Oct 20, 1999; p.12
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Before the international media pundits/mavens elevate any African leader to sainthood, a reality check with his own people is imperative for balance. At the minimum, Africans should be allowed to choose their own saints, not those imposed upon them by outsiders for that smacks of cultural imperialism or intellectual arrogance.
As the new millennium dawns, many Africans fervently hope that their old generation of leaders would quietly fade away into the sunset. To be sure, they did endure great personal sacrifice and fought gallantly for freedom from colonial rule for their respective countries. But the legacies they left behind bespeak of shattered economies, rampant corruption, never-ending cycles of political instability, senseless civil wars, wanton destruction, famine, and massive refugees. To deflect attention away from their own domestic failures, they grandstand on the world stage, railing against Western colonialism, imperialism, racism, the IMF and the World Bank. To continuously celebrate them without a hint of the unspeakable misery they bequeathed to their people is criminally irresponsible.
Julius Nyerere, regarded as the “Father of Tanzania,” passed away at the age of 77 in St. Thomas Hospital in London hospital on October 14. He will be buried in on Saturday, October 23 and more than 30 heads of state and foreign dignitaries, including U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, will attend the burial. He earned great international plaudits for winning independence for Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika) in 1961. More than 80 years of colonial rule had left the country with little social development. The country then had approximately 200 miles of tarmac road, and its "industrial sector” consisted of 6 factories - including one which employed 50 persons. About 85% of its adults were illiterate in any language. The country had only 2 African Engineers, 12 Doctors, and perhaps 30 Arts graduates. “I was one of them” Nyerere once proudly said. Under his rule, Tanzania became an oasis of peace and stability in war-scorched Africa. Tribal strife was a rarity. He provided free education and health care to all. Known by the local monicker, “Mwalimu” (the Teacher), the late Nyerere was among Africa’s first generation of nationalist leaders that also included Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Hastings Banda of Malawi.
After winning independence for their respective countries, they were all hailed as heroes, swept into power with huge parliamentary majorities, and deified. They built statues for themselves, named monuments, stadia, and streets after themselves. Currencies bore their portraits while they heaped vainglorious epithets upon themselves: Osagyefo, the Guide, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Teacher. They brooked no criticism. Criticizing them was sacrilegious. Newspapers that did so were banned and editors jailed. They used their parliamentary majorities to subvert their constitutions, outlaw opposition parties, and declare their countries "one-party states" and themselves presidents-for-life. Just one month after Malawi gained its independence from Britain in July 1964, the new Prime Minister, Hastings Banda, declared: “one party, one leader, one government and no nonsense about it.”
These were the leaders who, at the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester, demanded and pledged equal justice, freedom of the press, freedom of statement, and parliamentary democracy for every part of the continent: "We are determined to be free. We want education. We want health care. We want the right to earn a decent living; the right to express our thoughts and emotions, to adopt and create forms of beauty. We will fight in every way we can for freedom, democracy, and social betterment." But as soon as they took power after independence, they suddenly dismissed the concept of "democracy" as alien, claiming that multiparty democracy was "a Western thing," "a luxury Africa could not afford." Nkrumah of Ghana denounced it as an "imperialist dogma."
Julius Nyerere once said that "Democratic reforms are naturally well-suited to African conditions. For me the characteristics of democracy are: the freedom of the individual, including freedom to criticize the government, and the opportunity to change it without worrying about being murdered." But soon after becoming Tanzania's president, he changed his tune: “Democracy will create opposition among ourselves” and declared Tanzania a one-party state. When Chief Abdallah Said Fundikira, Mwinyijuma Othuman Upindo and James Mapalala, founders of Civic Movement, campaigned for greater political pluralism, they were immediately arrested in 1986 and detained under the Preventive Detention Act of 1962 (revised in 1985) -- exactly the same repressive colonial measure used to quell black aspirations for freedom. Similarly, within a year of Ghana's independence in 1957, Nkrumah had introduced the Preventive Detention Bill of July 1958, which gave the government sweeping powers "to imprison, without trial, any person suspected of activities prejudicial to the state's security." Nkrumah, who himself had been jailed by the colonialists, proscribed opposition activities and arrested some of its leaders.
“Only socialism will save Africa,” these leaders chanted in the 1960s. But the socialism they actually practiced was a peculiar form of “Swiss bank socialism.” “Socialism doesn’t mean if you have made a lot of money you can’t keep it,” intoned Krobo Edusei, one of Nkrumah’s ministers in the 1960s. Indeed, he invested part of his in a 3 million pounds sterling gold bed he imported into Ghana in 1963. Asked to define socialism, a minister in Mugabe’s cabinet replied: “Here in Zimbabwe, socialism means what is mine is mine, but what’s yours we share!”
Although Julius Nyerere belonged to this generation of African leaders, he did not display their egregious and megalomaniac excesses. He was not personally corrupt and his living style modest – a rare and refreshing exception among African leaders. He once said that, “’Being one of the hopeful, in a moment of extreme exasperation I once described the OAU as a Trade Union of African Heads of State!
We protected one another, whatever we did to our own peoples in our respective countries. To condemn a
Mobutu, or Iddi Amin or a Bokassa was taboo!” But as a true Pan-Africanist, he broke that taboo in 1978 and sent his troops into neighboring Uganda to chase out Field Marshall Idi Amin, the “Conqueror of the British Empire.” The idiotic and tyrannical reign of Idi Amin did not only pose a security threat to Tanzania but had also become an embarrassment to all of Africa. As a leader in one of the “frontline states,” Nyerere spearheaded the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, offering the African National Congress (ANC) sanctuary and logistical support.
Nyerere was also among the very few African head of state who relinquished political power voluntarily. Between 1957 and 1990, there were more than 150 African heads of state but only 6 stepped down on their own accord: General Olusegun Abasanjo of Nigeria in 1979 (after one year); Leopold Senghor of Senegal in 1980 (after 20 years); El Hadj Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon in 1982 (after 22 years); Julius Nyerere of Tanzania in 1984 (after 23 years); Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone in 1985 (after 14 years); and Abdul Rahman Swaredahab of Sudan in 1986 (after one year). The rest sat there, looting their treasuries and mismanaging their economies until they were booted out in military coups.
After his retirement from office, Julius Nyerere worked indefatigably to mediate conflicts and bring peace to the East African and Great Lakes Region. He was active in peace-making efforts in Rwanda and the Congo conflict. He led East African community to impose sanctions against Burundi, following the ethnic massacres and seizure of power by General Pierre Buyoya in 1997. Furthermore, as Chairman of the South-South Dialogue, Nyerere was quite active in promoting peace, understanding among people of the developing nations.
Nyerere’s international achievements and stature, however, are considerably eclipsed by a domestic record and legacy of massive failures and blunders that have left Tanzanians worse off than they were at independence. With an income per capita of $210, it is among the seven poorest nations in the world.
Nyerere’s adopted ideology was “African socialism.” He was first exposed to socialism, as were many African socialists, in the West, during his schooling in Scotland. He castigated capitalism, or the "money economy," because, he believed, it "encourages individual acquisitiveness and economic competition." The money economy was, in his view, foreign to Africa, and thus could "be catastrophic as regards the African family social unit." As an alternative to "the relentless pursuit of individual advancement," Nyerere insisted that Tanzania be transformed into a nation of small-scale communalists "Ujamaa.” He claimed that the traditional African economy and social organization were based on socialist principles of communal ownership of the means of production in which kinship and family groups participated in economic activity and were jointly responsible for welfare and security. Thus, he argued, the socialist system of co-operative production appeared to be more compatible with African culture than the individualism of capitalism.
Accordingly, the Tanzania African National Union Constitution declared as the first socialist principle "that all human beings are equal" and pledged that the government would give "equal opportunity to all men and women," and would eradicate "all types of exploitation" so as to "prevent the accumulation of wealth which is inconsistent with the existence of a classless society." And Nyerere stated as one of his principles of socialism that: "It is the responsibility of the state to intervene actively in the economic life of the nation so as to ensure the well-being of the all citizens.”
After the enactment of the “Arusha Declaration” in 1967, the Tanzanian state became predominant in all spheres. The state took over all commercial banks, insurance companies, grain mills, and the main import-export firms, and acquired a controlling interest in the major multinational corporation subsidiaries, coffee estates and the sisal industry. But within a decade, more than half of the 330 state-run enterprises were scandalously inefficient and broke. One was the Morongo Shoe Company (MSC) financed by the World Bank. When the plant became operational in the 1980s, it achieved just about 5 percent capacity utilization. Most of the machines were never used, quality and design were abysmal, and unit costs were very high that the factory was eventually abandoned. Another was the state brewery that produced the local Safari beer. Production was hideously inefficient and quality-control non-existent. A stray cockroach could now and then be spotted in the bottled brew. In 1993, the government sold part of its stake to a South African company.
In 1973, Nyerere undertook massive resettlement programs under "Operation Dodoma," "Operation Sogeza," "Operation Kigoma," and many others to create "communal villages." Peasants were loaded into trucks, often forcibly, and moved to new locations. Many lost their lives and property in the process. To prevent them from returning to their old habitats, the government bulldozed the abandoned buildings. By 1976 some 13 million peasants had been forced into 8,000 cooperative villages, and by the end of the 1970s, about 91 percent of the entire rural population had been moved into government villages. Regulations required that all crops were to be bought and distributed by the government. It was illegal for the peasants to sell their own produce.
Many Western aid donors, particularly in Scandinavia, gave enthusiastic backing to this Ujaama socialist experiment, pouring an estimated $10 billion into Tanzania over 20 years. A National Maize Project under this program was funded by US AID from 1979 to 1985. Aid also came from Cuba, China and the former Soviet Union. China built the 1,200 mile Tan-Zam railway at a cost of 166 million pounds sterling, free of interest and two years ahead of schedule. But the results of this socialist experimentation were disastrous.
Nyerere’s “Ujaama” villagization program was based upon a complete misunderstanding of his own African cultural heritage. The means of production in indigenous Africa were privately owned; not by tribal governments. Nyerere misread the communalism of African traditional life as readiness for socialism. Being “socialistic” in terms of caring about a neighbor’s welfare does not necessarily make one a “socialist.” Inevitably, the “Ujaama” program proved a miserable failure – as was also the case with forced villagization under Ethiopia’s ruthless Marxist leader, Comrade Haile Mariam Mengistu.
Tanzania’s economy contracted an average of 0.5 percent a year between 1965 and 1988. Average personal consumption declined dramatically by 43 percent between 1973 and 1988.The agricultural economy was left devastated. Production of most crops showed a steady decline from 1974. Overall output of food crops rose only 2.1 percent between 1970 and 1982, well below the population growth of 3.5 percent. By 1981, a food crisis had gripped the nation, turning it into a net importer of basic foodstuffs. A similar decline occurred in the production of cash crops for export.
Even worse, forced settlement later proved to be an ecological disaster. United Nations agencies estimated that about one-third of Tanzania is threatened by desertification due to deforestation, over-grazing, over-cultivation and population increase because of the government's policy of villagization that was pursued vigorously in the 1970s. “Critics say this caused lower farm yields and increased land degradation since families were settled regardless of land fertility or livestock numbers” (New African, Nov 1991; p.35).
Infrastructure crumbled under Nyerere’s rule. Pot-holed roads, cracked pavements, decaying buildings and a dilapidated telecommunications system became the features of Tanzanian society. As for the Tan-Zam railway completed by the Chinese, it now operates under low capacity due to lack of railway engines. Tanzanian Railways Corporation, with support from Canada, operates rail service on other tracks. But since they are of a different guage, the engines can’t be placed on the Tan-Zam line.
Delivery of social services collapsed. The Muhimbili Medical Center, where the Dar-es-Salaam University of Medicine is based and which serves as the only referral hospital for all Tanzanians, often has no drugs, medicine and is in state of complete collapse. Educational institutions have similarly crumbled to such an extent that government officials seek medical care overseas (as was Nyerere himself) and send their children to foreign schools.
In 1996, Denmark and even Canada suspended aid to Tanzania, citing rampant corruption. So brazen it was that senior government officials and major politicians were exempting themselves from paying taxes. In 1993, there were over 2,000 such exemptions, costing the treasury $113 million. When corruption first reared its head in the early 1970s, Nyerere set up a Corruption Bureau. But officials running that Bureau themselves became so corrupt that one of the top officials of that outfit was himself seen bribing an airline official to secure a ticket for Tanzanian Airways.
When Nyerere stepped down in 1984, it was a clever political move to shift blame for his failed policies on to his hand-picked successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi. It was after then that Nyerere’s real education and teaching began. In a remarkable statement made during a speech at his Alma Mater (the University of Edinburgh) on October 9, 1997, he observed that: "In practice, colonialism, with its implications of racial superiority, was replaced by a combination of neo-colonialism and government by local elites who too often had learned to despise their own African traditions and the mass of the people who worked on the land."
He had characterized the World Bank and the IMF as “imperialist institutions and devices by which powerful nations maintain their power over poor nations,” described Africa’s dire economic situation as a “neo-colonial one” and lashed out foreign companies for “exploiting Africa.” At the University of Edinburg, he was a changed man. Foreign investors are now welcome but the necessary conditions for attracting them are simply not there yet in most African countries, he said.
“In my view, three factors militate against economic and social growth in Africa. The first of these is corruption. This is a widespread cancer in Africa. Its negative impact on the economic, social, and political development of our continent is undeniable. The primary responsibility for eradicating this cancer from our Societies, is our own in Africa . . . The second factor which makes business reluctant to invest in Africa is political instability . . . But even if African countries were to become paragons of good governance and political stability, despite the corruptive and disruptive nature of poverty itself, foreign investors would not be coming rushing to Africa. Most African countries still lack the necessary physical infrastructure and the education and training in skills needed for rapid economic and social development. This, in my view, is the third and the most important factor militating against significant flows of Foreign Direct Investment to Africa. Until this lack is remedied through substantial and sustained investment in those areas, African countries could pass all the laws the IMF and the World Bank might prescribe, and privatize everything including their prisons, but the foreign investors will not come; instead they will go to such Asian, Latin American or East European countries where the infrastructure is more developed and the modern skills are available. (PanAfican News, February, 1998; p.7).
Perhaps, this “reeducation” came a little too late but it validated the adage that one never ceases to learn until death. In this sense, Nyerere was a true teacher. But the supreme irony of it all is that, Julius Nyerere, who denounced the British colonialists, should seek medical help from Britain where he died of leukemia. But then again, who thought Sergei Kruschev, the son of Soviet President, Nikita Kruschev, would take up U.S. citizenship this year?
May Nyerere rest quietly in peace.
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George Ayittey
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