By Karl Lyimo
    ARUSHA DECLARATION
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OKAY, Okay, Okay...! You’ve had enough about the twenty Utopian years of my life. But, bear with me; this is the last piece... Honest!

Last Saturday, I noted that, in hindsight, 1968 was the crowning glory in my otherwise beleaguered life. That was the year when I entered into a lifelong marital bond, and had an unforgettable study tour of The Netherlands (Holland), a country with a zillion bicycles and a million canals.

What a beautiful country! One thing I learnt in Holland was to move around with sugar cubes in my briefcase. Your hosts would give you coffee -- lots of it. But you had to supply your own sugar. Sheesh!

The year before, I’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro; President Nyerere had proclaimed the Arusha Declaration on Socialism & Self-reliance -- much to the chagrin of capitalist roaders -- and Tanzania experienced the first unfavourable balance of trade, a regenerating hydra-headed monster that’s still with us today!

The Arusha Declaration impact is highly debatable. It’s believed in certain quarters that it was the undoing of Tanzania’s future social and economic prospects, reducing the country to a pariah within the comity of (capitalist) nations.Others think the Declaration was the lifeline Tanzania sorely needed to enable the country to strike out on its own for Cloud Nine in Seventh Heaven.

In the event, that wasn’t to be. Indeed, the Declaration signalled the period when the socio-economic roof was to cave in, and make paupers out of ordinary Tanzanians, you and me... Victims of circumstances beyond our control -- albeit not beyond the control of leaderships of dubious probity and their collaborators in the ufisadi stakes!
But, that’s another story...

As I was saying, things began to go awry a few years post-Arusha. The devil’s in the details...
Life was still good in the early 1970s, when a troy ounce of gold was worth a mere $35 (around $1,700 today)! The US dollar was equal to Sh7.20; the pound sterling: Sh20, before British Premier Harold Wilson devalued it to Sh14!

In 1971, Mwalimu Nyerere invited former British administrators to tour Tanzania and see for themselves developments achieved in ten years of independence under home-grown rulers, compared with 42 years under a UN Trusteeship. Little did Mwalimu heed the adage that ‘he laughs best who laughs last.’ Today, the world is laughing at Tanzania, a phenomenally resource-rich country with a population that has little to show for it! Ye gods!

For me and many ordinary Tanzanians, the days when one would proudly write out a cheque for Sh5 are long gone. So are the days when utilities were available day and night at the turn of a tap and a wall switch. Bathroom showers no longer run; and I’ve to join long queues in a sweltering banking hall to draw money whose lasting chance is that of a snowball in Hell!

Long, long gone are those short 20 Utopian years of my life. Oh, how I wish I’d a time machine that’d take me back to the 1960s and early ‘70s... Cheers!

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