| Political blunders that hit us where it hur`t`s most | Send to a friend |
| Friday, 09 December 2011 16:29 |
 Political blunders are typically caused by ignorance, confusion and carelessness. Politicians and policy makers are infamous for making world-class blunders.Tanganyika’s 50 years of independence have been marked by a streak of political blunders that impacted negatively on political and socio-economic development. In an attempt to rectify some of these blunders, the country has gone full circle from where the colonialists left it. The series of political blunders started with the post-colonial State’s failure to re-organise the colonial structures that had been put in place to facilitate colonial exploitation, subjugation and oppression. The post-colonial State did not take the trouble to understand why colonialism went hand in hand with the dismantling of the pre-colonial state structures and mode of production. The colonial powers did so in order to put in place a structure better suited to achieving colonial objectives. While it was opposition to these colonial structures and policies that united the various anti-colonial movements, the TANU government chose to carry them forward on attainment of political independence. Consequently, there were intense struggles between different interest groups immediately after independence. The end result was the failure of development for one cannot use institutions that were meant to suppress development to bring about development. The Westminster Parliamentary Model The second political blunder was the dismantling of the Independence Constitution, which was bequeathed by the British colonial power on the eve of political independence in 1961. Much as the Independence Constitution was ambiguous, given that it recognised the Queen as head of an independent State and that it had no bill of rights, it did provide for the position of prime minister from the political party commanding majority support in a popularly elected and representative legislature. The substance of the Independence Constitution comprised the principles of prime ministerial and cabinet system, the sovereignty of parliament, loyal opposition, electoral system based on one-man vote and the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, civil service and armed forces. Under that Constitution, Parliament was the central institution of government vested with supreme powers. It was envisaged that it would exercise direct control over legislation and indirect control over the actions of the executive. Under the Westminster Parliamentary Model, ministers were responsible to Parliament, both for cabinet decisions and for the functions of their departments. In short, the Independence Constitution created a situation that would not allow the government of the day to fool around and survive. The Republic Constitution of 1962 shifted the political arrangement from a parliamentary system to a presidential system and, by so doing, greatly eroded the powers of Parliament. The fusion of parliamentary and presidential models brought about a hybrid monster and confusion, especially when it came to checks, balances and accountability. But the worst move was the shift of supreme power from Parliament to the Presidency. It was not only that the collective responsibility of cabinet had now shifted to the President, but the President could now dissolve the Parliament. The end result was the entombment of Parliament. Hitherto seen as not only the supreme law-making organ in the land but also as the institution whereby people, through their representatives, were to exercise their supreme authority in decision-making, Parliament was later to be turned into a party committee or national party conference responsible for legitimising new party policies. Under the Republic Constitution, the Presidency became a very powerful organ of the state. There was concentration of a lot of powers in that office. The President could turn out to be a dictator and still be acting within the laws duly passed by the National Assembly. The President is not only the Head of State and Government but also the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. That office appoints ministers, ambassadors, senior civil servants, top executives of parastatal organisations, regional and district commissioners, judges of the High Court and the Court of Appeal, Chief of Defence Forces, Inspector-General of Police, the Director-General of the National Security System and others. He can detain someone without trial for as long as he likes. He can declare a state of emergency and commit the country to war. To inject further impotence into Parliament, the Republican Constitution robbed it of its vital weapon to control the action of the Executive, the vote of no confidence. The 1962 constitutional changes did not only heap a wide range of powers on the President but also initiated, albeit indirectly, a movement towards party supremacy and, consequently, the entombment of the National Assembly. The changes that accompanied the dawn of multi-partyism notwithstanding, Parliament has never recovered from that political blunder. The dismantling of multi-partyism Depriving Parliament of its supremacy powers was followed by the scrapping of multi-party democracy. The TANU government’s main reason for the move was that the political movement managed to garner landslide victories in both the first and second pre-independence general elections. Tanganyika had thus become, by the choice of the people themselves, a one-party state and TANU thus represented the interests of the bulk of Tanganyikans. The TANU leadership also argued that a multi-party system of government gives rise to unnecessary factions and internal divisions. What the TANU leadership forgot was that only a very small segment of the people of Tanganyika took part in the two elections. In the 1958/59 general elections, only 59,291 people were registered out of an estimated 8.8 million voters. Similarly, in the 1960 elections, only 885,000 people were registered out of 8.9 million voters. Equally important, by 1965 several political parties had emerged and were winning popularity in the country. Besides United Tanganyika Party (UTP) and the African National Congress (ANC), other political parties included All Muslim National Union of Tanganyika (AMNUT), the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led by Kassanga Tumbo, People’s Convention Party (PCP) and the National Enterprise Party (NEP). Their existence further disproves the assertion that TANU enjoyed virtually uncontested political support and influence in the country. The fact of the matter is that TANU felt threatened by the new parties, given the sharp contradictions in the country resulting from its failure to deliver the fruits of independence to the people. Thus, the movement towards the one-party system of government in Tanganyika was part and parcel of the efforts of the petty bourgeois social class to consolidate itself and stifle political opposition in the face of sharpening contradictions in the country. It was part of political response which also included the dissolution of the militant trade unions and the curtailment of the autonomy of the giant co-operative movement. It also involved replacement of British personnel in all important regional administration posts with staunch TANU cadres. The TANU regime made many political blunders partly because it failed to accommodate ideas and views from others. Abolition of Local Government Authorities The abolition of people’s local authorities was triggered by conflict of interest between chiefs and the TANU government over land issues and tax collection. Under the 1926 Native Authority Ordinance that set out the principle of indirect rule, native chiefs were regarded as an integral part of the machinery of government with well defined powers and functions recognised by government and by law. When Tanganyika attained independence, the TANU government worried about independent councilors, especially those who identified with opposition political parties. Thus the Local Authority Ordinance that had provided for local authorities was revised in 1962 to repeal the sections that established Native Authorities. The Local Government Ordinance of 1962 also repealed the African Chiefs Ordinance of 1953. All chiefs were stripped of their powers and their roles abolished. In 1972, local governments were replaced with decentralised administration. Nevertheless, the goal of attaining popular participation was never realised. This was yet another political blunder. Even Mwalimu Nyerere confessed to it after retirement. “There are certain things I would not do if I were to start again. One of them is the abolition of local governments and the other is the disbanding of cooperatives. We had these two instruments of participation, we got rid of them. Local Government was re-introduced in January 1984 but has remained a sick institution suffering from financial, decision-making, legitimacy, accountability, and manpower crises. Suppression of worker and peasant movements During the struggle for independence, there had been general agreement that the colonial policies that were aimed at interfering with the local peasant economy were unacceptable. Opposition to these policies provided much of the cement holding the nationalist movement together. However, on attainment of independence, TANU went out of its way to suppress peasant co-operatives simply because they opposed the decision by the new TANU government to nationalise land in 1962 to make the state the ultimate trustee of all land and rule out individual freeholding. After independence, the TANU government encouraged people to establish co-operatives. The motivation was mainly to cut out the middlemen, specifically Asian traders. Thereafter, various moves were made to put the co-operatives under the firm grip of the ruling class. Following the enactment of Co-operatives Societies Act, 1968, the powers of the commissioner for co-operative development were increased. The extreme powers reflected TANU’s desire, through its government, to control the co-operatives more effectively in line with the newly-adopted policies after the Arusha Declaration. These were the creation of regional co-operative unions all over the country, an increase in control over recruitment of union staff and intervention in the election of the committee members in the unions. The creation of regional co-operative unions helped extend central control to rural areas. Co-operatives were disbanded in 1975. A lot of damage had been done by the time they were reconstituted in 1982. As for trade unions, these were among the earliest mass movements to be strangled by the TANU government. This policy evolved pretty much in the same direction as that taken towards political opposition groups and the co-operative movement and local governments. Even though this policy was eventually reversed, things were never the same again. The villagisation programme After experimenting with a variety of rural development policies without success in the first decade of independence, the TANU government in 1973/74 launched a gigantic villagisation programme for mainland Tanzania. The programme essentially consisted of abolishing the traditional system of rural settlements by which households were located in small isolated pockets and replacing them with large villages. Millions of people were moved into new areas in a brutal manner never experienced since the days of slave trade. The stated purpose of the programme was to facilitate the provision by government of essential social infrastructure to rural areas, particularly water, health services and primary education—and this regardless of the government’s capacity to provide such social services. Given the manner in which the programme was carried out, it is fair to argue that the aim was essentially to control the rural population. Between 1973 and 1975, as many as nine million rural inhabitants were shifted forcibly from their traditional villages to the so-called Ujamaa villages. Come 1976, it was declared that practically all rural Tanzanians were living in these new villages, with each village accommodating at least 250 families. While peasants are traditionally supposed to be surrounded by farms, they were now living in makeshift houses built in straight rows close to each other and along roads. When the tally of registered villages was done in June 1979, there were 8,299 villages with a total population of 14.9 million, which is equivalent to 87 percent of the country’s population. The manner in which the programme was implemented left a lot to be desired. In some cases, violence was unduly used. In others, the sites chosen for settlement were hostile and unsuitable and in still other cases the planning process was deficient. All these factors brought about widespread resentment among the rural population and, in a few cases, open opposition to the party and its government. The cost of the operation was very heavy. In fact, they are still felt today. Soon after the operation, production of almost all crops fell, leading to deficit of over a million tons of cereals spread over 1974-1977. The cotton crop dropped from 77,000 tons in 1972/73 to 42,500 in 1975/76. But, worst of all, the government had no money to render the envisaged social services. The end result is that, 50 years later and in yet another political blunder, rural people are poorer than they were before the villagisation programme. Interestingly, the country has turned full circle in respect of every blunder but for the chiefdoms. In other words, the country is back where it started on the eve of independence in 1961. Parliament in session in Dodoma. PHOTO | FILE Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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