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| Friday, 09 December 2011 15:45 |
 The fiftieth anniversary of Tanganyika’s independence is the right time to ponder the past and the present and ask ourselves why we have arrived where we are today. To do so, analysts must stick to two basic issues. First, we should ask in whose interests we are celebrating the anniversary—those sweating or the beneficiaries of the sweat. We are fed up with self-proclaimed seasoned scholars and experts defending their own interests or those of their class in the name of conducting scientific analyses. We must also understand that we cannot treat 50 years as just a calendar day but as a history of social struggles within different periods, coupled with specific inclinations and visions. I will attempt to analyse 50 years of independence in the view of the have-nots. Achievements and failures will be gauged using criteria based on needs and opinions of the working class. The era of patriotism We can divide our half a century into two: The first 25 years (1961 – 1985) of patriotism and the following 25 years (1986 – 2005) of neo-liberalism. The apex of the patriotism era was 10 years of the Arusha Declaration between 1967 and 1977. The climax of neo-liberalism was during the Mkapa Administration between 1995 and 2005. If the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, is the founding father of patriotism, former President Benjamin Mkapa is the architect of the neo-liberalism era dubbed the globalisation epoch. Others were transition periods, so to speak. Disabled economy After 1977, specifically after the Uganda war in 1979, our economy and politics were in crisis. The last five years of Nyerere were full of turmoil caused by forces from inside and outside the country. The truth is we did not liberate ourselves from an economy controlled by capitalists. We continued to be dependent. Mistakes were committed while building socialism. Mwalimu Nyerere admitted some of the blunders in his speech to mark 10th anniversary of the Arusha Declaration. He openly said we goofed when we replaced local authorities with the decentralisation policy created by a US firm, Mackenzi. Instead of widening democracy, the introduction of regional administration encouraged bureaucracy at grassroots level, where it mutitated into taking the law into our hands. Secondly, we made mistakes when we allowed government authorities to substitute cooperative unions owned by farmers themselves. This fuelled bureaucracy and created lords, who tapped into the sweat of farmers’ to amass wealth through a myriad allowances and live lavishly. Thirdly, construction of factories for producing luxurious goods prevented us from establishing plants to produce basic goods such as farming implements. A few factories produced goods consumed by ordinary citizens, though. These included the Friendship Mills, which produced clothes and Ubungo farming and cooking oil factories. Despite these and other achievements registered in social service provision in education, health and the water sectors, the fact is that our economy remained dependent. Mwalimu Nyerere admitted this after stepping down. Addressing government and public institution leaders in 1989, he said: « The first qualification of our economy is that it is weak. This qualification is bad, but it is not so bad, probably because it has become business as usual. Why? Because it is a regressive economy, not an emerging one…. It would not be that bad if it was an emerging economy, as we could invigorate it to register growth. The second qualification of our economy is that it is dependent. It is an economy that depends on the West. The dependency syndrome is tantamount to malaise, which does not result from its weakness alone. It is a disease. It is a disability. It is a disabled economy. Watch military parades. We don’t have many planes, but you can watch them in Dar es Salaam. Wealthy countries capable of producing oil have plenty of airports for big planes of different kinds. Our roads in countries of the South, including Dar es Salaam, are full of vehicles. Even shops are laden with goods. But where are they produced? All these—be it military parades, airports, vehicles or goods such as Coca Cola in the shops—are all meant for show. They are dependency parades. Owing to its power in the soft drinks market, the US wants all of us to drink Coca Cola. Mr Mengi, whether you like it or not, you have to sell us Coca Cola. Our economy, therefore, is dependent. Economies of all of our countries have these two qualifications. This is our primary problem. Our economy is weak, but the weakness alone is not so much of a problem. The biggest setback is economic dependency. And we are proud of the malaise. We are proud of it without shame. You are parading rich countries’ weapons, their planes, their goods and Coca Cola, yet you are proud to say you have made it. Mwalimu openly said our economy is dependent on capitalist countries. By analysing our economy the way he did, he admitted that measures taken by his administration did not succeed in liberating our economy from the dependence malaise. Germs of the disease multiplied at an alarming rate in 1980s, leading to economic anarchy. Global pilfering and globalisation Globalisation was nothing new but just another name for capitalism. And neo-liberalism policy was not new either but an economic system tailor-made for swallowing African countries through capitalism. Those who embraced the policy became Reagan and Thatcher touts and we found ourselves entering another dependency phase, without objection this time. We voluntarily entered the phase through signatures and the determination of our bourgeoisie. This is why CCM failed to stand up for its socialism vision despite correctly analysing the situation and coming up with guidelines. Mwalimu Nyerere stepped down. We entered former President Ali Hassan Mwinyi’s era of Ruksa, permission granted, which step by step started to open doors to the market economy. The process of privatising parastatals took off hesitantly during the second term of Mwinyi’s era mainly because Mwalimu Nyerere continued to criticise the neo-liberalism policy. Mwinyi’s era, therefore, was a transtition period between patriotism and neo-liberalism, which became fully fledged during Benjamin Mkapa’s era. National Bank of Commerce (NBC), the country’s sole commercial bank, was privatised and so to a firm from South Africa at a throwaway price. The door of the financial sector was opened without control measures. Other parastatals, including the after tax profit-making ones such as the Tanzania Cigarette Company, were sold. Others were the oil refinery calledTiper and National Milling Corporation (NMC) which, to a great extent, prevented inflation resulting from surging prices of essential goods on the world market. The investor in Tiper uprooted the plant and transformed the buildings into warehouses whereas oil is imported from his sister firm. The capitalism drive, which leads production and supply of goods, including essential ones such as foodstuff and grain, is the only one to make profit. The NMC owner, therefore, produced foodstuff and sold them to lucrative markets regardless of wananchi being in dire need of them. The government, which embraced the market economy, found itself with no power to control prices of essential goods, including foodstuff, grain and oil. The government’s recent attempt to control fuel prices was met with stiff resistance from dealers, leading to the authorities’ shame before the public. We should not complain because this is the truth about the economic system we chose. Most of the economic transformations were carried out during the third phase government. Laws which gave local and foreign investors the right to grab land from the people were passed in 1998 and were amended in 2004 only due to pressure from banks. The 2004 amendment added value to land, which can be sold. The right wing economic policy belonging to Hernando de Soto, who emphasises formalisation of assets of the poor for them to contribute in building a strong capitalist eonomy, was embraced by the Mkapa Administration and Christened in its Kiswahili acronym of Mkurabita, meaning a programme of formalising resources and businesses in Tanzania. Formalisation of businesses is a mystery. The truth is that formalising land, which is the basic asset of farmers and pastoralists, is tantamount to enabling it to be sold to the market as any other commodity. Wherever this programme was tested in Africa, small-scale producers lost their land to local and foreign investors, mostly multinationals belonging to capitalists. In 1998, the Mining Act was passed, enabling investors to reap profit without paying taxes, let alone the other nuisances we complain about today. The housing levy, which was passed after independence in 1962 to protect tenants, was waived. The landlord is now free to set rent and terminate the contract without any legal objection. The National Housing Corporation law, whose goal was to provide wananchi with shelter, was amended to give the parastatal the autonomy to run as a business entity regardless of the growing housing needs. Government houses were sold to the politically correct and senior civil servants. Labour laws enacted after indepenence, whose goal were to create a class of permanent workers instead of labourers and increasing their salaries and setting a minimum wage, were amended. The pension law was also amended. New labour laws meant for meeting demands of the market and giving employers authority to hire and fire workers as they wished were introduced. They were replaced with labour laws, which were the brainchild of experts from South Africa and Denmark. All achievements accrued from the patriotism era, in a nutshell, were turned upside down. The neo-liberalism or globalisation touted and overseen by capitalist countries, their multinationals and the local petty bourgouisei was economically, ideologically, politically and socially against patriotism. We are reaping bitter globalisation fruits today as we debate and complain over a myriad of issues in the fourth phase government. Our society is severely torn. We have today a society that is divided into classes of the haves and the have-nots. A few are considerably rich as the majority languish in extreme poverty. The economy is growing, we are told, but poverty is growing two-fold. Between 2001 and 2007, the number of the poor living below two dollars grew to 4.5 million. Few employment opportunities are available. Almost three-quarters of wanananchi rely on agriculture, but the sector contributes hardly a quarter to the national economy. The manufacturing sector has been employing less than 100,000 people and the number remained constant between 2001 and 2007. But employment in the informal sector, mainly inlvoving hawkers popularly known as machinga, has increased by 90 per cent, equivalent to 17 times the growth of the manufacturing sector. Employment for housegirls has risen by 33 per cent. These are signs of economic malaise that we should not be proud of. Investments, which we are told are the engine of the economy, have increased. An average of foreign direct investments a year between 1997 and 2009 was valued at $439, but over 95 per cent of them were directed towards the mining sector, which extracts the country’s wealth and exports it without contributing to national growth. The mining sector contributes 39 per cent to foreign exchange. But the input of the same sector to the GDP is below three per cent. Issa Shivji is Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan African studies Worse still, the $439 worth of investments hardly create 7,000 jobs, 10 times the housegirl employment opportunities. At the same time, the number of youth entering the labour market each year is over 800,000. These are not only qualifications of a dependent economy as analysed by Mwalimu Nyerere, but rather of a petty economy, which is not sustainable and does not give hope to the majority. Frankly speaking, petty capitalism breeds in petty politics. The seeds of the economic system that has led us to where we are today were sown during the third phase government. What the wanamtandao—network members (the fourth phase government)—did was to tend them. And we are now reaping the bitter fruits of petty capitalism. Petty economy gives roots to petty politics. Petty politics are carried out by dictatorship armed with threats, tricks and arguments because they lack legitimacy. Let us not complain over or be dragged into political wranges without understanding and discussing the source of our political and economic weakenesses.Let us rather think and ask ourselves: Who will redeem us—donors, leaders or the working class led by their own leaders? Who is benefiting from and who is losing in the existing system? Can those reaping from our weaknesses lead us to liberation? I do not have answers, only questions. Answers will be obtained after critically thinking, debating and struggling among members of the working class themselves. Our role as scholars, patriotists and wakereketwa is to put issues into perspective and ask the right questions regardless of our own interests. Let us stop ingratiating ourselves to seek ministerial posts. For scholars to stoop low to rulers or would-be rulers is tantamount to betraying the public. Issa Shivji is Professor, Mwalimu Nyerere Academic Stool, University of Dar es Salaam Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
