New Internationalist – September 2019

COUNTRY

PROFILE

E

veryone in Tanzania knows that

the country is at war but what they

would probably fail to tell you

is with what or with whom. When the

country’s founding father Julius Nyerere

led the Kagera War of 1979 against

Uganda’s Idi Amin, who had invaded

Tanzanian soil, we knew who the enemy

was. But every time the current presi-

dent, John Magufuli, says the country is

at economic war, there is a lot of room

left for guesswork as to who the enemy is.

After Tanganyika gained independ-

ence from British rule in 1961 and united

with Zanzibar in 1964 to form the United

Republic of Tanzania, Nyerere attempted

to introduce a form of African socialism,

Ujamaa. Nyerere designed villages under

the Arusha Declaration of 1967 that were

supposed to create a sense of unity and

social cohesion, restoring the social and

economic health that colonialism had

disrupted. Ujamaa was based on the idea

that we the African people should be

responsible to remain free and become

self-reliant, creating a sense of ownership

of our own development.

However, the Ujamaa experiment

did not work. The economy collapsed

and Nyerere was humble enough both

to accept foreign aid and to step down

as leader, handing over to Ali Hassan

Mwinyi in 1985. Mwinyi accepted loans

from the IMF and the World Bank along

with the harsh Structural Adjustment

Programmes (SAPs) upon which they

were conditional. These SAPs demanded

spending cuts and privatization, argu-

ably worsening the corruption and

poverty they were supposed to reduce.

In an interview with the New Interna-

tionalist just before his death, Nyerere

said: ‘At the World Bank they asked me:

“How did you fail?” In 1988, I responded,

Tanzania’s per-capita income was $280.

Now, in 1998, it is $140. Yet in those 10

years Tanzania has done everything the

IMF and the World Bank wanted. So I

asked the World Bank people: “What

went wrong?”’

When Magufuli was elected in 2015,

he hit the ground running. His no-

nonsense leadership style was noticed

all over Africa and around the world:

he was nicknamed ‘The Bulldozer’. He

was seen cleaning the streets of Dar es

Salaam, firing government officials on

TANZANIA

38 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

RukwaLake

Dodoma

MOZAMBIQUE

MALAWI

ZAMBIA

DEMOCRATIC

REPUBLIC

OF CONGO

BURUNDI

RWANDA

UGANDA

KENYA

Shinyanga

Kigoma

Tabora

Same

Kilimanjaro

Pemba Island

ZanzibarIsland

Mafia Island

TanganyikaLake

VictoriaLake

Zanzibar

Kilosa Dar es Salaam

Iringa

Mbeya Kilwa Masoko

Lindi

Mwanza

Ruvuma

0 500 miles

0 500 1000 kilometres