Hi Folks,
The following article will appear in today's (Oct. 20, 1999) issue of the
Wall Street Journal (Europe).
Cheers,
Madiba.
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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.
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 expression, 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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