Ujamaa/Ubuntumaniac hii ni sehemu ya uchambuzi tulioufanya miaka kadhaa iliyopita kuhusu Ujamaa na Itikadi Ya Maendeleo wakati wa Mwalimu Nyerere - uchambuzi huu unadhihirisha kuwa tulichokuwa tunakitekeleza kilikuwa ni Ubepari wa Dola na si Ujamaa wa Wananchi:
In General, the model of development adopted after independence seemingly registered some rates of economic growth, whereby the growth of value added in that manufacturing for the period 1965 to 1974 was more than 13% annually. Between 1965 and 1975, the percentage share of agriculture in the GDP fell from 56% to 42%, while that of manufacturing rose from 4% to 11%. With such developments, it had become difficult for agriculture to sustain any further expansion by 1974, as no significant technical transformations had taken place within the sector. In this year, export volume fell by 35%. The situation was made worse by forcible villagization, (which halted production in most regions in the country), recurrent droughts and floods, the rise in oil prices in the worldmarket and huge loss-making parastatals that were in existence. There were nearly 400 parastatals handling production, processing, transportation, and marketing of goods and services. Prices of almost 1,000 commodities were also controlled by this period. By 1976 there were 108 parastatal enterprises in farming. Many of them were making huge losses, but donors supported them in terms of capital and personnel. Holland and Denmark supported in sugar production, Canada in wheat production, North Korea in rice production, the World Bank in ranching, etc. The dominance of the crop authorities in marketing and provision of inputs had resulted into the total control and bureaucratization of the conditions of peasant production. With the villagezation programme of 1973/74 and the changes in the administration and marketing structures, production targets were imposed on the peasants and the type of crops to be farmed was administratively specified. The gainers from the enhanced role of marketing boards in the 1970s were no longer thes tate exchequer, as in the 1960s, but the people who manned them, through corruption, fraud and embezzlement. The boards consumed an increasing take of the peasant producer price themselves. The 1977 ILO report recorded that the barter terms of trade for the peasants fell by 22.5 per cent between 1965 and 1973. These parastatals had also become an increasing drain on central government finances as their distribution and buying programmes consumed large magnitudes of official credit.
By 1976, the Minister of Home Affairs reported an official figure of corruption and embezzlement of funds to the tune of Tshs 1,600 million. Thus, when reviewing the Ten Years of the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere said: "We have reached a stage where our greatest danger is a new one. The thing which could now most undermine our socialist development would be failure in the battle against corruption, against theft and loss of public money and goods and other abuses of public office…."
Since early 1970s, workers and other sections of the society had attempted to check these abuses, but thegovernment defeated them. The attempts were a consequence of the introduction of Party Guidelines (Mwongozo) in February 1971, a radical document which claimed to empower the people. There were 31 strikes and lock-outs from February to September in the same year. These were supposedly illegal strikes, since they were not sanctioned by NUTA General Council. These strikes were directed against corruption, commandism and abuses of the managers and bureaucrats. These abuses included the lifestyles and eating habits of those in management, grand parties, unnecessary trips and other extravagances. For the first time in the history of Tanzania, these were strikes that were not concerned with pay or remuneration. These strikes continued in 1972 and they were becoming almost a movement by 1973 when the government crushed a strike at the Sungura Textile Mill by dismissing workers. The climax of these strikes was between May and July 1973. This was when the 900 workers of the British-American Tobacco (which was 51% government owned) locked out the personnel manager. The case was taken to the Permanent Labour Tribunal,where the officer was accused of "wasting company resources, and of favouring his tribesmen."
It was after the defeat of the workers that the Party (TANU) became supreme in 1975. With the Constitutional amendments in 1977, all mass organizations became party (CCM) affiliates, and NUTA replaced by Jumuiya ya Wafanyakazi wa Tanzania (JUWATA). Under these arrangements, the union was simply a department of the ruling party. This move had resulted into increased statization of society and the trade union in particular. As a consequence of this, the disjunction that had already been created by the mid-1970s between the formal political system and the social system was reinforced further by late 1970s. That was not the only time the state used force against those who opposed privileges and abuse of power: brutal force was used against a peaceful march of students on 5 March 1978. The students sought to oppose the government move raise salaries as much as 40% in most cases and introduce huge fringe benefits to ministers, senior party officials, and members of parliament, when it had been announced that the country was facing a crisis. This move by the government seemed to contradict the Arusha Declaration. After rounding and sending home 400 students, the government accused the students of "having opposed ujamaa village managers" and marching instead of accepting an invitation from the President. Leaflets were circulated after exposing the undemocratic nature of the state given the manner it had handled the students.
By this time, most of the parastatals, which were supposed to be purchasing crops from the farmers, were increasingly becoming unable to do so. They were becoming heavily indebted to the banks because of unaccountability, corruption and inefficiency. By 1981/82, some nine parastatals had combined losses of Tshs 692 million (USD 84m), which was "equal to 21% of their processed commodities." The National Milling Corporation alone was responsible for two thirds of those losses which represented 31% of its sales. By the same year, the"parastatals' overdrafts had reached Tshs 5,127 million and accounted for 80% of the loans of the National Bank ofCommerce...." Meanwhile, the "volume handled by agricultural parastatals increased by 18 per cent, whereas parastatal employment increased by 37 percent, leading to decline in labour productivity by 14 pe cent."
The country had begun to face an economic crisis in the late 1970s. The economic crisis resulted into foreign reserves which had peaked at USD 281.8 million in 1977, to fall to USD 99.9 million in 1978 and finally to USD 20.3million in 1980. The latter "was less than one week's worth of foreign exchange needed to cover the average import bill." By 1980, the value of exports was equivalent to 43% only of the imports and the trade gap was over Tshs 6billion. Similarly, industrial capacity utilization was between 30% and 50% on the average and at this time the manufacturing sector accounted for only 5.8% of a smaller GDP, compared to 1977 when it accounted for 10.4percent. The symptoms of the crisis by 1980 were deterioration in the balance of trade, a fall in agricultural production (food and export crops), negative per capita growth and high inflation rates. Others were acute shortage of essential consumer goods, low industrial capacity utilization, deterioration in the budgetary position and general deterioration of the conditions of the working people.
Tanzania attempted to negotiate with the World Bank and IMF for loans to deal with the situation. But these institutions refused to lend the country, unless there were changes made in the policy directions by implementing Structural Adjustment Programmes. These institutions required Tanzania to devalue the currency significantly, freeze wage increases, increase interest rates, decontrol prices, remove subsidies on agricultural inputs and foodstuffs, relax import controls, encourage private investments and reduce government spending by cutting down budget on social services. While some sections of the economists, planners and politicians supported SAPs; some lawyers and social scientists opposed them for their anti-welfare and inegalitarian tendencies.
Despite the initial protests against the IMF preconditions, the government had started implementing them in a form of home made programmes from 1981, to the extent that by 1986 it had accepted all the conditionalities and the philosophy behind them. Thus, with the implementation of SAPs, by early 1990s, the government had liberalized crops marketing; liberalized the distribution of most inputs; introduced freehold lease in land ownership; and liberalized the investment policy in favour of private investments. It had also deregulated exchange and interest rates; reformed the fiscal and monetary policies; removed all subsidies for agricultural inputs and foodstuffs; reintroduced school fees in schools; and, reintroduce poll tax under the guise of "Development Levy". Other measures taken were reform policies to allow private banking; allow free transactions in foreign exchange by opening change de bureaus; restructure parastatal statutes to allow private shareholders or private ownership and finally abandon the Leadership Code of the Arusha Declaration which constrained capitalist tendencies among the leaders.
Chanzo: http://www.codesria.org/Links/conferences/papers/Chachage_Seithy_L_Chachage.pdf