Category Archives: Issue 52

THE BUDGET

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Tanzania’s 1995/96 budget was unexciting but did clearly aim to win some popularity for the government prior to the elections. The minimum wage was raised and duties on imported foodstuffs and clothing were reduced. The transport sector was hit hard.

The budget proposed a 14.2% increase in expenditure on last year to Shs 627,688 million – Shs 184.7 million foreign component; Shs 27 million in bank loans. Minister for Finance Jakaya Kikwete said he was assuming that the February pledges of $1 million from donors would be fulfilled. Tax exemption on most capital goods and services enjoyed by foreign investors would be abolished but other tax rates would be adjusted to compensate. Planning Minister Horace Kolimba said that the government would no longer accept foreign aid involving foreign experts; projects would be implemented by Tanzanian experts.

Targets for next year, which many observers considered unrealistic, included a GDP growth of 5%, reduction of inflation to 15%, repayment of Shs 26.8 billion to banks and a self-financing budget by 1997/98. More realistic targets included increasing export levels from $505 million to $606 million.

BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS
* Minimum wage for civil servants raised from Shs 10,000 to Shs 17,500 per month and not taxed; minimum pension to retirees to be raised to Shs 2,000 per month;
* Tax exemption for imports abolished to curb tax evasion; as compensation capital goods and industrial raw materials would be charged only a flat 5% duty instead of 30%; tax holidays intact;
* Sugar, rice, cooking oil and wheat products – 20% import duty (compared with about 50%) and 5% sales tax compared with 30% before; duty on imported clothes reduced from 50% to 30%;
* road toll levy on petrol and diesel up from Shs 40 per litre to Shs 50;
* Vehicle registration fee up from Shs 50,000 to Shs 75,000;
* Foreign companies to pay 20% of profits after tax as ‘branch withholding tax’; corporation tax to be 35% for all (down from 40% for foreign firms);

TANZANIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

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LEANER AND MEANER
Faced with increasing competition from railways running to South African and, shortly, Angolan ports the Tanzania-Zambia (TAZARA) railway plans to become leaner and meaner, wrote Adam Lusekelo in the BBC’S FOCUS ON AFRICA (July-Sept.). Freight volume has gone down from more than a million metric tonnes in 1992/93 to 642,270 metric tonnes last year. Some 2,500 out of 6,600 jobs will be axed; entire directorates have been merged or scrapped outright. Regional General Manager Hamisi Tegissa was quoted as saying that, from now on, TAZARA will have to do business or it will sink.

COUNTRY FILE TANZANIA
The May issue of BRITISH OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT contained a four-page ‘Country File’ on Tanzania suitable for the British National Curriculum Geography key stages three and four. There were short articles on roads, railways, cashew nuts, cloves, family life, health and the elections. Tanzania was said to be four times the size of Britain but with half the population.

SAVING THE MARRIAGE
The SUN in huge front page headlines has been following the fortunes of Tanzanian-born Mukhtar Mohidin with intense interest since he won £18 million on the British National Lottery and thus changed his life for ever. In the issue dated May 13 his wife was said to be insisting on a written agreement from her husband spelling out her share of the massive win. In another issue (May 12) the SUN reported that at a reunion for relatives there was such an angry squabble about who was entitled to a share of the money that the Thames Valley Police had to be brought in and detained two men until they had calmed down.

WILL THE FRAGILE UNION SURVIVE?
This was the question posed by the glossy Kenya publication THE OPTION – THE MAGAZINE FOR PRINCIPLED LEADERSHIP (April 1995). The article traced the history of the Union and gave reasons why it was ‘under question as politicians square up to multi-party elections’. Calls for Zanzibari autonomy could be a popular electoral card for mainland and island po1iticians …. ‘the decision to move the administrative capital from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma had only alienated the island … ‘

A DAZZLING PICTURE SHOW
‘At the soon-to-be-gazetted Mafia Island Marine Park I went diving on the most incredible reefs I have ever seen, an adventure, a dazzling picture show and a science lesson all rolled into one’. So wrote Anne Outwater in the EAST AFRICAN (May 15-21) who went on to say that she had also never seen bommies before. They are big pieces of Proties coral that long ago fastened themselves on to something like a clam shell in the sand and then grew, sometimes to a height of 12 feet and a width of 8 feet. ‘Other corals are then able to fasten themselves and grow. Thus an entire community is formed …. ‘

FIRST AFRICAN PILOT
The first African South African Air Force jet pilot to go solo, Captain Tsoku Khuma10, celebrated his historic feat in time-honoured style by being dunked by his colleagues in a mud bath. Khuma10 spent nine years out of South Africa with Umkhonto we Sizwe after training in Angola. He completed the first part of his education in Tanzania – JOHANNESBURG STAR

LAKE VICTORIA: A SICK GIANT
Under this heading PEOPLE AND THE PLANET (Vol. 2 No 4) recalled that Lake victoria was ‘discovered’ in 1858 by John Speke, after months of braving dense forests and tropical diseases in his search for the source of the Nile. But now, the illustrated article by Nancy Chege goes on, ‘The once clear life-filled lake is now murky, smelly and choking with algae … for decades, ecologists have travelled to Lake Victoria to study cichlids, small indigenous bony fish which made up 80% of the biomass composition of the Lake. Some 400 species had evolved from five species of ancestors, making Lake victoria one of the most species-diverse lakes in the world. But now there are only 200 species thanks to the depredations of the Nile Perch which has jumped in 15 years to 80% of fish weight in the Lake … one specialist has described this as the greatest vertebrate mass extinction in recorded history. But the Nile Perch has become a money spinner and is being exported all over the world.

“WE HAVEN’T LOST IT, WE JUST DON’T KNOW WHERE IT IS”
So said a spokesman for London Zoo quoted in the DAILY TELEGRAPH (August 8) describing the dash for freedom of a rare African female bush baby – the first to have been kept in captivity in Britain – which had been brought to London in February from a Tanzanian forest. The three-inch tall creature leapt out of its metal cage and slipped through a crack in its open door. Keepers armed with nets and torches had spent 11 days crawling behind the pen in an effort to find it.

“WE ARE IN BURUNDIAN WATERS NOW”
JOHANNESBURG STAR writer Duncan Guy, out in a canoe with Tanzanian fishermen on Lake Tanganyika in the middle of the night, gulped when he heard the news. “We all (Tanzanian and Burundian fishermen) fish where the catches are best …. ” he was told … “sometimes we go so far that we have to stay in Burundi during the day. And the Burundians come down to our village if that’s where the fish are”. The writer described how the boats and their attachments creek in the gentle swell and just below the surface the fish shine like silver as they enter the light from hurricane lamps in the canoes …..

A MAJOR SUCCESS STORY
In an article on tuberculosis in a recent issue of NEW AFRICA it was stated that, besides China and New York, Tanzania’s anti-tuberculosis campaign was the major success story on WHO’s books. It was estimated that 80% of all TB cases in Tanzania had been found, 90% had been treated and 80% of the infectious cases had been cured. But TB was still the second most important killer in Dar es Salaam.

LEGACY OF THE GREATEST WHITE HUNTER
Frederick Courtney Selous (born 1851) was the subject of an illustrated article in the JOHANNESBURG STAR INTERNATIONAL (July 20). Why was the Selous Game Reserve so special it asked; it was expensive, inaccessible and only modestly promoted. The answer was probably the legend surrounding the area and the mystique of the man whose name it bore …. the greatest white hunter of them all. As a boy he idolised his hero David Livingstone. For 20 years he was hunter (he shot 31 lions), safari guide, skin exporter, gold prospector, ostrich farmer, naturalist, ornithologist. He fought in the war against the Germans in Tanganyika and was killed by a bullet to the head on January 4, 1917 and was buried by his men in a modest grave in what was later to become the Selous Game Reserve.

PUBLISHING PROBLEMS
The AFRICAN PUBLISHING REVIEW discussed in its May/June 1995 issue problems of book publishing in several countries including Tanzania. The biggest constraint on marketing and distribution of books was the absence of sales outlets; of the 104 districts in Tanzania 85 do not have bookshops as a result of the government’s old policy of the confinement of sale of educational books to Tanzania Elimu supplies and the free education policy so that parents feel cheated if they have to buy books. (Thank you Pru Watts-Russell for this item – Ed.).

BEWARE!
Peter Fairy writing in the WEEKEND TELEGRAPH (July 22) suggested that Britons visiting Tanzania should beware of two swindles they might encounter if they fly into Kilimanjaro airport. ‘You might be asked to produce a certificate of vaccination against yellow fever although this is only mandatory if you are coming from a country (including Kenya) where the disease is endemic’ he wrote. A woman passenger had been told that she would have to be injected on the spot “although there is another solution”!

The second dodge occurred on departure. ‘When I was bodysearched the security officer found TShs 6,000 (£6.85) in my shirt pocket’ he wrote. “You are not allowed to take Tanzanian money out of the country. You must change it at a bank”. The nearest one was 30 miles away and it was 8 pm. I demanded to see his superior – at which point I was waved through …..

IN THE TOP 75
FIFA published recently its rankings of 175 world football teams. Tanzania has improved its position from 80th in 1993 to 74th in 1994. Brazil was number one with England 18th, Scotland 32nd, Wales 42nd, and Northern Ireland 45th.

But, sadly, as the EAST AFRICAN explained, apart from a late comeback by the national soccer team which grabbed the Challenge Cup Tournament in Nairobi (and the cricketers victory in the East and Central African competition at home) most Tanzanian teams were a flop on the international scene in 1994. Mbwana Matumla was praised for giving Tanzania its only medal (bronze) at the Commonwealth Games in Canada.

EXCITEMENT AND JOY
The London TIMES published a letter from Mr Jack Storer who had been in Dar es Salaam reviewing the work of the Tanzania Institute of Bankers at the time when a consignment of 1,100 textbooks funded by ODA arrived. ‘I shall long remember’ he wrote, ‘the excitement and joy of the librarian and her colleagues …. before I left two weeks later more than 100 members of the Institute had been in to borrow books’. Mr Storer praised the superb job being done by the British Council in Dar es Salaam and its ‘always busy’ library. (Thank you Christine Lawrence for this item – Ed.)

NEW CODE OF PRACTICE FOR LEADERS

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The original ‘leadership code’ under the one-party state was binding on senior civil servants and TANU party leaders and was set out in the TANU Party Constitution. Similar requirements, extended to the membership of the successor organisation CCM, appear in the 1982 Constitution of CCM.

With the introduction of the multi-party state, the subject of leadership ethics was incorporated in section 132 of the Constitution and Parliament was required to give practical effect to the subject by setting up a tribunal to adjudicate on matters of leadership ethics. The new code passed by Parliament in May this year (Public Leadership Code of Ethics Act 1995 – part of the 12th Amendment to the Constitution) set up an Ethics Secretariat under an Ethics Commissioner. It differs in important respects from the TANU Leadership Code. No longer is the holding of shares in public companies, or the ownership of rented housing, forbidden. Leaders are, however, required to declare their assets and declarable assets including dividends and profits from stocks and shares or real estate other than personal dwellings. The definition of leader is wide-ranging from the President to the members of a local government authority, but this list can be altered by the Minister in charge, who appears to be a Minister of State in the Office of the President, though not defined as such.

The Act also specifies the procedures to be followed in dealing with allegations of infringement. Allegations known to be false may be punishable by a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years.

It is too early to judge the likely effectiveness of this legislation. The ethical standards of leaders are unexceptional, but in the last resort much will depend on the independence of the Commissioner in the exercise of his quasi-judicial functions. The prospects for the independence of the three- member Tribunal are enhanced by the statutory requirement that one of them must be a judge of the High Court, or the Court of Appeal, while the other two are to be appointed on advice by the Commissioner.
Roger Carter

THIRTY YEARS – TWELVE SERMONS – FIVE YEARS

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It was thirty years since I had been a priest in the Diocese of Zanzibar in the twilight years of missionary direction. They had not been fruitful years for me; nobody had worked out what to do with the last of the new missionaries in the parishes, and I was glad to be moved to a theological college where I knew, and everyone else knew what I was supposed to be doing.

I went back last year to research a book; I was there for five weeks during which I preached twelve times, at first haltingly, then more easily as the language came back. It was hot, it was tiring, it was disorienting. I learned to avoid the people who wanted to answer my questions, and to listen to those who did not. And I reached conclusions which I checked with others, and with the literature, and discovered I was in agreement with the experts. Which was reassuring, for five weeks is not a long time.

So, what did I discover? After my first day I remarked that there was more sense of order. I was inclined to say that people were more intelligent, but mental alertness may be the best way to put it. Which I should have expected; in my day only 14%of children had any schooling at all and this had risen to eighty-five percent.

HOP SCOTCH
The second astonishing discovery was to see children playing games. Complicated games. Sometimes with complicated home-made toys, the boys particularly delighting in handmade toy cars which could be steered with long sticks. And the girls playing hop-scotch. Are hop-scotch squares the key to everything? (No, I am sorry, hop-scotch is not Scotland’s contribution to world progress; ‘scotch’ is a form of ‘scratch’). It was only after my return that I discovered that children’s games scarcely existed in Britain before the industrial revolution. Children helped their parents; they did not play with one another. But once they played with one another, they learned the ways of the whole world, and their own worlds widened.

WOMEN WEARING GLASSES
And the third discovery came a few days after my arrival when I started to preach to a packed church, a vast and untypical stone building dating from German colonial days, which I remembered as having been three-quarters empty. What was different? And it dawned on me; women wearing glasses. These used to be rare enough amongst men but the idea of glasses for women! I had already noted that people were better dressed, and better fed, and of course there were many more of them, but it took longer for me to realise that women had made more strides than had men. In all fields of life.

QUIET PRIDE
As I listened, I began to get some idea of how people regarded themselves and the world. First, there was a good deal of quiet pride in what had been done since independence. Tanzania was a ‘haven of peace’, and the name of the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, means just that. There had been political stability, and a degree of democracy – imperfect democracy, but government generally responsive to popular will. Compared with the neighbouring countries – Zaire, Uganda, Rwanda, they have been fortunate. And they also consider themselves more fortunate than people in Britain. There is a religious view that the west is largely lost to Christ and lost to decency, and this has, surprisingly, been accepted by many Africans. I was forced to argue that churches in Europe were not in as bad shape as we supposed. I had great difficulty in conveying my conviction that young people were good-natured, open to spiritual influences, and with a strong moral sense, even if not quite that of the church. And I began to wonder if my hosts did not regard, and want to regard, Africa as the Christian heartland, replacing a Europe and an America which had fallen by the wayside.

CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS
And now the church. It was not as different from early days as I expected. Except that things worked better. There was less inertia, more drive, as there was in the country generally. And there were more people in church. The national population was four times what it had been thirty years earlier, but Christian growth in Africa far outstrips population growth. It is estimated that these Christians have multiplied from 25 to 100 million from 1950 to 1975, and may well number 200 million today. But in a mainly Islamic area such as coastal Tanzania there were not the mass movements seen elsewhere. There are some converts from Islam, and whole villages have turned from Islam, but Islam is still a strong force. And many Christians are very worried about Islam and ask if there is not a central plan by Muslims to take over the world. I tried to suggest that Muslims the world over are aware that Muslim states are generally not very successful, and they tend to get over-sensitive because they feel that Christians, for their part, are more united than they seem to be and want to take over the world, and that this leads to extremist movements and statements. But Muslims and Christians generally try to get on in Tanzania.

WORSHIP
The worship differs from early days, just as it does here. The old Zanzibar liturgy has given way to a ‘Provincial’ liturgy~ this is like shifting from English Missal to 1982 Blue Book, though propers from the old are sometimes inserted into the new, and the old is still used for requiems. Of course some bemoan the changes, and some think they came too late, but that is much as it is here. But there are also , revival’ meetings, and gospel songs inserted into the more formal worship – some being translations from the English which completely disregard the rules of Swahili grammar. All this is attributed to invasions by American groups, mostly Pentecostal twenty years ago. They swept up what are described as the ‘nominal Christians’ (did anyone ask what the Anglican church lacked which made them nominal?) so the Anglicans responded by putting on revival services and songs in order to win these back, which, on the whole, succeeded.

When I went to Africa in 1959 the consecration of Africans to the episcopate was consigned to the remote future. Then came independence, and virtually all bishops were African. Since then there must have been a good thousand – Roman, Anglican, Lutheran, other. About 100 have been removed from office for various offences or have just failed to prove up to the job – this is about the same proportion as missionary bishops from Europe and about the same as bishops anywhere else. Looking back, Africans could have, and should have, been permitted to take control much earlier. That they were not so permitted was due to more than just race; it is within living memory that British bishops were still sought for dioceses in some of the white dominions.

A SORT OF BOTTLED JOHN THE BAPTIST
Finally, the trappings of Americanism are everywhere. Soft drinks, of all things. abound in a subsistence economy. But Coca-Cola, which nobody needs, is a symbol of a way of life which everybody wants. And if it precedes Christianity, it becomes a sort of bottled John the Baptist. which will trouble some people who think Africans should be Africans, and that means no Coca-Cola, no electric altar candles, no American music. But the ‘ old’ Africa was based on imported seeds – maize and cassava – and Africa received from other continents as it gave to other continents. And with the coming of transistor radios and the sight of the Echo Sounding Balloon in the night sky (as startling to an agricultural people as the Star of Bethlehem and leading in the same direction), the move to westernisation was accelerated. Of course there will be an African style in all this, but Africans are very much a part of world society. And they are more like other peoples in the world than is generally realised.
The Rev’d Gavin White

(from an article in the Scottish Episcopal Church Review – Winter-Spring 1995)

DOUBLE EVENT

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Although numbers allowed to attend were restricted and it was a stiflingly hot night, some 35 Britain-Tanzania members and a group of Members of Parliament participated in a joint event on July 18 at the House of Commons in London to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Britain-Tanzania Society and the establishment of an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tanzania. Speeches were made by Roger Carter and Izabella Koziell from the Society and the Tanzanian High Commissioner in London Mr Ali Mchumo representing Tanzania. Lord Redesdale, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on overseas aid in the House of Lords, who was also representing Mr David Steel MP, was in the Chair.

Among the MP’s present were Mr Richard Page who is the Conservative member for S W Hertfordshire; he told TA that he had pointed out when he was in Tanzania with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Group last year, the importance of free and fair access to the media for all parties in multi-party elections; he added that, since he had now become Minister for Small Business in the Department of Trade and Industry he was no longer in a position to intervene in external matters like this, for fear of impinging on the prerogatives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary; Mr Win Griffiths, Labour MP for Bridgend who (with the Chairman of the Group, Sir John Stanley MP for Tonbridge and MaIling), has taken a leading role in setting up the parliamentary group; the well-known Eurosceptic Conservative MP for Stafford, Mr Bill Cash whose wife was born in Mwanza; Dr. Jeremy Bray, Labour MP for Motherwell South , who had also been on the visit to Tanzania last year and who told TA that he had been impressed by the responsible way in which Tanzania’s move towards multipartyism had been handled; and, Ms Hilary Armstrong, Labour MP for Durham North west.

Mr Andrew Faulds, Labour MP for Warley East (Smethwick), who was born in Isoko, Rungwe District, who also spoke, told TA that his father had been a Church of Scotland missionary at Isoko for four years from 1921 and had married there. The parents had spent most of their lives in Malawi however and had asked that, after their deaths, their ashes should be buried in Malawi. Mr Faulds spoke movingly about the long journey he took through Tanzania in 1990 to take his mother’s ashes to Malawi and how he had been able to see again the hills approaching Isoko after an absence of 70 years.

BOOK REVIEWS

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AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT. Eds: U Himmelstrand, K Kinyanjui, E Mburugu. 1994. James Currey.

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS IN AFRICA. W Tordff. 1993, Indiana University Press.

POWER IN AFRICA. P Chabal. st. Martins Press. New York. 1994

‘African Perspectives on Development’, a tightly argued case laced with hard facts, calls into question much of the data and methodologies used by ‘experts’ (Eicher, Hyden, the World Bank) on the subject of Tanzanian agricultural production and its supposed decline during the years preceding the foreign exchange crisis of 1978. Marjorie Mbilinyi’s command of the history of agricultural production leads to conclusions that contrast sharply with those of the experts. Mbilinyi points, for example, to the tendency to aggregate crop data, combining plantation and peasant crops. Imagine aggregating data that include the collapsing sisal plantation industry with the positive growth of crops like tea and coffee planted by peasant and small capitalist producers! How easy to beat up on the small farmers once again; and how easy to justify unnecessary food imports.

From her factual base, Mbilinyi’s commentary is harsh. ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ (SAP’s) in agriculture are structured around the rehabilitation of the large-scale plantation and large farm sector owned by foreign, and, to a lesser extent, national enterprises and TNC’s, and the provision of a regular supply of cheap labour by impoverished peasants and farm workers. That the ‘cheap labour’ is mainly female is clear: by 1978 63% of all waged and unwaged agricultural labourers aged 15-29 were women. The campaign against the smallholder is further evidenced by data on credit: 90% of total lending in 1983 went to indigenous heads of household (covering some 4,300 out of 8,700 villages) as compared to only 15% of all peasant household heads in 1976. But following the SAP, only 2,000 villages received credit in 1986.

Recognising women’s grassroots organisations (in 1979 more than 7,500 economic groups on the mainland), and given the predominance of women in rural areas together with the much increased incidence of female-headed households, the author poses as ‘one of the greatest challenges to scholars and activists’ to ‘catch up with the ordinary women’. Much greater attention is due to the excellent writings of M Mbilinyi.

In the same volume, Samuel Chambua states that , irrespective of what development paradigm a sub-Saharan country has followed, the result has been the same ie: the failure to liquidate underdevelopment. This reviewer cheered his warning that ‘belief in the market has to be viewed with suspicion’ since the market was found wanting in the 1960’s as the solution to development problems. Both ‘modernization’ (dual economy) and ‘dependency’ theories are inadequate. Chambua calls for a theory and strategy that transforms the peasant economy while recognising that state and collective farms failed in both Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Also in ‘African Perspectives’, Benedict Mongula spoke to the ‘economic recovery experiments’ that have directly increased mass impoverishment, unemployment and destitution because both the social services sector and peoples’ real incomes have been affected. He points to the ‘considerable measurement problem’ in assessing the effectiveness of economic stabilization policies, due to such factors as the erratic inflation rates that follow currency devaluations and the challenge of comparing GNP’s when exchange rates and prices vacillate so much. Considering Mongula’s observations, one is tempted to question the exactness of economics as a science. After reviewing development theories and trends (often mentioning Tanzania) the author calls for a new kind of planning that would return control of their economies to the concerned countries themselves and avoid the blind liberalization of the economy advocated by the IMF.

Ernest Maganya scans the history of agricultural transformation in Southern Africa during the past three decades and the ongoing debate over modernization v dependency paradigms. Holding that the ‘free market’ can be ‘used or misused’, Maganya presents clear cases of government actions to improve or destroy the contributions of peasant farmers. He foresees the debate shifting from the issue ‘centrally planned economy v the market place’ to ‘the nature of the state that will have the political will and the technical capacity to harness the advantages of the market place and use it in the interests of the majority of the rural producers and smallholder peasants’.

The comprehensive analyses by the four Tanzanian authors above tempt one to ask the publishers of ‘African Perspectives’ to get a copy of their volume into the hands of every World Bank, IMF, and government planner. ‘Power in Africa’ a political essay labels as failures ‘paradigms lost’- all of the theories that have been employed to explain post-colonial politics. Patrick Chabal’s discussion of the African state as inherited from colonial powers, a state that did not arise from but had to create a nation, go a long way toward explaining why the post-colonial years have been perilous and why current economic adjustment programmes that disempower already fragile states’ capacities, carry with them a serious risk. Perceiving the state as the dominant economic actor in Africa – whether values are socialist, capitalist or mixed – Chabal nonetheless accepts ‘the politics of external aid’ from the West, the World Bank and the IMF as givens. He holds that ‘the system of dependence which is underpinned by the World Bank is one of the most significant factors in the survival of the post-colonial state. He sees such dependence as ‘hardly dependence at all’ but rather ‘inter-dependence’ – because, in his judgement, the donors finance African states ‘because the result is a relatively stable international order’ .

Some people, including this reviewer, hesitate to agree with Chabal, believing that the inherited risks that accompany adjustment programmes place ‘the social sectors in crisis’ as the World bank has itself said about its results in Tanzania (see ‘Adjustment in Africa’ page 413).

William Tordoff’s new edition of ‘Government and Politics in Africa’ is rich with detailed examples and refreshingly critical of both donor and developing countries. A former professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tordoff covers Tanzania thoroughly, from the East African Community through to President Mwinyi. He finds it ironic that ‘in the name of political and economic freedom’, western governments seek to deny African states the freedom to choose the political and economic systems that best suit their individual circumstances’. Questioning whether the African state as yet possesses the institutional capacity that the market economy system requires, he sees paradox in the SAP’s envisaging a ‘stronger society and a weaker central state’.

Reading Tordoff, I was reminded of President Nyerere’s response to questioning at a UN seminar in 1994. The gist of his statement was: They tell me all countries – the USA, Japan, Tanzania – participate on equal terms in the global ‘free market’. But putting Tanzania into that global market is like putting me in the boxing ring with champion Mohammed Ali! Margaret Snyder

THE MANAGEMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES IN TANZANIA: A PLEA FOR HEALTH SECTOR REFORM. P Sandford, G J Kanga and A M Ahmed. International Journal of Health Planning and Management. Vol. 9 No. 4. 1994. 13 pages.

This report on a research project in Kisarawe overturns widespread belief that management of health services can be substantially strengthened by such measures as development of information systems, training and evaluation. More radical changes are needed including the broadening of the base of funding (precise proposals are made) which would take into account an annual population survey in each district; full autonomy to health unit managers; the introduction of the private sector as provider; and, labour market reform including promotion to larger health units as incentives.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

INFLUENCE OF ARABIC LANGUAGE ON SWAHILI (WITH A TRILINGUAL DICTIONARY). I Bosha. Dar es Salaam Univ. Press. 1993. 268 pages. £11.95. The author does not accept that Swahili was of Arabic origin. There were linguistic interferences from both sides. The book includes a list of Swahili words believed to have originated from Arabic.

DOCTOR’S CONTINUING EDUCATION IN TANZANIA: DISTANCE LEARNING. S S Ndeki et al. World Health Forum. Vol. 16. 1995. 6 pages.

THE POETRY OF SHAABAN ROBERT. Edited and translated into English by C Ndulute. Dar es Salaam University Press. 1994 179 pages. Shs3,260. A selection of the best and most representative of the poems.

QUALITY REVIEW SCHEMES FOR AUDITORS: THEIR POTENTIAL FOR SUBSAHARAN AFRICA. Sonia R Johnson. Technical Paper No 276. World Bank Findings. 1994. This paper concentrates on one aspect of financial management: the role of the external auditor and describes the results of two pilot quality reviews of government and private auditors in Tanzania and Senegal.

ECONOMIC CHANGE AND POLITICAL LIBERALIZATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. Jennifer W Widner. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 1994. 307 pages. £14.00 paperback. The results of a 1992 colloquium in 1992 at Harvard; six case studies including one on Tanzania.

BUILDING CAPITALISM ….. SLOWLY. P Lewenstein. BBC Focus on Africa. Jan-March 1995. Two pages on how Tanzania is encouraging grass-roots capitalism.

THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF HIV/AIDS ON FARMING SYSTEMS AND LIVELIHOODS IN RURAL AFRICA. T Barnett et al. Journal of International Development. Vol. 7. No 1. 1995. 12 pages.

MARKET AND STATE: EVALUATING TANZANIA’S PROGRAM OF STATE-LED INDUSTRIALISATION. M Costello. World Development. Vol. 22. No 10. 1994. 10 pages

STRUCTURALLY ADJUSTED AFRICA: POVERTY, DEBT AND BASIC NEEDS. D Simon, W van Spengen, C Dixon and Z Narman. Pluto Press. £12.95. Essays in this book cover the workings of structural adjustment in several African countries. The Tanzanian case study is on urban migration and rural development.

ESSAYS ON THE TRANSITION TO MULTI-PARTYISM IN TANZANIA. Pius Msekwa. Dar es Salaam University Press. 1995. This book of 10 essays by the Speaker of the National Assembly, which is apparently not-for-sale, describes the transition to multipartyism, shows how pluralism helped Parliament to recapture its supremacy from the CCM National Executive Committee, questions the decision to reject a three government structure for the country, suggests new methods of arranging presidential elections and points out that there is still no provision for independent candidates to stand for election.

URBAN FRUIT AND VEGETABLE SUPPLY IN DAR ES SALAAM. Geographical Journal. 160 (3). 1994. 11 pages.

THE POLITICS OF ADULT EDUCATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: MODELS, RATIONALITIES, AND ADULT EDUCATION POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN CANADA, MEXICO AND TANZANIA. C A Torres and D Schurugency. Comparative Education. 30 (2). 1994. 21 pages.

BETTER HEALTH IN AFRICA: EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNT. World Bank. 1995. 240 pages. Tanzania is praised for its radio programme Man is Health which has been followed by two million people and also its health personnel plans where, in some cases, targets that were set up two decades ago have been surpassed.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT DECENTRALISATION AND THE HEALTH SECTOR IN TANZANIA. Public Administration and Development. 14 (5) 1994. 26 pages.

WOMEN AND COOPERATIVES IN TANZANIA: SEPARATISM OR INTEGRATION? Margaret R Msonganzila. Economic and Political Weekly. October 29. 1994. 11 pages in small type. This article discusses integrated cooperatives with men and women members and women-only cooperatives but states that the perspective and practice of Tanzanian Cooperative policies is biased against women.

The January 1995 issue of the JOURNAL OF FINANCE MANAGEMENT of the Institute of Finance Management in Dar es Salaam contains articles on the taxation of pension benefits, accounting and its environment in Tanzania, women executives and stress, an introduction to livestock insurance, safety management and on cushioning Tanzania’s external debt.

LETTERS

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SURPRISES
Recently I had two experiences which may be of interest to your readers. In a bar in Newcastle I was informed by the barman that a man who was also present was from the Kilimanjaro area of Tanzania. I greeted him formally in Kichagga. He was so surprised that he nearly dropped his glass of beer!. The man said that, as he was born after Uhuru, I was the first European he had met who could speak Kichagga. until Uhuru I commanded Field Force units in Moshi, Mwanza and Tanga.

Travelling by train from London to Newcastle on another occasion an elderly European couple suddenly started speaking to each other in Kiswahili. As their conversation was obviously meant to be private I interrupted and said, in Kiswahili “How nice to hear Kiswahili spoken again but I must point out that you are being ungrammatical”. Their mouths fell open with surprise. The man was a retired Director of Education in Kenya and whenever they wished to speak privately they always used Kiswahili. In the past thirty years they had never encountered anyone who had understood what they were saying.
R Hodgson

OLD NOTES AND COINS
I am a local businessman here in Musoma and I have in my possession a number of coins and bills issued in East Africa of which I would like to know the value. I am hoping that among your readers there might be someone who might send me information on this.
* Two 20 shilling Bills (in very good condition) from the East African Currency Board with the amount written in English, Kiswahili and Arabic with illustrations including a dhow, cotton, coffee and sisal and a watermark of a rhinoceros. No date is written but it must be Ca 1950.
* Bill from the Bank of Tanzania ‘Legal tender for twenty shillings’. One side has a picture of a young Nyerere and a national emblem ‘Umoja na Uhuru’. There is a giraffe watermark.
* Two 20 shilling Bills from ‘Benki ya Tanzania’ written completely in Kiswahili and with signatures from the ‘Waziri wa Fedha’ and ‘Gavana’. The pictures are of a man working in a textile factory and a cotton boIl. Also a 10-shilling smaller note with a picture of Mount Kilimanjaro.
* One Rupee ‘Deutsch Ostafrika’ coin (1906) with a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the words ‘Guilelmus II Imperator’ and one ‘Eine Rupee Deutsch Ostafrikaanisch Gesellschaft’ 1892 with a picture of a lion and a palm tree and also the Kaiser. Both in fairly good condition.
* One shilling TANU 1978 ten-sided FAO Regional Conference for Africa coin with pictures of a tractor driven by a woman and ‘Rais wa Kwanza’ Nyerere.

Robert Kussaga
Box 1229, Musoma

LESOTHO AND TANZANIA
Your readers might be interested to hear some of my impressions when I recently attended celebrations at the Universities of Dar es Salaam and Lesotho. The Dar celebrations began with a sports bonanza on June 7 and culminated in a peak on July 1, the university’s Silver Jubilee anniversary. The fact that all my appointments did take place despite the shortness of the notice of my visit indicates a welcome efficiency in the management. Substantial expansion in the student enrolment is planned, this is feasible in terms of existing favourable staff:student ratios but may be difficult to achieve in terms of the physical infrastructure. New technology is here to stay – part of the anniversary exhibition was an impressive demonstration of the University Library’s CD-Rom facilities although the use made of these to date has been disappointing. The Faculty of Engineering is an honourable exception to this. In January, I had attended the celebrations by the National university of Lesotho – as a consultant to the Association of African Universities – of its Golden Jubilee. There was a substantial difference between the two occasions. At the Lesotho celebrations many other universities and donor organisations were involved. The Dar es Salaam celebrations were very much a national affair. I cannot help wondering whether the presence of people from abroad at the fund-raising dinner and dance in Dar es Salaam and the following day’s ceremonies might not have been beneficial.
John Theakstone
Consultant in Higher Education Management and Gender Planning