Tanzania: Awaiting the Harvest

Points and penalties in a poor society

The huts in Luhanga are made of mud and thatch, the roads are no more than dusty alleys. A village of about 2,500 inhabitants, Luhanga is an archetypical example of how President Julius Nyerere intends to build a Tanzanian socialism based on Africa's traditional extended family.

Reports TIME Correspondent David Wood: "Luhanga, in contrast to many Tanzanian villages, is well on its way to Nyerere's socialist goal. The volunteer village militia combats crime, the village-owned dispensary and clinic combat disease, the village-owned furniture shop and tinsmithy combat unemployment. A women's cooperative sells milk and soft drinks, while profits from the village's enterprises fund a school and day-care center. Although each family has a private Shamba (plot) on which to grow its own food, its members are encouraged to work in the communal enterprises. Instead of pay, they receive 'points,' which entitle them to a share of the profits from the village's communal projects. There is no television, but on several evenings John Haule, 30, the exuberant secretary of the Luhanga branch of the ruling party, shows films that teach villagers how to sew and farm or inspire them to be good socialists.

"For those who refuse to become part of the extended family, there is a price to pay. They are 'ostracized and denied important services. If their ailing children are sent to the tribal shaman rather than the clinic, the parents may be denied the permits required to take a long bus trip or change jobs. An unemployed villager who refuses a job in the tinsmithy or furniture shop will be banished from Luhanga because it is assumed that, out of work, he will soon start stealing."

Through villages like Luhanga, Nyerere hopes to prove that socialism can reorganize and modernize his country, which ranks among the world's 25 poorest. Tanzania's leaders have fashioned one of the world's most egalitarian societies. Thanks to sharply progressive taxes, the earnings ratio between the highest-and lowest-paid citizen is now 9 to 1, down dramatically from about 100 to 1 at the time of independence from Britain 16 years ago. A strict "leadership code" bars most civil servants from drawing more than one salary, owning rent-producing property, or riding around in limousines. Nyerere's own life-style must surely be one of the simplest of any chief of state; he is paid only $6,000 annually, and lives in a very modest beach house outside Dar es Salaam.

As a result of expanded, although still primitive medical care, life expectancy for the 16 million Tanzanians has risen from about 40 years in 1961 to 47 today. Education is free through university (though most children attend school only through the primary grades), and universal literacy by 1980 is a goal of the party.

The charter of Tanzanian socialism is the Arusha Declaration of 1967. Under its provisions, all major industries, banks, insurance companies, wholesale firms and import-export concerns were nationalized. The most radical measure was the resettlement of millions of peasants into ujamaa ("familyhood," in Swahili) villages, which in principle are supposed to resemble Luhanga. Initially, migration to these communities was voluntary, but only 2 million responded. Then, in 1973, Nyerere's party ordered everyone in the countryside to the villages. Army units loaded peasants into trucks. Those who balked saw their huts bulldozed or ignited. Scores, perhaps hundreds, died. Some who stubbornly remained on their lands became easy prey for lions, while those who tried to organize resistance were jailed. Today about 14 million Tanzanians live in ujamaa villages.

The upheavals created by the forced relocation and nationalization have pushed Tanzania's economy toward bankruptcy. A lack of consumer goods has encouraged well-organized smuggling; huge quantities of Tanzanian coffee, tea, cotton and cattle clandestinely find their way to free markets in neighboring Kenya. Peasants who have to rely on the state-run distribution network spend days carting their harvests to central crop-collection centers. Once there, they often camp for weeks, sleeping atop bales of cotton or mounds of corn, waiting for cash payments to arrive from Dar es Salaam.

Pervading every aspect of life is a lack of concern and enthusiasm. The secretary asleep at her desk and the reply "Gone out" have almost become national symbols of bureaucracy. Government officials are likely to be uninformed and unable to make a decision. A foreign business man complains: "I've wanted to buy things that Tanzania supposedly wants to sell. But the deals have fallen through because no one cared enough or was able to quote me a price." Managers are frustrated by laws making it impossible for them to dismiss or even discipline incompetent workers.

Although Nyerere's leadership code still keeps most top officials honest, below them, says a Tanzanian, "corruption has become institutionalized." Explains a resident of Dar es Salaam: "You can't get anything done without paying -- whether a permit for a plot of land or an import license. I even have to bribe to get my cess pool emptied."

Aid from the U.S., Western Europe, China, the Soviet Union and various international agencies, which last year totaled about $300 million, has helped keep Tanzania solvent. Officials insist, however, that their nation's difficulties are merely temporary. Explains a Tanzanian socialist: "I know it seems like a mess. The people lack enthusiasm because they often don't have the vision to see the promise of a better life. But that is changing slowly; the foundation is being built."

Nonetheless, there are signs that the regime is having second thoughts about the pace of its economic strategy. Dar es Salaam has endorsed a World Bank study that, among other things, calls on Tanzania to 1) spend less on social services and more on industrial and farm development, 2) pay peasants more for crops to spur productivity, 3) stop forcing villagers to join the ujamaa work brigades.

State-owned enterprises have already been warned that the government will no longer subsidize chronic losses. Early this year, 26 private companies jointly promised to begin new projects totaling $15 million -- admittedly a small sum but the first major investment by Tanzanian businessmen in a decade. The government has even been encouraging Western capital, something that might be viewed as a violation of Nyerere's cardinal principle that socialism equals self-reliance. But as the President ruefully explains: "There is a time for planting and a time for harvesting. I am afraid for us it is still a time for planting."

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