My Africa Today

In a thought-provoking article in The Sunday Standard on December 24, 2006, Prof Ali Mazrui questioned Tanzania’s historical accounts especially in relation to the late Tanzanian President Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere’s public policy decisions.In an earlier article that was published in Britain titled: “Tanzania versus East Africa: A Case of Unwitting Federal Sabotage” Mazrui argued that Tanzania’s pursuance of socialism and self-reliance unintentionally destroyed the prospects for an East African Federation.

In most historical accounts Nyerere is said to have been willing to delay Tanganyika’s independence if it would lead to an East African Federation.

The extent to which Nyerere’s ujamaa (socialism) policy contributed to the collapse of the East African Community (EAC) is seldom mentioned.

Historians in Tanzania have not considered whether the country’s divergent policies were the main reason behind the collapse of the community.

Most historians blame former Ugandan dictator, the late Idi Amin, for the collapse of the EAC. In our distorted historical perspective Tanzania’ s hands are clean!

Mazrui left Nyerere’s Pan-Africanist image in tatters when he claimed the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar was initiated by the West to protect Anglo-American cold war interests. He dismissed historical accounts that it was a home grown initiative to build one Africa.

Mazrui suggested that Nyerere was not amused by the contention that the union was part of the cold war strategy and not a case for Pan-Africanism.

Our history books are inundated with information on how our shared history, common security interests, economic needs and a desire for one Africa guided the unification of Tanganyika with Zanzibar.

But Mazrui argued that the then US President Lyndon Johnston and British Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas feared that the archipelago of Zanzibar would be converted by the Soviets into a communist nation with the suport of the Soviet Union and Cuba. This assertion cannot be found any where in our history books.

The books briefly mention that foreign manipulations of Zanzibar were detrimental to mainland interests without singling out machinations of the Soviet Union.

A foreign-initiated unification of Tanganyika and Zanzibar meant that external interests were paramount rather than the need to respond to local interests.

This may explain why the much envisaged benefits of the union are nowhere in sight.

But the professor must account for espousing contradictory thoughts in his column.

His suggestion that Zanzibar was more communism-prone than mainland Tanganyika is not plausible. Zanzibar, which was ruled by the Sultanate of Zanzibar, was feudal in nature. It was ruled by feudalism apologists who were unlikely to change policy direction. The Zanzibar Marxists, who were determined to wrestle power from the rulers of the time, depended on the Sultan’s moral and financial support.

In other words whichever direction the wind of political change in Zanzibar blew the colonial legacy of the economic blueprint of the Sultan would be firmly unaltered.

Socialist Tanganyika was more likely to fall under Soviets control and be a worry to Western hegemonies than Zanzibar. It is likely that the unity was brought about by the confusion in Zanzibar and Tanganyika’s experimentation with the virtues of an egalitarian society.