Tanzania, the Non-Aligned Movement and Non Alignment

Abstract

: This paper explores the ideology and agenda behind Tanzania’s active membership of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the emergence of a dynamic interaction between the Tanzanian government’s foreign policy strategy and the government’s domestic policy and legitimacy. The chapter charts Tanzania’s evolution “as a stable and important member of the non-aligned group” setting out Tanzania’s particular contribution at the NA Meetings at the UN and in other multilateral fora. The paper sets out the importance of the liberation of South Africa from white minority rule. Emancipation of all African brothers from white domination could not be confined to individual nation-states; this was a transnational moral and psychological imperative that encompassed racial justice and social justice; it concerned the right of self-determination of small nations. For Nyerere and his fellow Tanzanians, this was not simply reactive support for liberation movements facing oppression; it was pro-active support. The decolonisation of Africa demanded the structural economic transformation and a corresponding dedication to enhance the African agenda in the workings of the international system, to correct the skewed international political economy and division into antagonistic ideological blocs. The Non-Aligned Movement and the practice of non-alignment were thus a vital counterweight to marginalisation, insidious bias and continued exploitation by the developed European world. The paper provides an analysis of Tanzania’s position in the NAM in the latter part of the 1980s and 1990s after President Julius Nyerere stepped down from office. Also, the paper considers the relationship with the superpowers and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).