The Peasant Question Under Nyerere’s Socialism

This essay is a succinct overview of the manner in which the first president of Tanzania attempted to address the peasant question in the country. In the immediate aftermath of independence (1961–1966), Nyerere’s government bought into the World Bank’s recommendation of village settlement schemes and range development to pull the peasantry and the pastoralist out of the backward, traditional agriculture to modern, more productive agriculture and pastoralism spearheaded by what the WB called progressive farmers. Selected ‘progressive farmers’ would be resettled in new environment administered by hired management which would teach them modern husbandry under close supervision. Village settlement scheme was established at a great cost. By 1966 it was clear that both these projects were disastrous. With the adoption of the country’s socialist blueprint, the government adopted the policy of ‘small is beautiful’, so to speak. Peasant agriculture would be improved through extension services and collective production in Ujamaa villages. Peasants were not particularly enthusiastic about Ujamaa villages. Very few were established making the party diehards, including Nyerere, exasperated. In 1973 the President ordered that living in villages was compulsory and thus began the forced villagisation from 1971–1974 by which time it was estimated that some five million people were forcefully resettled in the so-called development villages. In hindsight, it can be surmised that this move both discredited the Ujamaa project and Nyerere could have lost his peasant base. Beginning late 1970s and early 1980s the country experienced its worst economic crisis due to a variety of internal and external reasons providing imperialism and internal proto-bourgeoisies an entry point for imposing the notorious structural adjustment programmes. The essay briefly discusses the fate and the fight of the peasant under the subsequent neo-liberal phase predicated on the so-called free market, private property regime and private investment exposing the peasant to the vagaries of capitalism and its crisis. The essay ends with outlining some elements of an alternative discourse to spearhead the peasant struggle for autonomous, sovereign development. JEL Codes: P32, Q15, Q24