Kelly Askew

African Socialisms and Postsocialisms

In the 1980s, historic political and economic shifts dealt a fatal blow to the foundational pillars of socialist systems worldwide. Unable to respond to the challenges from within and without to their attempted monopolization of economic and political power, socialist regimes succumbed to processes of structural adjustment, economic liberalization and political pluralism. Although scholars have focused in depth on the downfall of socialist and communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern and Central Europe, the impact of these changes on socialist states in Africa was no less monumental. The 1989 collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 contributed to the demise of several avowedly Marxist-Leninist African states such as Ethiopia and CongoPR. Having lost key strategic allies and the primary referents of socialist success, they consequently underwent regime change. In addition, ruling parties in several countries such as Benin, Mozambique and Zambia jettisoned most of the rhetoric of socialism that had been employed in the 1970s and 1980s and began to speak instead of ‘emerging markets’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘democratic participation’. On the ground, the impact of the changes was much more variegated. In some places, even as companies changed from state to private hands, socialist ideology endured, persisting, for example, in Tanzania, whose populist version of socialism (termed Ujamaa, literally ‘familyhood’) defied easy classification by capitalists and communists alike. Just as ‘democracy’ today has become a common idiom of political parlance, so too might ‘socialism’ be considered for Africa an idiom of the 1950s to the 1980s. During that time, no fewer than thirty-five countries out of fifty-three proclaimed themselves ‘socialist’ at one or other point in their history. So widespread was the commitment to

The Formal Divide: Customary Rights and the Allocation of Credit to Agriculture in Tanzania

ABSTRACT It is generally held that one mechanism to enable inclusive growth in Tanzania is enabling farmers to access credit to raise productivity and incomes. The formalisation of property rights in Tanzania is being undertaken by a multiplicity of actors at great expense to donors, individuals and the government. While there have been a variety of different justifications for allocating Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) to farmers in Tanzania, perhaps the most prominent argument is that it will enable farmers to finally overcome the divide between ‘informal’ customary rights and the formal banking sector. CCROs would provide the collateral that would induce banks to lend money to small-scale farmers. As part of a six-year investigation in Manyara, Mbeya and Dodoma regions, our research team evaluated the impact of formalisation on farmers’ access to credit. The paper will present the results while pointing to the continuing institutional and market imperfections that perpetuate the formal divide.

Building a peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the establishment of sovereignty in Tanzania, 1960–1964

In Building a Peaceful Nation, Paul Bjerk offers detailed insight into the critical first years of Tanganyika as a sovereign nation and the personalities and events that gave rise to the United Rep...

CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN RACE, CLASS AND NATION IN TANZANIA. JAMES R. BRENNAN, Taifa: making nation and race in urban Tanzania . Athens OH: Ohio University Press (pb

Relative to many a country in Africa, Tanzania has received considerable scholarly attention, especially with regard to the study of its – by most accounts successful – nation-building process. Surrounded on all sides by countries beset by ethnic, religious or other forms of politicized violence, the Tanzanian mainland (former Tanganyika) constitutes by contrast a ‘Haven of Peace’, as its commercial capital Dar es Salaam is named. The triumphal narrative touted by both state and sympathetic observers attributes its success to a variety of fortuitous factors: the charismatic and incorruptible first president Julius Nyerere; an ethnic landscape not dominated by one or two numerically preponderant groups; a lingua franca (Kiswahili) that – owing to its geographic breadth and ethnic ambivalence – serves well as a national language; and an unorthodox version of socialism configured to resonate with widespread cultural values. Two recent works, however, interrogate this widely accepted depiction of Tanzania. James Brennan’s Taifa: making nation and race in urban Tanzania (2012) and Ronald Aminzade’s Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Africa: the case of Tanzania (2013) delve into the oft-overlooked junctures in Tanzania’s history where conflict, not consensus, and exclusionary, not inclusionary, forces threatened to produce a very different outcome. Through close examination of archival materials and interviews and an intensive review of period newspapers, these authors complement each other in revealing a highly contingent, and by no means determined, process of state formation. They cover some of the same ground and exhibit different strengths, but nonetheless both make important contributions to Tanzanian historiography and, more generally, to scholarship on multi-ethnic or multiracial societies, nationalism, state–market relations and race relations in Africa. Nyerere’s insistence on a race-blind, ethnicity-blind and religion-blind nation met frequent challenge, as both Brennan and Aminzade show. Whereas Brennan focuses his attention on the British colonial and early postcolonial periods ending with the nationalization of urban housing in 1971, Aminzade tackles a more ambitious time frame, from German colonialism into British colonialism, then socialism and neoliberalism, ending with a spate of corruption scandals in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Both authors offer narratives that fall at an uncomfortable angle relative to conventional Tanzanian historiography. Focusing not on successes and outcomes, they train our attention on the frequently fraught negotiations over national identity and belonging that occurred both within the ruling party of CCM (Chama cha Mapinduzi or Party of the Revolution) and in the public sphere. Opposition to Nyerere’s non-racialism took various forms, from internal CCM factionalism to labour union protests, from student movements to newspaper critiques, and evoked varied responses from the neutralizing of opposing factions, the disciplining of students and Africa 85 (3) 2015: 546–67