This collection, occasioned by one of the latest anniversaries, is a call for more extensive debate on Tanzania's experience of half a century. This experience of half a century is especially noteworthy as its early decades attracted much attention across the continent. It is especially fitting for this anniversary to be marked in these pages, as Tanzania, and its dramatic experiences in searching for a new direction of post-independence development and its central role in liberation struggles, was one of the key inspirations for the launching of this journal. Several of the founding editors of ROAPE had been fortunate to see at close hand these forces at work. Here three of those who have been associated with the Review from the outset offer their perspectives on those 50 years. These differing contributions can only be a small mark of respect to a significant date in history, with an emphasis on the early decades, and only a first step in any evaluation. The hope is that they will raise enough issues and unanswered questions to spark off a continued debate in these columns on the lessons and legacy of the Tanzania experience. Some articles and debate pieces, by Tanzanians as well as outside observers, and on the more recent periods, are provisionally lined up for later issues, but here is an open call for others to consider engaging in this dialogue.
These three contributors focus on the first decades: associated with Nyerere's leadership, and including the ‘ujamaa period’, when Tanzania proclaimed a socialist path and sought to redefine a self-reliant stance in its political and economic relations with the dominant forces in the world. Sadly, the commitment to public ownership of industry and finance, and to cooperatives in agricultural production and marketing, and an independent and sceptical relation with the international capitalist system had been reversed by 1986 – the same year that Nyerere resigned the presidency. These coincidences prompt an approach to the historiography of the last 50 years as a period divided clearly into two distinct and almost equal halves. It is hoped that these views of the first half of the period can still be instructive, and some effort is made in them to pose questions about this legacy of the 1961–86 period. But more importantly they are offered as a stimulus that will lead to further reflections in subsequent issues; especially invited are future contributions that concentrate on the second period. It may well be that future contributions might want to explore continuities as well as disjunctures, using a different periodisation.
Debate that aims at re-evaluating and advancing perspectives on a crucial half century offers several kinds of opportunities. First it can be an occasion for a straightforward setting out and setting to right of the historical record. In this ROAPE debate, different memories are offered of Nyerere's stance towards radical students and the liberation movements. A second, more analytical challenge is to the weight given to past dynamics and explanatory factors, and to the importance of certain, seemingly key, events. Thus, for instance, the contributions of Shivji and Saul here both put the policies and beliefs of the early years, and especially the perceptions and initiatives of Nyerere centre stage. Maybe other retrospectives might question how far outcomes are the translations of explicit policy ideas, and see other forces as being more decisive, whether they be global economic steamrollering or local people's initiatives pursued in a lightly structured social and political environment. Another example of possible widening of analytical agendas is to search for the gaps in what is well known about the recent past and identify what has not been thoroughly researched. This is the major focus of the final piece, ‘Fifty years of making sense of independence politics’.
A third challenge posed by recognising this milestone is to seek to illuminate not the past but the future. What are the legacies, the constraints and prospects for twenty-first century developments in Tanzania, given its particular history? Specifically, a whole range of investigations could be constructed by simply asking what difference the ujamaa experience, highlighted in these pieces, will make to today's options? For instance:
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If villages did not become production cooperatives, as the ujamaa model intended, do they offer a locational and legal basis for an alternative to total individualisation of land – or any other legacy?
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In a global crisis where banks and financial institutions do not offer security and can be a liability, and where privatised social infrastructure does not deliver to all, are there relevant lessons from the period of public ownership in Tanzania?
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Can education that is national, non-elitist, and wide-reaching be reconstructed?
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What institutional mechanisms can curb corruption and make leaders accountable?