Let the people speak: Tanzania down the road to neo-liberalism

Tanzania is one of the few countries in Africa, which can still boast of political stability and a fair amount of openness. On reading these essays, the reader might wonder if this kind of debate and discussion is possible in an African country. Yet it is. Open intellectual discussions, so long as they were intellectual and did not take an organized political form, are one of Mwalimu’s lasting legacy. Whether it will survive it will survive the era of neo-liberalism will depend on how far we the intellectuals are prepared to nurture and keep it alive. The essays that I wrote in the second term of President Myinyi (1990-1995), some of which were quite open and critical, elicited a considerable amount of response and generated debate in the newspapers. But those I wrote in the second term (2000-2005) of President Mkapa, which underscored the dangers of imperialism and globalization had virtually no response. Perhaps it is the sign of the times. The National Project in Africa has been defeated and the imperial project is on the offensive. But there is bound to be a backlash, witnesses Latin America. African scholars are already debating the resurgence of nationalism and Pan-Africanism and searching for alternative Paths of development and democracy. The Tanzanian intellectual cannot continue wallowing in the shifting mirage of neo-liberal promises. It is my hope that at the least these essays will demonstrate, particularly to our younger to our younger generation of intellectuals, the historical tradition of debates and critical thought that is Tanzanian. Imperialism thrives on debunking our histories of national liberation struggles. We have to counter it by not only recovering history but also treating the present as history. We cannot know where we are going, or where we want to go unless we constantly remind ourselves and learn from where we are coming. I hope that these essays will make a small contribution towards understanding from where we are coming.