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Doomsday agenda : Keenja, land leases and election sentiments
2005-07-07 09:26:58
By Nimi Mweta
How far will the bus called Tanzania be driven in two opposite directions without coming to a halt, and shouting starts?
This is what many analysts fear might happen at some future date, but no one can say if such date is approaching, though the warnings are rising, or we are getting used to those warnings, and we know they are of no use.
It is a little hard to make out what lies in store, but examining the worries is just fair.
Perhaps it is the outcome of current land policies which will determine the possible limits, or infinity, of the peace and tranquility in the country, at least by certain impressions.
An editorialist in a serious daily paper in the national language was forewarning Agriculture and Food Security Minister Charles Keenja, after the minister appealed for people to come out to pick large chunks of land. The commentary deeply regretted it.
In several regards it can be said that cordoning off the land and placing it under a title holder, a commercial titled holder in the case of a foreign investor, or ‘land grabbing’ for local people, is largely considered to be a powder keg.
Just how far this is the case is to that extent unclear, as the matter did not arise at any stage in the run to get a CCM nominee for the presidential election.
Were it that serious a matter, it would be noticed.
There is hence a way in which this fear can be compared to other fears in the past, for instance, the fear of starting liberalisation, illustrated at a University campus address by the late Prof. Kighoma Malima.
He told students at an appearance in early 1982 that there are queues at meat shops because the price is still low, that is, the government ensures it stays low.
If one frees the market, queues go as price rations purchasing.
What the learned economist and socialist leader may not have noticed is that at the same time competition ensues between the various butcheries, each trying to sell as much meat as possible.
In that way prices are condemned to fall to average prices, that is, basketfuls of comparable goods and whose prices are set by the market.
So in the final analysis liberalisation boosts meat consumption by spurring competition, not bribes.
Another fear that occupied so many people a great deal, such that it was important to form a presidential commission to tour the whole country and take people’s views in a deep and systematic way was adopting multiparty political system.
How many wise people reminded Tanzanians of what happens if many parties were allowed, with all sorts of tribal and religious groups formed? Quite a few held their breath, even now...
Even without going further, it can (logically) be said that if liberalisation and adopting a multiparty system did not throw the country into chaos, leasing land to foreign investors won’t lead to that, either.
Nor for that matter will a take up of land by the country’s ‘elites’ lead to that situation, for it people aren’t likely to be so irked by foreigners (Europeans, Asians) on the land, locals won’t stir them up. Many are their very leaders.
Yet another issue about which it was said peace and tranquility won’t be assured was privatisation, as it was removing national control over some strategic sectors.
Many people believed that national security itself was dependent on our ability to act decisively if anything happens in that area, one element being the flow of crude oil and refinement in the country.
Without national control, we could fall victims of foreign plots....
After this serious hurdle to obtaining national consensus on the matter, which brought jitters and sweat on the brow of the IMF and the World Bank to bring it about, lesser impediments followed.
The bank sector was less difficult than it could have been on account of having opened a plethora of well capitalised foreign banks.
Otherwise the denationalisation of the National Bank of Commerce was almost touching off a crisis.
Even retired President Julius Nyerere came out of retirement to briefly lead a campaign about the issue, the third item he picked up in his retirement, or say the fourth.
The first was thrusting to a multiparty system, the second being the rejection of the parliamentary resolution to set up a government of Tanganyika within the Union, and the third, campaigning for the CCM presidential candidate in 1995. NBC was a post-1995 agenda.
Somehow it appeared that the breakup of the country’s largest bank sparked dangers for the economy, while such view remains to be authenticated.
Needless to say little of such danger occurred, neither in its sale nor in its breaking into three parts - NBC itself, then NMB and finally the foreign branch which became Twiga Bankcorp.
After this projection of doom, the next item on the doomsday agenda is the leasing out of land.
There are however some differences between these other issues and land, and that’s why its chaos causing potential is more real than privatising petroleum trade, etc.
At every point where land is being leased out, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that there is usually an ethnic group vying to control it, either for agriculture or pastureland, seasonal or all year round.
When property is also standing on it, local villagers claim it by right.
Still it is difficult to come up with a suggestion that may be somewhat better than current goverment policy, or rather Minister Keenja’s outlook.
In a strict economic sense, the best way would be to enfranchise each one of us with traditional land, pay a sum to liberate it from the clan, allowing sales and uplift land prices all over the country.
At the same time a slump in prices for regional land could occur on account of huge offer.
Were Tanzania abandoning Ujamaa in like manner as the Soviet Union, the latter option would be proper, as it is typical to issuing vouchers for tens or hundreds of shares of parastatals liquidated into a million shares to be distributed among workers.
Here we focus on an investor, in which case the peasant remains with his land, together with hostility to seeing foreigners anywhere near. So the peasant sector skips capital inflows.
What there is in store is that a ‘perverted’ integration in the global capitalist system occurs, as wide sections of society dream of ‘national’ control of land, identified with village, cooperative and government land.
There are rising contests on land use between farmers and herders, and within mixed economy communities, and at certain points governance is breaking down. And few rules exist on who gets 3,000 acres, or twice as much...
Yet there are good chances that little of a systematic disruption of consensus is likely, because pressures on land lead to detribalisation, emigration to urban centres.
So long as the wider economy is growing, and an efficient informal sector absorbs much of the labour, the system can withstand pressure, as elements of extended families will linger on. It is the quid pro quo to refusing emancipation and empowerment by capital.
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