'I hope it will not be considered blasphemous to suggest that Marx might well have welcomed the freshness of this approach ' Professor Michael Lofchie We must look at Africa on its own terms and not through the looking glass of often irrelevant models derived from the experience of other societies. If we do this, and if we are alive to the social realities of the African continent , we shall recognize that the roots of Africa's under development are not found in the inter national system, but in the rural areas of that continent, where pre-modern social format ions hold capitalism at bay. Because of this fundamenta l fact socialism will have - I to serve as the main agent of modern ization. However, modern development can only take place if the social autonomy of the peasants is removed and to achieve this coercion will be required . Goran Hyden has taken the case of the peasants in Tanzania as the starting point of his arguments . He maintain s that by and large the peasantry of sub-Saharan Africa has not been effectively captured by other social classes. Land ownership has not been concentrated in the hands of a few big landlords. Land is not a market commodity . In Tanzania and many other parts of Africa there is still an active pre-capitalist, peasant mode of production in operation . Regimes, whatever their ideological orientation , are faced with the predica ment that development requires the curtailment of peasant power and freedom . In Africa he maintains that 'small is powerful' . Goran Hyden argues that the experience of building ujamaa in Tanzania on pre modern foundations has implications which our conventional conceptu alisation of the process of the socialist transfor mation cannot easily handle. Such arguments will excite controversy not least because Goran Hyden challenges the assumptions , and often the continued on back flap 0 435 96300 7 Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania UNDERDEVELOPMENT AND AN UNCAPTURED PEASANTRY GORAN HYDEN Social Science Research Adviser to the Ford Foundation in Nairobi LONDON HEINEMANN IBADAN NAIROBI Heinemann Educational Books Ltd 22 Bedford Square, London WCI B 3HH P.M.B. 5205, Ibadan · P.O. Box 45314, Nairobi EDINBURGH MELBOURNE AUCKLAND HONG KONG SINGAPORE KUALA LUMPUR NEW DELHI KINGSTON PORT OF SPAIN ISBN O 435 96300 7 (cased) ISBN O 435 96301 5 (paper) © Goran Hyden 1980 /: First published 1980 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hyden, Goran Beyond ujamaa in Tanzania. I. Tanzania - Economic conditions 2. Africa, Sub-Saharan - Economic conditions - Case studies 3. Peasantry - Tanzania 4. Peasantry - Africa, Sub-Saharan - Case studies I. Title 330.9'678 HC557.T3 ISBN 0-435-96300-7 Filmset in 'Monophoto ' Times IO on 11 pt by Northumberland Press Ltd, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Contents page Preface ix Introduction I The origin of this book 4 The organization of the book 7 References and notes 7 Small is powerful: the structural anomaly of rural Africa 9 The uniqueness of the African peasantry 9 The peasant mode of production 12 The economy of affection 18 Two contending modes of production 19 The limits of state power 23 The petty-bourgeoisie and the post-colonial state 28 Power, dependence and development 31 References and notes 34 2 Small rebuffs modern and big: peasants m colonial Tanganyika 38 The effects of early colonization 39 Peasants under German rule 42 British agricultural policies 45 Peasant reactions to enforced agricultural change 49 Colonial attempts at capitalist farming 62 Peasant intractability and political independence 64 References and notes 66 3 Big slips on small: peasant agriculture after uhuru 70 The transformation approach 71 The improvement approach 76 The nyarubanja issue 82 Petty-bourgeois politics and the peasants 86 Conclusions 91 References and notes 92 4 Small goes into hiding: peasants and ujamaa 96 The concept of ujamaa 98 Ujamaa in practice 100 Bureaucrats and ujamaa 105 Peasant attitudes to ujamaa 113 The effects of ujamaa 119 Conclusions 123 References and notes 125 5 Small the deceitful: government versus peasants after 1973 129 The villagization policy 129 Removal of the middlemen 132 Reorganization of party and government 134 The bureaucrats' approach to agriculture 141 Peasants and villagization 146 Conclusions 151 References and notes 153 6 Small as infiltrator: problems of developing the public sector 156 Background to Mwongozo 157 Workers, managers and Mwongozo 160 Effects of Mwongozo 163 Revival of discipline 167 Towards a socialist managerial elite 176 Conclusions I 78 References and notes 180 7 The pervasiveness of small: peasants and petty- bourgeois rulers in Africa 182 Intellectual escapism 183 The parameters of agricultural modernization 184 Agricultural modernization in Kenya 187 The limits of capitalism 194 The reasons for socialism 200 Liberation struggle and the peasants 201 Conclusions 204 References and notes 205 8 Is small really beautiful? The dilemma of socialist development 209 The 'trained incapacity' of the Westerner 210 The socialist challenge 220 The problems of cadre work 223 The role of bureaucracy 226 The limits of socialist planning 229 Peasants and development 231 Conclusions 232 References and notes 234 9 Why small remains unexplored : the inadequacy of prevailing paradigms 237 The growth of a nature artificielle 238 The rise of bourgeois positivism 240 The Marxist 'alternative' 244 The limits of the Marxist paradigm 248 Research, praxis and development 251 Conclusions 259 References and notes 260 Index 263