Browsing by Author "Ngware, Suleiman Shaaban Abdallah"

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    Village management and mobilisation for rural change: a case study of three villages in Hanang District
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 1979) Ngware, Suleiman Shaaban Abdallah
    The Arusha declaration articulated the type of (socialist) society envisaged by the party and government as well as the strategy Tanzania was to pursue to attain its socialist objectives. Tanzania’s strategy is one of socialism and self-reliance. However the building of socialism entails not only the realisation but also the implementation of certain basic principles and conditions. Among these are the abolition of capitalist relations of production and establishment of the public ownership of basic means of production. Furthermore, for a country like Tanzania where agriculture is the backbone of the economy, building socialism necessitates transformation of the entire rural sector particularly the agricultural sector. It is in this context that one has to see the role and importance of the villagisation programme since 1967 as a first crucial step towards socialist construction in Tanzania. At present over 13 million peasants live in villages. However sheer moving of people into villages is a necessary but hardly a sufficient condition to effect socialist rural transformation. The resettling of people into planned villages should have been accompanied by serious and systematic attempts at mobilizing and managing both human and material resources for socialist construction. But this could not easily be done. There are basic constraints which retard efforts towards the realisation of the above objective. Among these constraints is private ownership of the means of production which is dominant in the rural areas; such ownership relations are not conducive to effective management and mobilisation for transformation of the rural sector. Socialist rural transformation requires a social ownership of the means of production and basic instruments of labour. In addition the party’s rural policy has some ideological flaws and as a result the party is very weak at village level. The study shows that there is close correlation between property ownership and leadership in villages. Consequently it is the rich peasants who have monopolized village party and government leadership and such leadership frustrates efforts towards mobilizing the peasantry for communal production. There is no doubt class differentiation is now being hardened in the existing villages. Finally the low level of productive forces and poor utilisation of resources retard efforts towards