Table Of Content'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
