7
From the Arusha Declaration to the Zanzibar Declaration
With the First Phase Government there were many problems, especially with supplies. At that time miradi [projects] had to be hidden. The Arusha Declaration said that leaders were not permitted to do miradi . If they did this they were violating the Leadership Code. With the Second Phase Government one can support oneself with one's income by doing miradi . Mwinyi says that the government doesn't have the ability to provide adequate wages and people should supplement their incomes with other means.
College administrator, Dar es Salaam
The year 1990 marked a significant turning point for Tanzania's ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Party. That year, for the first time since independence, the party began to contemplate multipartyism and to dismantle policies that had been implemented to bolster one-party rule and enhance statism. By 1992 independent parties were allowed to register. The struggle that emerged in the 1980s between the government and the party over policies affecting the informal economy shaped the timing and nature of the new policies that were adopted. For the most part the party acted as a restraint on the government, which was facing more immediate external and internal pressures to liberalize. Nowhere was this conflict more apparent than in the party's footdragging over revising the Leadership Code of the Arusha Declaration after the government had already adopted measures that contradicted the essence of the Leadership Code.
The CCM finally abandoned the Leadership Code in what came to be known as the Zanzibar Declaration of 1991, which fundamentally modified the 1967 Arusha Declaration and challenged the original objectives of the document. The symbolic importance of these changes cannot be emphasized strongly enough, for the Arusha Declaration was the central document in establishing the egalitarian, self-reliant, and socialist orientation that Tanzania had adopted. The CCM, for example, lifted key restrictions on its members with second incomes. CCM members represented 11 percent of the population (2.5 million members in 1988) in a country where
many jobs, especially in the civil service and in parastatals, required party membership.
When the Leadership Code was first implemented, it was aimed at preventing party leaders from becoming part of a privileged group that exploited people through hiring labor or renting property. The code was an attempt to stem the growing gap between the well-to-do and the poorer members of society. It was also an attempt to prevent personalistic forms of rule—that is, the exchange of personal favors for political loyalty—that were widespread in other parts of Africa and were beginning to emerge in Tanzania.
The conditions of the Leadership Code were not only party policy, they were made into an amendment of the country's constitution in 1967. Members of Parliament would have to make a declaration to the Speaker that they had agreed to comply with the Leadership Code and to submit a sworn statement detailing their finances. Those who refused to make the declaration or whose statement failed to meet the requirements of the attorney general could face a court petition to vacate their seats. Only one member of Parliament failed to make the declaration by the time of the deadline (Cliffe 1972, 254).
When the Leadership Code was first implemented it was aimed primarily at senior party and government leaders and high- and middle-ranking civil servants, but gradually it came to apply to all leaders and party members who received a salary of more than TSh 1,060.70. The sum was fixed in 1973 and would have included all government and parastatal employees at high and middle levels at that time. By the early 1990s, with the raising of the minimum wage, this included all employees in government or government-owned enterprises (Shaidi 1991, 125).
According to the Leadership Code, party leaders and their spouses could not be associated with capitalist practices. More specifically, they were forbidden to own shares in any company, hold directorships in privately owned businesses, rent out houses, receive two or more incomes, and hire anyone for the purposes of business, trade, or one's profession.[1]
According to the Arusha Declaration (Nyerere 1968, 36):
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Members of the TANU National Executive Committee; Ministers; Members of Parliament; senior officials of organizations affiliated to TANU; senior officials of parastatal organizations; all those appointed or elected under any clause of the TANU Constitution; councillors; and civil servants in the high and middle cadres. (In this context 'leader' means a man, or a man and his wife; a woman, or a woman and her husband.)
The hiring of casual labor or seasonal labor on small farms was permitted, but not that of permanent or full-time labor. Leaders could, however, transfer property to a trust in their children's name. No mention was made of hiring domestic servants, which was ostensibly permitted because no profits were made from their labor. Leaders were given one year to meet the stipulations of the Arusha Declaration.Leaders had to sign a declaration agreeing to abide by the conditions of the code. In 1973 a Committee for the Enforcement of the Leadership
Code was formed by parliamentary decree to investigate violations, call on the police to arrest people who did not voluntarily respond to summons, and expel members from the party if found in violation of the code (Shaidi 1991, 126).
Little is known about why Julius Nyerere chose to issue this declaration at the time that he did and why it took the form that it did. There have been widely diverging interpretations of this declaration, including those of Lionel Cliffe (1972), Michaela Von Freyhold (1979), Goran Hyden (1980), Bismarck Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt (1979), Cranford Pratt (1976), John Saul (1979), and Issa Shivji (1976).
In part the Leadership Code appears to have been a legitimating move, for it took place at a time when many other African regimes that had come to power with independence were being toppled in military coups. The form that the declaration took, with its strong emphasis on egalitarianism while undercutting any possibilities for leaders to accumulate wealth, can only be seen as an attempt to give the impression that Tanzanian society was moving toward classlessness. The party leaders hoped that it would give the party the moral authority it felt it needed to claim dominance in Tanzania's political order.
Agreement on the Arusha Declaration was far from unanimous, but very little open opposition was visible at the time of its pronouncement. Part of the explanation for the lack of expressed opposition has to do with the nature of the leadership and the weakness of Tanzanian capital. The leaders came from the group of urban civil servants, teachers, farmers, and traders who had formed the base of TANU's mobilization for independence. They were not capitalists themselves, they did not have strong allegiances to capital in Tanzania, and, for the most part, they did not represent the interests of African capital, which was extremely weak at the time. There were only a few hundred rural capitalists at the time of independence, most of whom were scattered around the country away from Dar es Salaam and did not act as a cohesive interest group, unlike their counterparts in Kenya at the time. It is also possible that some may have seen no reason to oppose a move that reduced the competitiveness of foreigners and Asians because this might open up new business opportunities for them in the future (Mueller 1980, 13, 16). The leaders saw the state not only as the main means through which they could advance the nation but also as the main way in which they could advance personally. Tanzania was not seen as attractive to foreign investment at the time, and the leaders grabbed the idea of self-reliance in what Mueller describes as an attempt to "make an ideological virtue out of what they found to be
politically necessary and economically expedient to insure their own survival" (1980, 15).
Disaffection with the declaration was not voiced at the time because any open criticism would have been severely muted. Only twenty years after the promulgation of the Arusha Declaration did people begin to feel free to talk about opposition to the decree. One former member of Parliament, who later became an influential businessman, was with Nyerere when the Arusha Declaration was announced. In an interview in 1988 he explained that "the Arusha Declaration was something dictated. Nyerere did not discuss the program at all, he just announced it. It was like someone holding a sharp knife on one's side in such a way that it could not be pulled away without getting hurt. Some left the country, like Kambona. He criticized from the outside, but that was ineffective. Some really supported the policy at first, but then when they realized what the Arusha Declaration was all about, they became bitter."[2]
No. 7.21, interview by author, 11 June 1988, Dar es Salaam.
This particular former parliamentarian opposed the declaration because of what he feared it would do to the economic future of the country, but it appears that much of the resistance came from members of Parliament who were concerned about the loss of personal economic privilege. This concern over private wealth was evident in a booklet published in 1967, featuring questions by members of Parliament regarding the Arusha Declaration answered by Julius Nyerere (United Republic of Tanzania 1967). Not surprisingly, the majority of questions concerned the Leadership Code. The preoccupation with the code is even noted in the four-sentence preface to the pamphlet, which offers the observation that "unfortunately almost all the questions received related to just one section of the Arusha Declaration—that on qualifications for leadership. There was not even one question on Socialism and Self-Reliance."
At the district- and town-council level about one-quarter of the councillors withdrew from political office as a consequence of the declaration (Cliffe 1972, 255). One junior minister, Mr. Mtaki, resigned to keep his job with fan international company. Nine other members of Parliament were expelled from the party in 1968 for opposing "the party line," with no further explanation. Their expulsion ensured their removal from the Parliament. Although their background and circumstances varied, they shared an outspoken opposition to the policies that were being adopted and flagrant resistance to authority (Bienen 1970, 437).
At the same time, Oscar Kambona, the secretary general of TANU and minister of foreign affairs, was also expelled from the party, but by the time of his expulsion he had already gone into self-exile. He claimed then
and continued to claim that the basis of his opposition was to the one-party state, the "authoritarian rule of Nyerere," and "the limitation on personal and political freedoms, the decline of the rule of law, the growth of corruption in public life and the widespread maladministration in the public services."[3]
Africa Events, May 1985, 6.
His departure is significant in the period after the Arusha Declaration, for he was the second-highest-ranking individual in the country at the time.Those who did not toe the line suffered various forms of repression and ostracism. According to Kambona, his two brothers served ten years under arrest and were released only after repeated interventions by international human-rights groups.[4]
Inter Press Service, 11 December 1990.
In 1968 the National Assembly member who successfully led a parliamentary struggle to restore some of the income lost by leaders with the Arusha Declaration was purged from the party (Resnick 1981, 101). Bibi Titi Mohammed, Michael Kamaliza, and Paul Rupia were other prominent leaders who were casualties of the Arusha Declaration.Impact of the Leadership Code
The most serious consequence of the Arusha Declaration was not so much that it undercut the leaders' ability to accumulate wealth but that it discouraged private-capital accumulation and investment by the smallest and largest businesses alike. Not only did it hurt foreign investment, but, more importantly, it put a damper on the formation of national capital. Capitalism, as Mueller argued, was "stunted in its most backward form" (1980, 20). From 1965 to 1970 the private-sector share of all monetary fixed-capital formation fell from 60 percent to 30 percent (Hartmann 1991, 11). Meanwhile, the public sector grew, with parastatals increasing in number from 64 in 1967 to 139 by 1974 (Coulson 1982, 272–74).
The Arusha Declaration also put a serious damper on open discussion and criticism. The members of Parliament had been one of the main sources of criticism on behalf of their constituents when it came to issues of equity regarding prices, incomes, and education. This kind of debate over local equity concerns was gradually suppressed as manifestations of authoritarianism became more prevalent (Resnick 1981, 81). Because dominant ideology was proworker and procultivator, any criticism of this was considered opposition to ujamaa, or the broader socialist orientation of the country. Moreover, the Leadership Code was seen as evidence that the leaders themselves were willing to submit to the requirements of ujamaa . As Von Freyhold put it, the code provided a rationale for suppressing
workers' wage demands and banning strikes, because workers' funds were needed for "socialist construction" in rural areas. The "unemployed" could be thrown into the villages to build ujamaa , and wealthier farmers who opposed various bureaucratic measures could be told they were thwarting the country's policies. Similarly, the declaration provided the justification for the villagization campaigns and the suppression of poor farmers (Mueller 1980, 20; Von Freyhold 1979, 120).
In the late 1970s in a rare and bold move, Sosthenes Maliti, a retired lawyer who had worked for the government for ten years, published a book, Honest to My Country , under the pen name Candid Scope. In this book he criticized the Arusha Declaration, the Detention Act, the extensive presidential powers, and the lack of press freedom. The deferential way in which the book was written, with page after page of praise for Nyerere, the government, and the party and its leaders, is indicative of the fear he undoubtedly felt in expressing his criticisms. It is a fear he addresses in his discussion of the limits on freedom of expression, in which he captures much of what those who disagreed with the policies of the country must have felt (c. 1978, 22):
Our people's way of life shows an unfortunate spirit of fear to speak about politicians and politics. Fear to express what one believes in good faith to be the correct opinion on the trend of affairs in the nation. There are fears of ending up in "keko, " i.e., detention; fears of "unamulikwa" — sort of being spied upon; fears of losing a nice job; fears of missing a promotion; and fears of losing some favour or other, if you dare to air a view which contradicts the authorities or the "official line"; even if you believe very strongly that your opinion would be of vital benefit to the nation as a whole. This unfortunate spirit of fear so badly injures the character of our people to an extent that it may be bad for the national interest as a whole.
The code had other direct consequences. Sheer economic necessity had made the party Leadership Code policy on two incomes untenable for people even in the higher-income brackets, who had also suffered a dramatic reduction of living standard with the crisis, while their salaries were lowered and heavily taxed. By 1989 a top-ranking minister took home little more than $25 a month in a country where the cost of living (especially of consumer goods) was close to that in the United States![5]
Africa Report, April-March 1989.
As the economic situation became more difficult in the late 1970s and early 1980s, managers had the choice of either engaging in corruption (embezzlement, graft, extortion) or starting a sideline business with their savings, with funds diverted from the workplace, or with a little of both. The dilemma managers and government leaders faced was that their households wouldbarely survive if they simply lived off the salary they earned by running a state institution or a company. Although many middle-level and top-ranking managers diverted funds from state companies and institutions to finance their private businesses, others worked hard to sustain modest businesses by making and selling chicken feed, raising cows for milk sales, raising chickens for meat and eggs, tailoring, or engaging in agricultural production on the outskirts of the city. A few were able to pursue even larger businesses and left their positions in the government early on to do so on a full-time basis.
One of the most damaging consequences of these restrictions was to blur the lines between gainful sideline activities and outright corruption because the authorities treated them as the same kind of violation. Party members of all income groups had little choice but to engage in sideline activities, but they were forced to conceal them and lie about them. One woman, a party representative at the foreign-owned company she worked for, was responsible for reprimanding other employees who, preoccupied with their sideline projects, were not putting in a full day's work. At the same time she herself had a sideline chicken business. She finally decided to leave her party post and eventually her job because, as she put it, "I found myself and others doing what we had to do in order to survive."[6]
No. 7.5, interview by author, 5 October 1987, Mikocheni, Dar es Salaam.
She could not reconcile the conflict between the party directives and the realities of life for herself and her fellow employees.The code also played a role in forcing professionals to leave the country to seek better incomes in neighboring countries or in the West. Drops in real wages meant that they could no longer live on their salaries, but they were not permitted legally to engage in sideline enterprises or hire others to do so for them. The ranks of Tanzania's physicians and university academics were seriously undermined through the voluntary exile of hundreds if not thousands of professionals.
Instead of eliminating capitalism, the Arusha Declaration and the growing state monopoly of various economic enterprises simply increased opportunities for bribery, rent seeking, and clientelism. As the exparliamentarian businessman explained in 1988, "Today, only those unscrupulous leaders who are protected by the system pray for the Arusha Declaration to continue."[7]
No. 7.21, interview by author, 11 June 1988, Dar es Salaam.
In the 1970s and early 1980s employees were harassed, questioned, and spied on. Those who were found to have sideline incomes were also threatened with suspension from their jobs. The majority who were punished for violating the code were ordinary party members, according to Shaidi.
Even when economic liberalization began in the mid-1980s, it was not accompanied by ideological concessions that would have suggested a retreat from socialism. In fact, as late as 1985 Nyerere said in an interview that "as far as socialism is concerned, there is nothing that we would not do in the same way. We announced socialism in the Arusha Declaration. If I was asked to rewrite it, I would change some commas, but nothing else. If possible, I would simply strengthen our recommitment to socialism."[8]
Africa Report, November-December 1985, 4.
These were prominent themes in his speech at the October 1987 party conference at Kizota. There he argued (Nyerere 1987, 7–9):Economic differences among our people … are beginning to be conspicuous…. But more noticeable to people suffering economic hardship (as most honest people now do) is the beginnings of real individual wealth in a poor country like ours…. Private wealth in our poor country still brings with it a question mark about the probity of the possessor. We still ask "how is it that this or that Government or Party leader seems to be rich"? And we suspect such people either of taking part in smuggling and breaking the Leadership Code, or of breaking all the Tax Laws of our country…. We have begun to get truly wealthy people, and we ask where they got their wealth from for it is not easy here in Tanzania for an honest person—even a trader—to get rich quickly.
Not everyone shared Nyerere's view that capitalism inherently bred corruption. Many viewed the 1970s and 1980s as evidence of how state monopolies themselves fostered corruption, especially as the crisis deepened. With options for legal, private-sector activities increasingly curtailed or discouraged, those who pursued these activities often did so within the context of the informal economy. As the incomes of even the highest government officials fell far below the cost of living, they too began to pursue sideline incomes. By the mid-1980s the government openly encouraged sideline businesses to help people get by, while the party remained staunch in its support of the Leadership Code.
Party leaders were reported saying that people who kept poultry and engaged in other small projects were "enemies of our socialist policies." In a 1987 interview Selemani Kitundu, chairman of the Commission for the Enforcement of the Leadership Code, said that public leaders (which included most employees because by the mid-1980s most workers made more than TSh 1,060) were prohibited from having secret incomes and engaging in businesses that condoned the exploitation of one person over another. Kitundu also criticized leaders who used their relatives to run huge businesses on their behalf.[9]
Daily News, 29 July 1987.
This view was echoed by a member of the party's Central Committee at the time. I asked whether the policy that prohibited second incomes was not unrealistic, given the present state of the economy. The leader's response was that there was nothing wrong with the policy. People simply were not implementing the policy correctly. He argued that if one were to have two jobs, one's formal job would suffer and one would end up cheating the state. If one employed someone to do one's sideline job, then one would be violating the Leadership Code because one would be making money off the sweat of another person, which was exploitation. He added: "Even if all the Muslims started eating pork, it wouldn't make eating pork right for Muslims."[10]
No. 7.28, interview by author, 12 October 1987.
Many of those who opposed economic reforms were concerned that these measures had been taken at the expense of the poor. They feared that Tanzania would forfeit the gains it had made in narrowing the gap in formal incomes and in fostering an ethic of equality within the country's political culture if economic reforms were implemented.
A Culture of Noncompliance
By the mid-1980s the Leadership Code affected most urban employees, because the minimum wage exceeded the 1973 income figure that stipulated who had to abide by the code. The inflexible expectations of the party leadership regarding the code contributed to the widening of the gap between party policy and popular sentiments. A culture of noncompliance, including rumors, gossip, and satire, became more prevalent. The vignette that opens this book, in which minibus passengers transformed themselves into a wedding party to avoid police harassment, actually became a commonplace occurrence in Dar es Salaam in the early 1980s. Even the government-run newspaper Daily News ran a column by a popular satirist, Adam Lusekelo, who frequently wrote about the pervasiveness of sideline projects, scams, and their social consequences. The, columns were on such topics as "Moonlighting Is Now In," "How We Used to Beat the Ban," "Guarding One's Kraal," and "'Kukus ' [chickens] Build Houses?"[11]
Daily News, 10 May 1987, 2; 9 August 1987; 20 September 1987.
New Swahili words emerged to describe the various economic activities people engaged in and the way they carried them out. Tanzania itself was popularly referred to as Bongoland ; that is, the land where one needs smarts to survive. Mradi , or project, had its origins in the 1970 Education for Self-Reliance campaign gardening projects for schoolchildren and in the large-scale United Nations projects that were initiated in the same
period. The term was appropriated and became the common word for small, income-generating projects in the 1980s. Other terms associated with miradi also gained in usage in the 1980s, including shughuli ndogo ndogo, biashara ndogo ndogo, and miradi midogo midogo (small businesses), and mitumba (secondhand clothes). Mteja (the patient of a healer) became the common term for customer or client in the 1980s.
In the 1990s other words relating to the informal sector increased in usage. Mama Ntilie (literally, Mama, put food on a plate) was used to refer to women who sold pastries and other foodstuffs in roadside magenge (kiosks). Wamachinga originally referred to Mozambicans who had migrated to Mtwara and then to Dar es Salaam in search of work. By the mid-1990s its meaning had broadened to all young street vendors who sold goods they carried around with them because they had no permanent business location.[12]
William Mjema, personal communication, 30 August 1995.
Dagaa (small fish) referred to young street children and vendors.A word that had been used to describe how a traditional healer walked a patient around, kulangua , took on an entirely new meaning as price hiking became commonplace in the early 1980s, and ulanguzi , the practice of hiking prices, became part of people's everyday language. It then declined in use by the end of the decade as trade liberalization eliminated the price gouging. Bribery or extortion came to be known as obtaining a little mchuzi (gravy). The party's initials, CCM, came to symbolize in popular discourse Chukua Chako Mapema (Take yours as fast as you can) or Chama Cha Majangili (the party of crooks). These terms represent more than linguistic developments. They also belie a value system and a normative view of what the rules of the game should be.
Many gray areas and ambiguities become apparent in analyzing popular noncompliance with the Leadership Code. It is worth trying to sort them out because not all sideline activities were the same. In the first chapter I made a distinction between licit economic activities, which have a legal counterpart in the society in question and illicit economic activities, in which there is no legal counterpart. This distinction is even made in Swahili between the terms miradi and mipango . Most informal sideline projects, like raising chickens, operating a kiosk, and tailoring, are considered licit. Even though they are commonly not registered, licensed, or taxed, they can be carried out legally in Tanzania and therefore are referred to as miradi . in contrast, illicit activities popularly known as mipango usually involved one's place of employment. In the 1980s mipango , which previously just meant plans or designs, took on the added meaning of schemes or scams; that is, illicit ways of making money through
one's formal job. Where there were shortages of commodities and services, people who worked in parastatals or in the public sector sometimes used their jobs to make "a little extra"—or a great deal extra in the case of well-connected employees in better positions. This "little extra" has sometimes been described as a "'veiled' redistribution from the public sector resources into private pockets" (Ndulu 1988, 8).
Scams, like projects, were usually motivated by the need to make up the difference between the cost of living and one's paltry wage. However, increasing one's income by taking bribes (illicit informal activities) differs significantly from augmenting it by farming, selling services, or making commodities to sell (licit informal activities). A ticket agent who, claiming a shortage of seats, inflates the price of a bus ticket offers no service of his or her own, in contrast to a man I interviewed who made maps with his own inputs and sold them at the government-owned map store where he worked.
The scams varied from one workplace to another in the 1980s. In one hospital the laboratory technicians made a minimum of TSh 200 ($2 at 1988 exchange rates) a day from patients who paid TSh 50 to have their blood-test analysis sped up. They called it chakula cha daktari (food for the doctor—anyone donning a white coat risks being loosely referred to as "doctor"). One customs official admitted to me that on a good day he could bring home TSh 3,000 for "facilitating" the clearance of imported goods and claimed that higher-ranking customs officials could make as much as TSh 10,000 a day.[13]
No. 7.32, discussion with author, 22 January 1988, Dar es Salaam.
A woman who worked in the foreign-exchange section of a bank indicated to patrons where they could have money changed on the black market and in this way received her "cut into the action" of the black marketeers. Especially during peak travel periods, people selling bus, railway, and airline tickets would often ask passengers for a little extra in order to guarantee them a seat.These kinds of scams were by no means new in Tanzania, nor were they peculiar to Tanzania. However, their pervasiveness in the country was new. When asked why they involved themselves in these forms of petty hustling, people invariably answered that their wages were low and that they had to make up the difference somehow. In many peoples' minds, the "hustle" was a way of claiming what they believed was owed them. In a discussion about business licenses one party secretary told me, "You know our problems. I am asked to check licenses in my area. That day I haven't eaten anything. I come to turn you in and you plead and say, 'Please let me go. I will give you 200 shillings.' Well, I let the person go and take the money. People don't care about the law."[14]
No. 7.29, interview by author, 6 November 1987, Manzese, Dar es Salaam.
Another worker expressed thelink between wages and scams in reference to the police, who are notorious for extracting bribes: "There are no police in Tanzania. You have to bribe them. It would be better to pay them money as wages than to pay them bribes."[15]
No. 4.146B, interview by author, 7 December 1987, Manzese, Dar es Salaam.
I spoke with one businessman who was a beer distributor and worked at the Ministry of Interior as a civil servant. He set out to explain to me the complexities of Tanzania's political economy. Believing that I was a naive, young, foreign woman he started with the basics: "Let me tell you, my dear, it could take more than a lifetime to understand Tanzanian politics. It is so complicated. Nothing is as it seems. There is so much involved beneath it all. If you say you want to study economics, you can never really know many things. We all do something to survive. We have to. You can't get anything done in this country if you follow the rules. Like me."[16]
No. 7.32, interview by author, 25 July 1987, City Center, Dar es Salaam.
This was my cue to ask what he did, whereupon he proceeded to explain how he and other beer distributors would pay mechanics at the government-owned breweries not to fix the equipment when it broke down. This created artificial shortages and raised the price of beer.
The higher the position one held, the greater the opportunities for such illicit scams. For example, parastatals were riddled with clientelistic practices, as Deborah Bryceson points out. The general manager and supporting managers and accounting staff had the best access to parastatal resources and were in the best position to misuse public vehicles, falsify records of purchases, engage in favoritism in allocating goods, misappropriate Treasury funds, charge the parastatal for questionable imprests (per diem for out-of-town business or conferences), commission projects involving kickbacks, embezzlement, and outright theft (Bryceson 1990, 189).
The emphasis on high-positioned people involved in corruption is not meant to imply that low-ranking employees were not also culpable. However, unlike better-positioned citizens, the poorest members of society were most victimized by these scams and had the least opportunities to engage in them. Unlicensed street vendors frequently had to dole out bribe money to City Council militia who threatened them with arrest; applicants for business licenses often had to pay bribes to obtain the necessary forms and papers.
The poor not only suffered tangible monetary losses as a result of bribes and extortion, they also experienced these practices as a personal affront. Bribery violated societal notions of economic justice in which the poor ought to pay the least for whatever good or service is being sought. Moreover, to demand payment so blatantly was taken as an obvious offense.
In addition to the class dimensions of scams, the strengthening of the legal private sector helped bring pressure to bear on those using their public-sector positions to enhance themselves illegally. For example, in 1991 the Tanzania Drivers Association publicly urged the government to crack down on pirate taxi operators, who were using government and parastatal vehicles in what the association called "lucrative and unlawful business." These operators were charging the same rate as formal taxis but were not paying any tax. Most pirate taxis were said to belong to highly placed government officials.[17]
Daily News, 23 June, 1991.
Given these economic realities, the equation of corruption with licit sideline activities only compounded people's frustrations. As far as the Leadership Code was concerned, urban dwellers saw the issue in pragmatic terms, as a matter of survival rather than as one of adhering to an abstract ideological principle. Moreover, given the fact that most civil servants earned so much more income from their sideline activities than from their jobs, it is surprising that they chose to remain employed at all. Most people who engaged in sideline projects saw them as an honest way to earn a living and found the notion absurd that they might be undermining the government or party in some way.
One typical response to our question concerning what people thought of the party policy on two incomes was that of a messenger working at the Tanzania Harbors Authority who made soap as a sideline activity. "Our party should change its policy on that point," he said. "We have to survive, and our wages are not enough. We don't want to offend the party, but we have no option."[18]
No. 1.99, interview by Salome Mjema, 3 October 1987, Kurasini, Dar es Salaam.
In 1987 the messenger was still making the old minimum wage of TSh 810 a month even though the wages were supposed to have been raised by TSh 450.Several things become apparent when one begins to look at popular perceptions of the issue. The class and status dimensions are strikingly clear in the comments of one Dar es Salaam resident who wrote a letter to the Daily News in which he responded to the suspension of 102 Zanzibari workers for carrying out sideline activities:
The practice of indulging in personal miradi has become very common these days. We therefore need to ask the question why? Is it because our workers have suddenly become so greedy, bent on making as much money and as fast as possible? It is true that there are some workers especially the top bureaucrats, who are in a position to accumulate money rapidly through corrupt practices…. Most of the Government workers in the middle and lower levels, however, are hardly in a position to accumulate much…. The cost of living of the middle and lower income workers has increased nearly twice as fast as their wages since 1969. This is not taking
into consideration the fact that many of the essentials can now be obtained only at "black market prices." [They] have to choose either to reduce their consumption below the minimum necessary for survival, return their families to the rural areas, or find other means of supplementing their incomes through petty corruption or petty personal businesses.[19]
Daily News, 2 September 1981.
Clearly, to this individual the issue of sideline jobs was not one of corruption for the majority of citizens for whom survival was the key issue. Instead, it was government officials who had opportunities to engage in real corrupt practices and enrich themselves at the expense of the citizens. The hypocrisy of the double standard was underscored by one local college administrator who explained: "Men of politics are cheats. The big shots in the party have three incomes themselves, and they are telling us not to have projects."[20]
No. 2.4, interview by author, 10 September 1987, Upanga, Dar es Salaam.
The administrator, who himself had a kiosk, chicken business, and piggery, took refuge in government policy in arguing against the party policy.Moreover, ordinary citizens saw themselves as victims of rules for which they had not been consulted. If they did not comply, it was because they felt their bargain with the state, such as it was, had been violated by the state. They had not received adequate wages and therefore had to engage in sideline enterprises, they received woefully inadequate services and therefore evaded taxes.
The nature of this violated "contract" between officials and ordinary citizens is seen clearly in the comments people made about the Leadership Code and about the terms of their employment. For example, one civil servant who worked at a ministry office was asked by a fellow employee why he frequently was late for work. He responded with this rationalization: "If I come to work late, I work only two hours and then leave. What are they paying me? They aren't paying me anything. I have to take care of my projects in the morning. What they are giving me [TSh 4,000 a month] is enough only for two hours work a day."[21]
No. 7.30, discussion with Salome Mjema, 10 September 1987, Dar es Salaam.
It would not be fair, however, to suggest that all employees engaged in sideline projects at the expense of their jobs in this way. For most industrial workers, leaving one's job early or coming in late was not even an option.In sum, there were many indistinct boundaries between licit informal activities like small-scale enterprises and the use of formal jobs to profit through illicit activities. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between ordinary citizens and higher-ranking officials and government employees. These distinctions should be made in the disparities in opportunities to engage in corrupt practices and in the scale of corruption. It should also be noted that the poor usually suffered disproportionately from corrupt
practices, which meant that low-income citizens generally experienced more intensely the hypocrisy, double standards, and injustice of a system in which they were told to abide by rules that were not followed by those who made the rules. This kind of hypocrisy led to the belief among ordinary citizens that the leaders had not lived up to their end of the bargain, having established the rules.
The Struggle Between Party and Government Over the Leadership Code
By the mid-1980s illicit and, particularly, licit informal economic activities became so pervasive that they could no longer be ignored by the government, while the CCM remained intransigent on its policy. Dean McHenry refers to this conflict between the CCM and government leadership as one between ideological and pragmatic socialists (1994, 23). The CCM leaders lumped both licit and illicit activities into the same category of "capitalist exploitative" practices and refused to separate the two, thus offending many people who felt they were engaged in legitimate, albeit unlicensed, income-generating activities. Moreover, when efforts were made to curb corruption, they started out with the pretense of targeting the wealthier culprits, but invariably ended up going after the poorer members of society, thus exacerbating tensions between those tied to and protected by the state and those outside those networks. For example, an Economic Sabotage Act was passed in 1983 and revised in 1984 and a National Anti-Economic Sabotage Tribunal was set up to investigate and try offenders of economic crimes like price hiking, hoarding, and smuggling. Initially the efforts of this tribunal were welcomed, but they quickly lost popular support when they became directed against ordinary people, most of whom participated to some degree in these parallel markets. What compounded frustrations was the fact that the largest operators, who were taking advantage of the crisis to make large profit margins, were left untouched by the anticorruption campaign. These actors undoubtedly influenced the shift in the focus of its attack on poor members of society. Similar efforts by the Anti-Corruption Squad to eliminate bribery, embezzlement, and other forms of corruption in the late 1980s drew cynical responses from urban dwellers, who commonly referred to them as the "Corruption Squad."
In contrast to party policy, the government began to encourage workers' projects. In May 1987 President Mwinyi called on workers to start farms, gardens, cattle rearing, and other projects. He said this was a good
trend and hoped that more workers would go into such projects. These projects would help to lessen the burden on workers and at the same time help the national economic recovery efforts.[22]
Daily News, 2 May 1987.
The government's changing position was evident also from Mwinyi's comments to university leaders when he said that academics were now permitted to supplement their incomes by cultivating, raising chickens and cows, and other such projects.[23]Africa Events, January 1989.
Further evidence of a change in government policy came with the issuing of the 1988–1989 budget in June 1988. At that time Finance Minister Cleopa Msuya also mentioned that the government might consider taxing owners of hair salons and other such businesses, apparently referring to the projects of the middle- and upper-income earners. "Don't be surprised if we come to your businesses demanding tax," Msuya warned his fellow members of Parliament as the assembly broke out in laughter.[24]
Daily News, 25 June 1988.
This was yet another indication that the government was softening its position and implicitly acknowledging that most projects of those in middle-income brackets were neither licensed nor taxed because they were skirting the Leadership Code. Frequently civil servants and middle and upper employees underreported their real incomes in paying taxes in order to evade the party's Leadership Code. Admitting to a second income for tax purposes would have been an open admission that they were violating the code.Although employees were supposed to work at their jobs half a day on Saturdays, it was common knowledge that most considered the weekend a time to catch up on their projects. Attendance at office jobs was especially low on Saturdays. Some workers just made an appearance and then left to attend to their projects. Parliament asked the government to introduce a five-day work week so that workers could undertake activities to supplement their incomes.[25]
Ibid., 22 July 1987.
In May 1991 the president announced a five-day work week, a move that was readily backed by the national trade union.[26]Ibid., 26 February 1991.
Thus societal noncompliance forced the government to begin acknowledging the real situation, in which the majority of wage earners were pursuing informal sideline incomes and were relying primarily on these incomes as real wages declined.While the government took pragmatic measures to address the survival needs of workers, the party moved more slowly and cautiously and was more concerned about what was at stake ideologically. Until 1992 the party remained reluctant to condone sideline activities. In response to persistent rumblings within the CCM over the Leadership Code in 1987, Party Chairman Nyerere denied that the party planned to revise the code. One CCM member had asked him whether party and government leaders ought not be able to operate self-help projects like shops and farms to supplement
inadequate incomes. Nyerere, sidestepping the issue, responded by saying that leaders would prostitute their offices even if they were allowed to earn side incomes.[27]
Ibid., 8 June 1987.
Herein lay the crux of the difference between the party and government leadership over these sideline incomes: The party leadership equated all second incomes with corruption, whereas the government tended to see sideline jobs as legitimate and necessary activities, given the state of the economy.Pressures were mounting within the party to review the Leadership Code in light of the changes in the country. Instead, the party leadership launched an aggressive campaign against "corruption" in February 1990. The campaign forced party leaders to list their properties and submit this list to a commission appointed by the Central Committee.[28]
Ibid., 27 February 1990, 1.
The Zanzibar Declaration
Although there had been debates within the CCM regarding the Leadership Code in the late 1980s, it was not until the beginning of the 1990s that internal party differences finally forced the CCM to back down from its ban on second incomes. The code had become an albatross on the backs of many leaders, argue Max Mmuya and Amon Chaligha. Many public officials no longer were involved only in small sideline projects, they had moved on to become large-scale entrepreneurs in the hotel and restaurant business, in the import and export business, in the transport, clearing, and forwarding of traded goods, in retail and wholesale trade, and in manufacturing. The debates over second incomes were part of broader discussions that took place behind closed doors over the continuance of Tanzania's ujamaa orientation, the future of parastatals, whether to allow party members to employ workers, property ownership, and other such issues that had been at the heart of the Arusha Declaration (Mmuya and Chaligha 1992, 44, 129).
Finally, in Zanzibar in February 1991, the National Executive Committee of the CCM revised the Arusha Declaration, stating that a party member could draw more than one salary, rent out houses in order to pay back the mortgage, and acquire shares in a private company. The committee's statement, which came to be known as the Zanzibar Declaration, stressed that party members were encouraged to keep livestock, farm, fish, and carry out petty trade. A CCM member could also be employed as a director in a private firm on a full-time basis, and that same person could earn more than one salary if he or she held more than one job.[29]
Ibid., 17 February 1991.
Although it was presented as a "clarification" of the Arusha Declaration rather thana revision of it and as an "adaptation to new social and economic conditions," there is little doubt that the policy change represented a significant shift in ideological orientation. The Zanzibar Declaration was an attempt by the CCM to gain popularity at a time when the debate over multiparty politics was in full force and the future of the CCM was increasingly coming into question.
The Arusha Declaration had been designed to check self-aggrandizement among party ranks at a time when people could buy food and save part of their earnings, the president said in a February 1991 speech. He pointed out that "due to prevailing economic difficulties in the country, the government could not afford to give civil servants, parastatal employees and party leaders adequate pay." Therefore, according to the president, it was illogical to restrict people who engaged in income-generating activities after their official working time.
The public debate that followed the abandonment of the Leadership Code indicated that there were still significant forces in the party that did not approve of the changes and believed that this new orientation would lead to the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor in Tanzania. Many felt that it was tantamount to the dismantling of the Arusha Declaration. Others welcomed the move and called on the party to apologize to people who had been removed from leadership for opposing the declaration.[30]
Ibid., 8 March 1991, 18 February 1991.
For the most part, however, it was simply a matter of legitimating what had already been going on for years and of doing away with the hypocrisy.Apart from merely legalizing activities that were already widespread, the rejection of the Leadership Code also paved the way for the taxation of second incomes that previously could not be reported because people were hiding their businesses to avoid losing their formal jobs. Soon after the Leadership Code was dropped, new measures were taken to curb tax evaders. But most importantly, the Zanzibar Declaration represented a clear ideological retreat and helped lay the basis for the move toward multiparty politics.
Conclusions
The most important consequence of the Zanzibar Declaration was the practical acknowledgement that not all informal activities to supplement incomes were undermining the political order and the economy and that many activities involved the creation of new products and services vital to the survival of urban dwellers. Economic liberalization more generally had
the effect of beginning to undermine state monopolies that had been a breeding ground for the illicit informal economy, although as long as there was a gross imbalance between formal wages and the cost of living it is unlikely that these activities would subside significantly. The distinction between mipango and miradi is not clear-cut, but the experience of the 1980s and 1990s in Tanzania has shown that failure to try to disaggregate various activities within the informal economy led to policies that did not correspond to the economic realities people faced. Moreover, it exacerbated feelings among local people that leaders were perpetuating a state of hypocrisy by demanding that people not engage in licit informal activities while they themselves engaged not only in licit activities but also illicit informal economic activities. The differences between mipango and miradi also had class dimensions, because those who were best situated in the public sector or government-owned companies had the greatest opportunity to engage in mipango involving bribery, embezzlement, and other forms of corruption at the expense of the poor.