2. Introduction
2.4 The movement towards political independence in Tanganyika (192S-1961)
chiefs, it was appropriate to educate them so that they could effectively carry out the colonial instructions and orders.126
Africans resented this system and criticized it. Actions taken by the British government, such as the setting of industrial wages, the close control of union activity and political organizations, the extraction of agricultural surplus through cooperatives, and the development of a racially divided education system, produced a reaction among the people of Tanganyika that fed the peaceful movement for independence. This consciousness not only affected the nation but, as we shall see later on, played a role in the missionary work. In light of the above, both the Germans and the British government perpetuated racial and ethnic divisions and the missionaries who established mission fields and worked on ethnic lines also adopted this strategy.
These racial divisions brought about political awareness as we shall see in the following section.
2.4 The movement towards political independence in
this weakness, they were easily attacked by Arabs and Europeans and taken as slaves and subservients. This historical fact of disunity degraded the African personality, for it was a form of human abuse.
Political awareness, however, restored the dignity of the African person. Colonialism was precisely another form of slavery after real slavery had been put to an end. The era of colonialism not only deprived Africa of its wealth but also degraded Africans who were attached to tribal traditions and cultural beliefs.
A growing concern about social and economic inequality in Tanganyika was the basis of the African political parties in Tanganyika which fought against colonialism. The earliest roots of Tanganyika's independence can be traced to the Maji Maji rebellion. It was the first instance of political resistance that brought different tribes together.127 During the decades following the rebellion, the nationalist movement gradually solidified. In 1925, following the transfer of colonial power from Germany to Great Britain, the Tanganyika African Association·
(TAA) was founded, initially as an organization of the African elite in urban areas. The TAA served as a channel for grassroots resentment against colonial policies. Gradually, the TAA spread into the rural areas and became a political force although most of its members were still from urban areas.
Cameron's initial colonial attitude toward African associations was expressed in an official statement by one of his successors:
These African Associations crop up regularly from time to time, generally under the auspices of semi-literate politically-minded mission-trained youths... It is important to see that they are handled properly, i.e., with a due amount of sympathy and
Tanganyika National Archives, Dar es Salaam.
127Julius Nyerere in C. Stahl, Tanganyika Sail into the Wilderness (Hague: Mounton
&Company, 1961), pp. 6 - 7.
support for what is legitimate and prompted by reasonable motives and a due amount of firmness for what is not. They are inevitable and the best line is to deflect their energies and aspirations of their members into the paths of social welfare and away from politics and supererogation.128
The above quote shows a heavy-handed paternalism and suggests that the colonial government was not worried about African interest groups.
The associations were not of tribal groups, even though at first their composition was of the more educated members of single indigenous societies. The associations were formed to assist the social and material needs of increasingly marginalized men and women, who had common aspirations in the colonial economy and occupational structure but were frustrated by a lack of opportunity and by traditional social restrictions at home.129
The TAA became politically active after World War II when its membership grew to include more rural Africans. It later formed the nucleus of an openly anti-colonial political party that would finally bring national independence to the mainland.
Tribal unions mainly developed among a few formally educated, the Chagga of Kilimanjaro, the Haya of Bukoba, and the Zaramo of the Coast, the Sukuma of Mwanza and the Sambaa of North-eastern Tanganyika.13o These unions later grew to oppose the British colonial administration. They were also critical of traditional tribal leaders, who came to power through heredity.131 Such unions never developed in Uhehe because there were very few educated people in the early 1920s. The hereditary system not only deprived capable people of their leadership opportunities, but also gave the chiefs the opportunity
128 Roger eager,Y T.anzanta, an xpenment,. E . p. 14.
129 Ibid.
130Henry Bienen, Tanzania (Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 24.
131 Ibid., p. 35.
to exercise power in a corrupt fashion over their fellow Africans. In most cases the tribal chiefs allied themselves with the British administration, in order to maintain their power. This created a negative attitude toward tribal chiefs not only among the Hehe but also among other Tanganyikan tribes as well.132 One consequence of the chief's alliance was that as soon as the country attained its independence, the Government Act No. 13 of 1963 removed the status of chiefs, which had been supported by colonial powers.133
During the 1950s, Julius Nyerere dominated Tanganyika politics. In this decade, a constitutional revolution brought the country from British control to the threshold of independence. Nyerere was the man behind all these early steps towards independence. Life for most Tanganyikans remained peaceful, but they struggled to grow sufficient food to appease hunger. The one genuine change that took place was a growing consciousness of African dignity, of responsibility for local and national affairs of the country and a dawning awareness that the white rulers should not be a permanent feature of Tanganyikan society. This profound change of outlook was almost entirely due to Nyerere. During the war, Nyerere had been educated at Makerere College in Uganda. His early political thinking was revealed when he founded a branch of the Tanganyika African Association, a discussion group which began to take an active part in politics after the Second World War. Nyerere, being a devout Catholic, taught in a Roman Catholic Mission school until in 1949 when he became the first African student from Tanganyika to attend a British University. After graduating, he again taught in a Catholic school, outside Dar es Salaam, where he espoused his political ideas. In Edinburgh, he got prepared intellectually and emotionally for the task of organising and
132Niwagila, From the Catacomb to a Self-Governing Church, p. 69.
133 Niwagila, p. 70.
leading his people to self-reliance, with the ultimate goal of self- government. He soon was elected president of the TAA, but this organization, according to him, could not accomplish the desired revolution in national life. However, the TAA was the most important forerunner of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). On July 7, 1954, he founded the Tanganyika African National Union, which had as its slogan 'uhuru na umoja' or 'freedom and unity'. This was formed in order to create a mass party, which would fertilise the roots of the society of Tanganyika with his nationalist ideas. Tanganyika's move to independence should be understood in Uhehe to mean freedom from the yoke of colonial government and freedom from the yoke of tribal chiefs who spent a lot of time trying to define their powers in implementing colonial regulations according to the Hehe customs and traditions.
Nyerere was fundamentally a political man with Christian influences.
He saw the poverty and misery of his people as eVils, which were his responsibility to change. He believed Tanganyikans would never experience the feeling of national dynamism essential to change their social conditions until they had discarded colonial rule. He, thUS, led his people to battle for the right of governing themselves. Only then would he and they gain the opportunity to attack the roots of poverty.
Nyerere found that his main barrier was less imperial domination than paternalism. Tanganyika became a sovereign state on December 9, 1961 and Adam Sa pi Mkwawa the chief of the Hehe became the first speaker. In 1964 formed a union with Zanzibar and changed its name to Tanzania. Its constitution detailed individual rights among other things. According to the Tanzanian constitution, every citizen has the right to freedom of expression, of movement, of religious belief, of association within the limits of the law, subject in all cases only to the maintenance of equal freedom for all other citizens. Furthermore, the
state has not adopted any creed. In Parliament, when taking the oath, every member holds a book which represents ones faith or belief.
There is separation between church and state.
Another development as far as the independence of Tanzania is concerned was the move towards self-reliance.134 In 1967, the Arusha Declaration was formulated and it became a guiding principle, by which the country was to be directed, without excluding the church.
The Declaration defined what socialism meant in the context of Tanzania, it set out qualifications which had to be fulfilled by all in leadership positions in politics and public service, and it demanded a much more serious commitment to self-reliance in Tanzanian's development.135 It stressed that there is no true freedom and socialism without freedom and work. Therefore, one can say that political awareness and the policy of self-reliance, of bUilding the nation, challenged and awakened the church in Tanzania to plan again and use its available resources in the most useful way in the mission work of the church.
134Roger Yeager, Tanzania, An African Experiment (Boulder: Westview Press), pp.59-61. , Julius K. Nyerere, "The Arusha Declaration" in Nyerere, Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p.28. This version of the declaration incorporates several revisions that Nyerere made to clarify ambiguities in an earlier English version translated from the original Kiswahili.
135 Rodger, p. 60.