The Rise and Fall and Insurrection of Trade Unionism in Tanzania

There is already in existence of a body of literature on both colonial and post-colonial trade unionism in Tanzania. What is discernible in this literature is the fact that trade unionism in Tanzania has gone through three phases. The first one is pre-struggles for independence one between 1930s and early 1950s. This was a time when permanent wage labour had emerged after a phase of predominantly semi-permanent wage labour. In this phase, the struggles of the working class had shifted from individual resistance to collective action, from rebellions and riots to strikes and from welfare societies to trade unions. It was in this context that the colonial government repealed the Master and Native Servants Ordinance of 1923 was repealed and the Trade Union Ordinance of 1932 put in place, to guide and supervise the organization of labourers within constitutional channels. The colonial government put in place compulsory registration as a weapon in keeping trade unions under control, monitoring and regulating their activities.

The first attempt to form a trade union was in 1927 when the African motors drivers and mechanics in Moshi formed a Motor Drivers’ Union and even attempted a strike for higher wages. The next attempt by Africans to form unions was to be made almost a decade later. Meanwhile, African civil servants had organized themselves into the Tanganyika African Civil Service Association (TSGA) in 1922, which was to become the African Association (AA) in 1929, Tanganyika African Association (TAA) in 1929 and was transformed to Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) in 1954. Before being transformed into a political party, the association had been formed on the lines similar to Asian and European civil servants’ associations. It was a white-collar elitist non-political non-union organization which sought to promote educational and social advancement of its members. By 1930s, this association had become weak, and African civil servants, by the 1940s had formed a trade union, which was to become one of the most militant ones.

It was the Union of Shop Assistants of Asians which was to be registered under the 1932 Ordinance in 1933. This mainly consisted of Asian clerks, bookkeepers, accountants and typists. This union survived for six years, due to numerical weakness as it was racially based and confined itself to white collar workers. Another one, the Asiatic Labour Union was formed in 1937. Although racially based again, it at least included in its membership both skilled and unskilled labourers. In 1937, a formerly Asian based union in Kenya, the Kenya Indian Labour Trade Union which had extended to Tanganyika and had included African membership changed its name to Labour Union of East Africa so as to cater for the members in Uganda and Tanganyika. It was registered in Tanganyika in 1939, but did not survive for long and was removed from the register in 1947. It was in 1937 that the African Labour Union was formed among the dock workers.

1940s saw the formation of trade unions registered under the Trade Union Ordinance in transport, domestic work and tailoring. By 1947, there were four registered unions, namely the Stevedores and Dockers’ Union; the African Cooks, Washermen and Houseboys’ Association; the African Tailors’ Association; and, the Dar es Salaam African Motor Drivers’ Union. Several other unions emerged in many parts of the country. The first phase was marked by a series of strikes, the major ones being the 1939 strikes in Dar es Salaam and Tanga ports and the 1943 of the Tanganyika Boating Co. workers, culminating in the 1947 General Strike which, which started with the dockworkers and spread throughout the country. The Stevedores’ and Dockworkers’ Union was born during the General strike. Strike had escalated in 1940s and 1950s. The labour Inspector of the territory reported in 1939 that “strikes among the labourers were almost a daily occurrence”. For example, there were 22 strikes and stoppages in Tanga Province in the second quarter of 1937 and 32 in the first half of 1938.[1] In 1950 alone, there were 50 strikes.

The 1947 General Strike, as Illife observed, the “most was widespread protest since Maji Maji rebellion” and it brought about a serious situation all over the country. [2] The 1950 dockworkers’ strike, among the many other strikes from workers of other enterprises, resulted into forms of violence never experienced before in Dar es Salaam. Consequently, the trade union was closed down. By the 1951, there were no trade unions in existence in Dar es Salaam as a result of government intervention. Trade unions were the most detested organizations by the colonial state. The reason for this is they were at the very heart of the colonial economy, since the major employer of labour was the state, settlers, planters, diggers, missionaries, commercialists and industrialists. Thus, besides being a confrontation of employers and workers, every strike or industrial action was a direct confrontation of races, and therefore, in most cases political.

In the meanwhile, the government had attempted to form works committees to prevent the emergence of trade unions and find ways of solving problems other than strikes. This was to no avail, since, trade unions were already resurfacing by 1953. Attempts to prevent their emergence failed. All that the government could do was to prevent them from becoming politically involved. Strikes and formation of trade unions continued in the 1950s. In fact, it was in the towns where the colonial government lost control first of the country.[3] Trade unions up to mid 1950s were generally formed from below. It was after the emergence of TANU that these began to be formed from above. For example, Bhoke Munanka turned to the formation of trade unions to advance nationalist goals when the government banned TANU activities in Mwanza.[4] As a territorial movement, Tanganyika Federation of Labour (TFL) was formed from above in 1956, mostly led by white-collar and clerical workers. In its resolutions it stated clearly that it would stir away from politics. Alliance between it and TANU was established from 1957 and some of the trade union leaders turned political leaders after joining TANU.

The approaching indeendence had brought to the fore the differences between the working masses and the nationalists and these were to manifest themselves in the manner which the transition was to take in the early years. These differences resulted into intense struggles at the eve of independence and thereafter. The priority of TANU was economic development, given the poverty situation of the country. The economic advice came largely from western sources, which advised the government and TANU to expand the open, capitalist economy of the 1950s. In this regard, the World Bank was very instrumental in the formulation of the 1961-1964 Development Plan. The World Bank’s advice was, sustainable growth would only be achieved if priority was given to agriculture and pastoralism, communications, and secondary and technical education, while leaving industrial development to private enterprise (local—mainly Asian—and foreign). The country was also advised to sell its non-industrial products (agricultural, mineral and labour) in the world market at competitive price if capital was to be attracted, as the basis for the modernization of the country.[5] This development model required that common interests of the people should be made subject to government activity—from building schools, dispensaries, etc. to village communal property. In return, people were expected to accept a high degree of econ­omic control at the same time offer unified political loyalty.

The urgency of the need to develop the country became even more apparent with the failure of rains throughout central and northern parts of the country in late 1950s. As a consequence of this, there was famine in the country, with half a million people receiving yellow corn famine relief from the USA and the government spending £1,300,000 to import food.[6] As if the blow caused by famine was not enough, with independence approaching, the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund had cut funds which had been planned for the country for the Three Year Development Plan by more than half. At the same time it insisted that Tanganyika should pay retirement benefits to colonial officers. Not only that, settlers showed their distrust of the new dispensation by leaving in large numbers from 1960 onwards, taking much of their capital with them—“at least £3 million.”[7] Famine continued to loom high in 1962, due to complete crop failure. This was a big blow to the pride of a country, as two years after independence it was still soliciting for famine relief maize.

The newly independent government decided to intervene in many sectors of the economy, including agricultural marketing and wage issues, just like the colonial government. In July 1960, the TANU National Executive had announced that opposition to capitalism and support for “African democratic socialism” and the co-operative model of development was to be adopted by the new government. It was accepted that where cooperatives could not be used, the capitalists would play the role.[8] Nyerere was to describe strikes as “evil things”, as “the law of the jungle”, when during the 1958 breweries workers strikes he had described them as workers’ last weapon.[9] Within this context, the workers opposition to the new government was being viewed as anti-socialist. In the 1962 pamphlet on Ujamaa, it was stated, for example, that “But the mine-workers of Mwadui could claim, quite correctly, that their labour was yielding greater financial profits to the community than that of the farmers. If, however, they went on to demand that they should therefore be given most of that extra profit for themselves, and that no share of it should be spent on helping the farmers, they would be potential capitalists!”[10]

As a consequence of these policies, conflicts between the nationalist party and the workers began in late 1950s. These began with the victory of TANU in the elections in 1958-59. They manifested themselves in TANU’s refusal to support the strikes by the sisal workers in Tanga, the mineworkers in Mwadui and the railway and postal workers. Strikes continued after independence. The biggest strike just before the attainment of Responsible Government was the 82 days strike by the Railway workers. It concerned the inaccessibility and lack of sensitivity to local problems of the East African High Commission. TANU did not support this strike. This enraged the unionists, because they could not understand why even at “TANU’s accession to power, the management of the high commission services remained politically inaccessible.”[11] They did not see any value in a federated East Africa under such circumstances.

The workers, besides demanding for a fast tempo of Africanization of the various structures, continued demanding for higher wages and opposition to oppressive management after independence. It was the white-collar workers (mostly a product of the trade unionization from above process since 1956) who demanded for fast Africanization, since these had turned away from the democratic struggles against the oppressive structures that were dominated by Europeans and Asians to those of replacing them: rather than working class struggles, these were petty bourgeois struggles. In fact the trade unionists had become the main opposition with independence approaching. In sum, there were 203 industrial disputes in 1960, which involved 89,000 workers; 101 disputes in 1961 involving 29,000 workers; and 153 disputes involving 48,000 workers.[12] In 1962, there were 152 strikes involving 48,434 workers—nearly a fourfold of the strikes of 1961.[13]

It was under these circumstances that by 1960, the transition government was looking for possibilities of restructuring the trade union movement and linking it with the Ministry of Labour. Mr. Michael Kamaliza, a former trade unionist who had become Minister for Labour and health in 1961 suggested that the Tanganyika Federation of Labour (TFL) become part of the Ministry. It was at a time when the workers in the harbour, plantations and railway workers were threatening to take over the enterprises from the owners and put them in their own hands.[14] Thus in 1962, the government passed the Trade Disputes (Settlement) Act, Trade Union (Amendment) Act and Civil Service (Negotiating Machinery) Act. Strikes were made illegal by making arbitration compulsory by the first act and the second act created a centralized TFL and compelled all unions to affiliate to it. TFL in turn was put under the control of the Ministry of Labour and the Registrar of Trade Unions. The last one banned all employees in the civil service earning above £702 from becoming members of trade unions.

Thus the workers movements were more or less brought under government control by 1962. The government claimed that this control was for sake of building a “united leadership in the interest of the workers and the country.”[15] The struggles by the state against the working people were waged under the banner of development of the country and the welfare of the peasants. These issues of development were raised within the context of formulating African socialist policies to deal with poverty, the sufferings of the people, universal brotherhood, education, economic development and reconciliation and welfare of all social groups. Thus TFL was brought under government control after the 1964 army mutiny. It became the sole trade union, known as the National union of Tanganyika Workers (NUTA), with the Minister of Labour as the General Secretary appointed by the government, together with his deputy. It was with the formation of NUTA that the number of strikes dropped (from 235 in 1962 and 1963 to 24 in 1964 to 13 in 1965 and 16 in 1966). It was with the formation of NUTA that the first phase of trade unionism ended in Tanzania. The objects of NUTA as an affiliate of TANU and the government were to promote policies of TANU and encourage its members to join it. This ‘union’ owed its existence to the state rather than membership, and it established departments and industrial sections. Thus ended the first phase of trade unions, and began the second stage of state and party controlled single union with branches according to industrial sections.

Generally the industrial relations policy after independence were geared towards prevention of strikes (by outlawing strikes), improvement of economic rights and address workers rights within the context of the goals of the country to achieve rapid economic development. Collective bargaining became impossible under those conditions; instead, the government set mechanisms for fixing wages and other fringe benefits. Workers were introduced to the culture of wage/salary increase announcements by the government during May Day. With the enactment of the Permanent Labour Tribunal Act of 1967 after the promulgation of the Arusha Declaration in the same year, the number of strikes declined further. These were years that saw the proliferation of public institutions (parastatals). There were 64 parastatals in 1967; by 1974 there were 139 and their number continued increasing to the extent that there were 320 by 1982 and almost 400 with more than 900 subsidiaries by 1986. During the same time, there were around 3,200 small scale industries under the Small Scale industrial Organization (SIDO).

In 1969 the government announced the formation of Workers’ Councils, with management and workers representation, for purposes of bringing the workers to the management of industries and promote better industrial relations, while giving workers more say. But in reality, these ended up being dominated by management. As a consequence, with the introduction of Party Guidelines (Mwongozo) in February 1971 there were 31 strikes and lock-outs from February to September in the same year. These were supposedly illegal strikes, since they were not sanctioned by NUTA General Council. These strikes were directed against commandism and abuses of the managers and bureaucrats. The abuses included the life styles and eating habits of those in management, grand parties, unnecessary trips and other extravagances. For the first time in the history of Tanzania, these were strikes that were not concerned with pay or remuneration.

These strikes continued in 1972 and they were becoming almost a movement by 1973 when the government crushed a strike at the Sungura Textile Mill by dismissing workers. The climax of these strikes was between May and July 1973. This was when the 900 workers of the British-American Tobacco (which was 51percent government owned) locked out the personnel manager. The case was taken to the Permanent Labour Tribunal, where the officer was accused of “wasting company resources, and of favouring his tribesmen.”[16]

With the Constitutional amendments in 1977, all mass organizations became party (CCM) affiliates. The NUTA Act was repealed in 1979 and was replaced by Jumuiya ya Wafanyakazi wa Tanzania (JUWATA) Act. Under these arrangements, the Minister for Labour continued to be appointed General Secretary. In fact, the union was simply a department of the ruling party. This move had resulted into increased statization of society and the trade union in particular. As a consequence of this, the disjunction that had already been created by the mid-1970s between the formal political system and the social system was reinforced further by late 1970s. The non-existence of independent social organizations and other effective watchdogs had over the years resulted into bureaucratic dominance of the whole society. In the process, bureaucrats and the wealthy classes had become really corrupt. Consequently, most of the parastatals were making losses or were heavily indebted, because, rather than serve as public enterprises, they were more or less serving the private interests of those who manned them and their cohorts. The losses in these parastatals are well documented.[17] The country was facing a socio-economic crisis by the late 1970s, which had resulted from external shocks and inefficiencies and corruption within the country.

The government and the party were increasingly coming under heavy criticisms by early 1980s. This was the beginning of the awakening of the people at grassroots level, marked by criticisms of the state, which aimed at restructuring and reshaping power relations between the state and the people. The quest was essentially for democratic rights against the monopolization of politics and decision-making by the state. The concept “civil society” in Tanzania was rediscovered around this time. The concept was meant to be an expression of human social will, and an agitation of decentralization of processes. Civil society connoted the emergence and consolidation of social and political movements and the whole question of empowering people. In some, the debate more or less raised the fundamental questions of how the society was organized.[18] When a symposium to mark the centenary of Karl Marx’s death was held at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1993, intellectuals took the occasion to sum up the experiences and critique the three decades of independence and nation building. They concluded that needed in Tanzania and Africa in general was broad democratization and resistance against imperialism, which sought to reinforce the exploitative relations through SAPs, which were being introduced in the country.

These views were being expressed at a time when the government had initiated the first major public debate ever on the constitution in 1982/83. During this debate, the legitimacy of the supremacy of the party was challenged. Not only that: issues of human rights and various freedoms were raised, including those of rights to organise workers, peasants, youth, women and marginalized groups organizations independent of the party and government control. The Union Constitution was amended in 1984, to at least include a Bill of Rights in the Preamble. But there were no effective articles in the Constitution itself as far as these rights were concerned. The trade union remained a party affiliate until 1991, after some years of implementation of SAPs. And the change was possible because of fact that the nature of the debates had changed by then from those of the early 1980s.

The debates on democracy by the end of the 1980s had been reduced to issues of multipartyism. Thus, multiparty democracy, reduced to the number of parties, the right to govern after garnering more votes (regardless of the manner in which one got them), had become the anchorage of legality and legitimacy. The introduction of multiparty democracy became one of the aid conditionalities by the end of the 1980s. This was in a context of a world that was working hard to irresponsibize the state by removing the notion of the public and public interests, submitting people to the belief of the values of the economy—the “return of individualism” (self-help, self employment, cost-sharing, etc) and the destruction of all philosophical foundations of welfarism and collective responsibility towards poverty, misery, sickness, misfortunes, education, etc.

It was in this context that trade unionism entered its third phase in Tanzania. Tanzania adopted a multiparty political system in 1992. The move to multi-party system was an implementation of the recommendations of a Presidential Commission chaired by Chief Justice Francis Nyalali on the party system to be followed in Tanzania, formed in 1991. At the same time, the relations between the “mass organizations” of CCM and the state had begun to change in 1991 in anticipation of the introduction of multipartyism. It was with the anticipation of the introduction of a multiparty political system in Tanzania in 1992, that the Chama Cha Mapinduzi, then the sole party, affiliated workers union—Jumuia ya Wafanyakazi Tanzania (JUWATA) was deregistered, since it was no longer relevant to the impending system. In its place, the state passed the Organization of Tanzania Trade Unions (OTTU) Act (No 20, December 1991).

The Act stated categorically that OTTU was to be the “sole trade union body representative of all employees in the United Republic”, with all members who previously belonged to JUWATA becoming the founding members. Membership was open to other persons in accordance with OTTU’s Constitution, and there would be formed other unions by OTTU as affiliates according to different industrial sectors. [19] Thus OTTU was a legislated union which made it both a trade union and a federation of unions. Under Section 9, the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, through the Registrar could deregister it; and the Minister of Labour could close any of its branches. The formation of OTTU by the state had violated the basic constitutional and international right of freedom of association. The process of forming trade unions started in 1992 and was completed in 1995. These could not be registered independently since the law did not provide for that. Strikes were allowed, but they involved long and strenuous procedures to be followed. At the same time, the government had established an Industrial Court through the amendment of Permanent Labour Tribunal in 1993, with similar powers to those of the High Court to arbitrate labour disputes. Within this context, essential services such as Air Traffic Control and Civil Aviation; telecommunications; and transport services were prohibited from taking part in strikes and loc-outs.

The Nyalali Commission listed the OTTU law as among the bad laws and recommended it to be looked into. There were public outcries that the body was not independent, since it was created from above through parliamentary legislation and the government imposed its leadership. The leadership was composed of CCM members, and some of them were essentially using the newly formed trade union for political gains. In this case, the naked example was that of the Secretary General, Bruno Mpangala, who made sure that the 1995 May Day Celebrations were held in Mbeya, where he was intending to contest for an MP seat. Later on he joined the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC), which deals with the privatization of the public enterprises, as a representative of the workers! It’s General Secretary, Nestory Ngula had made attempts to become Member of Parliament but no avail. Attempts by teachers during these early years to form an independent trade union outside the affiliates that had been established by the government, met with resistance from both OTTU and the government. The latter refused to register it for some years. OTTU was not an independent organization, and it was established at a time when the basis for organization of strong and effective unions had been eroded with the implementation of SAPs.

Effectively, retrenchments of workers started in 1982, as part of the implementation of the home-made SAPs (in the form of Economic Recovery Programmes). These retrenchments, besides endangering the livelihoods and welfare of the workers and their dependents, they in most cases involved low cadre employees who were the rank and file members of the official trade union—JUWATA. It was in this regard that workers failed to protest against privatization and cost-sharing in social services measures that were gradually introduced from mid-1980s onwards. By the end of the 1990s, as a result of privatization and retrenchment measures, the “hardest hit union appeared to be TUICO whose membership decreased from 92,430 in 1996 to 60, 000 in 1997 and 39,000 in 1999.”[20] Moreover, despite the official records showing that economic growth has been taking place as a result of economic liberalization, unemployment has been on the increase in the country. The findings of the Integrated Labour Force Survey (ILFS) of 2000/2001, according to the Business Times (25.04.2003), revealed that unemployment had doubled in the past ten years to about one million. Moreover, about two million people work for only a few hours because they cannot find full-time jobs.

OTTU, unlike its predecessor, was not affiliated to any political party. Yet, it was not completely independent of the government policies. In this regard, the leadership of the union regarded privatization of public enterprises as a good thing. This remains the attitude of many of the trade unionists to date. The only objections they had against the process were in terms of the manner in which the process was being implemented. They were of the view that all that was required was the involvement of the trade unions in the privatization exercise. Moreover, they only needed to be informed and assured of their terminal benefits, and also to be paid in time. Thus the first ‘general strike’ that was was planned for March 1994, as a result of the government’s inability to raise wages that were promised by the President in his May Day speech at Mtwara, ended up with less than 15% of the workers participating in the three days of the strike (1st-3rd March 1994). Most workers did not take part in the strike, not because they were satisfied with their salaries, but because they feared to be fired.

With the elections of the OTTU leadership in 1995, the organization and its affiliates decided to change the name of the umbrella organization to Tanzania Federation of Free Trade Unions (TFTU). Between 1995 and 2000, the organization had two names—the officially recognized OTTU and the unofficial one TFTU. This is because the law that had established OTTU remained intact. It was only with the repeal of the OTTU Act and the enactment of the Trade Union Act of 1998, which came into operation in 2000 that it was registered as the Trade Union Congress of Tanzania (TUCTA). When OTTU became TUCTA in 2001, 11 former unions became affiliates of the federation. There were several new ones that were awaiting registration. These were such as the Fishing Crew and Allied Workers Union (FICAWU) which had split from Tanzania Seamen Union (TASU); the Tanzania Social Industrial Workers Union (TASIWU); Industrial and General Workers Union of Tanzania (IGWUTA); Tanzania Union of Journalists (TUJ); and, Tanzania Universities Academic Staff Union (TUASU). Mrs Margaret Sitta, leader of the teachers union—CWT became its first president. She was appointed Minister for Education in January 2006, and her husband, former director of the Tanzania Investments Centre was elected Speaker of the Parliament in December 2005.

The Act had provided for the establishment of the Registrar of Trade Unions and his/her powers and the types of unions and federations that could be registered. Thus, although the Act provided for freedom of association, it also gave colossal powers to the Registrar and the Minister of Labour to effectively control the unions (to refuse registration, deregister and even reorganize unions as he/she may deem fit). The Act also gave allowance for several unions to be formed in one workplace. It also gave allowance for two or more trade unions to form a federation. Essentially, the established trade unions have continued to be involved in bargaining for wages and the conditions under which retrenchments should be undertaken. They have also been working hard to prevent the emergence of several unions within a working place, together with them multiple federations. According to them, the formation of several trade unions within one workplace is not for the best interests of the workers, since it leads to weak unions financially and otherwise. The formation of several federations is considered to be harmful to the trade union movement as whole since it may tend to erode trade union unity and solidarity.

TUCTA had also involved in lobbying for the amendment of appeal of some of the labour legislations that it considered to be inimical to the workers or were outdated under the ‘new’ economic dispensation. It was in this way that the government came out with the Employment and Labour Relations Bill, 2003. TUCTA leadership participated in the team that was led by South African “experts” in the formulation of this Bill. Two members of UDASA, Issa Shivji, a professor of law and one of its most active members, and Issa Musoke, an associate professor of industrial sociology who was among the least active members of UDASA were invited to join the team. The former rejected the offer when he discovered that the new Bill not only sought to repeal some of the Acts that had protected the workers in the past, such as the Security of Employment Act, the Severance Allowance Act, Employment Ordinance, etc., but to put in its place an Act that in effect protected the employers and sought to introduce contracts that were in some instances reminiscent of the colonial Master and Native Servant Ordinance of the 1920. UDASA made a ruthless criticism of this Bill in early 2004 in one of its public seminars. The RAAWU university leaders were invited to attend, but they did not do so since they were pressed with other urgent matters.

Are the existing trade unions democratic and participatory? Are they really defending the workers interests or simply those of the leaders in the top echelons of the organisations and their political ambitions? In what ways do they stand in relation to the experiences of trade unionism in the past? Are there any lessons that they have learnt from those experiences? The cases of UDASA may shed light to the fortunes and woes of the present forms of trade unionism as far as democracy and participation is concerned.

[1] See in C.S.L. Chachage, Socialist Ideology and the Reality of Tanzania, Ph D Thesis, Glasgow University, Glasgow, 1986, pp276-7.

[2] John Illife, “A History of the Dockworkers of Dar es Salaam”, in Tanzania Notes and Records, No 71, Dar es Salaam, 1970, p. 133.

[3] A. Coulson, Tanzania: A Political Economy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982, , pp 101ff, J. Iliffe, A Modern |History of Tanganyika, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1979.

[4] ibid

[5] Arthur D. Little, “Tanganyika Industrial Development”, in H. Smith (ed), Readings in Economic Development and Administration in Tanzania, Institute of Public Administration, university College of Dar es Salaam, 1966.

[6] J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979, p. 576.

[7] A. Coulson, Tanzania: A Political Economy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982, p.146.

[8] S.A. Kandoro, Mwito wa Uhuru, Blackstar Agencies, Dar es salaam, 1978, p. 121.

[9] I.G. Shivji, Law, State and the Working Class in Tanzania, 1920-1964, James Currey, London, 1986, p. 227.

[10] Nyerere, 1967, op cit, p. 168-9.

[11] For details, see, W.H. Friedland, Vuta Kamba: The Development of Trade Unions in Tanganyika, Hoover Institutions Press, Stanford University, California, 1969, p.126.

[12] See K. Guruli, “The Role of NUTA in the Struggle for Socialism and Self-Reliance” in G. Ruhumbika (ed), Towards Ujamaa, East African Literature Bureau, Nairobi, 1974, p. 49; and I.G. Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania, Tanzania Publishing House, Dar es Salaam, 1976, p. 135.

[13] I. Shivji, op cit..

[14] P. Mihyo, Industrial Conflict and change in Tanzania, Tanzania Publishing House, Dar es Salaam, 1983; Friedland, op cit.

[15] M. Kamaliza’s words in the Legislative Assembly, in Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), Government Printer, Dar es Salaam, 1962, p. 1019.

[16] Coulson, op cit. pp. 284ff. For more details on these struggles see I.G. Shivji, Class Struggles in Tanzania, Tanzania Publishing House, Dar es Salaam, 1975.

[17] See Uma. Lele & R.E. Christiansen, Markets, Marketing Boards, and Cooperatives in Africa: Issues in Adjustment, MADIA Discussion Paper 11, The World Bank, Washington D.C.,1989.

[18] See generally on Africa in I.G. Shivji (ed), 1985, op cit; I.G. Shivji, Fight my Beloved Continent: New Democracy in Africa, SAPE, Harare, 1988. Sosthenes Maliti published a book under the pseudonym Candid Scope, title, Honest to my Country in 1981 (TMP, Tabora), in which he reproduced some of Nyerere’s works of the early 1960s on democracy, including Tujisahihishe (Let us Correct Ourselves). His aim was to show that the country had deviated from the democratic principles.

[19] The following 11 industrial unions were formed and became OTTU affiliates: 1) Communication and Transport Workers Union (COWTU), 2)Conservation, Hotels, Domestic and Allied Workers Union (CHOWADU), 3) Research, Academicians and Allied Workers Union (RAAWU), 4) Tanzania Local Government Workers Union (TALGWU), 5)Tanzania Mines and Construction Workers Union (TAMICO) 6) Tanzania Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union (TPAWU) 7)Tanzania Railway Workers Union (TRAWU), 8) Tanzania Seamen Union (TASU) 9) Tanzania Teachers Union (TTU), 10) Tanzania Union of Government and Health Employees (TUGHE), and 11) Tanzania Union of Industries and Commercial Workers (TUICO).

[20] S. Chambua, Democratic Participation in Tanzania: The Voices of Workers Representatives, Dar es Salaam University Press, Dar es Salaam, 2002, p. 112.

Excerpt from Chachage Seithy L. Chachage
Professor of Sociology
University of Dar es Salaam