Martin Journal of Peace Research

No. 1 (1997)

The wave of democratization in Africa beginning abruptly in 1990 offers a unique opportunity to explore the causal influences of this profound process of change. Democratization in Africa increasingly appears to be a particularly provocative and revealing process, given the protracted and acute political and economic crises of the region.1 With the formal adoption of a multiparty system in Tanzania since 1992, moreover, an examination of the origins of its departure from this pioneering single-party state, initiated during the first months of 1990, appears to be increasingly useful in this context.

Is the assumed causal relationship between dramatic shifts to multipartyism, evident throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa after 1990, and external political pressures, including the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, valid? It is true that sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a rather egregiously non-democratic post-independence period.2 While varying explanations have been posited for this, most of them seem to stress the profound economic marginalization of the region in the past two decades, and its consequent vulnerability to external pressures (Ake, 1991:33-4). The tendency in Western social science to associate particular political and economic processes, however, represents a crucial and ironic dimension in the context of the current political changes in Tanzania, as the following study will seek to clarify.

Tanzania is typical of many sub-Saharan African countries in its profound vulnerability to external political and economic pressures. The significant increase in 1989 and 1990 in external political and economic pressures on African systems was clearly tied in one way or another to the political transformation of Eastern Europe by 1989. These changes caused what one observer has called a `profound shock' to the `cherished political verities' of many African countries, one that was sufficient even to `shatter faith in core values.'3 Mozambique's rapid and unexpected move to implement multiparty elections seems relevant in this regard. Zambia's experience offered further perspectives. Other countries, like Kenya, also found themselves swept up in the changes, although they vigorously resisted them.4 In most cases, then, it was this impact of clearly identifiable "external pressures," including the growing post-Cold War emphasis upon democratization by donor governments--expressed in foreign assistance programs5 and in the `political conditionalities' of multilateral lending institutions, that may have proven decisive (Ake, 1991: 32-44). One observer of Tanzanian politics, Goran Hyden, has argued that many African systems seemed to have been experiencing a kind of `perestroika without glasnost'6 by 1990, ostensibly as a result of these pressures.

The protracted governance of Tanzania by a single-party state was long seen as representing an "African model" of participatory democracy. It was a unique attempt to create an indigenous political system in control of a distinctively African socialist economic system. A critical aspect of this effort was the presidency of Tanzania's founder, Julius K. Nyerere. A profound liberalization of the economic elements of ujamaa, the family-based concept of socialism, or "communal living," which he had introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, preceded his retirement from the presidency in 1985. The single-party state, based on the Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), or Party of Revolution, had begun to redefine its economic goals as pressures for economic liberalization grew with the deterioration of the economy beginning in the late 1970s. The profound economic dysfunction evident in most of the Third World by the mid-1980s had finally pushed the system into a major economic reorganization, and including reforms that, by the late 1980s, had taken the national economy "far to the right" of where it had been at the beginning of the decade (Yeager, 1989: 147). By 1986, the first Economic Recovery Plan (ERP) included measures designed to "privatize" important aspects of the economy. Although socialism continued to be regarded formally as "the liberator" of Tanzania,7 the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the CCM engaged in a secret, and reportedly acrimonious, debate in early February, 1990, concerning the events of the previous year in Eastern Europe, and what they meant for the inevitable changes coming in Tanzania.8

Economic and political categories were conceptually fused--if not confused--in the Cold War climate of ideological polarization. Terms such as "democracy," "totalitarianism," and "authoritarianism" came to signify integrated and "typical" socio-economic systems,9 although their normative--if often contradictory--connotations contributed substantially to their weakness as "ideal types." "Democracy," in particular, often came to represent little more than a convenient label for "regimes we like,"10 and hence was applied to a wide range of authoritarian systems that virtually covered the ideological spectrum. The virtual collapse of the Cold War system, and a world-wide ressurgence of interest in a particularly Western and political form of democratization, have refocused academic interest in, and intensified the need for precision regarding, the broad subject of democracy. Sudden and widespread moves toward liberal democracy in Africa in 1990-91, moreover, point to that continent as a potentially fruitful object of analysis as regards contemporary democratization in the Third World.

The extreme, and extremely varied, political and economic conditions in Africa, however, emphasize the need carefully to define concepts, and explain the attractiveness of parsimonious definitions of concepts such as democracy. Those who would define democracy, moreover, must contend with the protracted and generalized appropriation of the term across the political spectrum, and its obvious ethnocentric (Western) ideological baggage.11 Democracy as a taxonomic concept emphasizes equality and political participation within a framework of rational rules, including competitive and open selection of leadership and policies. It is, to quote Robert Dahl, "a political system one of the characteristics of which is the quality of being completely or almost completely responsive to all its citizens" (1971: 2). The emphasis upon political participation, however, has increasingly come to be balanced against another, more liberal, criterion--the routinization of elite competition prior to expansion of popular participation. Hence, although democracy is widely thought to include universal adult franchise and periodic (and uncontrolled) elections, these have come to be regarded in much of the literature as taking place--optimally--after a record of increasingly open and peaceful competition between rival elites has been established.12 Multiple and competing political parties and interest groups have thus come to be regarded as crucial aspects of democratic systems, the `pluralist' basis of liberal democracy.

Confronted with the unique international and national conditions of most sub-Saharan African countries, their relatively short histories of political independence, and a profound paucity of cases of democracy (at least prior to 1991) in this region, most observers of African politics have conceded that the democratization process on the continent is enigmatic, at best. Studies of Latin America, however, ostensibly benefitting from a far longer period of formal political independence, have increasingly stressed the importance of an "optimum sequence that begins with the emergence of national identity, followed by the establishment of legitimate and authoritative state structures, only after which does the ‘crisis’ of participation crystalize and find resolution in the expansion of citizenship rights to nonelite elements."13 The creation of competitive multiparty systems seems to have been a vital aspect of this process, conditioning a political elite to accept constitutional conflict resolution and thus paving the way for a later successful expansion of the political system to include mass participation (Diamond and Linz, 1989: 9), although, in all fairness, this subsequent expansion of political participation in Latin America has been slow to develop and qualified, at best, and in most cases democratization has not proceeded beyond the stage of elite accommodation.

A history of communal land tenure patterns, and a brief independence period have meant that African countries for the most part have not produced an entrenched class of property-owning elites. The widespread impetus to create multiparty systems, evident throughout Africa by 1990, therefore appeared to be largely externally influenced, with a basic aim of conditioning and `constitutionalizing' inter-elite conflicts. The fostering of an educated and articulate elite, capable and predisposed to the democratization process, is therefore implied.14 Also implied is the development of the liberal conceptualization of a demarcation between the state and civil society, such that the latter can become a guardian of the political rights associated with routinized elite competition and, subsequently, the expansion of political participation. David Held argues that this is an indispensible process of "double democratization," which he describes as "the interdependent transformation of both state and civil society. Such a process must be premised by the acceptance of the principle that the division between state and civil society must be a central feature of democratic life" (Held, 1990: 16). Following decades of economic dysfunction in Southern Africa (including Tanzania), the monopolization of political power by single parties has become broadly controversial "at the level of civil society" (Anglin 1990: 440). The fact that the rare "stable democracies" of Africa, Botswana and The Gambia, have been governed since independence by the same parties, moreover, is said by observers merely to underscore the importance of another distinction, that between a single-party state, and dominant-party rule--where opposition parties exist (Wiseman, 1990: 8).

Because of its image as a model of political development in sub-Saharan Africa, Tanzania's response to the current pressures for multipartyism has a special relevance. The formal establishment of the single-party state in 1965 took place in the absence of any opposition parties: The Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) was effectively the only remaining political party on the mainland.15 Nyerere nevertheless moved cautiously in formalizing the single-party state. He stressed the need to develop a distinctively African concept of democracy, and openly discouraged the borrowing of a Western, liberal and pluralistic model for Tanzania. The democratic heritage of Africa was rooted in local government, he argued. Nyerere therefore urged that participation, rather than elite contestation, be the central pillar of the new democratic single-party system.16 As Cranford Pratt described it, the new African democracy would be focused upon a popularly-elected legislature, and hence a "government by men of goodwill...trusted by their fellow citizens and...electorally responsible to them." In Pratt's analysis, this represented more of

The establishment of the single-party state in Tanzania was by no means unique in sub-Saharan Africa, and seems to have been based on the three major reasons often cited for proscribing competitive multipartyism in other African systems: the need for unity in the process of nation building, the neo-colonial character of liberal democracy, and the special exigencies of the development process, which are said to deserve priority over all other concerns (Goulbourne, 1987: 35-6). Nevertheless, in its sincere and protracted policies to expand popular political participation, encourage competitive elections (for Parliament) and foster indigenous participatory decision-making, Tanzania can be said to have remained something of a model in sub-Saharan Africa. Elections for members of Parliament, in particular, have often been competitive, with significant--and obviously unorchestrated--electoral defeats of key cabinet members and party officials (Van Donge and Liviga, 1990: 1). They cannot be characterized, in any simplistic sense at least, as "state-controlled consent elections" (Bavu, 1990: 35). Thus the argument that Tanzania was evolving into an indigenous African democratic system, which was based primarily upon broad-based political participation, had a high degree of credibility. The argument was rebutted, however, by a quarter century of single-party government that included political repression, corruption and party-centered elitism, all of which could be said to have worked against popular participation, not to mention the routinization of peaceful inter-elite competition. Its "virtual organizational hegemony over its working people and popular classes,"17 moreover, also contrasted sharply with the image of the Tanzanian system as an emerging participatory-democracy.

In 1985 Julius Nyerere voluntarily retired from the presidency, although he remained the chair of the CCM until August 1990. This had the effect of temporarily bifurcating the positions of president and party leader, and hence of weakening executive power.18 Furthermore, the authoritarianism of the party leadership class (Pratt, 1976: 263) may have been attenuated to some extent because of economic dysfunction and the apparent imminence of an "economic opening," or liberalization, that it suggested. Nyerere essentially became an independent authority divorced from the daily political struggles--and from an increasingly entrenched government and party elite--but vitally influential in structuring the the wider parameters of the political system. When he dramatically called for a national debate on multiparyism, the bulwark of liberal democracy, in February 1990, while stressing at the same time the critical task of protecting Ujamaa,19 the effect was galvanic.

Proponents of Western economic individualism as a universal and generally applicable model tend to posit the necessary concomitance of capitalism and liberal democracy. Economists such as Friederich Hayek insist that democracy is only possible within a capitalist system (1944: 67-70), and Milton Friedman avers that "a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom" (1962: 8) After more than a decade of Thatcherism and Reaganism, and the apparent collapse of central economic planning in Europe, major donor countries and international lending institutions have increasingly added political conditionalities to the economic conditionalities (economic liberalization) that have long characterized their programs for sub-Saharan Africa. A current program of the United States Agency for International Development, for example, opens with the assumption that "democracy is complementary to and supportive of the transition to market-oriented economies and sustained, broadly-based economic development."20 The advocacy of multiparty democracy is assumed to be inimical to socialism. Nyerere's call for a debate on the merits of multiparty democracy in Tanzania was therefore of great interest, especially in the context of his simultaneous and vigorous support of Ujamaa.

Nyerere's second concern, the growth of dependence upon foreign capital assistance, suggested the emergence in Tanzania of what dependency theorists were calling a "comprador class."21 Nyerere's emphasis upon self reliance and distributivism were buttressed in this regard by his view that it was "stupid...for us to imagine that we shall rid ourselves of our poverty through foreign financial assistance rather than our own financial resources" (1967: 22). The rich, he argued, always had to be forced--through taxation--to give significantly to the poor, and rich nations were no different. It was therefore "impossible," he concluded, "for Tanzania to obtain from overseas enough money to develop our economy" (1967: 23). Nationalization of the economy should therefore not be discouraged merely because of its likely pejorative effects upon foreign capital assistance, he reasoned. For that matter, however, neither should Tanzania parrot the East Bloc: "it is not intelligent to reject an accolade from the West on democracy in order to seek one from the East on socialism" (1968: 20). He insisted that Tanzania would forge its own model, would become beholden to no other power, and would stress self-reliance above all other goals.

In response to these concerns, the implementation of the Arusha Declaration included two fundamental parts: the stipulation of a socialist leadership code, and the selective nationalization of key elements of the Tanzanian economy. The leadership code, applied to party and governmental elites, prohibited directorship or ownership of shares in any company, the receipt of two or more salaries, the ownership of rental property or evidence of any other `practices of capitalism or feudalism' (Nyerere, 1967: 36). The leadership code was to be the critical underpinning of Ujamaa, and discussion at that time of the Arusha Declaration among the leadership, according to Pratt, "was dominated by the issue. Time and again, [TANU National Executive Committee] members expressed their unhappiness over these restrictions on their income-earning activities" (1976: 238) In theory, however, potentially damaging inter-elite contestation would be prevented by this homogenization of the political elite, which was seen by some observers as a "bureaucratic bourgeoisie."22

Nationalization proceeded swiftly in part because of the general attractiveness to party and government leaders of expropriating the assets of non-Africans (Nyang'oro, 1989: 238). During the week following the Arusha Declaration in February 1967, all private banks, the National Insurance Corporation, the eight primary export trading companies, six manufacturing companies, all the major food processing companies and the sisal industry were nationalized or slated for government majority shareholding in the near future. Nyerere then went back to the National Executive Committee of TANU and used the broad popularity of the nationalizations to secure--with some compromises--the adoption of the national leadership code (Nyang'oro, 1989: 238-9). A month later, Nyerere told a TANU party conference that "there is no problem with the people. They support us completely. My problem is with the leaders."23

By most accounts, Ujamaa stagnated during the next decade despite strong, and sometimes strident, efforts at development. Although there were major successes, including the implementation of universal primary education, and steadily rising per capita incomes, some of the more desperate measures to ensure agricultural productivity, including villagization and forced labor schemes, had produced a severe popular backlash. Between 1978 and 1985 the Tanzanian economy entered into severe decline. Virtually all programs were affected, and national reliance upon foreign assistance again became acute. There are various explanations of this that range from allegations of the innate weaknesses of socialism to external problems: the severe decline in agricultural commodity prices coupled with the 1979 oil price rises.24 Goods disappeared from the shops, government and educational programs were cut wholesale, and a costly war with Uganda drained away what little government resources remained. A military coup conspiracy in 1982-8325 indicated the profundity of the crisis.

Julius Nyerere's long support of Ujamaa was coupled with a similarly consistent defense of the single-party state. Although external pressures for economic liberalization had begun to effect Tanzanian state policy well before he retired from the presidency in 1985,26 Nyerere appeared freer to oppose them after this juncture. It is interesting in this context that he began to question the unqualified merits of single-party rule in 1986, at about the time of the first ERP, suggesting that it might be a root cause for complacency in senior government officials.27 He dramatically opened the national debate over multipartyism in Tanzania, however, with a widely-publicized interview before the "heads of the national mass media" on February 21, 1990, in which he stressed that the CCM was not a vanguard party. National unity, long the central rationale for the single-party state, no longer required a single party, he remarked, and hence there was a danger of authoritarianism latent in a single-party state. He added that "when a Tanzanian cannot write an article and argue the need for more than one party--and that by doing so he is committing treason--then at that stage we shall have gone too far."28 The tenor of the interview was that the system had clearly gone that far already, that events in Eastern Europe would necesarily affect Tanzania, and that "Tanzanians should not be dogmatic and think that a single party is God's wish."29 The remarks appear to have shocked the CCM party hierarchy, although they dutifully scheduled a national conference on the political changes in Eastern Europe, and a three-day symposium on `socialist construction in the world' (Anglin, 1990:435).

Nyerere juxtaposed his call for a debate on multipartyism with a strident defense of Ujamaa, which, he said, had "taken root in Tanzania" and must be protected. Nyerere conceded that it was not unreasonable that a multiparty system could be seen as threatening national unity, and that were the CCM to allow the formation of other parties, these would have to be national, secular and socialist parties (Mruma, 1990). Just below front page coverage of the interview, in the government-owned Daily News, was a brief report announced a one-day CCM Central Committee meeting to discuss party-government communication for the purpose of speeding up implementation of party directives. The multiparty debate had been launched, however, and the editorial columns of the Daily News and Sunday News, both English-language papers, as well as the party-controlled Uhuru, a Swahili language daily, were soon filled with it.30

The elite and executive character of Nyerere's appeal is significant. The multiparty debate in Tanzania was conditioned by a significant growth in freedom of the press and freedom of speech in the 1980s, the growing outspokenness of independent journalists,31 and--related to economic liberalization--the creation of independent newspapers such as the Family Mirror. The press, and particularly the English-language press, became the medium of the debate on multipartyism. English, moreover, has an elite appeal in Tanzania, and is in decline among the lower classes: primary education, in particular, no longer stresses it to any degree. Although Nyerere--the most influential proponent of Kiswahili as the national language--quixotically suggested in early 1990 that the implementation of the national language policy "should not be done at the expense of English" (Lupatu, 1990b), this had clearly already happened.

Insofar as liberal democracy is said to be vitally linked to individual freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press (Diamond, 1988: 23), it should be noted that a significant broadening of press freedom was evident in Tanzania during the 1980s. Revealing reports of public corruption, the economy, and even human rights violations by the police appeared.32 Although the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Ahmed Hassan Diria, regarded as a "hardliner,"33 warned the press against "Western imperialist style" reporting and "yellow journalism,"34 later adding that the Tanzanian media should be careful not to further the aims of capitalist propaganda,35 the multiparty debate in the press continued, with many letters to the editors on both sides of the multiparty debate appearing in the government newspapers. The coverage and editorials seemed to reflect contrasting elite blocs, however, and this was evident even in newspaper reports of the multiparty question as regarded other African countries. Proposed reforms of the one-party system in Cuba, and moves toward multipartyism in Ethiopia in February and March, received front-page coverage in the government press (Sunday News, 18 February 1990: 1; Daily News, 20 March 1990: 1), and in April coverage of a speech by Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who intoned that "a multi-party system in our circumstances is nothing but a disastrous way to the doom of our nation...a sure way to national destruction" (Daily News, 7 April 1990: 1).

An initial response from President Mwinyi began to take shape in mid-March, 1990, and stressed the need to combat corruption.36 He asked for the resignation of his entire cabinet on March 12 and two days later announced the retention of Joseph Warioba, a politician long associated with CCM elite hegemony,37 as Prime Minister. The following day he announced that seven ministers had been dropped from the new cabinet for "lack of accountability," and that the central purpose of the shuffle had been to fight corruption. "It is so bad now," he said, "that people have to buy their own rights if they want anything...." He added that "we now want Party and Government decisions to be implemented fully."38

Nyerere's position as chairman of the CCM was tactically indispensible in his introduction of the debate on multipartyism in Tanzania. A clear example of this was the national seminar on the changes in Eastern Europe, directed at the party and national elites, that had been organized by the CCM shortly after Nyerere's February interview. As a first, and reportedly lively, round in the debate, it was extensively reported in the national media. After several opening speakers stressed that Tanzania could become a "model of [participatory] one-party democracy," and that the "National Assembly is not a Party congress" (Ally, 1990), a wide range of prominent Tanzanians, drawn from the CCM, government and higher education, warned of the potential dangers of single-party systems (Musendo, 1990), and questioned the amount and character of democracy in Tanzania. Legitimacy was repeatedly, if obliquely, stressed, and Kingunge Ngombale-Mwiru, the Secretary of the CCM National Executive Committee for Ideology, Political Education and Training, reminded the participants that the CCM must "deliver the goods," and that "Discipline has broken down and our democracy ends up in airing our views in meetings while no implementation of decisions takes place" (Mshana, 1990). The one-party system had "performed badly economically,"39 others argued, although they conceded that it had succeeded in forging national unity.

Assumptions regarding the necessary relationship between liberal, free-market economics and liberal democracy are complicated thus far in the case of sub-Saharan Africa. Extraordinarily limited `political arenas' in African countries,40 and the overwhelming prevalence of privation, appear to result in two factors that would arguably work against this necessary relationship: the facility with which economic change can be influenced externally (e.g., top-down economic liberalization), and the broad-based potential for the (initial, at least) political popularity of distributivist, or socialist, political platforms. In this setting, then, one can hypothesize the tactical introduction of multipartyism in order to counter the externally-influenced economic liberalization of the single-party state. In short, this suggests the possibility of an unexpected scenario: the introduction of multiparty (Western liberal) democracy for the purpose of recovering a socialist economic agenda. Such a scenario might explain at least some of the startling speed with which multipartyism has advanced after 1989 in sub-Saharan Africa, as the case of Tanzania hints.

The retirement of Nyerere from the CCM leadership in August, 1990, and his dramatic repetition at that time of the need for a debate on the virtues of multipartyism in Tanzania,41 given the proximity of the October general elections, clearly had a significant political impact on the ruling elite. The continued decline in CCM membership, attributed publicly by a law reform commission in October to its "top-heavy bureaucracy" and "vanguard party" tactics,42 further undercut the legitimacy of a government immersed in the most traumatic policies of a foreign-encouraged economic liberalization program. This may have influenced the removal of Warioba as Prime Minister in November, just after the elections, and his replacement with a foreign-trained and widely experienced public servant.43 A major reopening of intra-elite dialogue, if not a realignment of the elite coalition, appeared imminent. The opening of the multipartyism debate, presaged by events in Eastern Europe, appears to have been directed at elite, rather than mass, sentiment, although the potential for mobilizing popular forces, especially given the generalized economic trauma associated with economic liberalization, was not lost on the participants. The changes in the CCM leadership code may have represented the most effective rebuttal.

The potential for the emergence of openly capitalist interests in Tanzania, then, has clearly been enhanced by such changes, which appear to stem from opposition to the introduction of a multiparty system. The other side of the debate, while evidently dominated by proponents of Ujamaa, may ultimately encourage similar changes. In August, 1990, for example, the Daily News reprinted a letter to the editor from Oscar Kambona, a former Secretary General of TANU who had been in political exile in Britain for many years, and was now associated with the Tanzanian right in exile. The publication in the government-owned press of his call for the implementation of a multiparty democracy in Tanzania (Daily News, 2 August 1990: 5) 44 is enigmatic. Was it a warning to others of the mischief latent in the multiparty debate? Was it an attempt to emphasize--in full view of foreign financial institutions--the good faith effort of the system to democratize? The reprinted editorial listed Kambona as a member of the Tanzania Democratic Forum, an opposition party in exile that had received virtually no publicity before this. In August, in his last speech as CCM chair, Nyerere again spoke of the need for a debate on multipartyism, but warned that "if a multi-party system proves unworkable, the most likely thing to follow it will be either a one person dictatorship, or military rule" (Daily News, 17 August 1990: 6).

1A new genre of literature has emerged during the past decade that focuses upon the unique problems of democratization in developing countries. See, for example: the newly-innaugurated Journal of Democracy, edited by Marc Plattner and Larry Diamond; Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour Lipset (ed.s), Democracy in Developing Countries, 4 volumes (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988); Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead (ed.s), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule; Prospects for Democracy, 4 volumes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave; Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

2It should be noted, as John A. Wiseman clarifies, that democratic structures were initially prevalent in post-independence Africa, and that this democracy "was not simply foisted on unwilling, uncomprehending Africans. In almost all cases the nationalist leaders and their followers supported the democratic model and had been demanding freedom of political association and one man, one vote in advance of the willingness of the colonial authorities to grant them. The fact that so many leaders repudiated the idea of a legal and legitimate opposition at a later date must under no circumstances be allowed to obscure this fact" (Wiseman, 1990: 20).

3Anglin, 1990: 432. Anglin also notes that the imminent loss of economic assistance and investment, as Europe increasingly becomes unified, and particularly the loss of military assistance from Eastern European countries, may have had a major effect. Pp. 438-439.

4See, for example: Bonner, 1990.

5See, for example: United States Agency for International Development, 1990.

6Hyden, public lecture, University of Dar es Salaam, June 6, 1990.

7As the Secretary-General of the CCM, Rashidi Kawawa, declared on February 5, 1990, "CCM believes that socialism is the liberator of the people..." (Lupatu, 1990a).

8Only very brief mention of this was made in the government press (Daily News, 8 February 1990:1), although it was rumored at the University of Dar es Salaam that this debate had been bitter and protracted.

9A seminal essay by Juan Linz, "Spain: An Authoritarian System," clarified the terms to some extent, while nevertheless succumbing to the popular process of combining political and economic criteria.

10As John Wiseman has noted regarding Africa, "right wing scholars have been looking benignly at the democratic claims of single-party states like Kenya or the Ivory Coast, while left wing scholars have been doing the same for Mozambique." Democracy in Black Africa, p. 6.

11Wiseman argues that because of the fear of ethnocentricity latent in conceptions of democracy, in fact, "many Western observers have bent over backward to try to support the claims of democracy of ruling elites in Africa who were banning all opposition to themselves and denying their peoples the right to choose their representatives in freely competitive elections." Democracy in Black Africa, p. 5.

12Kohli, 1986: 155. Giovanni Sartori cautions, however, that "elections do not enact policies; elections establish, rather, who will enact them. Elections do not decide issues; they decide, rather, who will decide issues" (1987: 108).

13Diamond and Linz, 1989: 9. The authors cite works by Leonard Binder, Robert Dahl, Arturo Valenzuela and Dankwart Rustow.

14Interestingly, Holm notes that the elite status of the ruling party elite in Botswana "is particularly critical. The BDP leadership consists predominantly of owners of large cattle herds. Almost all cabinet members, for instance, own over two hundred head and are assured of deriving sufficient income from this enterprise to pay for a good share of their living expenses. In contrast to the typical Tswana owner of a large herd, who is satisfied to bask in the status his possessions give him, most of the BDP politicians come from a small but growing number of cattle owners who seek to build commercial operations. Their model is in the large ranches run by whites both in Botswana and across the border in South Africa" (Holm, 1988: 203).

15In the first post-independence parliament, TANU won 70 of 71 contested seats and was virtually unchallenged (Nyang'oro, 1989: 70-71). The Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) was the only party to survive the revolution of 1964 in Zanzibar. TANU and the ASP were formally inified in the CCM in 1977.

16Cliffe, 1972: 242. Nyerere later argued that "the resultant constitution is not perfect; but it suits us better than any system operating elsewhere, and we believe that it safeguards the people's sovereignty at the same time that it enables the effective and strong Government so essential at this stage of our development" (1968: 19).

17Nyang'oro, 1989: 77-8. As Wiseman notes, with reference to Tanzania, "in a single-party state a politician who feels that the policies of the ruling party are wrong can do one of two things. He can pretend, for career reasons, that he has no objections or he can opt out of legal and constitutional politics altogether by either retiring from political life or joining a subversive organization" (1990: 7).

18Goulbourne observes that the single-party in African states "tends to perform its task under the direction of the political executive. Therefore, it is in those countries on the continent where leaders genuinely wish to establish a mix of democracy with widespread central control, in which we find the party situated as a buffer between the repressive institutions of the state and civil society. One-partyism and benevolent presidentialism tend, therefore, to go hand in hand where the political leadership is serious about its business and therefore allows for a modicum of participation" (1987: 34).

19Sunday News (Dar es Salaam), 25 February 1990: 7.

20United States Agency for International Development, 1990: 1.

21See, for example: Colin Leys, 1975.

22E.g., Issa Shivji, as cited in Nyang'oro, 1989: 76.

23Quoted in Pratt, 1976: 245.

24Mwinyi later described the period after 1978 in the following terms: "We experienced a series of misfortunes: the war with Uganda, the break-up of the East African Community, and declining commodity prices" (Morna, 1990: 27).

25Africa Confidential 24, 6 (1983): 1; regarding the economic nature of the coup attempt, personal interview with a Tanzanian Member of Parliament, 27 June 1990, Dar es Salaam; Daily News, 22 January 1983: 1; Daily News 16 February 1983: 1; Daily News, 16 February 1983: 1; Dail News, 26 February 1983: 1; Daily News, 12 March 1983: 1.

26I am indebted to Professor Dean McHenry for raising this point.

27He had begun criticizing single-party rule in 1986, shortly after his retirement from the presidency, fearing that it was athe cause of complacency in government (Wiseman, 1990: 186).

28Sunday News (Dar es Salaam), 25 February 1990: 7. The interview was published in two parts, the second one coming in the Daily News (Dar es Salaam), 26 February 1990: 4. Both articles included editorial statements at the beginning stating that "Readers are invited to contribute ideas to issues raised by Mwalimu [Nyerere]."

29He noted that "even discussing the possibility of more than one party becomes treason." Sunday News, 25 February 1990: 7.

30A recent work emphasizes the complete control exercised by the Tanzanian government over the news media (Peter, 1990: 27). In 1985, several (reportedly subdued and carefully written) letters to party officials calling for the consideration of a multiparty system had resulted in arrests under the notorious Preventive Detention Act (Ibid: 31).

31E.g., Konde, 1984; Tegambwage, 1990.

32During the last half of 1989, Tanzanians were even notified of the torture death (in police custody) of a construction worker, and the torture of a businessman, which led to charges of murder and assault against a number of policemen. Daily News, 13 September 1989: 1; 14 September 1989: 1; 15 September 1989: 1; 18 September 1989: 1; 21 September 1989: 1; 22 September 1989: 5; 13 October 1989: 1; 16 November 1989: 3. On 3 April 1990, the state-owned Dailu News featured a front-page article on the deaths of sixteen prisoners due to overcrowding at Ukonga and Keko remand prisons.

33Personal interview with member of the teaching faculty, university of Dar es Salaam, 8 May 1990.

34"Diria Tells Journalists...Avoid Western Imperialist Reporting," Daily News, 15 December 1989: 5.

35He also warned journalists not to be "carried away" with events in other countries, not to engage in "mudslinging" as regarded Tanzania's national institutions. John Kulekana, "Watch Out for Propaganda, Diria Tells the Press," Daily News, 25 April 1990: 5.

36In March, 1990, Mwinyi used the dissolution and reorganization of the Cabinet to drop the ministers of Home Affairs, Justice and Health. These ministries were regarded as being plagued with corruption, although Mwinyi absolved the ministers themselves of any personal involvement. Africa Events (January, 1991): 12.

37Personal discussions with UDSM faculty members, mid-March, 1990.

38"Mwinyi Meets the Cabinet and Says: Resign," Daily News, 13 March 1990: 1; "Warioba Back in the Saddle; Ministers to Be Announced Today," Daily News, 15 March 1990: 1; Mwinyi Drops Seven Ministers and Throws Challenge to New Cabinet," Daily News, 16 March 1990: 1 and 3. The headlines were blaring: thick black bars with white lettering.

39"Tanzania Will Never Build Socialism Unless..." Daily News, 26 March 1991: 1.

40Larry Diamond has argued that "virtually everywhere in Africa, the formal political arena has remained narrow, even when it has not been narrowed as a deliberate authoritarian strategy" (Diamond, 1988: 19).

41Nyerere said: "...I myself believe that a decision to continue with a one party system cannot be a permanent decision. I believe that one day Tanzanians will decide to adopt a multi-party system." He added that he hoped that the debate would continue. Daily News, 17 August 1990: 6. It is important to add here that nothing in politics owes to a single cause, and that, as one of the anonymous reviewers noted, "...Nyrere, an elite who seemed to have a great deal of moral suasion, was able to use his position to sway people toward a multi-party system. He may have intended the multi-party elections to support the socialist system. However, events in the country may take it another direction. He opened up the debate, but this does not mean he had a control over its direction."

42"CCM Has Been Killing Itself, Says Lawyer," Daily News, 1 October 1990: 1.

43"Malecela New PM," Daily News, 9 November 1990: 1.

44The letter was reprinted from the Independent newspaper in Britain, where it was published on July 13, 1990.