by Guy Arnold
When the first major phase of moving people was completed, the second, more difficult phase of creating ujamaa societies began. As President Nyerere said: ‘No one can force people to become good socialists – that is a voluntary act.’ ‘The large-scale villageization simultaneously brought to the forefront the urgency of applying the principles TANU had enunciated as integral to ujamaa, especially the equality of the country’s citizens and their right to education and health services.’21 Given that the economy was 90 per cent dependent upon agriculture the success or failure of the programme of villageization was of overriding importance, especially as Tanzania was particularly subject to climate variations and increased world food and fertilizer prices. The country was also adversely affected by the fourfold increase in the price of oil that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War. By the end of 1974 about three million people had been relocated in ujamaa villages, two million were in other ‘new’ villages, one and a half million in older non-ujamaa villages and three and a half million remained in scattered homesteads and hamlets. In 1967 less than 15 per cent of the rural population outside plantations had lived in any type of village. There were great variations between the level of organization and quality of life in the new villages and the government was endeavouring to reach as many as possible with literacy programmes. Village assemblies were created in 1975 and everyone over 18 was a member. A village council of 25 was to be elected by the assembly. The government provided each village with paid personnel to carry out village functions and they were answerable to the village councils. In 1976 TANU was replaced by a single revolutionary party to include Zanzibar – Chama Cha Mapinduzi.
Many plans were upset during 1975 as a result of severe drought and, with all its endeavours to create a socialist society Tanzania was burdened with problems of deep poverty for it was one of the 25 poorest countries in the world and no amount of planning could lift it out of that condition except over a long period of time. Nyerere was re-elected President for another five-year term and suggested that it might be his last. Meanwhile, he showed formidable energy in dealing with Tanzania’s day-to-day problems, in supervising the ujamaa revolution and in his capacity as chairman of the Frontline States facing the white-controlled South. He had established especially close relations with Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia. In October 1976 the Chinese-built TANZAM Railway was completed and handed over to Tanzania and Zambia. It was a symbol of the two countries’ determination to break away from Western tutelage and dependence upon transit routes through the white-controlled South and, as a consequence, was not welcomed by the West.
Early in 1977 Nyerere reviewed the 10 years that had passed since the Arusha Declaration. He pointed out the significant advances that had been made in reducing income differentials between rich and poor, in establishing attitudes for co-operative rather than competitive endeavour, and in the provision of health, education and transport. On the other hand, he was highly critical of the parastatals. ‘We are not using our investments as efficiently as we should. Almost all our industrial plants are running well below capacity…’ He was equally critical of agricultural production. ‘The truth is that the agricultural results have been very disappointing. Modern methods have not spread very quickly or very widely; the majority of our traditional crops are still being grown by the same methods as our forefathers used… The real failure seems to have been a lack of political leadership and technical understanding at the village and district level. Despite the call in Politics is Agriculture for all political leaders to learn the basics of good husbandry in their areas, and to join with the peasants in production, we have continued to shout at the peasants and exhort them to produce more, without doing much to help them or to work with them in a relationship of mutual respect.’22 Nyerere’s criticisms pointed up an inherent contradiction in his socialist experiment: the division between the peasants who were exhorted to be socialists in their ujamaa villages and the urban population, including the political elite, who had and wished at all costs to retain other prospects. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, once Nyerere had stepped out of the political scene, Tanzania’s hierarchy did not take long to embrace a capitalist development path. That lay in the future. As of 1979, of 8,000 villages, 7,126 or 90 per cent of all mainland villages had established their own governments in the form of village assemblies and councils.
BOTSWANA
Ever since the Act of Union of 1910 it had been Pretoria’s intention and hope to absorb Botswana (along with Lesotho and Swaziland) into South Africa and though this objective was not achieved the three territories came to independence in the 1960s under the shadow of their powerful neighbour. Botswana was tied to South Africa by the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU), by the fact that considerable numbers of its men worked in South Africa, and because it was landlocked and dependent upon land communications through its neighbour. Seretse Khama, Botswana’s first President, had learned more than 15 years before independence of South Africa’s baleful influence when the British had first tricked him into visiting London and then banished him from his country to appease Pretoria because he had married an English woman, Ruth Williams, and so was guilty of miscegenation. Throughout his presidency Seretse Khama made plain his abhorrence of apartheid and refused to enter into diplomatic relations with his neighbour though, as he explained to the OAU, his country was obliged to trade and have other dealings with South Africa simply to survive.
Throughout the 1970s Botswana pursued a shrewdly independent policy, never surrendering its principles under the frequent pressures exerted upon it by South Africa, but steering a careful path that maximized its independence while not providing an excuse for Pretoria to intervene in its affairs. At independence in 1966 Botswana was rated by the United Nations as one of the poorest countries in Africa, with an economy entirely based upon cattle. That was before the discovery of diamonds and copper. By 1970 the government had reached complex agreements with the international mining community for the development of its new mineral finds and looked set to embark upon an economic expansion that would have seemed unthinkable only four years earlier. Addressing the Non-Aligned Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, in September 1970, Khama said: ‘If we appear reluctant to play an active and prominent role in the struggle for the establishment of majority rule throughout Southern Africa, it is not because we are unconcerned about the plight of our oppressed brothers in the white-ruled states of our region. Rather, it is because we are concerned about our particularly exposed position and the severe limitations it imposes on us. We want to see majority rule established not only throughout Southern Africa but throughout our continent. And we are determined to contribute towards the achievement of this noble goal. We are, however, aware that there is a limit beyond which our contribution cannot go without endangering our very independence.’23
The pressures South Africa was prepared to exert were brought out during the course of the year as Botswana, with US aid, began the construction of what came to be called the BOTZAM road that would link the centre of Botswana with Zambia at the ferry crossing of Kazungula over the Zambezi. South Africa tried to bully Botswana into abandoning the road but in the face of the government’s determination to go ahead with the project, Vorster, the South African Prime Minister, retreated when in June he answered a question in Parliament: ‘I have no jurisdiction over links that might or might not be built between independent countries. If the question implies whether that road link will pass over South African territory that, of course, is a different matter and the South African government has made its position clear to the Botswana Government.’ In fact, South African bluster had failed to persuade the Botswana government to back down. South Africa also tried to prevent Khama appointing Joe Matthews to his Ministry of Information. Matthews was the son of the late Professor Z. K. Matthews, a former ambassador to the UN. Joe Matthews had recently acted as the representative of the ANC in London and had been a prominent member of the ANC in South Africa until he was exiled in 1960. South Afr
ica regarded him as a communist; Khama said he would make what appointments he chose. The overriding national interest was to reduce dependence upon South Africa while avoiding an open breach and the BOTZAM road represented the desire to establish closer links with Zambia and Tanzania to the north, and beyond them Nigeria. Botswana made plain, in answer to pressures for a dialogue with its neighbour, that it was only prepared to engage in one that was concerned with the attainment of majority rule.
The National Development Plan 1970–75 proposed a growth rate of 15 per cent but stated: ‘If mining development occurs to a greater extent than the present cautious estimates envisage the rate of growth may easily reach 20 per cent per annum.’ However, it was clear that even with such a high rate of economic growth, three out of every five school-leavers would not find wage employment in Botswana during the Plan period, that agriculture must remain the key to jobs and that mining wealth should be used for rural development. Under the Plan it was determined to develop the livestock industry and increase arable production in basic foods. A World Bank loan for US$25 million was negotiated for infrastructure facilities for the copper-nickel project at Selebi-Pikwe. Botswana did not want its new mining industry to be dominated by South African interests and worked to create a consortium of US, Swedish, West German, Australian, British and Canadian mining interests to finance and operate the Selebi-Pikwe complex. However, it was not able to keep Harry Oppenheimer’s Anglo-American Corporation (AAC) out of the diamond developments although it obtained good terms; the AAC became the dominant partner in Bamangwato Concessions, which controlled the new diamond mines. By this time it was becoming apparent that Botswana was a storehouse of minerals. The biggest known coalfield in Southern Africa was discovered at Palapye and could be the source of thermal power for the country while it was known that huge water resources were locked up in the Okavango swamps. Other minerals included brine deposits in the Nata river delta that could produce pure salt and soda ash for industrial use at Makgadigadi. Meanwhile, the national cattle herd, centred in the east of the country, was being expanded too rapidly so that over-grazing was destroying the land. There were huge imbalances in terms of individual wealth: 12 per cent of farmers owned 60 per cent of the cattle, 60 per cent of owners had fewer than 40 beasts and 23 per cent of the people on the land had no cattle at all.
As the country’s mineral wealth was exploited, Botswana faced the problem of a two-society development between those working for government or in the mines and towns for wages and the poor in the rural areas and shanty towns. The industrial sector was tiny and consisted of little more than an abattoir and meat canning plant and a few small factories producing furniture or clothing. President Khama stressed that Botswana was a country of farmers and cattle ranchers and that mining was a peripheral bonanza, but bonanza or not the mining boom came to dominate economic considerations. The government was to receive dividends from 15 per cent of the copper-nickel project as well as royalties and corporation income tax, which together were expected to yield an annual income of R4 million. At the same time the government was responsible for R53 million of borrowing to cover the Selebi-Pikwe infrastructure which included a dam, power station, road and rail links. Government policy was to spread the mining wealth and restrict the wages of miners so as not to allow the emergence of a wage elite. Roan Selection Trust (RST) had an 85 per cent stake in Selebi-Pikwe and the Botswana government had the other 15 per cent. Sir Ronald Prain, Chairman of Botswana RST, said it was the first time a country had secured loans for a project in excess of its GDP and forecast that in 10 to 20 years Botswana’s per capita income would be among the highest in the developing world. On 26 May 1972 the De Beers Orapa diamond mine, the second biggest kimberlite pipe in the world, was opened; it was expected to yield net profits of R8 million a year with an output of 2.4 million carats of mainly industrial diamonds. Despite the mineral boom only seven per cent of the population had a cash income while the non-mining industrial sector was very small and growing very slowly. Cattle were still the basis of the economy with beef exports earning R10 million a year from a national herd of 1.5 million. It was planned to expand the herd to 2 million head.
Despite the excitement of mineral developments Botswana remained isolated in a deeply disturbed region in which all its neighbours had white minority governments. On a visit to Tanzania in 1973 Khama gave a speech on 28 August in which he said: ‘We have made clear on a number of occasions that despite our extremely exposed position in our region of Africa we are not prepared to sell our souls for the sake of good relations with our powerful neighbours. We have recognized the need to co-operate with them on certain matters, but only to the extent that is absolutely necessary for our national survival.’24 Later that year (November) Botswana, to South Africa’s anger, voted for a UN resolution supporting the legitimacy of liberation struggles ‘by all available means, including armed struggle’. The economy continued to boom. The Orapa mine proved more profitable than expected, a new diamond pipe was discovered, coal was mined at Morupule (78,000 tons) and this was expected to rise to 200,000 tons by 1977, and in early 1974 copper and nickel production got under way at Selebi-Pikwe, which was expected to provide 2,000 local jobs. In 1969–70 total exports (mainly beef) earned R13 million; by 1973–74 exports were expected to earn R70 million. It was estimated that expenditure on the 1973–78 Development Plan would come to R215 million.
On the political front Khama’s Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) won the 1974 elections, taking 27 of 32 seats; the President said he had no intention of creating a one-party state and repeated his commitment to creating a non-racial society in Southern Africa. Khama played a role in the détente exercise initiated by South Africa and at the end of the year Botswana established diplomatic relations with Beijing. The result of the oil price rises led the government to give higher priority to the BOTZAM road so as to create an alternative oil supply route through Zambia. The Arab oil embargo on South Africa led Pretoria to cut oil supplies to Botswana by 30 per cent at the end of 1973 leading the government to fear this would hold back the mining operations at Selebi-Pikwe and Orapa. Saudi Arabia agreed to meet Botswana’s oil needs provided the oil was not shipped through South Africa.
As Botswana’s mineral resources were opened up at Selebi-Pikwe and Orapa social and labour tensions inevitably developed: at Selebi-Pikwe there was resentment at the racialism of the white miners and management; at Orapa (in 1972) 400 miners went on strike against management policy that favoured employing black miners from South Africa. In 1975 over 1,000 miners struck at Selebi-Pikwe demanding wage parity with South African miners. Botswana now had to face the problems associated with organized labour. There were other problems. In 1977 a three-year study by Derek Hudson of the Bank of Botswana showed that Botswana had one of the most unequal distributions of wealth in the world. Diamonds continued to boom. Orapa, which had gone into production in 1972, was the world’s second-largest diamond pipe and very profitable. The mine was run by Debswana, a combination of De Beers Consolidated Mines and the Botswana government. In 1975 the original agreement was renegotiated and the government’s shareholding was raised from 15 to 50 per cent, and royalties and taxes were placed on a new variable basis, with the result that government revenues from dividends, taxes and royalties amounted to 75 per cent of the profits. Diamonds had become the country’s leading export and the principal source of government finance. Two new diamond pipes, DK1 and DK2, 40 kilometres from Orapa, went into production in 1977 and another rich diamond pipe was discovered at Jwaneng in 1978 and was scheduled to go into production in 1982. However, the high hopes for Selebi-Pikwe were scaled down as the mine ran into technical problems and Anglo-American shelved plans to develop the soda ash deposits that had been discovered at Sua. Taking stock at the end of the decade, Botswana had done extraordinarily well. It had moved from the position of one of the poorest countries in Africa to one with a bright economic future possessing one of the continent’s strongest currencies. Develop
ment, however, was one-sided and apart from the mining sector and the cattle business the rest of the economy was badly under-developed: manufacturing was negligible and arable farming had hardly taken off. Moreover, the new prosperity had not filtered down to the majority of the rural population.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Oil and Israel; A New International Economic Order
President Boumedienne of Algeria played a leading role in the events of the early 1970s that led to the demand for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). Though the demand was the direct result of the October War of 1973 between Israel and its Arab neighbours and the subsequent fourfold increase in the price of oil, the search for a more equitable international order that he was to spearhead went back further and related to the history of exploitation from which the whole of ex-colonial Africa was still suffering. In a Memorandum submitted by Algeria to the Conference of Sovereigns and Heads of State of OPEC Member Countries (dated March 1975) the point is made that access to economic power should be given to those countries which were absent from Bretton Woods because they were then colonies and so excluded from the process of establishing and running the prevailing economic order. As a result they were still excluded from the economic decision-making process in 1975. As the memorandum pointed out, in increasing numbers these countries were emerging with their own resources and their great potential as well as their legitimate desire to take their part in the processes connected with major economic and monetary decisions:
Will the developed countries draw the inevitable conclusions from the fundamental changes that have taken place since Bretton Woods, or will they continue to ignore these changes? Will they accept that Third World countries can mobilize their resources to play a responsible and positive role in international economic relations, or will they persist in ignoring these countries and attempting to leave them in a position without responsibility vis-à-vis the vast problems of the world economy, with all the ugly consequences that such a state of affairs is bound to have on the harmony and stability of the world economy?1