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UJAMAA
The Basis of African Socialism
Socialism–like democracy–is an attitude of mind. In a socialist society it
is the socialist attitude of mind, and not the rigid adherence to a standard
political pattern, which is needed to ensure that the people care for each
other’s welfare.
The purpose of this paper is to examine that attitude. It is not intended to
define the institutions which may be required to embody it in a modern
society.
In the individual, as in the society, it is an attitude. It is not intended
to define the institutions which may be required to embody it in a modern
society.
In the individual, as in the society, it is an attitude of mind which
distinguishes the socialist from the non-socialist. It has nothing to do
with the possession or non-possession of wealth. Destitute people can be
potential capitalists–exploiters of their fellow human beings. A millionaire
can equally well be a socialist; he may value his wealth only because it can
be used in the service of his fellow men. But the man who uses wealth for
the purpose of dominating any of his fellows is a capitalist. So is the man
who would if he could!
I have said that a millionaire can be a good socialist. But a socialist
millionaire is a rare phenomenon. Indeed he is almost a contradiction in
terms. The appearance of millionaires in any society is no proof of its
affluence; they can be produced by very poor countries like Tanganyika just
as well as by rich countries like the United States of America. For it is
not efficiency of production, nor the amount of wealth in a country, which
make millionaires; it is the uneven distribution of what is produced. The
basic difference between a socialist society and a capitalist society does
not lie in their methods of producing wealth, but in the way that wealth is
distributed. While, therefore, a millionaire could be a good socialist, he
could hardly be the product of a socialist society.
Since the appearance of millionaires in a society does not depend on its
affluence, sociologists may find it interesting to try and find out why our
societies in Africa did not, in fact, produce any millionaires–for we
certainly had enough wealth to create a few. I think they would discover
that it was because the organization of traditional African society–its
distribution of the wealth it produced–was such that there was hardly any
room for parasitism. They might also say, of course, that as a result of
this Africa could not produce a leisured class of landowners, and therefore
there was nobody to produce the works of art or science which capitalist
societies can boast. But works of art and the achievements of science are
products of the intellect–which, like land, is one of God’s gifts to man.
And I cannot believe that God is so careless as to have made the use of one
of His gifts depend on the misuse of another!
Defenders of capitalism claim that the millionaire’s wealth is the just
reward for his ability or enterprise. But this claim is not borne out by the
facts. The wealth of the millionaire depends as little on the enterprise or,
abilities of the millionaire himself as the power of a feudal monarch
depended on his own efforts, enterprise or brain. Both are users,
exploiters, of the abilities and enterprise of other people. Even when you
have an exceptionally intelligent and hard-working millionaire, the
difference between his intelligence, his enterprise, his hard work, and
those of other members of society, cannot possibly be proportionate to the
difference between their ‘rewards’. There must be something wrong in a
society where one man, however hard-working or clever he may be, can acquire
as great a ‘reward’ as a thousand of his fellows can acquire between them.
Acquisitiveness for the purpose of gaining power and prestige is unsocialist.
In an acquisitive society wealth tends to corrupt those who possess it. It
tends to breed in them a desire to live more comfortably than their fellows,
to dress better, and in every way to outdo them. They begin to feel they
must climb as far above their neighbours as they can. The visible contrast
between their own comfort and the comparative discomfort of the rest of
society becomes almost essential to the enjoyment of their wealth, and this
sets off the spiral of personal competition–which is then anti-social.
Apart from the anti-social effects of the accumulation of personal wealth,
the very desire to accumulate it must be interpreted as a vote of ‘no
confidence’ in the social system. For when a society is so organized that it
cares about its individuals, then, provided he is willing to work, no
individual, then within that society should worry about what will happen to
him tomorrow if he does not hoard wealth today. Society itself should look
after him, or his widow, or his orphans. This is exactly what traditional
African society succeeded in doing. Both the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’
individual were completely secure in African society. Natural catastrophe
brought famine, but it brought famine to everybody–‘poor’ or ‘rich’. Nobody
starved, either of food or of human dignity, because he lacked personal
wealth; he could depend on the wealth possessed by the community of which he
was a member. That was socialism. That is socialism. There can be no such
thing as acquisitive socialism, for that would be another contradiction in
terms. Socialism is essentially distributive. Its concern is to see that
those who sow reap a fair share of what they sow.
The production of wealth, whether by primitive or modern methods, requires
three things. First, land. God has given us the land, and it is from the
land that we get the raw materials which we reshape to meet our needs.
Secondly, tools. We have found by simple experience that tools do help! So
we make the hoe, the axe, or the modern factory or tractor, to help us to
produce wealth–the goods we need. And, thirdly, human exertion–or labour. We
don’t need to read Karl Marx or Adam Smith to find out that neither the land
nor the hoe actually produces wealth. And we don’t need to take degrees in
Economics to know that neither the worker nor the landlord produces land.
Land is God’s gift to man–it is always there. But we do know, still without
degrees in Economics, that the axe and the plough were produced by the
labourer. Some of our more sophisticated friends apparently have to undergo
the most rigorous intellectual training simply in order to discover that
stone axes were produced by that ancient gentleman ‘Early Man’ to make it
easier for him to skin the impala he had just killed with a club, which he
had also made for himself!
In traditional African society everybody was a worker. There was no other
way of earning a living for the community. Even the Elder, who appeared to
be enjoying himself without doing any work and for whom everybody else
appeared to be working, had, in fact, worked hard all his younger days. The
wealth he now appeared to possess was not his, personally; it was only ‘his’
as the Elder of the group which had produced it. He was its guardian. The
wealth itself gave him neither power nor prestige. The respect paid to him
by the young was his because he was older than they, and had served his
community longer; and the ‘poor’ Elder enjoyed as much respect in our
society as the ‘rich’ Elder.
When I say that in traditional African society everybody was a worker, I do
not use the word ‘worker’ simply as opposed to ‘employer’ but also as
opposed to ‘loiterer’ or ‘idler’. One of the most socialistic achievements
of our society was the sense of security it gave to its members, and the
universal hospitality on which they could rely. But it is too often
forgotten, nowadays, that the basis of this great socialistic achievement
was this: that it was taken for granted that every member of society–barring
only the children and the infirm–contributed his fair share of effort
towards the production of its wealth. Not only was the capitalist, or the
landed exploiter, unknown to traditional African society, but we did not
have that other form of modern parasite–the loiterer, or idler, who accepts
the hospitality of society as his ‘right’ but gives nothing in return!
Capitalistic exploitation was impossible. Loitering was an unthinkable
disgrace.
Those of us who talk about the African way of life and, quite rightly, take
a pride in maintaining the tradition of hospitality which is so great a part
of it, might do well to remember the Swahili saying: ‘Mgeni siku mbili; siku
ya tatu mpe jembe’ –or in English, ‘Treat your guest as a guest for two
days; on the third day give him a hoe!’ In actual fact, the guest was likely
to ask for the hoe even before his host had to give him one–for he knew what
was expected of him, and would have been ashamed to remain idle any longer.
Thus, working was part and parcel, was indeed the very basis and
justification of this socialist achievement of which we are so justly proud.
There is no such thing as socialism without work. A society which fails to
give its individuals the means to work, or, having given them the means to
work, prevents them from getting a fair share of the products of their own
sweat and toil, needs putting right. Similarly, an individual who can
work–and is provided by society with the means to work–but does not do so,
is equally wrong. He has no right to expect anything from society because he
contributes nothing to society.
The other use of the word ‘worker’, in its specialized sense of ‘employee;
as opposed to ‘employer’, reflects a capitalist attitude of mind which was
introduced into Africa with the coming of colonialism and is totally foreign
to our own way of thinking. In the old days the African had never aspired to
the possession of personal wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his
fellows. He had never had labourers or ‘factory hands’ to do his work for
him. But then came the foreign capitalists. They were wealthy. They were
powerful. And the African naturally started wanting to be wealthy too. There
is nothing wrong in our wanting to be wealthy; nor is it a bad thing for us
to want to acquire the power which wealth brings with it. But it most
certainly is wrong if we want the wealth and the power so that we can
dominate somebody else. Unfortunately there are some of us who have already
learnt to covet wealth for that purpose–and who would like to use the
methods which the capitalist uses in acquiring it. That is to say, some of
us would like to use, or exploit, our brothers for the purpose of building
up our own personal power and prestige. This is completely foreign to us,
and it is incompatible with the socialist society we want to build here.
Our first step, therefore, must be to re-educate ourselves; to regain our
former attitude of mind. In our traditional African society we were
individuals within a community. We took care of the community, and the
community took care of us. We neither needed nor wished to exploit our
fellow men.
And in rejecting the capitalist attitude of mind which colonialism brought
into Africa, we must reject also the capitalist methods which go with it.
One of these is the individual ownership of land. To us in Africa land was
always recognized as belonging to the community. Each individual within our
society had a right to the use of land, because otherwise he could not earn
his living and one cannot have the right to life without also having the
right to some means of maintaining life. But the African’s right to land was
simply the right to use it; he had no other right to it, nor did it occur to
him to try and claim one.
The foreigner introduced a completely different concept–the concept of land
as a marketable commodity. According to this system, a person could claim a
piece of land as his own private property whether he intended to use it or
not. I could take a few square miles of land, call them ‘mine’, and then go
off to the moon. All I had to do to gain a living from ‘my’ land was to
charge a rent to the people who wanted to use it. If this piece of land was
in an urban area I had no need to develop it at all; I could leave it to the
fools who were prepared to develop all the other pieces of land surrounding
‘My’ piece, and in doing so automatically to raise the market value of mine.
Then I could come down from the moon and demand that these fools pay me
through their noses for the high value of ‘my’ land–a value which they
themselves had created for me while I was enjoying myself on the moon! Such
a system is not only foreign to us, it is completely wrong. Landlords, in a
society which recognizes individual ownership of land, can be, and usually
are, in the same class as the loiterers I was talking about: the class of
parasites.
We must not allow the growth of parasites here in Tanganyika. The TANU
Government must go back to the traditional African custom of land-holding.
That is to say a member of society will be entitled to a piece of land on
condition that he uses it. Unconditional, or ‘freehold’, ownership of land
(which leads to speculation and parasitism) must be abolished. We must, as I
have said, regain our former attitude of mind–our traditional African
socialism–and apply it to the new societies we are building today. TANU has
pledged itself to make socialism the basis of its policy in every field. The
people of Tanganyika have given us their mandate to carry out that policy,
by electing a TANU Government to lead them. So the Government can be relied
upon to introduce only legislation which is in harmony with socialist
principles.
But, as I said at the beginning, true socialism is an attitude of mind. It
is therefore up to the people of Tanganyika–the peasants, the wage-earners,
the students, the leaders, all of us–to make sure that this socialist
attitude of mind is not lost through the temptations to personal gain (or to
the abuse of positions of authority) which may come our way as individuals,
or through the temptation to look on the good of the whole community as of
secondary importance to the interests of our own particular group.
Just as the Elder, in our former society, was respected for his age and his
service to the community, so, in our modern society, this respect for age
and service will be preserved. And in the same way as the ‘rich’ Elder’s
apparent wealth was really only held by him in trust for his people, so,
today, the apparent extra wealth which certain positions of leadership may
bring to the individuals who fill them, can be theirs only in so far as it
is a necessary aim to them carrying out of their duties. It is a ‘tool’
entrusted to them for the benefit of the people they serve. It is not
‘theirs’ personally; and they may not use any part of it as a means of
accumulating more for their own benefit, nor as an ‘insurance’ against the
day when they no longer hold the same positions. That would be to betray the
people who entrusted it to them. If they serve the community while they can,
the community must look after them when they are no longer able to do so.
In tribal society, the individuals or the families within a tribe were
‘rich’ or ‘poor’ according to whether the whole tribe was rich or poor. If
the tribe prospered all the members of the tribe shared in its prosperity.
Tanganyika, today, is a poor country. The standard of living of the masses
of our people is shamefully low. But if every man and woman in the country
takes up the challenge and works to the limit of his or her ability for the
good of the whole society, Tanganyika will prosper; and that prosperity will
be shared by all her people.
But it must be shared. The true socialist may not exploit his fellows. So
that if the members of any group within our society are going to argue that,
because they happen to be contributing more to the national income than some
other groups, they must therefore take for themselves a greater share of the
profits of their own industry than they actually need; and if they insist on
this in spite of the fact that it would mean reducing their group’s
contribution to the general income and thus slowing down the rate at which
the whole community can benefit, then that group is exploiting (or trying to
exploit) its fellow human beings. It is displaying a capitalist attitude of
mind.
There are bound to be certain groups which, by virtue of the ‘market value’
of their particular industry’s products, will contribute more to the
nation’s income than others. But the others may actually be producing goods
or services which are of equal, or greater, intrinsic value although they do
not happen to command such a high artificial value. For example, the food
produced by the peasant farmer is of greater social value than the diamonds
mined at Mwadui. 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!
This is exactly where the attitude of mind comes in. It is one of the
purposes of trade unions to ensure for the workers a fair share of the
profits of their labour. But a ‘fair’ share must be fair in relation to the
whole society. If it is greater than the country can afford without having
to penalize some other section of society, then it is not a fair share.
Trade union leaders and their followers, and long as they are true
socialists, will not need to be coerced by the Government into keeping their
demands within the limits imposed by the needs of society as a whole. Only
if there are potential capitalists amongst them will the socialist
government have to step in and prevent them from putting their capitalist
ideas into practice!
As with groups, so with individuals. There are certain skills, certain
qualifications, which, for good reasons, command a higher rate of salary for
their possessors than others. But, here again, the true socialist will
demand only that return for his skilled work which he knows to be a fair one
in proportion to the wealth or poverty of the whole society to which he
belongs. He will not, unless he is a would-be capitalist, attempt to
blackmail the community by demanding a salary equal to that paid to his
counterpart in some far wealthier society.
European socialism was born of the Agrarian Revolution and the Industrial
Revolution which followed it. The former created the ‘landed’ and the
‘landless’ classes in society; the latter produced the modern capitalist and
the industrial proletariat.
These two revolutions planted the seeds of conflict within society, and not
only was European socialism born of that conflict, but its apostles
sanctified the conflict itself into a philosophy. Civil war was no longer
looked upon as something evil, or something unfortunate, but as something
good and necessary. As prayer is to Christianity or to Islam, so civil war
(which they call ‘class war’) is to the European version of socialism–a
means inseparable from the end. Each becomes the basis of a whole way of
life. The European socialist cannot think of his socialism without its
father–capitalism!
Brought up in tribal socialism, I must say I find this contradiction quite
intolerable. It gives capitalism a philosophical status which capitalism
neither claims nor deserves. For it virtually says, ‘Without capitalism, and
the conflict which capitalism creates within society, there can be no
socialism’! This glorification of capitalism by the doctrinaire European
socialists, I repeat, I find intolerable.
African socialism, on the other hand, did not have the ‘benefit’ of the
Agrarian Revolution or the Industrial Revolution. It did not start from the
existence of conflicting ‘classes’ in society. Indeed I doubt if the
equivalent for the word ‘class’ exists in any indigenous African language;
for language describes the ideas of those who speak it, and the idea of
‘class’ or ‘caste’ was non-existent in African society.
The foundation, and the objective, of African socialism is the extended
family. The true African socialist does not look on one class of men as his
brethren and another as his natural enemies. He does not form an alliance
with the ‘brethren’ for the extermination of the ‘non-brethren’.
He rather regards all men as his brethren–as members of his ever extending
family. That is why the first article of TANU’S Creed is: ‘Binadamu wote ni
ndugu zangu, na Afrika ni moja’. If this had been originally put in English,
it could have been: ‘I believe in Human Brotherhood and the Unity of
Africa’.
‘Ujamaa’, then, or ‘Familyhood’, describes our socialism. It is opposed to
capitalism, which seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the
exploitation of man by man; and it is equally opposed to doctrinaire
socialism which seeks to build its happy society on a philosophy of
inevitable conflict between man and man.
We, in Africa, have no more need of being ‘converted’ to socialism than we
have of being ‘taught’ democracy. Both are rooted in our own past–in the
traditional society which produced us. Modern African socialism can draw
from its traditional heritage the recognition of ‘society’ as an extension
of the basic family within the limits of the tribe, nor, indeed, of the
nation. For no true African socialist can look at a line drawn on a map and
say. ‘The people on this side of that line are my brothers, but those who
happen to live on the other side of it can have no claim on me’; every
individual on this continent is his brother.
It was in the struggle to break the grip of colonialism that we learnt the
need for unity. We came to recognize that the same socialist attitude of
mind which, in the tribal days, gave to every individual the security that
comes of belonging to a widely extended family, must be preserved within the
still wider society of the nation. But we should not stop there. Our
recognition of the family to which we all belong must be extended yet
further–beyond the tribe, the community, the nation, or even the
continent–to embrace the whole society of mankind. This is the only logical
conclusion for true socialism.
Isssue by:
TANU
DAR ES SALAAM
1962
Also Available In:
Nyerere, Julius K. (1967)
UJAMAA-Essays On Socialism;
Oxford University Press;
Dar es Salaam |
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