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Ethnic structure, inequality and governance of the public sector in Tanzania
Nyang’oro, Julius E.
Nyang’oro, Julius E.
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"The standard narrative on ethnicity in Tanzania as reflected in the two above quotes is that Tanzania represents the success story on ethnic accommodation. Unlike many other countries on the African continent and elsewhere, Tanzania has managed to develop a political system that has successfully managed to neutralize the potential for ethnic conflict by developing an ethos of national ideology. The national ideology, so goes the argument, is largely a reflection and a result of the nationalist ideology, which was put in place by the late President Julius Nyerere. The creation of a Tanzanian national identity was seen as a culmination of the nationalist project. The argument for a nationalist project is a familiar one: Tanzania like all other countries in Africa were artificial creations of the colonial project which was formalized at the Berlin Conference of 1884/85. Colonial rule conveniently subjugated and subsumed under its authority, the different ethnic groups that constituted the colonial subjects. Colonial administration worked well because it hardly presented itself as democratic. As Mahmood Mamdani has noted, in order to affect political control of its subjects, colonial rule emphasized the difference between Africans and their European colonizers. This had both a political rationale and a practical effect in the nature of colonial administration: [t]he emphasis on differentiation meant the forging of specifically “native” institutions through which to rule subjects, but the institutions so defined and enforced were not racial as much as ethnic, not “native” as much as “tribal.” Racial dualism was thereby anchored in a politically enforced ethnic pluralism.3 Ethnic pluralism was also used by the colonial state to justify the presence of an overarching authoritarian state. In a curious way, ethnic “differences” or “tribalism” was viewed by the colonial state as posing dangers to national integration and cohesion. The fact that “tribalism” was seen to be a problem reflected the anxiety of the colonial state in its project of physical and political control. Tribal differences as they were could not be allowed to disrupt economic production and the smooth functioning of colonial administration. The underlying conceptualization of African societies by Europeans was that these societies had not politically matured to accommodate modern institutions of governance. Colonially established institutions were therefore viewed as the bridge between primitivism and modernity."(pg 3)
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2004
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