Tanzania: The Search for Socialism and Pluralism

Abstract

There is a village museum on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam which contains life-size replicas of traditional buildings from different parts of Tanzania. In front of each building is a plaque containing a synopsis of the history and culture of the area concerned. To a newly-arrived visitor from Ghana the most striking feature of the descriptions is the absence of any references to the role of chiefs in that history and culture. As the institution of the chieftaincy was abolished in 1962, the omission may be partly an Orwellian attempt to blot out inconvenient historical facts, but it may also reflect a genuine belief that chiefs had never played a major role. In a country with over a hundred small ethnic groups, in which no one of these was ever strong enough to have had pretensions about dominating the others, and none was greatly feared as a potential dominator, chiefs had been, for the most part, small fish in a big pond. All this is in contrast to Ghana, where tribes such as the Asantes and the Ewes dominate whole regions. They may see themselves as groups which can unite to maximise their collective benefits from the political system, and may be seen by others as a potential threat.