ABSTRACT
In 1967, Tanzania’s newly independent government adopted a program of rural socialism known as ujamaa (“familyhood” in Swahili). The East African country’s president, Julius Nyerere, announced in his Arusha Declaration that the principles of socialism and self-reliance would henceforth be at the center of national development. Although the Arusha Declaration was a statement of overarching political principles rather than a concrete set of policy prescriptions, the Tanzanian regime immediately nationalized major industries, banks, and natural resources and soon thereafter released a set of documents clarifying the nature of the villagization drive at the heart of the ujamaa project. Within months, rural citizens across the country began relocating into communal villages in accordance with the new national vision of collective agriculture and property ownership. After six years of voluntary villagization, which proceeded at an uneven pace with mixed results, Nyerere’s government inaugurated a push for forced resettlement into ujamaa villages, known as Operation Vijiji (villages). By the end of 1975, millions of Tanzanian citizens had moved by choice or compulsion into ujamaa villages, but substantive rural socialism remained an elusive goal. Meanwhile, the country’s economy had fallen into a severe crisis that made the aspiration of national self-reliance seem more abstract than ever before. It had become clear that the goal of agrarian socialism would be deferred or abandoned, although it was not until the 1990s that the state officially announced the conclusion of its ujamaa experiment. 1
