Aminzade 43. From Race to Citizenship: The Indigenization Debate in Post-Socialist Tanzania* Ronald Aminzade

Transcription

1 Aminzade 43 From Race to Citizenship: The Indigenization Debate in Post-Socialist Tanzania* Ronald Aminzade Neoliberal economic reforms in post-socialist Tanzania heightened racial as well as anti-foreign hostilities, while liberal political reforms made possible the expression of these antagonisms in electoral politics. Newly formed opposition parties mobilized popular support by advocating anti-asian indigenization policies that questioned a key element of liberal democracy, the protection of minority rights. This prompted the ruling party, which had initially denounced advocates of indigenization as racist, to alter its position. In doing so, ruling party leaders redefined the meaning of indigenization, shifting the focus of the debate away from racial issues and Asian control of the economy toward issues of free trade, foreign investment, and foreign economic domination. By implementing indigenization measures targeting non-citizens and featuring anti-liberal economic policies, including tariff barriers, local content laws, and restrictions on property ownership, the government faced the danger of losing international support from foreign donors and international financial institutions. The trajectory of the indigenization debate reveals the role of electoral competition and party formation in shaping race relations and national identity in post-socialist Tanzania. It suggests the need for event-centered studies of the way in which political identities are constructed in processes of conflict within the institutional arenas created by liberal political reforms. After years of economic crisis and failure to achieve sustained economic development, Tanzania s socialist experiment was gradually abandoned during the late 1980s and early 1990s, in response to internal as well as external pressures. I have no quarrel with capitalism, stated Julius Nyerere, the central architect of Tanzanian socialism, at a press conference in April Ronald Aminzade is professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. His publications concerning the social and political consequences of capitalist development include Ballots and Barricade: Class Formation and Republican Politics in France, (Princeton University Press, 1993) and Class, Politics, and Early Industrial Capitalism: A Study of Mid-Nineteenth Century Toulouse, France (State University of New York Press, 1981). He is also co-editor of Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and The Social Worlds of Higher Education (Pine Forge Press, 1999). Studies in Comparative International Development, Spring 2003, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp

2 44 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2003 It is possible that free market policies can bring about people s development if properly administered. Capitalism is wealth. People should go for it (New African, June 1997: 22). Like other former socialist countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia, Tanzania experienced a relatively rapid transition to neoliberal economics and multiparty politics in the final decades of the twentieth century, adopting the same neoliberal economic policies implemented in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America, including currency devaluation, trade liberalization, cutbacks in state-provided social services, and the privatization of public enterprises. Diverse national responses to these policies were constructed through political activities, via organizational and ideological mechanisms that link economic change to collective political action. The translation of interests and grievances fostered by neoliberal economic policies into subjective political dispositions and collective political action depends on a political process in which institutions such as political parties and ideologies like nationalism play a central role. This article explores this political process in the context of a contentious debate over the meaning of race and nation in Tanzania. In his comparative analysis of South Africa, Brazil, and the United States, Anthony Marx (1998) argues that trajectories of nation formation in each case were a result of elite uses of state power to build coalitions which, in the cases of South Africa and the United States, unified whites within the nation-state by excluding blacks. In these cases, racially based civic exclusions helped foster national unity among a divided white population. Efforts to foster national unity by appealing to racial solidarities also figure prominently in the history of Tanzanian nation building (Aminzade 2000; Brennan 2002). In Tanzania, however, political elites have been and remain divided over whether to use civic exclusion of the Asian racial minority as a means of fostering national unity among the black majority. Since the demise of state socialism and advent of multiparty politics and neoliberal economics, this division has found expression in an ongoing debate within and between political parties over the issue of indigenization (uzawa). Racial understandings of identity and difference have played a central role in the construction of nations around the globe. Nationalism s dominant conceptual partners, argues Kathryn Manzo, are not simply nation and state. They are also race and alien, for without the racialized kind of alien there can be no national kin (1996: 3). My research analyzes the debate over indigenization and efforts of opposition and ruling party leaders to frame it in terms of a rhetoric of race versus one of citizenship. Those different frames seek to construct different boundaries of inclusion and exclusion and identify different enemies and threats. Indigenization defined in terms of race sees the nation as constituted by indigenous black Africans (wazawa), excluding Asian- Tanzanians as disloyal outsiders who are exploiting the nation for their own benefit. Indigenization understood in terms of territory draws a different boundary, between citizens (wananchi) and foreigners, and seeks to protect the nation s economy and culture from the threat of foreign domination. Political theorists have often highlighted the institutional dimensions of the process of identity formation. In analyzing class identity, for example, Giovani

3 Aminzade 45 Sartori argues that political parties constitute the structural cement of class reality and hypothesizes that a thorough-going organizational network is a necessary condition of class consciousness and behavior... (1969: 86-87). Adam Przeworski and John Sprague (1986) also identify political parties as central forces determining the saliency of different sources of political identity and voting behavior, arguing that party strategies and the struggles they organize are central determinants of the extent to which individuals experience their lives in terms of the identities and commitments of class. Scholars of nationalism have been much less attentive to the role of political parties and party struggles in the creation of national identities. They typically ignore the role of political parties and party competition in creating national identities, emphasizing instead the constraints and opportunities imposed by structural relations of the global economy and international relations. Institutions like parties are viewed as translators rather than creators of shared meanings of the nation, and such meanings are typically treated as firmly rooted in larger structural realities of modernity, capitalism, and state formation (Gellner 1994; Hobsbawm 1990; Giddens 1985) rather than produced by a continual process of political contention within the electoral arena. The following account follows Brubaker s admonition that we should focus on... nation as practical category, institutionalized form, and contingent event (1996: 7). In documenting the trajectory of the indigenization debate, I highlight the role of political parties, and the dynamic process of party competition, in shaping contested boundaries of the nation. Political parties have been central in the creation of national identity in Tanzania and they continue to contest and shape national identities during the post-socialist era. An event-centered narrative approach reveals how the meaning of the term indigenous (uzawa) has shifted during the post-socialist period from a racially charged designator of the boundary between Asians and black Africans to a term used to designate the boundary between foreigners and citizens. This narrative relies heavily on accounts from the popular opposition press, which expanded rapidly during the political liberalization of the 1990s to challenge the monopoly of the state-owned print media. By early 1998, there were seventy registered publications appearing on newsstands, including four English daily newspapers that competed with the government-owned Daily News (The East African February 16-22, 1998: 3). Opposition papers were quite outspoken on a variety of contentious issues that had been taboo during the socialist period of single-party rule. Such issues, including racial inequalities between Asians and Africans, were regarded by the ruling party as a divisive threat to national unity and were excluded from public debate. During the 1990s, opposition newspaper reports provided detailed accounts of racial conflict and antiforeign hostility, but they typically treated these events as isolated happenings, failing to adequately situate them in a broader historical or sociopolitical context or to theorize their connections and their implications for nationalism and democracy. The following section of this article situates contemporary political events within a broader historical context of colonialism, which established enduring patterns of racial inequality, and state socialism, which denied public expres-

4 46 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2003 sion of racial antagonisms, channeling them into a racially coded rhetoric of class. This is followed by an analysis of how neoliberal economic policies of the post-socialist period fostered both racial and anti-foreign antagonisms. The subsequent section then traces the public expression of these antagonisms in the multiparty political arena via a narrative account of the indigenization debate. This narrative documents the ruling party s successful efforts to co-opt and transform the conflict over the indigenization issue by redefining national identity away from race, which pitted indigenous people against Asians, to a territory-based definition that opposed citizens and foreigners. The Historical Context: A Colonial Tripartite Racial Order and Race Blind African Socialism The historical antecedents of the current debate over indigenization date back to colonial times. Racial inequality in Tanzania is rooted in decades of racist British colonial policy that constituted Asians (i.e., people of Indian and Pakistani origin), Europeans (i.e., all whites), and Africans (i.e., all blacks) as distinct races, despite tremendous cultural variation within each group. Asians never constituted a single consolidated community. They were fragmented along lines of class, caste, ethnicity, religion, and language (Nagar 1997), but they were treated by colonial policy makers as, and perceived by Africans to be, one of three distinct racial groups, occupying an intermediate location between Europeans and Africans in the racial hierarchy. The majority of South Asian migrants to East Africa arrived during the twentieth century, many as coolie laborers on the railway at the beginning of the century or, after World War II, as merchants, shopkeepers, and clerks in the British colonial civil service (Gregory 1992; Nagar 1996; Voigt-Graf 1998). A highly visible and culturally distinct minority, they remained socially, residentially, and politically segregated from Africans, with few ties of marriage, kinship, and friendship across racial boundaries. Asians in British East Africa constituted what sociologists refer to as a middlemen minority, an ethnic group that occupies an intermediate niche in the economic system, as traders, shopkeepers, moneylenders, and professionals. The creation of an Asian middlemen minority in East Africa was inextricably linked to the political constitution of races by the British colonial state, which established a communal system of political representation with separate voting rolls and a racial division of labor that prevented Africans access to credit and commerce. Colonial rule created a rigid tripartite racial order reinforced daily by segregated schools, hospitals, prisons, and social clubs; racial patterns of residency and marriage; and a racially based salary structure. During the struggle for national independence, led by the Tanganyikan African National Union (TANU), nationalist leaders fought bitterly over whether to participate in a racially based election, whether to use race to define citizenship, and whether to implement race-conscious policies of Africanization in the recruitment of state personnel. Opponents of racial nationalism, led by Julius Nyerere, won each of these three conflicts (Aminzade 2000). The conflict over TANU s participation in the racially based election of 1958 produced the first split within nationalist ranks, giving rise to the Tanzanian African

5 Aminzade 47 National Congress (ANC), a political party that advocated Africa for the Africans and advocated a citizenship law that distinguished between indigenous inhabitants and other races who have made their homes in Tanganyika (Tanganyika National Assembly Debates 1961: ). Even after this split, TANU remained divided, and proponents of anti-asian racial nationalism, including Bibi Titi Mohamed and Oscar Kambona, remained influential within TANU. Some scholars contend that the ANC s racial ideology attracted few supporters because racial polemicizing had become too universal to distinguish any party by 1959" (Brennan 2002: 314). Julius Nyerere s 1964 declaration that Africanization was dead and that Asians and Europeans would be allowed to join TANU generated intense protest, including an abortive military uprising, the repression of which temporarily put an end to the public debate over racial issues. Those individuals and political parties advocating racial nationalism fell victim to laws restricting freedom of association and assembly and laws instituting a single-party state. Race was a taboo subject during the following decades of socialist single-party rule. The socialist project rejected the tripartite racial order that had underpinned colonialism and called on all citizens, regardless of race, to help build the new nation. Public expressions of racial nationalism were prohibited and the ruling party justified this suppression by the need to maintain national unity. But anti-asian racism did not disappear, and the legacy of decades of racial inequality and conflict was not easily eliminated. Although the socialist regime was committed to non-racial policies, its actions did not occur on a blank slate. They took place in a society in which decades of racist colonial policies and structural racism embedded in the economy well into the post-colonial period had generated a level of racial consciousness and anti-asian hostilities that the government could not simply erase. Dissident voices of racial nationalism within the ruling party often found expression in the party newspaper, Uhuru, using an anti-asian rhetoric couched in terms of anti-capitalism. Despite Nyerere s staunch opposition to racial nationalism, divisions within TANU over the Asian question persisted. Government efforts to suppress expressions of racial nationalism led to the use of innuendo, hints, ambiguous symbols, code words, and other subtle devices to introduce racial themes into public discourse, giving words like corruption and exploitation racial connotations. During the economic crisis of , Asians were often accused, and sometimes convicted, of scarce goods hoarding, currency smuggling, and profiteering (Smyth and Seftel 1998: 167). Official government pronouncements repeatedly reminded the public that not all Asians were capitalist exploiters and that non-asians were also guilty of capitalist practices. Although ostensibly motivated by a desire for class equality, there was a racial dimension to socialist policies that Nyerere only acknowledged many years later. When asked in June 1997 about nationalization policies that his government had implemented during the 1970s, Nyerere replied that he had no choice. If he had left the country to the private sector, he argued, it would have become entirely Asian and this would have produced unacceptable racial conflicts (Tanzanian Affairs September-December 1997: 16). Race blind socialist policies did not eliminate racial inequalities and antagonisms but drove

6 48 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2003 them underground, outside the public sphere, and channeled their public expression into a racially coded class rhetoric of attacks on corrupt Asian exploiters. Despite a strong commitment to the value of equality, the socialist experiment failed to eliminate a racially stratified class system. The suppression of discussion of racial issues during three decades of socialist rule, and the embracing of a race-blind approach that emphasized consensus rather than diversity, meant that affirmative action policies of redistribution to reduce racial inequalities were not publicly discussed or implemented. The collapse of state socialism and implementation of neoliberal economic policies have helped to further exacerbate racial inequalities and animosities. The Consequences of Neoliberal Economics: Racial and Anti-Foreign Antagonisms Neoliberal economic policies include trade liberalization; massive currency devaluation; the introduction of user fees for schools, hospitals, and rural water consumption; the withdrawal of subsidies for basic food staples; the retrenchment of public sector employees; and the privatization of government-owned and operated companies. One of the key unintended political consequences of these economic policies has been the promotion of racial antagonisms. This has occurred as a result of changing class relations, including the emergence of a nascent black African capitalist class and growing economic power of an Asian-Tanzanian capitalist class with strong connections to global markets; the growth and heightened visibility of racial inequalities; and increasing attention to corruption, which has strong racial connotations in Tanzanian political culture. I will briefly explore each of these three developments. The recent growth of a black African bourgeoisie is tied to neoliberal market reforms and to the Zanzibar Resolution of February 1990, which ended restrictions imposed by the Arusha leadership code. The code had prohibited government and party officials from engaging in capitalist activities, including renting houses, earning more than one salary, owning shares in private companies, or serving on the board of directors of a private company. Many of the new African entrepreneurs are former public officials who have used their cultural capital and social connections to develop businesses. African businessmen have been in the forefront of efforts to implement policies of racial preference in the transition from state socialism to capitalism. In August 1995, David Mwaibula, president of the Tanzanian Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture, urged the government to support the Chamber s recommendation that the Banking and Financial Institutions Act of 1991 be amended to specify that a minimum percentage of all bank loans go to indigenous entrepreneurs (The Express August 22, 1995). In June 1997, Mwaibula warned that in the absence of government intervention, the privatization exercise will simply lead to further entrenchment of the national economy in the hands of the minority group (Sunday Observer June 15, 1997). Ally Sykes, one of the original founding members of TANU, is a prominent businessman who has become a spokesman for the emerging black African bourgeoisie. He has called on the government to give economic power to indigenous Africans by refusing to

7 Aminzade 49 grant Asians business licenses and by granting indigenous Tanzanians the right to first purchase of parastatal shares. Asians have been thrown out of business everywhere in the world, he stated in an interview in We have seen this in Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ghana, etc. Why should we allow these people to run the economy the way they are doing? (Sunday Observer December 8, 1996). Sykes also praised the policies of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, commenting in 1993: Unfortunately, people say Amin was a bad fellow, but the Ugandan expulsion was very well done (Evans 1993: 36). Most Asian-Tanzanian businessmen, whose contacts, capital, and organization rely on ties of family and kinship that encompass East Africa, the United Kingdom, North America, and India, have shown little interest in initiating partnerships or joint ventures with black Africans. State officials are unlikely to force them to do so, given the political clout of wealthy Asian businessmen and neoliberal economic policies that make these globally connected businessmen more crucial to state development initiatives and tax revenue generation. While no systematic study is available on new patterns of ownership, write Samuel Wangwe and Brian Van Arkadie, the impression gained from casual observation is that the main effect [of liberalization and privatization] has been a resurgence of the Asian business community, not only in areas where they traditionally played a dominant role, such as trade, but in new areas such as banking and finance, and real estate development (2000: 67-68). Neoliberal economic policies have heightened class-based racial inequalities, as the poor have suffered from sharp cutbacks in social services; wage freezes; dismissal of civil servants; the end of price controls on thousands of items, including basic commodities; and massive currency devaluations that reduce their purchasing power (Mmuya and Chaligha 1992: 33-41). The privatization of social services, including education and health care, has produced further racial divisions in access to basic services. Fiscal constraints resulting from neoliberal economic policies made it difficult for the state to continue to provide social services and led to the imposition of user fees for education and health care, which large numbers of the impoverished black African population cannot afford. Access to costly privatized services on the part of the Asian community has made racial inequalities more visible. The deterioration of public services in the era of structural adjustment has had a less severe impact on the Asian community, where non-government communal institutions, financed in large part by generous contributions from Asian businessmen, provide educational, health care, and social services. The rhetoric of neoliberalism includes an emphasis on good governance, which implies an end to the corruption that has plagued African governments. Opposition politicians have made anti-corruption a central theme in their campaigns, which target government officials as well as smugglers, speculators, and merchants who fix prices and bribe officials to evade taxes or gain special privileges. The most vocal anti-corruption opposition politicians have embraced an anti-asian rhetoric. Political charges of corruption are often racially coded, with media headlines frequently focusing on Asian businessmen bribing African politicians or using their political connections to circumvent the law and purchase or lease public property at an extremely low cost. Racial antago-

8 50 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2003 nisms have been heightened by several cases of corruption involving Asian businessmen. In addition to heightening racial antagonisms, neoliberal economic policies have also fostered anti-foreign sentiments, which have focused on three developments: the process of privatization and alleged corruption surrounding it; growing foreign investments, especially by South African capital; and the dumping of cheap foreign goods on the local market. Since much of the impetus for privatization comes from the World Bank and IMF, which have made loans and credits conditional, in part, on privatizing state enterprises, and since foreign investors have purchased the majority of former public enterprises, many Tanzanians see the exercise as a form of neocolonialism. As of March 1997, foreigners had purchased ninety-two of 143 privatized companies, with only twenty-three purchased by indigenous investors and twentyeight sold as joint ventures (Sunday Observer March 23, 1997: 3). Privatization has helped to popularize anti-foreign sentiments across class lines, among local businessmen fearing foreign competition as well as trade union members and middle managers who became unemployed after their companies were purchased by foreign owners. To transform inefficient and loss-making firms into profitable enterprises, foreign purchasers of privatized enterprises have typically reduced the number of employees and replaced local managers with foreign experts. The secrecy with which some sales have occurred has generated public suspicion of corruption and the view that privatization has mainly benefited foreign investors with political connections. Critics charge that corruption has led to the sale of parastatals to foreigners at ridiculously low prices and claim that well-managed and profit-making public firms, like the Tanzania Cigarettes Company and Tanzania Breweries, were sold to foreigners. Others complain that the sale of major state banks to foreigners has lead to curtailment of services in smaller and less profitable rural branches, thus depriving many Tanzanians of basic banking services (Harsch 2000: 15). Growing foreign domination of the economy, especially by South African investors, has also helped to popularize anti-foreign sentiments. Opposition party politicians made South African investments an issue in the 2000 presidential election campaign. John Cheyo, UDP candidate for president, campaigned on the issue of the large number of South African investors in Tanzania (Tanzanian Affairs September-December, 2000: 4). After South African investors were left out of the preferred list of buyers for the Tanzania Telecommunications Company Ltd., Samuel Sitta, director of the Tanzania Investment Center, stated: Most South African investors are white. When anything happens at a work place Tanzanian workers are reminded of apartheid (Tanzanian Affairs September-December 2000: 51). Another issue that has helped to popularize anti-foreign sentiments concerns the dumping of foreign goods on the local market resulting from neoliberal tariff policies. Critics charge that this has led to the decline of local industries, eliminating jobs and the demand for local inputs. Many politicians and local business leaders have advocated protectionist measures to sustain local industries, even though these contradict the logic of free market liberalization.

9 Aminzade 51 Neoliberal economic reforms and their consequences help to define constellations of interests, grievances, and identities that can serve as a potential basis for collective political action, but these are constituted through a political process in which parties and party conflict play a central role. Given the problematic and historically contingent character of the relationship between economic change and collective political action, we need to explore the ways in which the interests, grievances, and identities fostered by neoliberal economic reforms have been constituted in the institutional arena of competing political parties created by liberal political reforms. Political Liberalization, Multiparty Politics, and the Indigenization Debate By institutionalizing multiparty electoral competition, political liberalization made a possible a public debate on an issue that had remained taboo for decades racial inequality. Even though newly formed political parties were prohibited from mobilizing supporters on the basis of race (or ethnicity or religion), and though the opposition party that first forced the issue of indigenization onto the public agenda was refused official recognition in the form of government registration, indigenization became one of the dominant issues within the newly established multiparty electoral system. Opposition politicians called for policies of preferential treatment for indigenous Tanzanians (wazawa) and, in their effort to mobilize popular support without challenging free-market orthodoxies, seized on indigenization as a way to address the grievances generated by neoliberal economic policies. Whereas racial hostility was expressed in class terms during the socialist era, in popular denunciations of Asians as capitalist exploiters, in the post-socialist period it was increasingly expressed in racial terms, by labeling Asians non-indigenous people whose loyalty to the nation and claims to citizenship are questionable. The following account traces the emergence of the indigenization debate and the conflicts among and within political parties generated by this issue. In 1992, the Tanzanian parliament eliminated the legal status of the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) as the sole political party, thus allowing a multiparty system to emerge. This was followed by a variety of measures that granted trade unions and cooperative organizations autonomy from the party-state; strengthened the power of parliament vis-à-vis the executive branch; and loosened restrictions on rights to association, assembly, and a free press (Mmuya and Chaligha 1992; Msekwa 1995; Ngasongwa 1992). Although the law explicitly prohibited the registration of any party based on race, religion, or ethnicity, opposition parties emerged which mobilized popular support by denouncing Asian-Tanzanians and demanding preferential legislation for indigenous Tanzanians. The most popular advocate of racial nationalism in the early years of multiparty politics was the Reverend Chistopher Mtikila, a fortyeight-year-old clergyman of the Full Salvation Church who led the unregistered Democratic Party (DP). Mtikila targeted Asians as enemies of the nation and coined a new racial nationalist vocabulary of indigenization to express his exclusive sense of authentic Tanzanian identity. Rejecting the term wananchi, which was part of the socialist discourse of citizenship, Mtikila coined the

10 52 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2003 racially coded term wazawa (indigenous) as an alternative term for referring to citizens. While attending Malangali Government Secondary School in Mufindi district, Mtikila was nicknamed Hitler by fellow students because he ardently advocated some of Hitler s ideas in school debates (Weekly Mail May 31-June 1, 1993: 4-5). Mtikila denounced Indians and Arabs as thieves and looters of the country s wealth (gabacholis) who sold out the nation and exploited dispossessed Africans (walalahoi). He claimed that the economy was run by 161 Asian-Tanzanians to benefit their own communities at the expense of indigenous Africans, the downtrodden people (mkombozi wa walalahoi). Mtikila called for the expulsion of Asians and Arabs from Tanzania and urged neighboring African countries to repay the assistance Tanzania provided during their liberation struggles by sending troops to drive the Asians and Arabs out of Tanzania (Evans 1993: 36). In July 1992, after his inflammatory speeches provoked supporters to destroy Arab and Asian-owned shops in Dar es Salaam, Mtikila was arrested and charged, along with nine of his followers, with unlawful assembly and use of abusive language. He was released after serving two months in jail when the High Court overturned the lower court s conviction. Mtikila was again arrested and charged with sedition and illegal assembly in late January 1993 for a speech which incited youthful supporters to stone the cars of Asian residents, a number of whom were injured. Just prior to these violent incidents, at a mass rally at Jangwani grounds, Mtikila declared war against non-indigenous Tanzanians whom he accused of looting the country s wealth (Daily News January 26, 1993). Mtikila s fiery speeches included accusations of corruption directed against top government and ruling party leaders who, in his view, had betrayed the nation. He denounced the ruling party for embracing Asian tycoons, whom he accused of looting national resources, exporting capital, and corrupting politicians. Mtikila s message was widely distributed via audiotapes and the racist terms he coined are now part of popular vocabulary. Although some Tanzanian commentators denounced Mtikila s message as the gospel of hate thy neighbor and labeled his political party the incarnation of fascism (The Express February 11-17, 1993; Business Times February 12, 1993), others defended his actions and called for popular protests and a boycott of Asian businesses. In 1995, a poll found Mtikila to be one of the most popular politicians in the country, second only to Julius Nyerere (Africa Confidential July 1995). The poor street vendors of Dar es Salaam, mostly recent young black male migrants seeking employment, were his strongest supporters. These poor underemployed urban youth engaged in the informal economy constitute a sizable political constituency. Each day an estimated 4,500 youth migrate to Dar es Salaam, which has an annual growth rate of 11 percent and is now African s third fastest growing city (The Express April 24, 1995). In September 1993, police swept through the streets of the commercial neighborhood of Kariakoo, arresting street vendors (wamachinga) and dismantling their stalls. The city council justified the police actions by claiming that unlicensed roadside kiosks posed a threat to public health, citing a recent cholera epidemic that claimed over 100 lives. A group of over 100 African youths responded to the raid by looting Asian shops and stoning cars driven by Asians

11 Aminzade 53 in the city center. The rioters viewed the municipal government s actions as a response to complaints by Asian shopkeepers determined to eliminate African street vendors, many of whom depended on Asians for their goods, so that people would be forced to buy goods at higher prices in the shops. Rumors circulated that Asian shopkeepers had paid local authorities a bribe of $80,000 to rid the city center of African street hawkers who occupied sidewalks outside their shops. Foreigners cannot remove us from our motherland, shouted the rioters. We shall die here (The Express October 15, 1993). The confrontation between police and demonstrators lasted over four hours, resulting in two deaths and scores of injuries. Similar confrontations between street vendors and Asian shopkeepers took place in Morogoro, located 150 miles west of Dar es Salaam, in July Hundreds of African street vendors attacked and looted Asianowned stores to protest what they regarded as a concerted effort by Asian shopkeepers and municipal authorities to remove them from the center of town (Business Times July 8-15, 1994; The Express August 3, 1994). As the leader of an unregistered opposition party, Mtikila s espousal of indigenization remained at the margins of the political system, and his party was prohibited from running candidates in elections. But other opposition leaders, recognizing the powerful mobilizing potential of the indigenization issue, soon altered their views in response to Mtikila s popular appeal. CHADEMA (Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo) is an opposition party that initially received its main support from African businessmen and government officials, many of whom were very well connected. The party initially rejected racial nationalism and espoused the principle of non-discrimination based on race, religion, or ethnicity. But a dissident faction within the party espoused a racial nationalist vision, similar to the racist populism of the Reverend Mtikila. On March 31, 1997 CHADEMA accepted Mtikila into its ranks as a candidate for office in the fourth by-election held since the first multiparty general election of Mtikila had previously been prevented from running for office because he was unable to get his Democratic Party officially registered. CHADEMA provided him with a public forum and enhanced legitimacy as their official candidate in the May 25, 1997 Ludewa by-election. Mtikila offered CHADEMA an opportunity to broaden its base of support among youth, the unemployed, and those in the informal sector, beyond the black African businessmen and former senior government and parastatal officials who dominated the party. During his unsuccessful bid for a seat in parliament, Mtikila was arrested for distributing audiocassettes suggesting a government conspiracy in the death of former MP Horace Kolimba, a conspiracy allegedly designed to silence a strong voice of reform within the ruling party and avoid a potential defection to the opposition (Sunday Observer April 6, 1997). Although other opposition political parties raised the issue of indigenization, they initially did so very cautiously until Mtikila demonstrated its popular appeal. Mtikila gained popular support by speaking out on an issue that most other politicians were initially hesitant to address. Despite his electoral marginality, he played an important agenda-setting role, raising issues that were taboo in the electoral arena and taking his followers into the streets to challenge the regime on its racial policies as well as on a continued union with Zanzibar. Regardless

12 54 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2003 of what one thinks of his racist politics, it is clear that Mtikila was a skillful populist politician, who read the popular mood and seized on issues that divided the ruling party. Mtikila s popularity gradually declined after 1995, in large part because other more mainstream political leaders, especially Augustine Mrema, leader of the NCCR-Maguezi party, the largest opposition party with seventeen seats in Parliament, embraced the issue of indigenization. The National Convention for Construction and Reform (NCCR-Maguezi) advocated the use of racial criteria in economic development policies, including governmental financial assistance to the indigenous urban unemployed, to encourage them to start their own businesses (Mmuya and Chaligha 1992: 53-92). Party leaders used the vocabulary coined by Mtikila, such as the term magabacholi (thieves) to refer to Asian-Tanzanians. The party s Economic and Finance Secretary Mohamed Ngaula, when asked in October 1992 what would be the best form of government in Tanzania, replied: government which respects parliamentary enactments and favors the aboriginal Tanzanians in its economic policies (Business Times October 30, 1992). The social base of NCCR-Maguezi was in the cities, among youth, academics, and those employed in the informal sector. Augustine Mrema became chairman of NCCR-Maguezi in early 1995, when he quit CCM after being fired from his position as Minister of Labor and Youth for publicly criticizing the government s handling of an alleged embezzlement of public funds by the non-tanzanian Asian businessman Vinu Chavda and several government officials. He had earlier gained popularity by advocating the formation of self-defense vigilante groups (sungu sungu) and by criticizing local CCM officials in Dar es Salaam for expelling African street hawkers and vendors from the central city. As Minister, Mrema appealed to the city s growing population of young people, most of whom could not find work, by urging the government to create more jobs by issuing trading licenses for jobless youth. Mrema subsequently campaigned aggressively on the issue of government corruption and appealed to anti-asian sentiments. In his campaign for the presidency in the country s first multiparty election of October 1995, Mrema captured 1.8 million votes (27.8 percent), consolidating his position as leader of the opposition. During the campaign, many Asian shopkeepers closed their stores during NCCR-Maguezi rallies, fearful that Mrema s supporters would attack them and their property (Voigt-Graf 1998: 97). There were rumors that many Asian-Tanzanians were planning to flee the country in the event of an Mrema electoral victory. In his subsequent successful parliamentary campaign in the Temeke by-election of October 1997, Mrema highlighted the issue of corruption, criticizing the ruling party for courting rich businessmen who were not citizens and ignoring the interests of the indigenous majority (The Guardian July 23, 1996; Sunday Observer October 13, 1996). Linking his anti-corruption message with appeals to anti-asian sentiments, Mrema commented during the campaign that he admired Idi Amin s indigenization policies, even though he did not support many of Amin s other actions (The Guardian July 23, 1996). Despite active campaigning by top government officials, including the president and seventy CCM members of parliament, Mrema won the by-election by a landslide.

13 Aminzade 55 Divisions within NCCR-Maguezi, between the party s so-called intellectual wing, headed by the lawyer who founded the party, secretary general Mabere Marando, and party chairman Augustine Mrema, the popular politician responsible for the party s electoral rejuvenation, led to rapid decline. Amidst charges of embezzlement and bribery, and recriminations over subsidy funds provided by the government, several prominent leaders, including Masumbuko Lamwai and Makongoro Nyerere, abandoned the party. Mrema, claiming infiltration by government agents, quit the party in April 1999 to join the small Tanzania Labor Party, which did not have a single seat in Parliament. But the issue of indigenization remained, with the ruling party realizing that it had to respond to growing popular demands for preferential treatment based on race. The popularity of the indigenization issue forced the government and ruling party to attempt to co-opt what it once regarded as a racist and divisive position, initially promulgated by the leader of an illegal political party. From Racial Inequality to Foreign Domination: The Ruling Party Response Although the ruling party s social base had been peasants and urban workers, the abandonment of socialism and adoption of free market policies transformed Chama Cha Mapinduzi into a party of the business elite and government officials, which retains strong, patronage-based support in rural areas. Unlike the opposition parties, CCM is both rural and urban-based, with the organizational resources to operate on a national level. CCM s strength derives from well-organized local party branches throughout the country, including rural areas where opposition parties have little presence; control over communication resources and the distribution of government resources; and close ties with government officials, including district and sub-district authorities who have sometimes refused to grant opposition parties permission to hold meetings (Mmuya and Chaligha 1994: 98). The party s rich historical legacy, as an outgrowth of the original nationalist party that led the struggle for independence, and the status of its founder and recently deceased elder statesman Julius Nyerere, are sources of legitimacy and support. Unlike opposition parties, CCM has welcomed Asians into its ranks. Prominent Asian businessmen ran for office as CCM candidates in the 1994 Kigoma and Igunga by-elections, and many more helped to finance ruling-party campaigns (Mmuya and Chaligha 1994: 118). The themes of national unity in the face of growing racial, religious, and ethnic divisions and anti-corruption have been prominent in CCM pronouncements. In accepting his election as the new chairman of CCM at a ceremony in Dodoma in June 1996, President Benjamin Mkapa pledged to fight against tribalism, discrimination, and religious bigotry as well as against corruption within his party (Tanzanian Affairs September-December, 1996: 2). A series of losses and close calls in by-elections, and fears that populist mobilization around the issue of indigenization by the opposition might lead to further losses, generated serious divisions within the ruling party and a shift in its position on the issue. CCM leaders initially refused to confront the issue, labeling it an expression of racism, arresting Mtikila and his followers in the unregistered Democratic Party (DP) for their provocative actions, and denounc-

14 56 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2003 ing indigenization as a divisive threat to national unity. In recent years, however, CCM has altered its position on indigenization following conflicts within the party over this issue. Certain segments within CCM reject racial nationalism and denounce indigenization proposals as racist. Others within the party fear that growing Asian influence within CCM will tarnish the party s image and lead to a loss of popular support and electoral defeats as the opposition seizes control of the popular issue of indigenization. They fear that the ruling party s embrace of neoliberal economic policies threatens to alienate its grassroots political base. To counteract this threat and mobilize popular support among the rural and urban poor, some CCM leaders embraced the rhetoric of indigenization, which was initially denounced by their fellow party members as racist. One of the key racial issues that generated internal divisions within CCM concerns relations between Asian shopkeepers and African street vendors. Some high-ranking national party officials expressed sympathy for the plight of African vendors and denounced their harassment by local CCM authorities. Prior to the October 1993 anti-asian riot in Dar es Salaam, for example, the secretary general of CCM, Horace Kolimba, stated that the ruling party would never allow its supporters to be removed from the city center, contradicting President Mwinyi s order that the hawkers should be evicted. A second important racial issue that divided the ruling party concerned the sale of formerly public enterprises, or parastatals. Some government officials stated that indigenous people would receive priority in the sale of formerly public enterprises while other prominent CCM leaders expressed their opposition to preferential treatment for indigenous people. (Mmuya and Chaligha 1994: 182). President Mkapa stated in 1995 that loss-making parastatals would be sold to any potential buyers or partners who can provide the capital, equipment and technology required (The East African November 18-24, 1996: 17). The ruling party s less internally divisive response to the issue involved redefining indigenization in terms of citizens versus foreigners and highlighting the threat of foreign, rather than Asian-Tanzanian, economic domination. The CCM government responded to complaints about foreigners growing control of the economy by implementing restrictions on foreign ownership in certain major new industries, such as insurance. Although foreign ownership of banks is legal, Tanzanian citizens must constitute one third of both the shareholders and boards of directors for insurance companies (The East African May 3-9, 1999). The exclusion of foreigners from the new stock exchange has come under attack as a violation of the country s neoliberal economic policies and a restraint on economic growth, although it is a politically rather than economically motivated policy. Even those who advocate allowing foreigners to trade on the stock market acknowledged the political risk involved, making it unlikely to happen before the October 2000 election, since politicians do not want to expose themselves to accusations of selling out to foreigners as they set out on the campaign trail (The African May 23, 2000: 5). The CCM government also responded to complaints about free trade and the destruction of local industries by cheap foreign imports with a variety of measures. In July 1998, the government imposed a duty of 30 percent on sugar imports. In

15 Aminzade 57 April 1999, the Tanzania Revenue Authority required a cash bond for foreign sugar after the authorities received complaints from some businessmen that low-priced foreign sugar in transit through Tanzania was being illegally diverted onto the local market (The East African April 19-25, 1999). In December 1999, the government addressed complaints about the flooding of the national market with cheap foreign sugar by arresting shipment of all major sugar imports through Zanzibar, which smugglers frequently used to gain entry to the mainland, thereby evading official entry points and import taxes (The East African December 13-19, 1999). The government also responded to calls for the protection of local industries by introducing non-tariff barriers. In June 1999, new quality and safety standards were imposed by the Tanzania Bureau of Standards to prevent importers from dumping substandard goods on the local market. Beer and tobacco industry complaints about foreign competition led to protectionist provisions in the 1999 government budget, including an increase in customs duties on imported beer and a higher excise tax on cigarettes whether manufactured in Tanzania or not if they had less than 75 percent local tobacco content (The East African June 14-20, 1999: 6). In May 2000, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry announced that it was planning to propose new anti-dumping laws (The Guardian May 22, 2000). CCM leaders gradually responded to growing agitation around the issue of indigenization by conceding that the issue could not simply be ignored or dismissed as racist posturing. In the face of growing popular support for indigenization and internal party divisions, the party took the dramatic step of appointing a vocal proponent of indigenization, prominent businessman Idi Simba, as Minister of Commerce and Industry. This came at a time when there were rumors that CCM might splinter into different political parties, with a dissident group leaving to form a CCM-2 (The East African October 18-24, 1999: 3). As leader of the Confederation of Tanzanian Industries (CTI), which represented some of the nation s largest manufacturing concerns, Idi Simba had been an important advocate for state policies to strengthen the industrial sector by protecting Tanzanian industries from foreign products and more rigorously enforcing customs duties. Although he initially adopted the racially based rhetoric of indigenization used by opposition party candidates like Mtikila and Mrema, and was harshly denounced by some of his fellow ruling party members as racist, Simba adapted his rhetoric to focus on foreigners and citizenship rather than race. As Minister of Commerce and Industry, he proposed new laws reserving certain sectors of the economy exclusively for indigenous entrepreneurs and others for joint ventures with foreign investors. Opposition members of parliament joined CCM backbenchers to support the legislation, labeled the National Employment Promotion Service Act of 1999, which went into effect on May 1, No employer, stated the legislation, shall employ a foreigner as an employee in any employment or class of employment which the Minister may from time to time by notice in the gazette declare to be employment or class of employment in which citizens may only be employed (The National Employment Promotion Service Act 1999). The twenty-four businesses designated by the Minister as solely limited to ownership by Tanzanian