I shook Tanzania’s dust off my feet 20 years ago and looked back only in anguish. I first arrived in this former colony—a place the British never put their heart into—in 1964, just after independence. I was one of the first contingent of volunteers who lived out in the bush and happily did what we could for the new African socialism of Julius Nyerere. Later, I interviewed Nyerere many times, both for television documentaries and the International Herald Tribune. The last time I saw him in 1979, we had sat outside his house on the Indian ocean, both of us exhausted after a four-hour interview on Rhodesia and South Africa—he was playing an important role as an intermediary between the guerrillas and London and Washington. As the sun went down we sipped our wine and watched the dhows gliding in from a day’s fishing or trading trip to Zanzibar.
This April, 41 years later, as I walked away from the presidential office in Dar es Salaam after my first interview with the current president, Benjamin Mkapa, I headed down to the ocean and reflected on why I had stayed away so long. Again, it was evening time. The women were cleaning the fresh fish on the white sand. The dhows were flitting landward. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. Nyerere had steered the country into an economic hole, as he himself recognised before his death in 1999. It seemed likely then that most Tanzanians would live on a dollar a day as far into the future as anyone could see. Now my hopes were recharged. Tanzania, during Mkapa’s ten years of office, has become a relative success story, albeit from a low base. Although still one of the poorest countries in Africa, with a national income per head of $290 compared to the African average of $490, Tanzania has been growing at an annual rate of almost 6 per cent over the past five years, and inflation seems to have been conquered on Mkapa’s watch. Tanzania was praised in the recent Africa Commission report; and Mkapa himself was one of the commissioners.
Mkapa will step down after the general election in October, but in an orderly, democratic transition. The opposition parties have a presence, but they are not strong and will not be able to stop the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party’s candidate, foreign minister Jakaya Kikwete, cruising to victory.
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