Post-colonial continuities

Perhaps contrary to initial expectations, there was no immediate break between pre and post-Independence Tanganyika, at least from the perspective of the rural dweller who found that life remained pretty much the same. National policy in the post-independence period merely accentuated colonial techniques for the marginalisation of the south. The tanu regime strove to institutionalise and embed party power across all tiers of Tanzanian society, sometimes by forced nationalisation and confrontation, sometimes by stealth. The result was the gradual conversion of state and economy to an extension of the party machine (Mlimuka and Kabudi 1986; Moore 1988). The aim was to establish new power relations based on a party definition of political legitimacy while eclipsing, if not eliminating, pre-existing positions of political authority.

The impacts of these changes were variable. In some districts apparently ‘pre-colonial’ positions of ‘traditional’ authority, in actuality the creations of indirect rule, sustained themselves for a time in parallel to the reformed system (Abrahams 1981: 38; Thiele 1984: 60). Elsewhere, individual holders of power shrewdly strove to build convergence between pre and post-colonial positions through strategic manipulation of the blurred interface between state, party and local level political regimes. Of course, political authority never rested solely with government servants, whether they were chiefs, headmen or representatives of the political party. Power and authority were, and are, fragmented and related to the material and symbolic resources which a person actually had under their control (Lonsdale 1986).