Tanzania: Struggling Against Good Intentions?

At Tanganyika's independence on December 9, 1961, climbers placed a torch on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, to cast symbolic rays of hope beyond the country's borders. Few would have predicted then that Tanzania would capture the attention not just of Africa, but of much of the world, for its efforts to create through persuasion a rural-based socialism. To be sure, its 39-year-old leader, Julius Nyerere, had already shown a strong concern for equity among his people, a Gandhian commitment to non-violence, and an ability to reach his countrymen unsurpassed by any other African leader. Still, as a poor backwater in British East Africa, Tanganyika seemed to have little choice but to work within the economic, social and political structures it had inherited.