How successful has the ‘governance agenda’ been in politically empowering local communities in developing countries? This article, written for African Affairs, documents a tax revolt in 1998 in northeast Tanzania. Despite claims by theorists that the revolt reflects the sort of popular empowerment compatible with the governance agenda, it is argued that it was, in reality, heavily conditioned by elite interests. The revolt is explained as an instance of ‘districtization’ of Tanzanian politics, a phenomenon with important implications for future accountability and stability in the country.
In the first half of 1998, a tax revolt occurred in the west of Arumeru District in northeast Tanzania. Simmering public dissatisfaction with an apparently corrupt and ineffective council was ignited when the council increased the development tax by 150 per cent.
The revolt was striking because a key feature of post-independence politics has been the relative lack of rural political mobilisation. It was cast as a triumph of the governance agenda, which aims to improve implementation of development policy through politically empowering the local population. Yet, after closer analysis, the scale of the mobilisation suggests that it was triggered by a miscalculation on the part of the council, in a context of economic hardship, which coincided with an elite interest in popular mobilisation.
The revolt reflects a process of ‘districtization’ in Tanzania. To be understood, this has to be set against the political stability in the Tanzanian countryside in the years since independence. Rural stability can be explained by reference to a set of ‘presences’ and ‘absences’:
- With regard to presences, Tanzanians have a strong sense of nationhood. Related to this is the popularity of the country’s first President, Julius Nyerere.
- In addition, Regional Commissioners also had a wide range of powers to stop potential troublemakers, and there is a perception that the countryside is permeated by the Tanzanian Secret Police, who will inform the Commissioner of potential disturbances.
- With regard to absences, Tanzania has never had an ethnic makeup conducive to sectionalist politics. Also, the lack of national leaders with strong local followings further reinforces the muted status of ethnic politics.
- Since independence, the rural elite has generally been able to accrue enough resources from government to pursue their own interests and thus have had little reason to invoke local support in opposition.
Rural stability in Tanzania is increasingly under threat from districtization. A number of factors are behind this trend:
- Since the 1980s, there have been redundancies in the parastatal sector and the professional wage has sunk below subsistence levels. Thus, where the middle classes were previously able to sustain themselves economically through the state, they are increasingly forming economic relations with local communities, and generally with those of their own ethnic group.
- Due to a lack of government provision, local middle classes increasingly control access to secondary education and do so along ethnic lines.
- These factors, combined with the abolition of reserved parliamentary seats for the President, has forced aspiring politicians to develop more local support bases.
- Consequently, where Tanzania has previously been characterised by stability, politics in the future may become more turbulent and sectionalism and clientelism may increase.
