By BEATRICE MATERU

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Tanzania’s founding president Julius Kambarage Nyerere peacefully passing over the presidency to his hand-picked successor Ali Hassan Mwinyi was a rarity in Africa at that time, it also marked the start of the private sector’s involvement in the country’s development agenda.

It saw former president Mwinyi earn the nickname Mzee wa Rukhsa, which in Kiswahili means the elder who permitted almost everything.

Mzee Mwinyi practically reversed all Nyerere’s Ujamaa na Kujitegemea, the socialist-inspired policies that dominated Tanzania’s politics, society, and economy during the 24 years of Nyerere’s tenure. His government moved from one of the most influential and passionate defenders of socialism and self-reliance to a free market economy, referred to as neoliberal capitalism.

In Mzee Mwinyi’s book Mzee Rukhsa: Safari ya Maisha Yangu (loosely translating to “Mister Permission: The Journey of My Life), he says his administration will always be remembered for its great economic reforms, “a task that … was not easy at all, but change was must.”

When Mzee Mwinyi took over the presidency, Tanzania was at the brink of collapse economically. Ujamaa was something of a social success, but economically ruinous. Nyerere had succeeded in creating a sense of unity and effectively removed ethnic politics in a country with more than 120 tribes. But his policies on socialism and self-reliance were short on economic development. Sectors like food production collapsed.

The Kagera War between Tanzania and Idi Amin’s Uganda in 1978-79 and continual attempts to resist assistance from the Bretton Woods institutions saw dramatic cuts in social services.

Mzee Mwinyi opened up the country to investment and trade, which later on paved the way to the introduction of multiparty democracy and freedoms that Tanzania has enjoyed for decades. Negotiating with the World Bank and the IMF, he says, was one of the most difficult tasks he undertook. This was done between 1975 and 1985, with the first programme implemented in 1986.

Mzee Mwinyi explains in his memoir that the second-phase administration found Tanzania with external debt of more than 50 percent of GDP. He started to revive the economy by slowly moving away from Mzee Nyerere’s socialist ideology.

He abolished the Arusha Declaration on Socialism and Self-reliance and established the Zanzibar Declaration that allowed party members to take part in private enterprise.

“Shortly after I came to power, we finalised the negotiations with the international financial institutions and began implementing the so-called Economic Reform Programme,” he writes.

His government allowed investments in mobile phones for the first time and on March 28, 1995, Mzee Mwinyi officially launched the first mobile phone service provided by Mobitel. At that time 70 percent of the available landline services served only 20 percent of the population.

“We also allowed citizens to own computers and televisions,” he writes. His book was launched last week in Dar es Salaam.