THE Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) recently organized a one day intellectual forum to honour distinguished Professor Emirius Goran Hyden. During the forum meeting, organizers described Professor Goran as being among the greatest scholars of African politics and governance and a long serving academic staff, and the UDSM remembers his for being among the founders who helped to establish the political science department at the UDSM in early 1964. A senior academic staff and head of the political science department of the UDSM, Dr. Benson Bana told a packed audience in his introductory remarks that, because of this and the contribution made by the great professor Goran, the UDSM has seen it more commendable and therefore has the reason to honour him. He further said that, the UDSM honours him for his research works and various books which he had written during his tenure of service as a professor and senior academic staff at the University of Dar es Salaam way back in early nineteen sixties. The forum was attended by invited guests from Tanzania and outside including professors most of whom were taught by the great scholar Prof. Goran including former Ugandan Prime Minister professor Apolo Nsibambi. The Ugandan ex-Prime Minister also attended the forum meeting.
The attendants took time to discuss and review some of the books written by the Prof. Goran and which according to them have contributed significantly to the development of mankind in the aspects of social, economic and political grounds. Analyzing one of the 12 different political books entitled “Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania, underdevelopment and uncaptured peasantry” written by Prof. Goran in1980, Professor Benadetha Killian of the UDSM described the book for being fascinating one and intellectually exciting, provocative and largely convincing. She added that, this is the book that describes the life of Tanzanians since independence time. It also helps to know how the capitalists were weakened by peasants including many aspects of capitalist economic exploitation. For the academic professionalism, Prof. Benadetha noted that the book served as the main source of information on the political history of Tanzania and that it had helped him when he was doing her PhD dissertation. However, she said adding that the book helped her prepare a training manual course when teaching a course in “Government and Politics in Tanzania” the course which according to her she taught for 4 years at UDSM from 2001-2006. By using the ideas and examples presented on the book when the author elaborated on the idea of uncaptured peasantry Professor Killian noted that, the idea was drawn during the time when Tanzania was a one party state with an ideology of self reliance and socialism. However, she said that, if this idea was made active today when the government has adopted capitalist mode of production, she would have advised the government to change the slogan of “Kilimo Kwanza to Wakulima Kwanza” meaning that, instead of Agriculture first, it should be termed as peasants first. In this regard, Prof. Benadetha is on the view of the fact that, if the government was serious with the agricultural green revolution when it had introduced the policy of Kilimo kwanza, it should have taken the first hand in helping small scale farmers in the country by providing them with every necessities as a way to empower them. In this way according to him, inflation rate could have been reduced with ease. Reflecting back to Prof. Goran ideas on his book, she said, the book shows how the failure of the government to highlight peasants’ development issues during the time as spearheaded by the first regime under socialism. Giving further insight of the ideas presented on the book, she said that, the author noted that the Arusha declaration also failed to transform peasant’s mode of production and hence they faced resistance and ended up in the positive attitudes. Either she added in her review that, Ujamaa policy did not manage to transform the mode of production to peasants in the country. The clustered villages were not organized in communal farming while socialism was able to revive the production segments which totally failed to give good results. According to the author, social facilities such as health sectors and others totally failed to take effect and instead Tanzania peasants continued to practice capitalist types of life in their families despite of government efforts to streamline socialism type of economy to them.
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