The Village in Mwalimu's Thought and Political Practice

Abstract

The village was dear to Mwalimu's heart but not in any romantic sense, as his Western admirers would want to present it. 'Small-is-beautiful' or 'tradition-is- sacrosanct' were not part of Mwalimu's political practice, although one could find some isolated passages in his writings coming close to it. I want to suggest that Mwalimu's attitude to the village was, as a matter of fact, very pragmatic. He saw Tanzania essentially as a nation of village communities and was likely to be so for the foreseeable future. Very often, he rationalised and justified villagisation as a means of accelerating development and facilitating provision of health, education, water and other social services. But as is usually the case, the outcomes of history are not what the actors intended. In reality, the various villagisation programmes since independence became top-down centrist projects allowing more intense exploitation and siphoning off of surplus generated in the agrarian sector.