Thoughts on the Arusha Manifesto - From then Until Now
When I first read Nyerere’s Manifesto on a relaxed afternoon after just having had very strong Tanzanian coffee in a hip coffee shop located in the same building as the Ngorongoro Conservation Office (outside of which the manifesto is displayed), I felt surprised. And intrigued. I took a picture. Then, I felt like I can pack my bags and leave Arusha, and my PhD project, behind. Upon giving it first read, the Arusha manifesto clearly eludes to the fact that Tanzania wants, even expects, outside intervention regarding nature protection. But the imposition of outside knowledge and best practices in Tanzania, especially regarding environmental governance in front of a (post)colonial legacy, is something I had meant to deconstruct and critique with my PhD project. However, now it turned out that the “father of the nation” as he is affectionately called (for good reason) by us Tanzanians, the Tanzanian champion and ”liberator of the people”, advocate of Tanzanian (intellectual) spirit and rebirth, explicitly invited outside expertise to protect cultural and environmental heritage. Hadn’t Tanzania, by the early 1960s, just emerged from a long and hard-fought struggle for self-rule? Weren’t the last British administrators barely out the door? And wasn’t the Zanzibar Revolution against the colonial Arab elite already simmering by 1963 and about to erupt in early 1964? But then I read the manifesto again. And again. And then, again.
Upon careful re-reading, it turns out that Nyerere speaks of the natural heritage of the African continent as a whole, and does not specifically refer to Tanganyika (as Tanzania was called back then). It may be that he tried to highlight nature conservation as a pan-African effort, and saw the environmental legacy of Tanganyika as belonging to all of humankind. Perhaps to him, this was not about local vs. foreign but about the importance of preserving the countries’ spectacularly rich eco systems, while also seeing the financial potential in the protection of these environments for all of humanity. Furthermore if there is great value in the preservation of these regions natural environments, the next questions rightly so will center around how this should be achieved. Nyerere didn't go into the particulars of the action process but any governmental policies, without a doubt, are also always a product of their time.
The early 1960s were a time of hope on the African continent. During the famous independence movements, many African leaders envisioned a future in which the continent could chart its own political, economic, and cultural course. A new African confidence and pride was ignited and African socialism, as articulated by leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and Julius Nyerere, was seen as not only political but also philosophical in nature. Communal values, human dignity, and collective prosperity were envisioned to lead the continent into a new postcolonial period. This was also the birth of pan-Africanism, where ideas about shared responsibility, mutual aid, and interdependence between peoples and nations was a pursuit towards a new, modern African spirit. Environmental protection, then, could fit within this vision as something that transcended borders because the ecological richness of the continent was understood as a legacy and obligation shared across generations and geographies.
In Tanzania, the Ujamaa (”unity”, “community”) movement was Nyerere’s version of African socialism. At its heart was the belief that Tanzanians could develop not by imitating the capitalist West, but by reviving and adapting the community oriented spirit of traditional African village life. Ujamaa emphasised rural development, collective farming, self-reliance, and national unity. For Nyerere it was especially important that this unity was more important than tribal or ethnic divisions between the many different tribes of Tanganyika (this stood in stark contrast to the social policies of Tanzania’s neighbour Kenya of the same time. For a deeper dive into this interesting contrasting approach of two bordering nations, stay tuned!) The spirit of Ujamaa was anti-imperialist, and aimed at defining how Tanzanians thought about themselves, their future, and the role of the state. So within this logic, the protection of natural heritage might have been imagined not as an imported idea, but as expression of national pride and care, even if later on realised through international influence.
But this idealistic vision soon collided with the realities of global capitalism. It is important tp understand that by the 1980s, Tanzania, like many other postcolonial nations at the time was plunged into structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank and IMF. These integrations forced the country to liberalise its economy, cut public spending, and open up to foreign investors. The language of self-reliance was replaced by the logic of market efficiency. In the tourism and conservation sectors, this meant a turn toward private-public partnerships, international NGOs, and foreign donors. It slowly became evident that protected areas began to be managed not only by the Tanzanian state but by outside actors importing world views on how nature is best to be governed. This shift modified the public sector’s autonomy and left it vulnerable to be dependent or integrated into international donor schemes, metrics of success set by external actors. Most importantly to understand here is that the global capitalism era commencing the 80s, laid the foundations for a new market view of nature as a commodity to be priced, marketed, and sold with solid integration into an emergingly popular (safari) tourism sector.
Zooming out, it is evident that we are still in this time period. Tanzania's conservation landscape today is not neutral, sovereign nor apolitical. So back at the trendy coffee house, I sit back down at my tiny table and take a moment to think. The caffeine has finally hit and I reflect on the words of one of my interview participants from a few days ago, a retired Tanzanian tourism expert who has been keeping an eye on the country’s wildlife protection and tourism sectors. He describes tourism in his country as inseparable from wildlife protection and natural resource management, which he views as an uncomfortable merge:
“To most politicians, they think the product we have here {is wildlife}… to them tourism is wildlife. They cannot differentiate between wildlife and tourism. (…) It would have been better if we had a ministry of tourism and the ministry of natural {resources} as two different ministries.”
If we are to understand Tanzanian tourism as synonymous with wildlife and natural resource protection, the country’s safari industry and the power dynamics it enflicts on wildlife and nature management become much more evident. With this insight, I pack up my bags and leave the cafe.