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Witness History

Tanzania's socialist experiment

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the late 1960s Tanzania's first post-independence president, the charismatic Julius Nyerere, believed that endemic poverty in rural areas could only be addressed if peasant farmers relocated to larger villages and worked collectively. It was part of a new experimental form of socialism, known as Ujamaa. In 2016 Rob Walker spoke to two Tanzanians who remember it well.

This programme is a rebroadcast.

Photo: Tanzanian women cultivating the soil (AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Cladie Aide.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds.

0:29.2

Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

0:38.0

All this week as countries around the world consider how to rebuild their economies after COVID-19,

0:44.4

Witness history is looking back at previous attempts to reimagine society

0:48.8

in the wake of a crisis or moment of change.

0:52.1

And today we go back to the 1960s where newly independent Tanzania was one of the poorest

0:57.8

countries in the world.

0:59.7

The solution the government believed lay in a new kind of socialism called Ujama and as

1:05.3

Rob Walker found out in 2016 for many Tanzanians it was a time of hope and

1:11.0

excitement. Nahhahhidi in Bela, a mungu,

1:16.0

my Hindus in itak

1:18.0

and in the kulindah had you co-fah,

1:20.0

nahhahhahhahhahhahhah, mahhahhah mahhahhahhah mahhāhāhāhāhāhādīk'o-fā.

1:28.0

It means I swear in front of God and in front of the party that I'll guard the revolution until I die.

1:38.0

And that was a bold promise for a 12 year old living in a remote rural village. But at the time Beuhela Lu Nogello was swept up in the

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