The Tanzanian government this year plans to "sharply" increase from about 4,000 to 44,000 the number of HIV-positive people receiving antiretroviral drugs at no cost, Tanzanian Health Minister Anna Abdallah said, Reuters reports. Abdallah said the government at the end of 2004 was providing 4,000 HIV-positive people in the country with antiretroviral drugs at a cost of $2 million. She added that the health ministry has released $3.5 million to purchase antiretrovirals for 2005 and received a "similar amount" from Canada to purchase more medications, according to Reuters.

In his speech to a seminar of political leaders held in Zanzibar on 19th February this year, President Mkapa made a very fundamental point which needs to be deeply thought over and widely debated. In his view, the whole Tanzanian society and people need a muafaka or national consensus. He expressed his apprehension that the political and economic reforms that have taken place over the last twenty years have loosened national ties, unity and brotherhood/sisterhood (udugu) in our society and country. 'I earnestly urge,' he said, 'that the market or free economy, together with political freedoms and freedom of the press should not be the beginning of the weakening of our unity, national solidarity, or should not dilute our nationalism, union and udugu.' (translation from the original Kiswahili mine).

He continued: 'The market economy will result in some of us becoming richer than others. Political freedom has brought many parties and their many honourable leaders. But this should not be a reason for some to feel better than others. We, Tanzanians, should remain ndugu.' He went on to say that it is our udugu which makes us equal human beings, with equal dignity, equal rights and equal basic needs. 'Our udugu,' he emphasised, 'is not ideological; rather it is embedded in our African culture.'

Given the emphasis on udugu, a little digression on the political origin of the term 'ndugu' in Tanzania is appropriate. It was first used by trade unionists to express class (social) solidarity. Later, in particular after the adoption of the policy of socialism and self-reliance, the term became prominent in the party and political vocabulary. It expressed nationalism and the policy of ujamaa. In both cases, therefore, 'ndugu' was explicitly an expression of ideology. Be that as it may, let us return to the core question raised by the President.

In my view, there are three points in the President's submission which, with respect, are indisputable. One, that over the last two decades the national consensus in our society has begun to disintegrate pausing a veritable threat to national unity and social solidarity. Two, that the adoption of neo-liberal policies and orientations has begun to polarize our society. The emergence of the filthy rich and pathetically poor in our country is undeniable. Three, that there is a need to reconstruct national consensus and concord.

The central question is: what would be the basis of the new national consensus? To being to answer, let us examine our recent history.

The struggle for independence was a mass movement. The consensus of the large majority was based on the nationalist ideology, or the right of self-determination. Immediately after independence the nationalist consensus began to show cracks with the rise of the wabenzi, whose ambition was simply to step into the shoes of the colonial masters. The University students demonstrated against National Service in October 1966 accusing the politicians of drawing fat salaries while they were being asked to make sacrifices. Responding angrily, Mwalimu thundered:

'You are right when you talk about salaries. Our salaries are too high. … Do you know what my salary is? Five thousand damned shillings a month. Five thousand damned shillings in a poor country. The poor man who gets two hundred shillings a month – do you know how long it's going to take him to earn my damned salary? Twenty-five years! … The damned salaries! These are the salaries which build this kind of attitude in the educated people, all of them. Me and you. We belong to a class of exploiters. I belong to your class. … You are right, salaries are too high. Everybody in this country is demanding a pound of flesh. Everbody except the poor peasant. How can he demand it? He doesn't know the language. … What kind of country are we building?'

Three months later came the Arusha Declaration which declared that we wanted to build a socialist society, a society where every one is a worker or a peasant, where no one exploits another, where a genuine leader does not live off the sweat of another man. The building of a socialist and self-reliant society was the new national consensus. It mobilized the masses and inspired the youth.

The ujamaa consensus lasted almost a decade before the economic crisis of the late seventies and early eighties undermined it. Both the nationalist and the ujamaa consensus were ideologically based. Both were national visions to build a society based on equality. The socialist vision specifically addressed the cracks in the nationalist ideology which began to appear in the post-independence period with the rise of the self-enriching wabenzi.

Twenty years of neo-liberal policies have not generated any new national vision which can mobilize and inspire. The national consensus has been undermined by the market economy as ethnic, racial, religious, class and gender fault-lines have resurfaced. The rhetoric of political pluralism and economic liberalism cannot cover the deepening divide between the haves and have-nots, between the walalahoi, walalahai and walalaheri, that is, the poor, the middle and the rich.

Under the circumstances, what would be the basis for a new consensus? That is what we need to debate. While it may not be possible to say what it should be based on, we can certainly say what it cannot be based on. National consensus, by definition, cannot be built on some metaphysical values of cultural brotherhood when the underlying material reality is characterised by extreme class and social divisions.

We are fast slipping down the road of what the nineteenth century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli called 'two nations', the nation of the rich and the nation of the poor 'between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.'

Nor can national consensus be constructed on the basis of imported or imposed metapolitical values of political pluralism and hedonistic individualism.

With President Mkapa, we need first to admit that the old consensus has broken down and with Mwalimu, as in 1966, we need to ask: What kind of country are we building? Do we want to build a country of Two Nations?

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

* Please send comments to

Tanzanian activist groups dealing with gender, democracy and good governance have drawn up a voters' manifesto, which focuses on accountability of those seeking political office. Some 52 organisations that make up the membership the Feminist Activism Coalition (FemAct), a networking social movement that advocates for the protection of human rights and women's empowerment, have ratified the manifesto.

Tanzanian foreign minister Jakaya Kikwete has denied accusations by the UN and humanitarian agencies that his government is adopting an increasingly harsh stance towards refugees on its territory. He said Tanzania was still accommodative of refugees and was not planning to expel refugees from Burundi, Congo and Rwanda who make up the bulk of the nearly half-a-million refugees in Tanzania.

Tanzania will this year begin its first field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops. The first plants to be tested will be cotton modified to resist attack by insect pests, including a caterpillar known as red bollworm that feeds on cotton and causes bollworm disease. The plans were announced by Wilfred Ngirwa, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, at an international workshop on GM crops held in Arusha on 7 February.

Widows, in Tanzania and many other parts of the world, face discrimination on a regular basis, which often condemns women to a life of poverty. In the face of this discrimination, says this research from the Social Science Research Network, there are no national or international consensuses on the importance of changing the customary legal rules relating to widows, and on the larger question of the proper place of customary law and harmful traditional, cultural, and religious practices in the changing African society.

Some university lecturers have blamed “powerful foreign forces” for the decline in the quality of university education in Africa. Contributing to the discussions at a seminar on academic freedom organised by the University of Dar es Salaam Academic Staff Assembly (Udasa), the dons criticized the government and foreign donors for “downgrading university education”. A senior law lecturer, Dr Kabudi Kapalamagamba, said university education had been turned into a commodity because market forces were now dictating what teaching mode should be employed.

Africa may be totally different today than it was a century or so ago but many girls still face cultural practises that affected their great grandmothers. A lot of these traditional practices often favour men, since most African societies today are patriarchal. Subsequently, an African girl, who is supposed to have a formal education and has been exposed to the more positive aspects of the influences of Western culture, often ends up suffering the same societal inequalities that her great grandmother endured during her time.

"The future of ICT in Secondary Schools - Strategizing for Implementation" was the title of a four-day workshop held at Kunduchi Beach Hotel of Dar es salaam from January 24 to 27 this year. It was a unique workshop that probed and eventually set a foundation for integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a compulsory subject and a learning tool in secondary education in Tanzania Mainland. Aloyce Menda, a journalist with JUSTA-AFRICA who participated fully in the workshop narrates his observations.

Long host to hundreds of thousands of refugees, Tanzania is now forcibly repatriating asylum seekers to still-volatile Burundi despite their genuine reasons to fear persecution, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced. The government returned two families totaling nine persons, a UNHCR spokesperson said, despite assurances made to UNHCR that the nine would be granted refugee status.

Seven non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Tanzania have formed a coalition to fight female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that is still widespread in the East African country. "Various studies have shown that at least 18 percent of women in Tanzania are victims of FGM," Hellen Kijo-Bisimba, the coalition's co-ordinator, said in Dar es Salaam on Friday, ahead of its official launch on 6 February.

A recent survey, conducted by the Tanzania Media Women Association (TMWA) indicates that 99 per cent of 444 people interviewed, have blamed female genital mutilation (FGM) for fuelling the spread of HIV/AIDS in Tanzania. The TMWA surveyed people in three Tanzanian province-like regions, which have the highest percentage of female population affected by FGM. Manyara leads the country with 81 per cent, followed by Dodoma with 67 per cent and Mara with 43 per cent.

You are invited to apply to participate in the following hands-on training workshop aimed at non-profit and public sector workers, as well as people from small businesses running community-style telecentre ventures. It is a priority of the workshop that participants should find opportunities for participating in the global wireless networking community, and for taking project ideas further in their communities.

The European Union has given $18 million to support about 400,000 refugees, mostly from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, seeking asylum in Tanzania, the EU said in a statement on Tuesday. Although 76,000 refugees went home to Burundi in 2004, the east African country is still host to the largest group of refugees in Africa, despite the fact that it is also one of the world's poorest countries.

Death row prisoners in Tanzania have entered the fifth day of a hunger strike saying their human rights are being violated. More than 15 inmates at Ukonga maximum security prison in Dar es Salaam complain of a poor diet and severe beatings in overcrowded cells. Ukonga prisons, on the outskirts of Tanzania's main commercial city, is home to more than 3,000 inmates. Of these, 90 have been waiting for more than 20 years to be hanged, after the courts found them guilty of murder.

"For our countries, climate change is more catastrophic than terrorism." This was how the delegate from Tanzania summed up the stance of the world's 48 least developed countries at the 10th Conference of Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-10). The Tanzanian delegation's sentiments were echoed throughout the opening session of the conference. Almost all of the countries whose representatives took the floor expressed their satisfaction over the imminent entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol.

Prior research has shown a strong correlation between HIV infection and a history of intimate partner violence, particularly among young women. However, the role violence plays in the sexual relationships of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa is not well understood. This study in Tanzania, published in the December 4 edition of International Family Planning Perspectives, concludes that the association between HIV and violence identified among young people in prior research may be partially explained by their experiences with infidelity and forced sex in their intimate partnerships. HIV prevention interventions that fail to take into account the infidelity, violence and forced sex frequently involved in youth's sexual relationships will have a limited impact.

Several years have passed since Tanzania ratified an International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW). Nothing has been done to incorporate the convention in the country’s domestic laws up to now when the world is marking 16 Days of Activism Against Women Violence (16DAWV). This derails efforts to curb violence against women and schoolgirls, with the latter being the most affected.

Since the first three cases of AIDS were reported in 1983, HIV infection has spread throughout the country and thousands of people in all walks of life have lost their lives. Surveillance reports indicate a two fold increase of HIV prevalence from 7.2 to 13.3 per cent among female blood donors. The devastating impact of HIV/AIDS epidemic is now being experienced throughout our society.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the action of the authorities on the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar in continuing to harass the privately-owned weekly Dira, which has been prevented from publishing for the past 12 months. In a 24 November ruling, the Zanzibar high court made no comment on the Zanzibar government's claim that Dira violated press ethics - the reason given for closing the newspaper a year ago - but said it could not resume publishing because it was not properly registered. The court did, however, leave a door open for Dira by suggesting it could re-apply for an operating licence. (French version available)