Let the People Speak: Tanzania Down
the Road to Neo Liberalism
Issa G. Shivji
Published
June 2006, ISBN 2-86978-183-0 ; 320pages
Africa: US$25.00, 12500CFA; Elsewhere:
£16.95 /$32.50
"This is an extraordinary record of
one country's descent into 'neo-liberalism', which roughly
translated means socialism for the rich and capitalism for the
poor. Issa Shivji's shrewd eye concentrates on Tanzania, but his
stories could be from almost anywhere in Africa, if not the
world." - John Pilger,
This book of 90 critical and
thought-provoking essays, selected from over 150 written between
1990 and 2005 in three different newspapers, captures the
richness of Shivji’s contributions as a public intellectual. It
deals with the period when Tanzania under external pressures
from donors and financial institutions was forced down the road
of neo-liberalism. The local compradorial elites whose economic
appetites had been suppressed under Nyerere’s radical
nationalism now openly flexed muscles to get a place under the
capitalist sun as nationalism, radical or otherwise, was
abandoned, and neo-liberalism uncritically embraced.
The essays are on varied subjects
ranging from the politics of multi-party, the strains and
stresses of the Union with Zanzibar, the deep-seated
extra-constitutional behaviour of the ruling elite to the hopes,
fears and resistance of the working people. In these essays,
contemporary Tanzanian history is recorded in sweeping
journalistic strokes without burying the commitment of a
critical public intellectual in turgid scholarship. As a warning
on the slippery slope that neo-liberalism constitutes, Let
the People Speak will echo in many an African country. Hence
the salience and relevance of Shivji’s renewed call for the
resurrection of a radical, people driven Pan-Africanism.
Issa G. Shivji is Professor
of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam where he has been
teaching since 1970. He has authored over a dozen books and
numerous articles. His books include Class Struggles in
Tanzania (1976), The Concept of Human Rights in Africa
(1989) and Not Yet Democracy: Reforming Land Tenure in
Tanzania (1998).
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Enter Multiparty: A Critical Review of the Nyalali
Report
Part II: On Constitutionalism and Constitution-Making
Part III: The Union Question
Part IV: Parties, Power and Politicians: The Tycoonisation of
CCM
Part V: Intellectuals in Politics
Part VI: Down the Road to Neo-Liberalism
Part VII: The Loss of Vision and the Rise of Chauvinism, Race,
Religion and Ethnicity
Part VIII: State Violence and Impunity
Part IX: Freedom of Assembly, Association and Expression
Part X: Pan-Africanism or Imperialism?
ISBN 2-86978-183-0
Africa: US$25.00, 12500CFA;
Elsewhere: £16.95 /$32.50
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