agreement which insisted that while O.C.C. remained managers of
MECCO, they should not compete in their own right with
MECCO on any contract. O.C.C. therefore agreed with General
Tyre that they would subcontract the construction work to
MECCO - (so staying within the terms of the agreement) — while
keeping the main contract themselves, for which they were paid in
Dutch Guilders. MECCO was being used by O.C.C. to obtain
work and to take money out of the country.

However, it proved easier said than done to remove O.C.C. An
attempt to persuade them to leave voluntarily failed, since they
demanded outrageous amounts of compensation. As alternative
was liquidation of the company, which would have been possible
due to its heavy debts. However, when the National Bank of
Commerce threatened to foreclose if the overdraft was not repaid
in a certain time, O.C.C. appealed to the Dutch Ambassador and
put pressure on Tanzanian leaders and officials for the bank
deadline to be withdrawn (they argued that capitalist companies
operating in Tanzania would not be safe if the National Bank of
Commerce acted like this — and in a way they were right — the
more certainty represented a new approach in the Bank’s relation-
ships with its parastatal clients). The Bank withdrew the deadline,
and pressed instead for an auditor to be appointed to investigate
MECCQO’s affairs, and for an individual nominated by the bank to
report to the Bank on the operation of the company. O.C.C. ac-
cepted these terms.

And this is where the matter stood when in October 1970 the
workers of MECCO began to exert their influence. In a petition to
NUTA they said that worker/ management relations had reached
a critical state. They alleged racial discrimination and claimed that
the management was not sympathetic to the aspirations of the
country. Their immediate grievance was that the company was
relying on casual labour rather than training a permanent labour
force.®

So in November the Government finally acted by threatening
that it would take over the minority shareholding, in the interests
of securing greater control over the economy of the country. And
on 12 December 1970 the Government announced that it had
agreed to purchase O.C.C.’s shares in MECCO at par, and that the
management agreement would be terminated from 31 December. '’

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