sections of the leadership may agree but on which they cannot act
because they lack real political support from the masses. For this
reason it is essential that people come to represent themselves,
rather than being represented by proxies who articulate and often
define their ostensible demands.

The need for the creation of a mass base for Tanzania's
socialism is clearly recognised as rhe most important element in
making possible further socialist advance. In spite of the initial
broad base of TANU and its success in mobilisation around in-
dependence, its half-hearted efforts at maintaining mass par-
ticipation in politics soon faltered in face of the post-colonial
emergence of a heavy-handed, authoritarian and largely African
bureaucrary which has done much to ‘demobilise’ the people. The
urgency of this problem was highlighted by the Arusha
Declaration, which laid the basis from which the construction of a
socialist strategy was to proceed. More recently this problem of
mobilisation has been more directly confronted through the em-
pasis on ‘Ujamaa’ in the country-side, through the call for
workers’ participation in the factories and most generally through
the ‘Mwongozo’ which represented a major statement of Party
policy and which explicitly recognised the need that the people
must confront those leaders and bureaucrats who have most
clearly failed to grasp the notion that they are ‘public servants’.

But because these initiatives have come from the top down-
wards, in each of these areas, including the industrial relations
sphere, the difficulty of reconciling participation with control has
been extreme. After early differences with the independent trade
unions, the Government stepped in to establish NUTA in 1964.
However, whereas this proved at least a temporary solution to the
problem of controlling the unions, hopes that it could also ef-
fectively channel workers’ aspirations and demands to the higher
levels of Government were disappointed. As early as 1966, only
some two years after its establishment, the dismal reception it
received by the workers led to the creation of a Presidential
Inquiry into its problems. The report, published in 1967, con-
firmed the existence of extensive discontent, and in subsequent
years NUTA has done little to change this situation. Significantly,
the call for workers’ participation came from State House and not
from the union, and even once it had been announced, NUTA
was remarkably sluggish and unoriginal in its responses. Its

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