But it is not only the workers who seem to see NUTA as not
belonging to them. NUTA itself has often tended to dissociate it-
self from the workers; instead of organising and mobilising them,
NUTA has often assumed the role of demobiliser — warning
workers against ‘disobedience’. Thus in the many industrial
disputes that have occured in recent months leading to ‘illegal’
strikes, it has been NUTA which has been the main force used to
‘discipline’ the workers.

Perhaps it is significant that while the workers’ councils are
supposed to curb bureaucracy and bureaucratic attitudes, the
leaders of NUTA see even these as being instruments for control.
The Standard of 24th May, 1971, carried a report on the opening
of a workers' council in Dar es Salaam. The opening ceremony
was performed by Mr. Tandau, NUTA'’s Secretary General, who
said:

. the policy of workers’ participation in industrial management
should not be interpreted as a means of obstructing leaders of national
institutions from carrying out their duties. . . . Workers’ councils must
strive to promote and maintain harmony between the workers and their
leaders; they are not gangs of trouble-makers aimed at interfering and
disrupting the duties of management . . .

Such attitude of a trade union movement towards its member
justifies the letter which The Standard carried on the same day it
reported the above speech. Writing in the ‘People’s Forum’, the
writer questioned the legitimacy of NUTA as a workers’
organisation:

(NUTA) has outlined its convenience and a completely new role for it
is called for in the changed socio-political economic framework. . . . We
still question the idea of having to spend so much of our money to prop
up a sickly body that has since ceased to be functionally representative
of the workers. . . NUTA should be reorganised and given a new role
or be disbanded in the interests of the workers it purports to represent.

On study of workers’ conditions in a privately-owned industry
has revealed that workers’ committee is not only extremely inef-
ficient to serve the workers but is also repressive in its dealing
with the workers. At one particular place where racial
discrimination is blatant, child labour is practised rampantly, and
working and living conditions of the people are close to slave con-
ditions, NUTA has just stood by;%® and the authorities of the

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