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The
Kiswahili word ‘injamaa’ which was sometimes interpreted as familyhood
was used to describe the country’s professed purley of African
Socialism. The RDA type villages became known as Ujamaa villages.
The
results of the hard work of these villages soon attracted attention and
President Nyerere became very interested. He began to see it as a
pattern for the rural development of Tanzania. Millinga, while
remaining firmly rooted in the RDA villages, became a Councillor and
Chairman of the Songea District Council in 1963 and in 1965 Member of
Parliament for the Songea South constituency.
In
the villages and the Association there was always much practical
discussion which often led to new enterprises. From past experience,
the people knew that if their children went far enough in the school
system, they generally went off to find work in the big city. What is
the point, they said, of our hard work if our children do not remain to
carry on what we started. This led to them setting up a school at
Litowa for the children from all the RDA villages. Millinga’s position
had enabled him to select a fine person to be head of this school, and
the authority from Nyerere enabled them to develop their own curriculum
suitable for the needs of the villages.
Discussions also led to the questioning of the law which only allowed
the sale of people’s excess maize to the local inefficient co-operative
which sold maize flour at more than three times the price at which it
purchased the grain. A better price for the Association would mean
earning more development capital. This led to the Association buying
out the Songea grain mill. President Nyerere helped with this purchase
by personally donating Tsh 90,000/ -. Later the Association also
purchased the timber mill.
In
1967 Nyerere appointed Millinga as Principal Assistant Secretary of the
Tanzania Youth League responsible for Youth Settlement, and the
following year moved him to be Head of the Ujamaa Villages department of
TANU.
Millinga’s dream was coming to reality. With 15 village groups and
their association showing impressive results, the management of the
villages, the association and the two milling businesses were entirely
carried out by the people themselves and to a high standard. At the end
of the decade aid agencies were saying that the RDA was perhaps the
finest grassroots project on the continent.
The
tragedy is that in spite of the success of the association and its
villages, it received great opposition from successive Regional
Commissioners and most government officials. These people could not
accept a situation where the villagers were deciding the details of
their own development. They could not sit down with and discuss with
these village people as equals. During 1967/8, Nyerere wrote three
papers, “Education for Self Reliance”, “Socialism and Rural Development”
and “Freedom and Develop-ment”. These were all obviously based on the
developments of the RDA and dealt with the problems that the association
was facing. Without Millinga’s initiative which led to the RDA, it is
obvious that these papers would never have been written. It is also
true that without the backing of Nyerere, the association would have
found it difficult to exist.
Nyerere took many steps in an attempt to spread the practice of the RDA
ideology. One of these was a week-long seminar for the members of the
Central Committee of his party, which was held at Handeni. Three RDA
members attended. Shortly after this the whole of the Central Committee
met, and at this meeting 21 out of the 24 members voted for the banning
of the RDA. Millinga had very success-fully built a team of people able
to understand what was needed for the development of their dreams.
Nyerere was not able, despite great efforts, to build such a team at
government level. The party took over. People power was not accepted.
In the mid 1970s, the
peasant peoples of Tanzania were forced into villages nationwide,
causing much hardship and resent-ment. In many people’s minds today the
villages of this villagisation project by diktat is seen as producing
ujamaa villages. It was the antithesis of the RDA methods and of the
three papers written by Nyerere based on these methods and their
practice.
Millinga was born in one of the far corners of Tanzania by Lake Nyasa.
He was educated to Standard 8 at Kigonsera Seminary, had two years of
nursing training at the Peramiko Mission hospital and attended a
nine-month Political Science course at Kivukoni College, Dar es Salaam.
After the destruction of RDA, he worked in a number of areas in the
country as District Commissioner and Regional Secretary of Chama Cha
Mapinduzi (CCM), the changed name of the TANU party.
As
someone who knew him well said, in everything he was a man who never set
himself up above others, and used his considerable intelligence in
helping others and not exploiting them.
Ntimbanjayo John Millinga, farmer and political leader, born April 1939;
died 12th July 2008
Ralph Ibbott
17
July 2008 |
