Word: luhanga
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...huts in Luhanga are made of mud and thatch, the roads are no more than dusty alleys. A village of about 2,500 inhabitants, Luhanga is an archetypical example of how President Julius Nyerere intends to build a Tanzanian socialism based on Africa's traditional extended family...
Reports TIME Correspondent David Wood: "Luhanga, in contrast to many Tanzanian villages, is well on its way to Nyerere's socialist goal. The volunteer village militia combats crime, the village-owned dispensary and clinic combat disease, the village-owned furniture shop and tinsmithy combat unemployment. A women's cooperative sells milk and soft drinks, while profits from the village's enterprises fund a school and day-care center. Although each family has a private Shamba (plot) on which to grow its own food, its members are encouraged to work in the communal enterprises. Instead of pay, they...
...services. If their ailing children are sent to the tribal shaman rather than the clinic, the parents may be denied the permits required to take a long bus trip or change jobs. An unemployed villager who refuses a job in the tinsmithy or furniture shop will be banished from Luhanga because it is assumed that, out of work, he will soon start stealing...
Through villages like Luhanga, Nyerere hopes to prove that socialism can reorganize and modernize his country, which ranks among the world's 25 poorest. Tanzania's leaders have fashioned one of the world's most egalitarian societies. Thanks to sharply progressive taxes, the earnings ratio between the highest-and lowest-paid citizen is now 9 to 1, down dramatically from about 100 to 1 at the time of independence from Britain 16 years ago. A strict "leadership code" bars most civil servants from drawing more than one salary, owning rent-producing property, or riding around in limousines...
...Tanzanian socialism is the Arusha Declaration of 1967. Under its provisions, all major industries, banks, insurance companies, wholesale firms and import-export concerns were nationalized. The most radical measure was the resettlement of millions of peasants into ujamaa ("familyhood," in Swahili) villages, which in principle are supposed to resemble Luhanga. Initially, migration to these communities was voluntary, but only 2 million responded. Then, in 1973, Nyerere's party ordered everyone in the countryside to the villages. Army units loaded peasants into trucks. Those who balked saw their huts bulldozed or ignited. Scores, perhaps hundreds, died. Some who stubbornly remained...
| 1 |