Africa: African Socialism And Rural Change

...tensely conservative and many are not suited to gradual change from within...

...Distrust of neighbors and strangers is great and attachment to one's own land and a desire to live beside it is strong...

...It is hoping on some of the new settlement schemes to retain the former European farm intact as a single unit under a form of co-operative production but it has yet to acknowledge that this can work only if the settlers live together in villages...

...African leaders are groping for a balance between construction of a new non-tribal nation-state and retention Reprinted, with permission, from Venture, the organ of the English Fabian Society...

...The major obstacles to economic development in many parts of Africa are not technical but human and are to be found in the traditional social systems...

...This lack of village life seriously impedes economic, social and political development and the achievement of national unity...

...In much of East and Central Africa any marked increase in the standard of living requires radical social change...

...Self-help projects are difficult because people live too far apart readily to appreciate the value of communal labor...

...Rather than tamper with strongly held traditions many independent African governments have preferred to indulge in showpiece projects of doubtful economic value...

...The achievement of higher standards of living and enjoyment in rural areas requires that homes cease being private castles and take their place as part of rural communities...

...The symbol of modernity in the form of a jet airport or a television station is preferred to the reality which would involve analyzing the sources of backwardness...

...Like some Englishmen these rural Africans cherish their homes as castles...

...Thus community development and co-operative self-help projects organized nationally and non-tribally are not an extension but a radical break with the past...

...The failure to promote development in rural areas leads to an increased exodus towards the towns, already swollen by hordes of unemployed...

...The inability to gather people together or to bring services to them in their homes means that the national government remains a vague and remote concept...

...Uganda is trying to develop "group farms" whereby all the farmers living in a selected area share certain mechanical equipment...

...this is not possible for the individual homesteads of East Africa...

...by vaguely asserting that they are ultimately harmonious...

...This lack of village life prevails in Tanganyika with the lowest population density in Africa south of the Sahara (27 persons per square mile) and in Rwanda and Burundi (300 persons per square mile) where rural population density is among the highest in the world...

...Independent African governments have yet to face their challenge...

...Tribes in East and Central Africa are smaller in size and more segmented than those in West Africa and kinship and clan groups more restricted...

...Attachment to traditional values nurtures this desire for seclusion and privacy...

...Professions of commitment to "African socialism" are in many respects an attempt to avoid the real conflict between traditional and modern values...

...Colonial governments were concerned for the most part with administration rather than economic development and were reluctant to attempt such changes...

...Politicians fear the unpopularity with their own people of such measures and particularly the suspicion of the villager that his land will be stolen from him if he is asked to move elsewhere...

...Health services, roads, community development, literacy classes and agricultural extension work suffer equally from the lack of village life...

...It is the difference between bright lights and no lights at all...

...The result is a radical change from the traditional way of life but one that affects only a few people while nine million others remain trapped in subsistence poverty...

...There are signs of a faint but growing perception of the incompatibiliry of the traditional way of life with achievement of a higher standard of living...

...Even where farmers can be induced to gather for short courses at farm schools the results are often disappointing because no follow-up visits can be made to actual farms to see if the newly learned methods are being applied...

...In spite of the African predilection for one-party states to control and limit opposition, independent African governments have so far been reluctant to undertake unpopular but desirable measures or to use compulsion...

...It is easier to move stones than human beings...

...Yet the reality consists in these areas of single, isolated and secluded individual family homesteads living miles apart from their neighbors and lacking any common social life beyond infrequent feasts, funerals and marriages...

...Agricultural extension officers must deal with thousands of farmers scattered over remote and inaccessible areas which rules out individual instruction for more than a handful...

...Each farmer is to have a small individual plot as well as sharing in the communal labor and holding...

...The large extended family compound housing up to 200 persons found extensively in West Africa is unknown...

...This will lead to the profound split-level urban-rural society that occurs in many parts of Latin America...

...All education beyond primary school must be provided in boarding schools at five times the cost of day schools because the population is not sufficiently concentrated to allow children to live at home while attending schools at a reasonble walking distance...

...Rather than living in villages each peasant in Rwanda and Burundi insists upon his rugo or isolated hillside secluded from his neighbors...

...Instead of joining together to build a road to "their village" they must build hundreds of paths to individual homesteads...

...Traditional African societies are in...

...While certain communal and co-operative self-help practices do exist in most African societies these have been eroded by theextension of the monetary economy...

...Similarly in Kenya the government is having second thoughts about cutting-up formerly large mixed European farms into smallholders' plots...

...The scattered population makes the task of providing amenities and services in rural areas formidable...

...Particularly critical in this respect are decisions on languages of instruction, systems of land tenure and the role of women...

...The need to introduce organized village life is an essential prerequisite of all other forms of development in rural areas...

...of certain valuable attributes of tribal society...

...One study in Uganda found that half the primary school-children in day schools were walking five miles to school without any breakfast and that this was a major factor accounting for pupils' lack of concentration and the 50 per cent drop-out rate in the first few years at school...

...Villages in West Africa can be and are connected with electricity...

...The most ambitious attempt at "villageization" is being made in Tangan yika where previously uncultivated land is being settled with co-operative farms and villages organized on the lines of Israeli moshavim...

...Sometimes, as with compulsory culling of cattle in Tanganyika or compulsory terracing of land in Kenya to arrest soil erosion, the promotion of social change by the colonial regime provided a powerful weapon for rising African nationalists...

...The typical image of rural Africa is one of a cluster of mud and wattle huts grouped around a communal center with men, women and children going about their respective tasks in close proximity...

...They are reluctant to recognize that the most formidable obstacle to the achievement of African or any other kind of socialism is the need to convince their own people of the advantages of living closer to their neighbors...

...This lack of village life and village ties means that towns in East and Central Africa, with the exception of the centuries' old Afro-Arab coastal towns such as Mombassa and Tanga, are entirely alien places lacking the spontaneity and vivacity of West African town life where the sense of village life still remains...

...One of the most crucial tests of independent African governments will be their ability and willingness to undertake the planned introduction of social change in rural areas...

...Thus in Uganda the Acholi retain their cattle in order to pay the bride-price while the land is over-stocked and thereby eroded and the nation is obliged to import meat...

...However the group farmers continue to live in their isolated homes rather than in villages and must still trudge miles every day to the nearest store or school or even for water...

...Tribal sentiment and languages persist because there are few opportunities for gathering and communicating on a non-tribal basis...

...Moreover the obligations to aid others extended only to fellow tribesmen and in many instances only to fellow clansmen...

...The conflict between modern and traditional values and the emptiness of many of the slogans of African socialism is clearly seen in the lack of organized village life throughout much of East and Central Africa...

...The greatest danger is that the frustrations and political unpopularity involved in trying to organize the rural peasantry into villages will cause the independent African governments to concentrate their limited resources on the urban areas...

...The cost of a model village settlement in Tanganyika complete with homes, schools, social center and farm equipment averages £200,000 for 2,000 villagers...

...The gulf between the amenities found in the towns and their total absence in the rural areas causes the educated to shun We on the land with a genuine abhorrence...

...Fear of popular reaction prevented the Uganda government from trying to induce the group farmers to live in villages...