BY QUEENTER MAWINDA
4th September 2015
To revive 'some' principles of Ujamaa
Alliance
for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo) presidential candidate Anna
Mghwira yesterday vowed to nationalise some “industries” if she is
voted into power next month.
She
said her party would do so in reliving Founding President Mwalimu
Julius Nyerere’s socialist ideology and ACT-Wazalendo’s own Tabora
Declaration and election manifesto.
Mghwira,
the only female candidate for Tanzania’s presidency in the October 25
General Election, said the move would seek to alleviate poverty and
improve the country’s economy.
“The
party is bent on reviving our country’s socialist ideology,” she said
in the exclusive interview with this paper in Dar es Salaam yesterday.
She
clarified, though, that her party was not advocating “blanket complete
or blind nationalisation of private property,” adding: “But it is our
wish to revive some Ujamaa principles and restore social justice,
accountability, equality and leadership ethics.”
Mghwira
said her government would nationalise some industries in a bid to
ensure proper supervision of the country’s natural and other resources
in order to develop a self-reliant economy.
“We
want to put the economy in the hands of the people,” she said,
elaborating: “Every citizen has the right to benefit from our God-given
resources instead of helplessly looking on as the resources are enjoyed
by a few people.”
She
said the move would go hand in hand with stepped-up participation of
women in the economy, noting: “It is crucial that women across Africa
form a platform that will bring them to one table at which they will
discuss the challenges they face and how to meet them.”.
“Women all over the continent are facing similar challenges especially in politics,” she noted.
On
a different plane, she said Tanzania’s economic development was being
undermined by incompetence and irresponsible people in positions of
authority.
“My
government will hold accountable all irresponsible and corrupt
leaders,” she said, adding: “Patriotism is a scarce item among civil
servants... Many leaders are thinking only of themselves instead of the
country and the nation.”
ACT-Wazalendo
launched its General Election campaigns at the weekend, promising to
place leadership ethics first and to re-do the review of the country’s
Constitution.
The
party also promised to increase the number of primary school years from
seven to ten “in order to help ensure better student performance”.
Speaking
at the launch, Mghwira cited plans to revamp the economy saying in
order to transform the country’s economy, ACT would work to boost
agriculture through the establishment of the agriculture regulatory
authority.
She
said under her leadership and in accordance to the party’s election
manifesto, economic transformation will grow at a rate of 10 per cent in
a decade.
Following
the Arusha Declaration of 1967, in which the country’s first President
Julius Nyerere laid out his vision for self-reliance, many industries
were nationalised and new industrial parastatals created.
Nevertheless,
half of all industries remained in private hands during the socialist
period and Mwalimu Nyerere argued that a private sector was necessary
for economic growth to occur.
By
the mid-1970s, however, the growth within the sector that had been
achieved in the first few years of independence began to slow down.
Productivity
in many of the industrial parastatals started to fall around the
mid-1970s, mainly owing to chronic underutilisation of their capacity.
Some
once buoyant textile mills were operating at less than 10 per cent
capacity by the mid-1980s. As a result, many of these parastatals became
more dependent on government subsidies as their profits dwindled
further.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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