A Fanciful History: Annar Cassam On the Literacy-Language Story
By Prof. Karim F Hirji
In her contribution entitled: TheLiteracy-Language Story, Annar Cassam contends that (i) the literacy
programs implemented in Tanzania during the Mwalimu years had, by 1980, raised
the literacy rates among school children to 90% and among adults to 80%; and
(ii) these achievements together with other stellar gains in the education
sector were drastically reversed by the Structural Adjustment Conditionalities
imposed by International Financial Institutions and the West. She contrasts
this fate with the spectacular and sustained achievements of Cuba under Castro,
but then contends that African nations could not have followed the Cuban path. To
Africa, only an Ujamaa type alternative
road to development was available or feasible.
After joining the University of Dar es Salaam, in the company of many fellow students, I
participated in voluntary adult literacy activities. In the evenings and on
weekends, we spent one to two hours teaching reading, writing and basic
arithmetic to residents of the surrounding area. The language of instruction
was Kiswahili. I continued this work, but not that consistently, until 1973.
Especially at the outset, enthusiasm was high and attendance was good. People,
especially women, were eager to learn new skills. In that respect, I am in agreement
with the positive sentiments underlying Cassam’s contribution.
Nevertheless, I am of the view that her general contentions are misleading and exaggerated. Deriving
from selective and flawed data, they reflect the tendency among veterans and
intellectuals of that era to uncritically glorify the Nyerere years. We need to
set the record straight because only when armed with the actual achievements and
mistakes of the past can we extract useful lessons, learn from them, and chart
a viable path forward.
1.
Statistics:
The reports of multilateral agencies like UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF,
WHO, World Bank as well as of national funding agencies such as DANIDA, NORAD
and SIDA corroborate what Cassam says and more: That up to the early 1980s,
Tanzania showed higher levels of progress in literacy, education, health
services and water supply than most African countries. The gains were and are
attributed to the policy of Ujamaa na
Kujitegemea (Socialism and Self-Reliance).
2.
The catch is that many of these
statistics had a strong positive bias and painted a rosier picture than what
actually prevailed. How did that
occur?
3.
First, we need to bear in mind that by
the mid-1970s, Mwalimu had abandoned his pledge of moving towards self-reliance.
Contradicting the Arusha Declaration,
Tanzania stood among the top per capita recipients of external development funding in Africa. The main funders were the
Western nations and agencies. For their part, these entities, upon pouring in a
lot of money in Tanzania, had a vested interest in showing to their taxpayers
and providers that the funds were being put to good use. Fine outcome statistics
served their interests well. That these data did not well reflect the reality
on the ground was not a serious concern.
4.
In early 1974, I was ejected from the
University of Dar es Salaam upon the express order of Mwalimu. An assistant
lecturer in the Department of Mathematics was overnight transformed into a
Planning Officer in the Regional Planning Office of Rukwa Region. With my wife
and just born child, I was in Sumbawanga for two years. (It is a long story
that I will not go into for now).
5.
I bring this episode up here because my
stay in Sumbawanga gave me a direct experience of the process of generation of
the kind of statistics Cassam cites.
6.
In the middle and at the end of the
fiscal year, the Regional Planning Office (RMO) had to submit a report to the
Prime Minister’s Office indicating the progress made or not made in sectors
like education, health, social services, economy and transportation. However, a
systematic scheme for collecting these data did not exist. For education, we
relied on the numbers given by the Regional Education Officer; for health it
was the figures from the Regional Medical Officer, etc. It was not clear how
they got their data. Many times, we saw clearly flawed or incomplete numbers. Say,
we had to state the number of rural dispensaries with adequate staff. The RMO
might tell us 7 but our boss would say there were only 5. So we worked out a
compromise, and placed that number in our report.
7.
Basically, our report was designed to
show the Prime Minister’s Office that allocated funds had been spent well, that
our numbers were in line with what was stated in the past, and that sufficient
problems remained to justify the continued flow of funds. All my suggestions
and plans to collect reliable information were scuttled by my bosses. They
listened patiently to what I said but then forgot about it. In this
bureaucratic setting, the presence of a qualified statistician did not affect
the quality of the socio-economic development data being generated.
8.
A similar kind of situation prevailed in
almost all the regions. Such data were collated at the national level in the
Prime Minister’s Office, and put in the official reports. The reports of external
bilateral and multilateral agencies were mostly based on such official data. A
few of them carried out their own surveys and there were direct data collection
efforts at the national level as well. But these efforts were not well
implemented and generally lacked good quality control measures.
9.
In the mid-1990s, a documentary film
dealing with the decades of Norwegian assistance to Tanzania was produced by a
team from that country. I was in Norway when it was shown. It showed that many
of the claims of achievements made in NORAD reports were hot air. Some projects
had failed to take off; some had stalled in the middle and some had fallen into
disarray a few years upon completion. Earlier, a book assessing Westernsupported water development projects in Tanzania had noted that failure to
involve local communities had often produced unused, unusable and unsustainable
facilities. Here too, what was on paper did not generally match the outcomes in
the field.
10.Research by many
scholars, Tanzanian and expatriates, who were not beholden to TANU, also showed
wide disparities between the claims of the politicians and the actual situation
with regards to many aspects of the progress under Ujamaa. Many papers and books, including those relating to
education, documented the large gap between words and deeds.
11.The claims of
spectacular progress in raising literacy rates during this period have thus to be
viewed in the light of this overall context. There is no reason to believe that
literacy data were of a higher quality than other data. They too were affected
by the lack of systematic data collection and the tendency to exaggerate.
12.During my stay in
Sumbawanga, I visited many towns and villages in the area, and talked to a
large number of ordinary people. Most of them openly told me that when the
policy of Ujamaa was first announced,
they fully supported it. They were enthusiastic about the mass literacy and
health education programs. However, when the implementation was seen to be
poor, when their living standards hardly improved, when the bureaucrats treated
them the same way as the colonialists had done, they turned against the policy
and its associated components.
13.In 1974/75,
people in Rukwa Region were moved by force into the Ujamaa villages. In a move done without prior planning, human
rights abuses were rampant. A lot of common property was looted, generating
much anger on the ground. Participation, especially by males, in many Ujamaa programs including the literacy
schemes plummeted.
14.I am a
statistician of forty years standing. I have studied many social and economic development
reports and know their methods of data collection. I think I am quite well
qualified to speak on the veracity or otherwise of such data. It is my opinion
that the numbers Cassam relies on to make her case about the language-literacy
story do not hold up to scrutiny.
15.I do not dispute
or agree with her language-literacy claim. What I say is that her figures are
not reliable enough or sufficiently adequate to conclude that the use of Kiswahili
was a prime reason behind the success of the literacy programs in Tanzania. One
has first to show that these programs did achieve exceptional results. You
cannot make a sound case from flawed data. The use of Kiswahili may or may not
have been a critical factor. We simply do not have the information required to
conclude one way or another.
16.My impression is
that the gains under Ujamaa,
including those under regular and adult education, were impressive in the
initial five to six years but especially after the mid-1970s, they stalled and the
situation began to reverse. In contrast to the impression given by Cassam,
these reversals predated the institutions of the Structural Adjustment Programs
(SAPs). Neglect by and incompetence of the ruling party functionaries were
major factors behind these negative trends.
17.I also note that
the employees of agencies like UNESCO were and are paid exorbitant salaries and
allowances to `assist people in poor nations.’ They had and have a strong
conflict of interest in the reporting of outcomes. Consciously or otherwise,
the underlying need to justify their privileges implies that their reports carry
the potential of a strong built in bias.
18.Conflict of interest
is a documented feature of modern day research. It generates skewed data and
thus needs to be considered and controlled for in the evaluation of the
outcomes of any scientific research or other type of report. Many scholarly journals
today require an explicit declaration of conflict of interest.
19.My claim of bias
thereby derives from a solid methodological foundation. There is a large body of
critical papers that elaborate on the nature of such bias, and its effect on
data quality. Further, I have myself published scientific papers relating to
this issue.
20.Let us by all
means continue the important debate on the literacy, education and language connections.
But let us base it on reliable information and numbers. We need to avoid drawing
major conclusions from politically influenced, limited and biased statistics.
21.Cassam further discusses
the SAP and contrasts the experience of Tanzania with that of Cuba. If my
health and time permit, I will address these vital issues in the near future in
another contribution.
