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COLONIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION

SEMINAR GROUP

Colonization in its classical form means controlling the political, economic and social situation of one country by another country.

The political, economic and cultural movement that originated in western Europe around 14th century which gave shape to the so-called beginning of a modern era in the European historical tradition, expanded beyond the frontiers of Europe. This expansionism took many forms. Firstly, it was a movement in search of alternative sea routes to Asia to ensure a regular flow of spices and other Eastern wealth to the markets in Europe. Secondly, it was an attempt to carry the cross across to Asia inspired by the long drawn religious rivalries between the Catholic reformation and Protestant reformation. Whatever the form it assumed, in totality it brought forth a new kind of relationship amongst the European and Asian countries. It was a new era in a sense that sea power combined with superior technological methods gave small nations like Portugal, Holland and Britain the dominance over vast territories of Asia. It was also a new era in a sense that he who controlled the sea controlled the land masses.

This domination of most Asian and Pacific countries by Western powers continued for a long period, in the case of Asia more than 400 yrs. This long period of domination of Asia superimposed the Capitalist mode of production and distribution on the traditional subsistance economies of Asia. The western life style, cultural values and socio-economic and political structures penetrated far and wide to the people of Asia. Proselytizing activities of numerous missionary organizations completed the western assault on Asian societies. These centuries of Colonization gave the metropolitan countries secure opportunities to exploit the colonies. Exploitation was not the only major factor in the relationship between the metropolitan countries and the colonies. It created a continuous dependency of the colonies on the Imperial countries through the super-imposed import-export economic system, mainly based on primary products like tea, coffee, rubber, coconut, etc, which fulfilled the needs of the colonizer countries.

Colonization in its classical sense implies two levels:

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(1) Direct control of the affairs of the colony through the agents of the metropolitan centres. The colonizer committed their armed forces along with the local recruits to run the administrative system to the benefit of the centre. The local people have no participation in decision making and in reality they were domesticated to fit into the Colonial System. The colonizer also in some cases concisely improved the infrastructure, roads, communication systems, etc. to facilitate the exploitation. Philippines under Spain, Indian subcontinent under the British, Indo China under the French, Indonesia under Dutch and most of the South Pacific Islands under the British and French, etc, were classical colonies for centuries.

(2) Residential colonization — in this case colonial powers not only controlled the colonies but also encouraged white settlements in the colonies to the extent of outnumbering the indigenous people.. Australia and New 'Zealand by Britain, New Caledonia by France are some of the countries colonized by this way by European settlers who arrived in these countries for various reasons. But primarily they performed the task of colonizing the territories. The settlers pre-occupied with the task of transplanting social-political and economic structures of the mother countries grabbed the land from the indigenous people and in some cases indigenous people were hunted down as animals, reduced to a minority in their own soil. An example is the treatment meted out to Aboriginal people by the early settlers in Australia, the Maoris in New Zealand and the Melanesian people in New Caledonia. As a result, the indigenous people are faced with a heavy task of lighting for their rights and human dignity. Overwhelming influence of Westernization over their lives is an unavoidable factor which in some ways complicates their struggles further.

Ongoing crisis of world capitalism and primarily the aftermath of the war for world hegemony among the metropolitan powers paved the way for so-called political independence of the colonies. In some cases independence was granted as a response to the rising aspirations of the local elite who are the products of the colonial system. Independence movement in the Indian sub-continent was led by this local elite. The British could not control the Indian situation anymore and decided to grant independence. As an appendix to the political independence of India, small countries like Sri Lanka, too, became independent. In Indo-China with bloody revolutionary uprising of the people, the French were forced to leave Vietnam. Dutch were forced to leave Indonesia after the patriotic struggle for independence. Some of the South Pacific Island islands like Fiji and Papua New Guinea were granted political independence by disinterested colonizers Britain and Australia respectively.

However the termination of political control of the metropolitan centres by no means brought true independence to Asia except in the case of China, N. Korea and Indo-China. The economies of the Asian countries are directly or indirectly tied to the metropolitan centres. This means that the colonizers have not really left the former colonies. Through the local elite, development patterns, multinationals, education systems, value systems, international aid agencies etc. they are still in control of the Asian countries. This is what popularly known as neocolonialism.

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De-colonization.

De-colonization has to take place at three levels, based on the struggle for self-reliance.

(1) Political independence, with power to take decisions for the benefit of the people. People should hold the commanding heights of political decision making.

(2) True economic independence free from the controls of the development process aimed at the betterment of the people is living standards and their participation in the production and distribution processes.

(3) A cultural revolution aimed at de-colonizing the minds and values of the community. This means total transformation of the society from the colonial patterns to a life style worthy of a free sovereign nation.

The cultural revolution is a far away cry in most of the Asian countries although the ruling elite mouth lots of slogans on national culture, native language, lifestyle, etc. Basically they are colonial in attitudes and behaviour. This colonial mentality has filtered down to the ordinary people as well through education, mass media, etc.

The colonial politics of the past has also spread the seeds of tension around Asia. The root cause of tensions between India-Pakistan, Indonesia over Timor, Philippines and Malaysia over Sabah, two Koreas etc, is the past colonial policies of arbitrary determination of national boundaries and divide and rule policy of the colonizers.

Countries like Australia and New Zealand with relative affluence are exerting a neo-colonial policy on the small South Pacific Islands. The problems of the Aboriginal people in Australia and the Maoris in New Zealand have their roots in the colonial past as well as the present racist policies of the ruling elite. On the other hand, Australia and New Zealand as nations, are being controlled by the multinationals, therefore limiting the political and economic independence of these two countries.

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In this situation de-colonization is not yet a genuine reality in the region today. Working for the process of de-colonization means engaging in the struggle for self-reliance keeping in mind that the peoples of Asia and Pacific need to deal with all three issues, political independence, economic and cultural revolution.

The Church

Christianity was introduced to Asia through the same means of the colonizers. While the soldiers and administrators controlled the material things of the colonies, missionaries controlled the souls of the colonies. The Church provided the education system to prepare the local elite to run the colonial administration system. This also meant an assault against the indigenous cultures. The Church in Asia and the Pacific has in various ways practised land ownership. In spite of its having been a minority community (except in the case of Philippines and the South Pacific) it enjoyed privileged treatment of the colonial administration.

Therefore, the struggle for self-reliance within the Christian community should begin from the premise of a critique of our historical past and the present indifferent political position taken by the Christian community. This is part of the de-colonization process — our understanding of faith within the predominantly non-Christian communities of Asia, theology that we inherited from the colonial era does not provide the necessary tools for action within the struggle for liberation in Asia. This means that our faith in Christ should lead us to creative involvement in the process of de-colonization not only of the political process but also of the process of theological reflection based on our own 'praxis' within the Asia struggle. Theology of self-reliance in the Asian context means testing our faith within the on-going struggles for social justice.

MWANITU

(On the Tanzanian experience)

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These 3 areas I have circled here (X) are the areas which produce cash crops and they are the areas where missionaries first settled and started schools. That is why, the petty bourgeoise that was being formed in Dares-salam, the capital, came from these 3 areas. To me, this is important. While in other places you had scattered missionary influence, others were coming up, going to these places. In which case, if the majority of them came from these 3 places, they were concerned only with these 3 places, other areas remain neglected.

The other reason why I have drawn this map is to show that these 3 countries belong to the East African community. They were all former British colonies. The idea was to have a federation and so they had common services. Up to now, we have one East African Airways, one postal service, and communication, railways, harbours, everything. Now the headquarters for this community — the so called Common Market — is here in Tanzania.

And another reason for drawing this map is to show the importance of this railway, which was built by the Chinese and why by the Chinese? If these countries were late to the Western World, why by the Chinese? This is also important in understanding what is happening in Tanzania.

The other thing I would like to touch on is — the whole historical background of going socialist. After independence in 1961, the people who came to power were the petty bourgeois (there were 2 factions — the progressive and the reactionary). It was the progressive group which was headed by the President himself which saw this unequal internal development as a problem for unity. So they decided that we must have some kind of strategical development in the lesser developed areas. And the first thing they did was to visit Israel to study the kibbutz system and to study the distribution of consumer goods. And so back in 1963, we had a lot of villages in the Israeli model created in different places and we had distribution services created for the peasants or the people. These shops offered usually cheaper prices than those in the shops owned by the Arabs and the Indians.

This model of Kibbutz was a failure because the people who were grouped in such villages were normally not people of that place. So in 1965 the President visited China to see how they were building their country. I think for us that was some kind of a turning point in the whole transition to "ujama". And again some people were sent to Cuba and studied village organization. I am talking about the village because that was the most important thing. Our villages were scattered, one family about 20 miles away from another. While China and Cuba had concentration of villages and really no land. And after carefully studying all models in China, Cuba, it was found out that their models could not fit in our situation.

And so we had to study our own. Traditionally we had villages and this village was the basic kind of family. And that is where the whole concept of "ujama" comes in. Now ujama means familihood but it has another meaning, which means to help one another. And the traditional village was just like that and that is why it was decided that this was to be the goal to create such villages all over. Now the first problem was what do you do with these places, m the less developed areas people accept to come together

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in one place from different villages and this is what is happening. 1 am not saying that all over Tanzania you have villages but this is what is happening. People are grouping themselves together and their village has become the basic productive unit — instead of an individual.

I would like to mention some important dates and some important documents which actually facilitated this. First, the Declaration in 1967 which actually came about after the student unrest in 1966. Not that the students led the proclamation of the declaration but what they did was a very important historical event in the country. The students were attacking the petty bourgeoise group that was being formed, known as the Wabenzi group. Now this Wabenzi group came from the German car Mercedez Benz. They could not be identified in any other way except by what they owned. It was some kind of a new tribe, if you like. The students were attacking this group because it was this group that had proposed that the students undergo military training. The students were saying, "Why should we undergo military training while you people fatten yourselves". And there was this struggle, you can't say a class struggle, but an important advantage which led to education in self-reliance in the country — liberating education.

Another important document was the one in 1971 which gave powers to the workers — this was the party guidelines whereby the workers would form themselves into council and meet with the management for the running of the factory. This had its problems later but I think we can't go into that.

Another one was in 1972 — the decentralisation policy to give power to the people. Everything was centralised in Dares-salam. Now, decentralisation meant that decisions would come from different parts of society.

One problem which I see now in the whole transition to Socialism in Tanzania is the role of the East African community. We have disengaged ourselves theoretically from the International Multinational Corporations but if we have to import goods from Nairobi, which is the centre for multinationals, so we are still within the system. And this is the current debate now. The supra-left in Tanzania are arguing that we should disengage ourselves from the community but others are saying that we should give it time. I must say that it is a real problem because Tanzania is a market for these multinationals which are centred here and we have to abide by the treaty.

Another problem I see is the role of people coming to "ujama" villages. There are a lot of people coming to ujama villages from outside and the publicity they give in Tanzania is "Everything is so beautiful, everything is so nice, people are going on so well and so on. There is no failure". Now this is very dangerous for the leaders. It is possible to remain contented and say there is no struggle. You feel, maybe I am the best and so I will meet no problems.

Samson : How is the educational system?

Mwanitu: The students start to learn politics, right from primary school! They get to know what exploitation means right at the village and it is also at this level where there is manual work by the students.

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When they go to secondary school, there it gets deeper. They study the country, there is a lot of ideological inputs and I must say that the politicisation among students is as high as the peasants' because the same words are used. Actually, one thing that can be seen as the behind the success for the politicisation is the language itself — Swahili which is spoken all over and it is the medium of instruction in the country. So we have words to show exploitation coming out from the things that we see. For example, we have "kupe" — a kind of insect which sucks the blood of the animal. Now if we say you are a kupe, that means you are a sucker, an exploiter. In this way there is a lot of understanding even among peasants. Now if we go to University, we have to study political economy which is a compulsory subject. And the whole thing is actually completely overhauled in the sense that the disciplines we see here are quite different from the University in Nairobi or University in Kampala.

Pelegri: Are the students in contact with the rural people or not; is this a policy or compulsory thing and why?

Mwanitu: Personally I had been to "ujama" villages 3 times, when I was in secondary school and when I was at the University. This is not compulsory. It is not compulsory because within the ruling party we have the youth wing of the party which organizes such contacts. It is mostly during the holidays where students go to work with the peasants for 3 weeks to 1 month. But at the university it is usually 1 week or even less and one goes to the village for specific activities. It is the students themselves who decide that they will have to go. I am not sure what is happening now but there was a proposal that all the schools should close at a certain time and go to the villages to teach the people to read and write. Actually this is one of the successes we have in the literacy campaign. It is not only reading and writing but there are so many things involved here like the whole question of politicization and the whole question of hygiene. We have a lot of campaigns but the problem comes sometimes when we don't have the tools. We have to import things like eyeglasses and radio.