Tanzania Independence Quotes

They were posted to a country neither knew much about beyond the space it occupied on the map of East Africa between Kenya and Rwanda. After four years working in the remote Usambara Mountains, they moved to Moshi, which means “smoke” in Swahili, where the family was billeted by their Lutheran missionary society in a Greek gun dealer’s sprawling cinder-block home, which had been seized by the authorities. And with the sort of serendipity that so often rewards impetuousness, the entire family fell fiercely in love with the country that would be renamed Tanzania after independence in 1961. “The older I get, the more I appreciate my childhood. It was paradise,” Mortenson says

Even if making precise predictions about which societies will prosper relative to others is difficult, we have seen throughout the book that our theory explains the broad differences in the prosperity and poverty of nations around the world fairly well. We will see in the rest of this chapter that it also provides some guidelines as to what types of societies are more likely to achieve economic growth over the next several decades. First, vicious and virtuous circles generate a lot of persistence and sluggishness. There should be little doubt that in fifty or even a hundred years, the United States and Western Europe, based on their inclusive economic and political institutions, will be richer, most likely considerably richer, than sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central America, or Southeast Asia. However, within these broad patterns there will be major institutional changes in the next century, with some countries breaking the mold and transitioning from poor to rich. Nations that have achieved almost no political centralization, such as Somalia and Afghanistan, or those that have undergone a collapse of the state, such as Haiti did over the last several decades - long before the massive earthquake there in 2010 led to the devastation of the country's infrastructure - are unlikely either to achieve growth under extractive political institutions or to make major changes toward inclusive institutions. Instead, nations likely to grow over the next several decades - albeit probably under extractive institutions - are those that have attained some degree of political centralization. In sub-Saharan Africa this includes Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, nations with long histories of centralized states, and Tanzania, which has managed to build such centralization, or at least put in place some of the prerequisites for centralization, since independence. In Latin America, it includes Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, which have not only achieved political centralization but also made significant strides toward nascent pluralism. Our theory suggests that sustained economic growth is very unlikely in Colombia. Our theory also suggests that growth under extractive political institutions, as in China, will not bring sustained growth, and is likely to run out of steam. Beyond these cases, there is much uncertainty. Cuba, for example, might transition toward inclusive institutions and experience a major economic transformation, or it may linger on under extractive political and economic institutions. The same is true of North Korea and Burma (Myanmar) in Asia. Thus, while our theory provides the tools for thinking about how institutions change and the consequences of such changes, the nature of this change - the role of small differences and contingency - makes more precise predictions difficult.

Founded in Buenos Aires in 1974 and relocated to Mexico City after Argentina’s 1976 coup, Tercer Mundo (Third World) covered political events throughout what is today known as the Global South—Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In its first issue (September 1974), the journal discussed Argentina’s nationalist leader, Juan Domingo Perón, events in Peru, the decolonization struggle in Mozambique, dictatorship in Bolivia, and the Middle Eastern conflict. In issue 4 (May 1975), Tercer Mundo analyzed “Islamic Socialism” in Somalia, denounced the U.S. economic “blockade” of Cuba, discussed cultural decolonization in Tanzania, and reported on struggles for economic independence in Angola and Panama. Publishing from Mexico City a few years later, the journal’s issues 20 and 27 (April 1978 and February 1979) trained its anti-imperialist lens on issues commonly affecting Libya, Morocco (Western Sahara), Zaire (Congo), Mexico, Panama, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, and Cambodia.

Clearly, our immigration policies should be reexamined. A convincing case can be made on environmental grounds alone that a nation of 300,000,000 needs no more people, especially since it would enjoy natural growth if the borders were closed tomorrow. How can we possibly claim to be fighting environmental degradation or hope for energy independence when we import a million or more people every year? How can we claim to be fighting poverty, crime, school failure, or disease when we import people who are more likely than natives to be poor, criminals, school failures, and to suffer from strange diseases? Immigration is even harder to justify when many newcomers speak no English, maintain foreign loyalties, or practice disconcerting religions. It is profoundly unwise to add yet more disparate elements to a population already divided by diversity. [D]emographers and economists are making dire projections based on the lower likelihood of blacks and Hispanics to become productive workers. These people go on to insist that the solution is to improve education for blacks and Hispanics, but the United States has already made enormous efforts to that end. There is no reason to think some kind of breakthrough is imminent. Clearly, the solution to the problems posed by an increasing Hispanic population is to stop Hispanic immigration. However, [...], our policy-makers are too afraid of accusations of racism to draw such an obvious conclusion. Americans must open their eyes to the fact that a changing population could change everything in America. The United States could come to resemble the developing world rather than Europe—in some places it already does. One recent book on immigration to Europe sounded a similar alarm when the author asked: “Can you have the same Europe with different people?” His answer was a forthright “no.” It should be clear from the changes that have already taken place in the United States that we cannot have the same America with different people, either. Different populations build different societies. The principles of European and European-derived societies—freedom of speech, the rule of law, respect for women, representative government, low levels of corruption—do not easily take root elsewhere. They were born out of centuries of struggle, false starts, and setbacks, and cannot be taken for granted. A poorer, more desperate America, one riven with racial rivalries, one increasingly populated by people who come from non-Western traditions could turn its back on those principles. Many people assert that all people can understand and assimilate Western thinking—and yet cultures are very different. Can you, the reader, imagine emigrating to Cambodia or Saudi Arabia or Tanzania and assimilating perfectly? Probably not; yet everyone in the world is thought to be a potential American. Even if there is only a small chance that non-Western immigrants will establish alien and unsettling practices, why take this risk? Immigration to the United States, like immigration to any nation, is a favor granted by citizens to foreigners. It is not a right. Immigration advocates often point to the objections Anglo-Americans made to turn-of-the-century immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Hungary, and other “non-Nordic” countries. They point out that these immigrants assimilated, and insist that Mexicans and Haitians will do the same. Those advocates overlook the fundamental importance of race. They forget that the United States already had two ill assimilated racial groups long before the arrival of European ethnics—blacks and American Indians—and that those groups are still uncomfortably distinct elements in American society. Different European groups assimilated across ethnic lines after a few generations because they were of the same race. There are many societal fault lines in “diverse” societies—language, religion, ethnicity—but the fault line of race is deepest.