Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics

  The eyes came up to within three feet of my wall. Then they seemed to turn away, and in my flashlight beam I saw the enormous head of a Cape buffalo, scarfing the bougainvillea. I switched the room lights back on. Here was the animal “considered by hunters to be the most dangerous of the big game” (said my tourist guide). In fact, here were three of them. And they were acting like well-mannered parochial-school football players in the lunchroom cafeteria line—at the expense of the hotel’s gardening staff. The Cape buffalo were unperturbed, not interested in me, and eating everything in sight. They munched their way next door. I had another beer. It goes to show how even the most wrathful of earth’s residents can be rendered dull and domestic—if the chow’s good enough.

  How is Tanzania supposed to get rich? Well, there’s “improvements in agricultural yield,” always a favorite with development-aid types. The British Labour government tried this after World War II in what became known as “the groundnut scheme.” The Labourites decided that Tanganyika was going to become the world’s foremost producer of groundnuts—that is to say, peanuts. They selected three huge sites and cleared the land by running a chain between two tractors, pulling the chain through the bush, and destroying thousands of acres of wilderness. Thirty-six and a half million British pounds were invested, an amount nearly equal to the whole Tanganyikan government budget from 1946 to 1950. It was then discovered that peanuts wouldn’t grow in Tanganyika.

  The Tanzanian government budget contains more pages on agriculture than would ever be read by anyone, except a journalist in a hotel room with dysentery and nothing but a copy of The Mill on the Floss. But the only mentions of land ownership in the budget are an admission that buying land entails “lengthy and bureaucratic procedures,” and this weasel sentence: “A new land law being formulated proposes to introduce different structural arrangements.” Julius Nyerere (apologizing again) has said it was a mistake to collectivize the individual small farms, the shambas. But it’s a mistake that hasn’t been corrected. John said, using the same word the Russians use, that farms must be bought “informally.” (Another note from the budget: “FISHERIES—the sector still faces problems from dynamite fishing.”)

  I did see one swell coffee plantation, Gibb’s Farm, at the foot of the Ngorongoro Crater. This is run by English people and has thousands of neatly clipped coffee bushes lined in parade file. A smoothly raked dirt road winds up through the property with woven-stick barriers stuck in the drain gullies to hinder erosion. A profusion of blossoms surrounds the main house. The very picture of a Cotswold cottage yard has been somehow created from weird, thorny African plants which need to be irrigated every minute. The English will garden the ash heaps of Hades if hell lets them.

  I suppose the farms of Tanzania could all look like Gibb’s Farm, but it turns out that Gibb’s Farm doesn’t make any money as a farm but prospers because upscale tourist lodgings have been installed. So there’s tourism.

  According to the U.S. State Department’s Country Commercial Guide, “Tourism is currently the second-largest foreign-currency earner for Tanzania, after coffee.” (Actually, the largest foreign-currency earner for Tanzania is foreign aid. But never mind; with Republicans in Congress and 13 percent unemployment in Sweden, foreign aid is not a growth industry.) All the tourists I talked to were voluble in their praise of Tanzania—as soon as they’d recovered enough from their road trips to form words. And Tanzania’s tourist hotels produced $205 million in revenue in 1995. But that’s only 6.7 percent of the country’s GDP. This compared to the 6 percent of GDP produced by Tanzania’s “transport and communication sector.” Tanzania doesn’t have any communication. As for transport, according to the same State Department guide that talks up tourism, “It takes approximately three days to travel by road from the capital, Dar es Salaam, to the second-largest city, Mwanza,” a distance of about 500 miles.

  I talked to the manager of a luxury hotel near Mto-wa-Mbu, a Kenyan whom I’ll call Shabbir, and his friend, a Tanzanian named, let’s say, Mwambande, who ran the plush tented camp down the road. Shabbir said it was difficult to get these resorts to work. What was going on in his kitchen right now “was hell.” And at another hotel in Tanzania, I did watch a waiter just arrived from rural climes being utterly confounded by a soda-can pop-top. I asked Shabbir and Mwambande if tourism could make a country like Tanzania rich. Shabbir didn’t think so. He was leaving for better opportunities in Vietnam. Mwambande didn’t think so, either, but more optimistically. “Tourism acts as a showcase,” he said. “It helps people come see a place for them to invest.”

  They explained that tourism itself isn’t very profitable for Tanzania because so much of what’s spent is “yo-yo money.” The foreigners arrive via foreign-owned airlines in planes built by foreigners. They stay at hotels constructed with foreign building materials, ride around in foreign-made cars, and eat food imported from foreign places. The money rolls in, pauses for a moment, and rolls back out.

  Some of the foreigners are, indeed, rich people. “Is the Tanzanian government giving them any incentive to invest?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mwambande, “if you build a plant here you get a five-year tax holiday.”

  “But,” I said, “it normally takes a new enterprise five years to make a profit.” Mwambande and Shabbir laughed. “And what about after the tax holiday?” I said. “What are taxes like then?” Mwambande and Shabbir laughed and laughed.

  In a February 10, 1997, story about a Tanzanian crackdown on illegal tour operators, The East-African newspaper mentioned these taxes just in passing: “a hotel levy (20%), sales tax on food (15%), sales tax on fresh juices and cakes (30%), stamp duty (1% of turnover), withholding tax on goods and services (2%), training levy (10% on expatriate employees’ taxable income), payroll levy (4% on gross taxable income of all employees), vocational education training agency tax (2% on gross taxable income of all employees).”

  Forget about tourism. How about trade? Trade benefits everyone. Anytime I’ve got something you want more than I want it, or vice versa, and we swap instead of steal, the economy is improved. But trade in Tanzania has—surprise—its problems, too. Starting right at the dock. Says Foggy Bottom’s Commercial Guide: “The Customs Department is the greatest hindrance to importers throughout Tanzania. Clearance delays and extra-legal levies [note diplomatic wording] are commonplace.” And until a couple of years ago, Tanzanians, like Cubans, weren’t allowed to have real money. They had to make do with Tanzanian shillings, which no one wanted.

  The current Tanzanian government (which is to say, the same old government after some cheaty elections to stay current looking) claims to have a “trade liberalization policy.” But that government shows no understanding of what trade is. It talks about local industries “facing stiff and often unfair competition from imports.” That’s the point. Back in the States, we’d be driving DeSotos and browsing the Web with room-size Univacs if it weren’t for the Japanese. The Tanzanian government also claims that “the domestic market is now more or less saturated with imports.” Sure. Until the early 1980s there were only nine computer installations in the country, and a ban on importing computers wasn’t completely lifted until 1994.

  Nor does “trade liberalization” seem to be aimed at people doing the actual trading. A story in the Dar es Salaam Guardian began, “Petty traders along Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road…yesterday received a city commission notice to quit the area in five days—and a demolishing grader erased their kiosks a few hours later.” Or if bulldozers won’t do it, a value-added tax is being instituted this year. An exaction of between 14.2 and 17.5 percent will be charged on the sale of most goods and services. In Tanzania, no one ever says, “You can’t stand in the way of progress.”

  Still, trade does happen. I went to the largest and most prosperous-looking store in Arusha. I’ll give it the moniker Safari Barn. It sold souvenirs to tourists. A Maasai warrior in full fig stood sentry by the door, looking as quietly mortified as a Coldstream Guard placed
at attention in front of a Victoria’s Secret outlet.

  The souvenirs were beautiful: black wood carvings of hippos, rhinos, Cape buffalo, giraffes. (Could America’s unemployed carve squirrels and mice as well?) And Safari Barn also sold the best kangas I’d seen. I picked out one with orange hearts and black wiggle lines like a Keith Haring print. SEMENI MNAYOJUA MSIKAE MKAZUA, said the slogan along the material’s edge. I asked the saleswoman to translate. She blushed, the blood rising in her dark complexion and turning her cheeks maroon. John began giggling. “It means,” he said, “‘Don’t sit down and spread your legs and tell everything you know.’” Besides the kangas and wood carvings, there were comely Maasai beads, sparkling “Tanzanite” gemstones, and a terrific selection of masks. Literally terrific, most of them, with gobbly teeth and vexed expressions, and fulsome trimmings of what I hoped wasn’t human hair. “What are these masks used for?” I asked another saleswoman. You can’t come back from Africa without a mask. But I might be shy about having certain ceremonies represented around the house.

  “Mostly they’re for dancing,” said the saleswoman.

  “What kind of dancing is done in this one?” I said, pointing to a handsome white striped false face with a box for a mouth and nose.

  She hesitated: “Dancing…at night.”

  I got an antelope mask.

  I talked to the man who owned Safari Barn, whom I’ll call Nisar. By his faintly Middle Eastern speech and pallor (and wow of a wristwatch), I judged him to be a foreigner. But, though Europeans are rare, Tanzanians cover all skin-color bases. There is a sizable population with roots in India, Persia, and Oman, plus people of mixed African-Arab and whatever-whichever ancestry. Nisar’s family had been in Tanzania for six generations.

  Nisar said Julius Nyerere’s “economics were no good.” The British tradition of understatement survives in Tanzania. Although only sometimes. “I have queued for a loaf of bread for two weeks,” said Nisar. “Under Nyerere, even if I had enough money for a dozen Rolls-Royces, if I drove a Mercedes, I’d go to jail for seven years—languish in jail.” So he hated Nyerere’s guts. No. “Nyerere destroyed tribalism in Tanzania,” Nisar said and claimed he encountered no prejudice for being non-African. He praised Nyerere’s insistence that everyone speak Kiswahili: “It unified the nation.”

  Safari Barn was successful, said Nisar, because “I poured money into Tanzania when others were afraid to spend a shilling.” It was hard getting Safari Barn built. Nisar’s description of working with Tanzanian contractors was the same as Shabbir’s description of work in the hotel kitchen. Nisar had received no tax holidays, no subsidies. To get them, he would have had to go to Dar es Salaam and hang around. “‘The Minister is here.’ ‘The Minister is there.’ ‘The Minister is gone for a week.’ It could take a month to see the right guy. I’m a one-man show here.” Then, Nisar said (without a but or a however or an even so), “Tanzania is the best country in Africa. And I have traveled all over. If there is a food shortage in Tanzania, people won’t riot. There has never been that tradition here. They will get through it. They will share, help each other. They will organize to complain. They will have meetings. They are very political. But not violent. This is not a violent country.” He paused and thought that over for a second. “These people,” said Nisar, “are so damn lazy.”

  Well, not lazy—not when half the teenage girls in the country are walking around with five-gallon buckets on their heads. Five gallons of water weigh forty pounds. But Tanzanians are country. Rural labor is hard and long, not busy-busy. Cassava plants don’t crash on deadlines. Chickens don’t form quality teams. The sun does not take work home at night. And Tanzanians are political but, again, not in a way an American always understands. During the 1995 elections, John had run for the legislature, the Union Assembly, on the opposition NCCR ticket. But he couldn’t remember what the party’s initials stand for. (National Convention for Construction and Reform, incidentally, and I defy you to remember it until the bottom of the page.) Tanzania has been ruled by Nyerere’s CCM Party (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, Party of the Revolution) since independence. Tanzania is a one-party state but has dozens of political parties, anyway. According to Louisa Taylor, Africa correspondent for the Canadian Ottawa Citizen, “Every party stands for clean government and well-equipped hospitals, good roads, and higher crop yields, and all are equally vague on how they would make it so.”

  Even when making it so is a simple matter. I was talking to an expat Brit who’d come to East Africa as a colonial administrator after World War II. I said, “That washboard from Mto-wa-Mbu to Makuyuni—all they’d have to do is send a road grader over it.” (The one from Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road seems to be available on short notice.)

  “Oh, less than that,” said the Brit. “They used to just drag a big log behind a tractor—up and back. The fellow’d get to one end and turn around and go back to the other. Took all the corrugation out. You’d watch for the dust cloud having gone your way and then take off. I’d run my little MG right up to the Ngorongoro rim.”

  The dysfunction of Tanzania is comic, depending on the cruelty of your sense of humor. Here is an exhibit label from a Tanzanian Museum:

  The Soda Bottle (ancient)

  The soda bottle which in use up to 1959. This bottle contain a marble and rubbering which jointly (wished) as stopper for the gas.

  Then you take a swig of the locally produced purified water and notice brown, gelatinous things floating in your own bottle (modern).

  John and I visited a high functionary of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, Arusha branch.

  “What does the chamber of commerce do?” I asked.

  “Our main activity is getting new members,” said the functionary.

  “Is the chamber doing anything to attract business to Arusha?” I asked.

  “We haven’t reached that level yet,” said the functionary. “I think Arusha has everything to attract business.”

  “Except telephones,” I mentioned.

  “Telephones will be privatized next year,” he said. “Arusha has two million people in the whole town.” He thought about that. “Arusha has 300,000 people. It is second to Dar es Salaam in importance. If all goes well, it might become first important.”

  “Do you have any brochures?”

  “We used to have the newsletter, but of recently, we have not done any printing.”

  “But what does the chamber of commerce actually do?”

  “We are a pressure group,” said the functionary with emphasis.

  “Have you been a successful one?”

  “We have! To some good extent. The chamber of commerce played a big role in formulating the budget. We were invited to Dar es Salaam to give our opinion. We complained about the postal-service box rent going from 3,000 shillings to 50,000 shillings.”

  “Did they change the rate back?”

  “No.”

  The chamber of commerce office was located in a long, tin-roofed shed adjacent to the former headquarters of the East African Community or EAC. The latter building is of a truly stupendous international-donor type, featuring not only discolored concrete but also oxidized aluminum, rust-stained stainless steel, and a row of empty flagpoles all bent at different angles. The EAC was an attempt by Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda to form a common market, and it fell apart when Kenya’s president, Daniel arap Moi, started getting huffy and Uganda’s dictator, Idi Amin, started eating people. But nothing in Africa that receives foreign assistance ever really goes away, and the EAC continues to exist in the guise of East African Cooperation. In the parking space reserved for the EAC’s deputy secretary was a BMW. In the executive secretary’s parking space was a new Mercedes sedan. These plenipotentiaries are members of what Kiswahili-speaking Africans call waBenz, “People of the Fancy German Cars.” So the comedy of errors has a happy ending—for some folks.

  And not for others. When John isn’t guiding, he and his wife live in northwestern Tanzania, on an informally pu
rchased farm near the Burundi border. They have two grown sons and did have two young daughters, but the five-year-old girl had died a couple months before John and I met. She had malaria. John took her to the local dispensary, where she was injected with a massive dose of something, and she went into a coma. When the girl had been unconscious for five days, medics at the dispensary said she needed a tracheotomy. The nearest surgeon was a hundred kilometers away. John told the medics to radio ahead and hired a car. The drive took all day. By the time John and his daughter arrived, the surgeon—the only surgeon; in fact, the only doctor—at the hospital had left. “Oh, the doctor goes home around 5,” said the hospital staff. “Go get him!” said John. And they said, “We don’t know where his house is.” John hired another car and searched for hours. Meanwhile, his daughter died.

  I flew to the capital of Tanzania, wherever that may be. “In 1973 it was decided to move the capital city from Dar es Salaam on the coast to Dodoma in the center…a dry and desolate area,” says the East Africa Handbook. The move to Dodoma is “anticipated around the turn of the century,” says the Globetrotter Travel Guide to Tanzania. “Dodoma is now the official capital of Tanzania, displacing Dar es Salaam,” says the Brant Guide to Tanzania. “Some government offices have been transferred to Dodoma,” says the CIA’s 1997 World Factbook. And an article in the February 20, 1997, Dar es Salaam Guardian begins, “Dodoma branch members of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture have asked the government to clarify a minister’s statement that Dodoma is not the country’s legally recognized capital.”