The Meru Cooperative Union: An Adventure in PartnershipAuthor(s): Anton NelsonSource: Africa Today, Vol. 8, No. 10, Tanganyika: A Nation Is Born (Dec., 1961), pp. 12-14Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4184275 .

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The Meru Cooperative Union

an adventure in partnership

By ANTON NELSON

I 9 December 1951: The historical setting

SCENE: What the maps used to call the North Meru Reserve, along the Ngare Nanyuki River in the foot- hills between Mt. Meru and Kilimanjaro, the Shining Mountain. In the foreground the stone church where hundreds had worshiped only weeks before. Now its walls gape roofless to the sky, its doors and bell and pastor gone. Nearby stand the empty ruins of a school and a dispensary, and in the distance here and there the ashes of a house in which one of several hundred families of the Meru tribe had dwelt, cultivating their cornfields and herding their flocks-until a few weeks ago. Where did all the people go?

The administration of the United Nations Trust Territory of Tanganyika, politically responsible to the British government but not to the local inhabitants, gave its explanation, in officialese, that "a modern cattle ranching scheme was to come into force," which could only be implemented by alienating this land to white settlers. This alienation had necessitated the removal from 78,000 acres of mostly seasonal grazing land of nearly 3,000 persons, almost a tenth of the Meru tribe, who it was decided were making less ef- ficient use of the resources than 13 large-estate owners might.

The implementation turned out to be troublesome. The main body of the WaMeru (people of Meru) was already hard-pressed within an iron belt of European estates (since the days of German rule) and refused to cooperate in the move from land with water to the Kingori area, which was waterless most of the year. Government promised compensation and a water pipe to Kingori, but "agitators" argued: "You tell us you are giving us better land. If that were true our fathers would long ago have moved there. But if you think it is really better, why don't you give it to the settlers and just leave us alone on our inferior land?" Gov- ernment threatened force. The WaMeru remained adamant.

Some conscientious officers in the field had doubts. The Lutheran missionary superintendent, recalling the prophetic story of King Ahab's coveting the vineyard of poor Naboth, warned that forcible eviction was wrong and would bring racial strife. The new colonial Governor decided to exercise his power in the dilemma, the police and military were mobilized, and the north- ern WaMeru, who had refused to evict themselves from their homes, were hauled away bodily in trucks with their portable belongings, and their animals

driven off to "the new lands." To prevent squatters from returning by stealth their houses were burned and all standing crops and banana trees destroyed. A white paper answering objections to the eviction ex- pressed regret that the WaMeru were so blind to what was obviously in the best interests of themselves and the country as a whole, and blamed the necessity for using force on those who were obstructing law and order and depriving 13 white settlers of the estates "that had been made available to them."

The Meru Lands Case, however, did not develop according to the books. Locally, it pretty well ruined the confidence of the entire Meru people in the idea of benevolent government without the consent of the governed. A general economic recession set in through- out the tribe. In a country with an annual per capita real income of under $50, at least many WaMeru had a cash crop, but owing to the breakdown of confidence, coffee farmers refused to cooperate with government agricultural advisers. Their crop deteriorated in qua- lity and despite booming world coffee prices produc- tion stagnated to a very low level.

In 1951 the first Middle School, grades 4 to 8, had only recently been opened at Meru, and a mere handful of students had reached High School. No one had any commercial experience, and because no one would trust officers of the cooperative department of the Government, all Meru coffee was ordered sold through an appointed agent on a cost plus percentage com- mission basis.

Without money, schools, churches, the mission hos- pital, and local government staggered along. Needed water supplies could not be built and bridges over the many gorges broke down and stayed down. Transpor- tation was mostly by head-carry. Before 1955 almost no one knew how to drive any kind of machine, and the Chief had to beg rides or walk as far as 20 miles to hear cases and conduct meetings. Morale at Merui was at the bottom. In nearby areas despair and dis- trust broke out in the Mau Mau fury. How the WaMeru would react worried not a few people. Instead of reverting to tribal isolation or taking the warpath they did two unexpected things: they appealed by legal and orderly means to the conscience of the world, and they built a co-op. Thereby hangs this story.

ANTON NELSON is the technical adviser to the Meru Cooperative Union in Usa River, Tangan- yika. Originally from California, he has been in East Africa since 1954.

12 AFRICA TODAY

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II 9 December 1961: Meru on Independence Day

CASH INCOME from Meru coffee, despite a heavy fall in world coffee prices, has quadrupled from about one up to four million or so shillings per year. Seven East African shillings equal one US dollar, but in terms of real value to rural Africans, who grow most of their own requirements, a shilling may be worth much more. Meru Cooperatives, begun in 1955, have grown in six years to a union of five primary societies that sell their members' coffee, supply their main agricultural and building needs. and operate seedling nurseries. The Co-op Union initiates new crops such as pyreth- rum, a daisy-like flower used in insecticide manu- facture. It has sent overseas the first five Meru college students. Farmers' money is banked and interest paid. The first local industry, the manufacture of building blocks of cement and volcanic cinders, began with the co-ops, and they have even helped the farmers to buy back from European settlers much of the very land that was alienated ten years ago.

Indirectly, through local taxes and public purchas- ing power the co-ops have helped finance the expansion of the new Meru elected local government, to improve roads and extend many new ones, build modern steel and concrete bridges over the rivers, and open new dispensaries and schools. Middle School education has quadrupled, with the co-op matching funds from church and Government for one school. The new self- reliance has encouraged the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund to aid the building of several water reservoirs in the drier areas, and for the first time in 50 years the Mission Hospital has an adequate supply of clean water. With a trusted core of leaders from the farmers themselves, Agricultural Advisory Service has a new lever for encouraging better farming and forestry for the first big reforestation project.

Individual farmers, over and above most of their non-cash needs and other income, now average $150 cash from coffee per year, four times that of six years ago. Farmers with tractors now number nearly a score. A dozen Meru truckers haul most of the heavy goods, and a dozen Meru buses carry people to market, to town, etc. The secondhand car is a prestige item much in evidence, and Chief Sylvanus Kaaya pilots his new Land Rover full of elders and junior officers to their destinations, or sends them in the Council's new public works truck. There are many scores of new, modern houses, with real floors of clean cement, real windows, and metal roofs to catch rain water, houses that are the pride of many a woman and her children, who no longer have to endure the cold, damp, smokey, rat-infested houses of mud and stick walls and banana thatch roofs, with their accompanying pneumonia, tuberculosis, and hookworm.

The Co-op organization has had its growing pains, but now the staff consists of 15 or 20 men in positions of responsibility, and 50 to 100 laborers, formerly for the most part idle youths, to man the various branches and enterprises. Committeemen, elected by the farm- ers, direct employees and policy, and although few have much schooling or can write much or figure, they take responsibility-with their Advisers-for the day- to-day decisions in operating one of the two largest businesses in Arusha District. The Union's first Af- rican manager is now a Minister of the national Gov- ernment. His successor sits on national agricultural and cooperative Boards. From the beginning all ex-

pansion has been financed by hard cash from the mem- bers themselves.

My own basic encounter with what used to be called "The Meru Problem" came in 1952, long before the Peace Corps days. I was visiting in New York with some of the founders of the American Committee on Africa. At a UN Fourth Committee meeting Michael Scott introduced my son Chris and me to the Meru Lands Case petitioner, Kirilo Japhet, and his lawyer, Earl Seaton. Later, at supper, Dr. and Mrs. Z. K. Mat- thews of South Africa showed the vital importance of this seemingly minor event to the stirring inde- pendence breezes that so few then foresaw would be- come a gale of change.

I learned how the Meru reaction to the forced evic- tion had taken some unorthodox turns. Instead of accepting the new farms offered by the Government, the evictees had moved in with relatives and refused all compensation (which would have jeopardized their claims) ; a political action group, the Meru Citizens Union, had been organized; and the WaMeru had pro- ceeded to take on the world's mightiest Empire! By sacrificial offerings they had hired a lawyer, selected a spokesman, and dragged His Majesty's Imperial Government before the United Nations for violation of their rights under the Trusteeship agreement.

Not only the shock of the eviction, but the auda- city of the response aroused a thrill among the diverse and mostly self-interested peoples of Tanganyika. One little tribe, whose name was scarcely known, had been hurt, and from all sides people responded, "They can't do this to us!" While future leaders of yet unborn African nations taught school, or finished their studies abroad, or got their local P.G. degrees in jail, the elite of Tanganyika Africans were arguing in these terms: "If they can kick our people out of our God-given lands without our consent, in A.D. 1951, and in a UN Trust Territory, then who and what can save us? It is obvious that we must organize and save ourselves." Thus the new we was conceived, the larger loyalty, the basic premise of nationalism.

The Meru Lands Case ended in December 1952, com- ing within one vote of a two-thirds condemnation of the Administering Authority in the UN General As- sembly. Only the strenuous efforts of the US delegates saved the colonial supporters from an ignominious defeat, (at the cost in the years since of a good deal of suspicion of American motives among Africans). After a year of study at our local college in San Jose, California, as a guest of our church people, Kirilo Japhet returned in 1953 to Tanganyika, to address large crowds all over the country about the Meru Lands Case, which had become a cause cglebre, a moral victory with which millions came to identify them- selves. The next year Japhet joined a High School teacher named Julius Nyerere and others to found TANU, the Tanganyika African National Union.

That same year, 1954, having still found no real po- litical redress for their grievances, the Meru farmers took another unusual step of faith and invited me to come and help them organize the cooperative market- ing of their coffee and work toward their general economic advance. From the week we arrived there have been few moments of rest. If frustrating prob- lems have seemed at times insuperable, resources have been found to tackle them: a group of leaders of rare personal qualities to whom the new Christianity was

DECEMBER 1961 13

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an inspiration to courage and hard work, plus several fine young fellow employees, and supporting them four or five thousand farmers with a new attitude of group discipline and harder work and a new reconciliatory spirit toward government officers.

Our first 5 years consisted of trying to train com- petent staff, mostly from about the eighth grade level, to handle the rapid expansion of our co-ops, and especially to enable us to devolve responsibilities as fast as others could be found to carry them. In our second 5 years the commercial side is mostly under local management, while I am asked to expand oew^ pioneer system of central coffee pulping factories in order to increase the quality and value of our product. This successful start has aroused African farmers all over the country who until recently have been told that modern methods, which all European farmers (and their African employees) use, were too difficult for them. It is not an easy task, of course, but our method is to go ahead and try, doing and showing, building and teaching, as we go. Government has be- come sympathetic with our attempts, and a new door is opening for Tanganyika's coffee farmers.

I suppose the secret of our method is just usharika (partnership), "working together" as we say, one out- side man and 5,000 farmers. Their Technical Adviser is not paid by or responsible to a foreign government, church mission, or even the UN, but his relationship! is directly and only with them. He is their man; they hire him; they can fire him; they can follow his advice or not. Meru Co-op Union is their show, an act of faith in themselves and in a representative of an alien race and culture under which they have been sorely tried in the past. It is both humbling and inspiring to be '

part of that universal citizenship beyond race and religion which Prime Minister Julius Nyerere, my Meru colleagues, and 9,000,000 other Tanganyikans invoke as the basis on which to build a free and prosperous new nation on this Day of our Inde- pendence. Perhaps Mheshimiwa (the respected one) Julius is right-that we shall send forth a light to the nations from the country of the Shining Mountain, Kilima-Njaro. From our own experience I'm certain we shall be fearfully busy trying.

Uhuru na Kazi! Freedom and Hard Work!

Decision-Making in Africa a case study

By WILLIAM H. FRIEDLAND

This article was originally presented as a paper, in a slightly longer form, at the October 20-22 meetings of the American Studies Association. It is published here because it is felt that it gives an excellent example of what may happen to western institutions when thei are transferred to an African situation.

A FRICAN TRADE UNIONS came into existence in most parts of British Africa after certain functional

requisites were created. While the legal basis for trade unionism existed as early as 1930, the functional requi- sites were not yet established in most British African territories.

There was no constituency to which these legally feasible organizations could address themselves; in a word, there was no working class. To the extent that wage labor existed, it was characterized by "target labor" in which Africans entered the labor market for limited periods to obtain cash for specific goals. Once a working population became "committed" the func- tional requisite for trade unionism-a working class- existed. In British Africa, this was marked by the spread of trade unionism in most territories only after the last World War.

Protest against the character of modern economic life began under the guidance of the British and took institutional form in the trade unions. The transfer of the trade union idea took place with the spread of a constellation of organized ideas about trade union functions, roles, types of activities, mechanisms, etc. The agents nf transfer were representatives of the

Labor Departments. In most cases, guidance was pro- vided to groups of African workers and energies were channeled into trade union forms. British trade union- ism served as the model for development for most of these unions. For example, the structure of offices re- produced identically those in Great Britain, i.e., presi- dent, general secretary, trustees, etc. The formal func- tions of the various officers followed the British pat- tern: the president presiding at meetings, the general secretary as the chief executive officer, the trustees as legal proprietors of the real property of the union, etc. The transfer of the structure of offices was com- pleted intact. In Tanganyika, for example, there is a clear understanding of the functions performed by these various officers.

Let us now turn to a situation in which transfer was not achieved intact and where variation took place. For this purpose we look at the decision-making proc- ess in higher trade union bodies (such as executive committees of unions).

The general model of decision-making in trade union bodies in Britain follows that of Parliament. Decisions are made according to the following model:

WILLIAM H. FRIEDLAND is an assistant prof essor in the Department of Human Resources and Ad- ministration at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He was in Tan- ganyika for 14 months on a Ford Foundation grant studying the trade union movement.

14 AFRICA TODAY

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