CHANGES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN TANGANYIKA
| Published date | 01 July 1954 |
| Author | W. J. M. Mackenzie |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1954.tb00059.x |
| Date | 01 July 1954 |
CHANGES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN TANGANYIKA 123
I think that the establishment of these sub-stations that we have now in
Machakos
District-and
I do not pretend that they do not exist elsewhere-is the
most important development that could have taken place, and it is proving the
key to the success that I believe we are achieving here as a district team.
It
is as
important to law and order as to agrarian and economic development. It is not
aparticularly clever idea, or an original one; in fact, I accept it at once as fair
comment if someone says,
"The
man hasn't said anything at all except that
government ought to engage more staff, especially district
officers,
and put them
out to live with the people." That, indeed, is it.
That
is all I have said. We
ought to do it more often.
I sometimes wonder if in thirty years time, when I am old and gray and full
of sleep, I shall read amicable lectures over my port (if I can afford port) to my
successors, and say:
"Of
course, you young fellows in your helicopters can't
expect to know the country as we used to in my day; we used motor cars. Now,
that's the way to get to know the people, not flying about over their heads. Any-
way, you never get out the way we did. You get tied up in all this recording
tape. Paper was so much simpler." And I trust they will gravely agree with
me, and veil their eyes, in case there shows a little gleam of friendly mockery.
CHANGES
IN
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
IN
TANGANYIKA
By Professor W.
J.
M. Mackenzie
THE object of this article is to give a brief account of the origin and effect
of three recent ordinances affecting local government in Tanganyika, the Native
Authority (Amendment)
(No.2)
Ordinance, No. 23 of 1953, the African Chiefs
Ordinance, No. 27 of 1953, and the Local Government Ordinance, No. 35 of
1953.
The
writer played some part in the origin of one of these ordinances,
but
the part was a relatively small one, and the present article has no claim to
special authority.
The
ordinances are directly concerned with matters of administration of
rather a complex kind, but their origin is political, and to understand them
it is necessary to go back to the work of the Committee of the Legislative
Council which reported on constitutional development in March 1951.
The
committee met under the chairmanship of Mr. Charles Mathew, then Member
for Law and Order (now Sir Charles Mathew, Chief Justice of Malaya), and
the Member for Local Government (Mr. R. de Z. Hall, now Sir Robert Hall,
Governor of Sierra Leone) was also a member: but the committee consisted
.otherwise of all the unofficial members of the legislative council, seven Europeans,
four Africans and three Indians (there were some individual changes of member-
ship during the existence of the committee).
The
committee was thus mainly
a committee of unofficials, and its report is remarkable because it was unanimous,
and also because this is one of very few cases in which a programme of
constitutional development for a multi-racial colony has been worked out by
internal discussion, without the intervention of any commission of enquiry
from outside.
When the report was published there was political controversy but only
about one of its proposals, that for parity between the three races in unofficial
membership of the legislative council. This is now accepted pretty generally
as something which is bound to come: but at the time it was controversial,
~nd
it distracted attention from the quite extraordinary unanimity of opinion,
In the committee and outside it, on matters more pressing and more fundamental.
To continue reading
Request your trial