do. Compare it to the Republican “Contract with America.” And for brevity and bluntness, it tops anything that’s come out of the Oval Office since Nixon yelled “Fuck” on the Watergate tapes. There are lots of honest admissions in the Tanzanian budget: about civil- service reform “launched in 1992–93 against a background of grossly overstaffed, underpaid and barely performing workforce,” and about poverty —“The living conditions of the majority of the people, particularly in rural areas, are quite alarming.” And no easy, It Takes a Vijijini solutions are proposed. The budget says “poverty-borne problems” must be “tackled,” but “this needs to be achieved under conditions of macroeconomic stability.” Which may be translated as, “Curing poverty equals allowing people to get rich.” This very simple equation has eluded some of the deepest thinkers of the world’s advanced nations. Naturally there is also claptrap in the Tanzanian budget—the mealymouthing about property rights that I mentioned before and scary sentences such as “expenditure management control system will be enhanced by setting up five additional sub-treasuries, bringing the total to 10.” But taken as a whole, as an example of a government going on public record, the Rolling Plan and Forward Budget might almost be called refreshing. The Tanzanian government has an idea, a slight inkling of what to do—or, rather, what not to do. Often, the most important government action is to leave people alone. That brings us to what we prosperous Westerners should do for Tanzanians. We should leave them alone, too. Not the cheap, easy kind of leaving them alone. There are plenty of charities and causes in Tanzania that could be supported—and lavishly, if we’re the kind, decent folks we like to think we are. Individuals can be helped. But can you “help a nation”? Official Development Assistance has funded disasters and fostered attitudes of gross dependence. Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, says his country “needs just two things. We need infrastructure and we need foreign investment. That is what we need. The rest we shall do by ourselves.” This is the “if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs” philosophy. Or as Nzezele put it as I was leaving Dar after having given him a large and not very well-deserved tip, “When you get back to America, if you find that you have any
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