The murder of Wilbert Klerruu: collective agriculture on trial in Tanzania

This article uses the idea of a “tipping event” to help explain why the Government of Julius Nyerere called an abrupt end to the collective aspect of its policy of collective villagization. Perhaps the most striking feature of the program was its precipitous trajectory; intensive efforts at collectivization between 1970 and early 1973 gave way to an abrupt de-emphasis on the collective aspect of the program that may have begun to manifest itself as early as mid-1972. Of all the Tanzanian government's ambitious efforts to build a socialist economy, which included nationalization of the banking system, rental housing, and large industries as well as the creation of a state monopoly over the procurement, processing, and marketing of food staples, collective agriculture was the most short-lived. On Christmas Day 1971, an Ismani farmer, Saidi Abdallah Mwamwindi, shot and killed the Iringa Regional Commissioner, Dr. Wilbert Andrew Klerruu. As the murder trial proceeded during 1972, even the most ideologically inclined of Nyerere's allies became aware that their choice of agricultural policy was imposing deep political costs on the governing party in the form of declining rural support.