If you had prophesied in the 1970s that one day a 500-gramme loaf of bread would cost Tsh300 (30 US cents), you would have had problems recruiting followers. Then a loaf cost Tsh2.10, which incidentally, was worth 30 US cents then! 

Well, you might ask, why the fuss, since the price of bread has marked time for 20 years? Its mystery has to do with the number of hours spent earning that bread. Let us imagine two Tanzanian families: one in the 1970s and the other in the 2000s. 

Then the minimum wage was about half a dollar a day with the majority of the population employed on the land, by the state, on private estates or self-employed. So, in a family, mother and father would each bring back half a dollar a day, which is a total of one dollar. Today, the minimum wage is about one and a half dollars, but must be shared among several adults. 

Unemployment is so massive the Ministry of Labour and Youth has lost track and sees no sense in publishing figures. The Ministry admits, at least, that some 750,000 youth are released from primary, secondary and colleges to seek jobs every year, but hardly 30,000 find jobs. 

Our earlier family could bring home three loaves every day. Permanent dependants were likely to be underage children. Grown up offspring would be employed and therefore independent. Those three loaves fed fewer mouths. 

Our modern family is earning five loaves a day to feed more dependants who include grown-up offspring. To bring home enough bread to go round, whoever is employed must stretch each working day by a few more hours. 

Economic crisis or no, people must eat. So, where do people find the means? Let us trace a few footsteps. Our importer will sell to the retailers at a profit. This means the importer recovers his capital, feeds his family and still has something to add to his capital. In other words, he has shifted the cost of feeding his family to the retailer. 

Our retailer shifts the cost of feeding his family plus the cost of feeding the importer's family to an array of consumers. But we are not over with throwing off the burden as yet. One of the consumers is a middleman who buys foodstuff from the villages for urban consumption. He will shift a little of the burden on to the unsuspecting peasant by buying at lower-than-market price and then selling to the urban dweller at a profit. 

But who told you all urban dwellers were that easily swindled? Is he a teacher? He will conduct tuition classes that cost you more per week than the school proper for the whole year. 

Is he a mechanic? Not only will he charge you for repairs he has not done. He will sell back to you spares ripped from your own car. 

Which means you must have passed the buck on to somebody to keep the car running. And who is the poor fellow? I like to think it's the government! It is impersonal enough to make it all feel less painful. Any other boss would automatically shift the burden to someone else. 

Add the peasants and, next time you hear of economic hardship, you know who is really suffering. 

Michael Okema is a political scientist based in Dar es Salaam.
E-mail: nnldar@africanonline.co.tz 
 

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