Editorial
This is the inaugural issue of a new series of your traditional UTAFITI journal.
That is why it is coming out as UTAFITI (New Series) Vol. 1, No. 1. Due to
numerous delays and difficulties in publishing all the scheduled volumes and
numbers of the journal in its old series, and recognizing that papers recently
written may end up being dated several years before they were even conceived,
the Editorial Board has reluctantly agreed to inaugurate a new series of your
usual journal. We hope you will continue supporting UTAFITI in its new series
by continuing your subscription to it, and seeking to be published in it.
In this issue there are five papers. In the first paper, Victor Mlekwa discusses
the issues and implications emerging from research on the response of adult
learners to the policies and practises of state-organized literacy training.
Mlekwa concludes his paper by making a plea for greater use of the
participatory action research approach in studies evaluating the role of the state
in adult literacy programmes.
In the second paper Maghimbi seeks to demonstrate that, contrary to the popular
myth, pre-colonial Africa did consist of societies with class divisions. The
paper provides examples of Maghimbi's in-depth study of the old Ugweno State
of North-eastern Tanzania to support his argument that modes of production in
pre-colonial Tanzania were developed beyond the primitive communal level.
The third paper is by Peter Chonjo who offers an assessment of the materials
and physical facilities situation in Tanzanian primary schools. Basing himself
on an extensive review of current research reports, Chonjo provides support for
his assertion that good quality education is impossible in the majority of
Tanzanian primary schools given, among other things, the poor state of
buildings and other educational facilities in these schools.
In the fourth paper, Peter Foster examines the traditional and the more recent
preoccupations of British social anthropology. The paper then considers the
evidence which links British social anthropology with British colonialism,
before assessing radical criticisms of such anthropology. Foster concludes his
paper by stressing the importance of adopting and adapting those elements of
anthropology which constitute its ethno-scientific core for use in the study of
Tanzanian peasant communities for purposes of empowering such communities.


The last paper by Horace Campbell is a synthesis of notes the author wrote
summarizing the ideas which were generated by a conference he attended in
 1992 which assessed the impact on the so-called            Third World of the
disintegration of the USSR. Campbell's paper argues for the need to search for
theories accounting for the disintegration which do not demobilize working
people in the Third World in their struggle against the debt burden and
militarism, and for the fundamental restructuring of the world economy.
Once more, the Editorial Board invites readers of UTAFIT/ to continue their
support for the journal by subscribing and sending articles and book/conference
reviews to it, and sending to its Editors any criticisms they may have about its
ISSUes.
Kulikoyela K. Kahigi
Chief Editor