Introduction

Life under Nyerere

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 164 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (8 December 2006)

ISBN-10: 0980258723

ISBN-13: 978-0980258721

Introduction

MANY of those who were born in Tanganyika during British colonial rule are in a much better position, than those who weren't, to assess the full impact and influence of President Julius Nyerere on the country because they knew what type of leader he was since he began to campaign for independence in the early fifties, and whether or not he changed through the years.

I am one of them but not quite. I was born in colonial Tanganyika. But I was only a child when Nyerere started to campaign for independence travelling across the country to mobilize support for the nationalist struggle against British colonial rule. I nonetheless am in a position to make a fair assessment of what type of leader he was because I grew up under his leadership.

When he started his nationalist campaign in the early fifties after returning to Tanganyika from Britain in 1952, I was less than five years old. I was born on 4 October 1949 in the town of Kigoma, a port on Lake Tanganyika, in the western part of the country bordering the former Belgian Congo.

In fact, I was almost exactly 4 years and 9 months old when Nyerere formally launched the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) on 7 July 1954. He was 32.

Seven years later, he led the country to independence when TANU won massive support across the country in one of the biggest political and electoral victories in colonial history.

Much of this narrative and analysis is written from a personal perspective. But the subjects I have addressed are national and international in scope in terms of Nyerere's leadership.

He was no ordinary man hence larger than life in terms of influence on a global scale, yet humble as a peasant in terms of his commitment to the well-being of the masses. He was their saint, and humble servant, and without whom he would not have become as a leader of international stature.

As a news reporter in Tanzania, I got the chance to know about Nyerere as a leader in a way I would never have had I gone into another field or simply stayed in my home village in Rungwe District in the misty blue mountains of the Southern Highlands of Tanzania in a region that borders Malawi, which was known as Nyasaland during British colonial rule. My home region also borders Zambia, once known as Northern Rhodesia when it was under British colonial rule.

Therefore I looked at Nyerere from a vantage point many people didn't have when he led our country and during a period when he was one of the most influential African leaders on the entire continent and indeed in the history of post-colonial Africa. He will be remembered for generations.

But I also remember him in another respect. President Nyerere was the editor-in-chief of our newspaper, the Daily News. Yet he did not play any executive role at the newspaper. However, his position as editor-in-chief was of highly symbolic significance since he was the embodiment of the aspirations of the masses. And our newspaper served as an organ, and as a national institution, articulating their needs and grievances. It was government-owned.

Nyerere's close ties to the newspaper were also reflected in his appointment of our editors, Sammy Mdee and Ben Mkapa, as his press secretaries at different times. It was also he who appointed them as editors.

Mkapa also served as Tanzania's ambassador to Nigeria and the United States, and as Tanzania's high commissioner (ambassador) to Canada under President Nyerere. He also became Tanzania's minister of foreign affairs under Nyerere, and eventually president of Tanzania himself from 1995 to 2005.

Nyerere left a legacy which continues to inspire millions of people in Tanzania and elsewhere especially in other parts of Africa. But it is also a legacy that has drawn mixed reactions from many other people, depending on how they saw him as a leader and what kind of policies he pursued.

I have done my best to explain some of those policies and portray Nyerere the way he was: a simple yet tough leader, an intellectual yet a humble politician, deeply committed to the well-being of his people in spite of the mistakes he made during his tenure which lasted almost a quarter of a century as president of Tanzania.

I can't and don't speak for anybody else. What I have written here is the way I saw it and from personal experience as someone who was born in Tanganyika, and grew up in Tanganyika, later in Tanzania.

I am sure there are those who differ with me just as there are those who agree with me including some of Nyerere's most ardent critics who, in spite of their criticism of Nyerere and his policies, still concede that although he made mistakes, he did his best for his people. As he himself said in an interview with the Black World, an African-American journal, in the early seventies when he was asked what he would like to be remember for after he died, he hoped people would say: "He did his best."

Life under Nyerere

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 164 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (8 December 2006)

ISBN-10: 0980258723

ISBN-13: 978-0980258721