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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Obituary:
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters
The legacy of a great African
By Gamal Nkrumah
Former Tanzanian President Julius Kambarage Nyerere had the gift of incandescence. Undaunted by the multiplicity and complexity of the development problems his people faced, Nyerere's presence at political rallies, remote poverty-stricken villages, academic conferences and international forums where he pleaded the case of the South always lit up the occasion. He had a way with words, especially in his native Kiswahili. He was the philosopher-king, intellectual, enlightened, the polar opposite of the despotic ruler so common in the Africa of his day. But he was also a man of the people.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922-1999)
Nyerere was born in 1922 in Butiama, Tanganyika to a Roman Catholic peasant family of humble origins. Butiama is on the shores of Africa's largest natural freshwater reservoir, which is also a main source of the River Nile, Lake Victoria. It was here that Nyerere chose to retire after willingly relinquishing first power in 1985, then domestic politics in 1990.
Two years ago, at celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of Ghana's independence, I met and spoke to Nyerere for the last time. I would never have guessed that he was ill. As always, he spoke so eloquently and with such intellectual vigour. At that occasion, Nyerere publicly admitted that he had been wrong to belittle Kwame Nkrumah's dream of a united Africa. He acknowledged that he, like many other African leaders at the time, had lacked the necessary courage and political will to take up the cause of African unity and make it a reality.
Perhaps this was one of the most endearing characteristics of Nyerere. He was not only a man of great integrity, but he also had the courage and modesty to admit to past mistakes. I have heard him speak in London, at the Commonwealth Institute, in several forums in the United States and at the United Nations, as well as in many an African setting. To me personally, Nyerere was always the attentive father figure, never missing an opportunity to remind me that my own father's vision for a united Africa was the only way forward.
With his wit, humour, sharp intellect and disarming sincerity, Nyerere was always a winning personality. But, to say that he was an uncontroversial character would be a grave mistake. From the beginning of his political career, Nyerere was widely seen as a moderate, and that at a time when more militant African leaders prevailed. As early as the late 1950s and early 1960s, official US documents, now declassified, interestingly reveal that America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) regarded him as the only "responsible" African leader. Nyerere himself was clever enough to realise that such a revelation was no compliment.
In 1964, in a desperate bid to save his rule, Nyerere appealed to his former colonial masters, the British, to send in troops and quell a mutiny by his own army. This the British did. For resorting to their help, though, Nyerere was severely criticised by other more militant African leaders such as my father, Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Ahmed Sekou Ture.
Yet he was undeterred, and continued to champion the liberation movements of southern Africa and provide training camps for their freedom fighters on Tanzanian soil. Simultaneously, he downplayed the somewhat embarrassing obsession which certain Western liberals had with him, as the idealised African leader in European eyes, as well as his faltering experiments with African socialism. To the West, Nyerere was the acceptable face of African benevolent dictatorship. He ran Tanzania as a one party state for two decades (1964-85), and the West turned a blind eye to the "faults" of the man who for them was the voice of reason in Africa. As a result, many Africans came to deeply resent what the distinguished Kenyan-born Professor Ali Mazrui has pejoratively termed "Romantic Tanzaphilia."
But however we judge him on particular issues, there is no denying Nyerere's enormous contribution to the post-independence African political scene. His greatest achievement is undoubtedly the successful unification of mainland Tanganyika with the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar. The United Republic of Tanzania was born in 1964 out of that union with an overwhelmingly Muslim island-nation whose closest historical, economic and political ties were with Oman in particular and the Arab Gulf countries in general. Zanzibar was for two centuries the Omani official seat of government and the official residence of the Sultan. In contrast, Tanganyika, which gained its independence from Britain in 1961, had a more mixed population, equally divided between Christians and Muslims. It was to Nyerere's credit that he managed to unite this most ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse of nation-states and make it one of Africa's most politically stable countries.
Nyerere merged Zanzibar's ruling party, the Afro-Shirazi Party, with Tanganyika's Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) to create the new Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Party of the Revolution). Another of his most successful moves was to institute Kiswahili as the national language of Tanzania. Unprecedented in Africa, Nyerere's move enabled parliamentarians from across the country to debate national issues in their own national language. Kiswahili emerged as the unchallenged language of politics, government, the judiciary and education. Faced with the mosaic of countless distinct languages spoken across the vast country, Kiswahili was instrumental in building a united Tanzania in which today ethnic identities are blurred and ethnic conflict almost invisible.
Nyerere benefited tremendously from the windfall of European, and especially Scandinavian, leftist largesse. Even when Europeans disapproved of his one-party state, they continued to support Nyerere, who argued that it was impossible to rule an impoverished and underdeveloped country along the lines of a Western liberal democracy. Moreover, he managed to ensure that the Tanzanian people were empowered to take a more active role in the decision-making process. Literacy rates are among the highest in the continent, no mean feat considering that Tanzania is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Indeed, it is probably for his heroic efforts in eradicating illiteracy in many parts of rural Tanzania and providing basic services to even the most isolated backwaters that Nyerere shall best be remembered.
In sharp contrast to many other African states where the rural population has been herded uncontrolled into the urban centres, in Tanzania, especially under Nyerere, country people enjoyed the benefits of basic healthcare and educational facilities, and were largely content to continue to live on the land.
Until his death, Nyerere continued to serve as the Leader and chief spokesman of the Geneva-based South Commission. He also remained actively involved in scores of developmental and peacekeeping missions both in Africa and throughout the developing world. He was actively engaged in seeking an end to ethnic conflict in the Great Lakes region ,and especially in Burundi. This was to a great degree a thankless task, especially since the Burundian authorities, overwhelmingly ethnic Tutsi, accused him of favouring the ethnic Hutu majority.
Nyerere was likewise tireless in his efforts to bring to book those responsible for the mass genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The international tribunal set up to try the instigators of the violence was held in the Tanzanian city of Arusha, largely in deference to Nyerere.
As much as Nyerere was a peacemaker, he was still not easy prey for circling rivals scenting blood. In 1978, he ordered Tanzanian troops to invade Uganda and depose the murderous dictator Idi Amin. This was an unprecedented move in the African political arena, where the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of fellow states remains sacrosanct.
Nyerere outlived many of his bitterest adversaries at home, and did not hesitate to kick out difficult expatriates. When the renowned Caribbean radical academic Horace Campbell, then at Dar es-Salam University, following in the footsteps of a fellow Caribbean intellectual, set out to research how the Sungu Sungu and other peasant uprisings were crushed in Nyerere's Tanzania, he found himself promptly deported.
Forced collectivisation of agriculture caused a stir in certain quarters, and the peasants, if they had faith in their leader, were not always happy with the results. But, Mwalimu (the Teacher) Nyerere was always more Socialist disciplinarian than militant activist. Nor did he shy away from disciplining radical dissenters. He certainly did not suffer fools gladly. American and European missionary teachers and American Peace Corps volunteers were unceremoniously kicked out of the country whenever they dared interfere with or criticise the Ujamaa policies.
Nyerere himself was incorruptible, and lived according to his socialist principles. Yet in retrospect, especially in Tanzania, many now see his African socialism -- a mishmash of tribal concepts of communalism and Fabian socialism -- as the root cause of the country's economic stagnation. After he had stepped down from the presidency, there was a backlash against his policies, and the one-party system was soon scrapped. A multi-party system was instituted in its place, and the socialist infrastructure dismantled.
In Nyerere's day, suku huria, or the free market system, had horrible connotations. Now it has been renamed the suku huru, and a subtle change of a single vowel has given the concept a decidedly more upbeat ring. In the past, leftist militants like the late Abdur-Rahman Babu were systematically removed from the country. Since Nyerere's retirement, dissenters have been effectively isolated, hounded into exclusion or hunted down in a series of grizzly assassinations.
Another major challenge has been the rise of political Islam, which exploded when Nyerere stepped down from office. Muslims resented the fact that the great leader had wanted to change the name of Tanzania's capital, Dar es-Salam. Demonstrations erupted in May 1988 after Friday prayers in Ramadan. Yet Nyerere stuck to his guns and never permitted Tanzania to join either the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) or the Islamic Organisation of Africa (IOA), insisting instead on the essentially secular nature of the state.
Nyerere bequeathed his country and Africa a great legacy, that of unity, solidarity with the poor and down-trodden worldwide and political secularism, together with a real pride in the continent's languages and cultural heritage. He could have chosen an academic career in the West, after graduating from Kampala's celebrated Makarere University, then one of Africa's finest institutions of higher learning, and then again when he left Africa to do post-graduate work at Edinburgh in 1949. He translated two of William Shakespeare's plays into Kiswahili, his namesake Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice. But instead, he wisely chose to return to Africa and lead the anti-colonial struggle. In 1960, he even offered to delay Tanganyika's independence plans if the move would facilitate the creation of an East African Federation of Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda.
That dream failed, and Nyerere officiated instead over the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. It is a union that has lasted long, and there are no signs of cracks in it to this day. That this is so is thanks in large measure to Nyerere's own force of character and vision.
