A few key reflections on Mwalimu Nyerere
This year's Nyerere Day came a year after the Nyerere centenary—pretty underwhelming, to put it mildly. Thankfully, a most insightful book on Nyerere was released around the centenary to fill in the gaps. It is titled 38 Reflections on Mwalimu Nyerere and is co-edited by Professor Mwandosya and Juma Mwapachu. They also have their personal reflections.
My choice of reflections begins with none other than Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, a close associate of Mwalimu Nyerere, and with whom we most recently had the launch of his digital archive with officialdom.
A particularly appealing part of the Salim chapter in the book for me was Nyerere’s attention to detail. He notes: “I came to know something else about Mwalimu's character. You did not go to see Mwalimu at his Msasani home with something to share or explain without thoroughly analysing your mission.
When I was minister for foreign affairs, I realised that it was important to know what was happening around the world. This was so because Mwalimu was an avid listener of world news, especially BBC News.
He knew everything that was going on around the world. So, whenever you met him, he would ask, 'What's going on?' When I was at the United Nations in the USA, Mwalimu would come to my apartment and spend hours there. He would stay until late in the night, listening to BBC news, Hard Talk, interviews, and commentaries."
Veteran journalist Jenerali Ulimwengu makes it more interesting when revealing an unimaginable facet of Mwalimu's character as chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam.
"In July of 1971, the Student Union president, Simon Akivaga, a Kenyan, was sent home by the university administration headed by the vice-chancellor, Pius Msekwa.
The reason given by the latter was that Akivaga had written an insulting open letter to Msekwa and the administration. We rejected that justification and called a strike of the whole student body, demanding Akivaga be reinstated.
“A stalemate ensued and lasted a few months and, even after we had eased our boycott of school, we still refused to cooperate in any way with the administration. We reached out to Nyerere as chancellor, and he invited a few of us to his Msasanj home.
Led by the acting student president, E.A. Moshi, six of us were let into Mwalimu's home. We also found members of the university council, led by chairman Amon Nsekela.
“In a surprising move, Nyerere said he was interested in listening to us, the students, as he had already listened to the university administration.
He said listening to the university administration had not helped him much because the council suggested that more students be expelled. After we introduced ourselves, he said he had heard some of our names on the list they had given him.
'I told them they were jokers for not seeing what the expulsions of only one man, and a Kenyan at that, had done to the university.
And here they were recommending the expulsion of several more (and Tanzanians this time)!' That helped us get a just measure of what these bureaucrats had been planning for us, and it emboldened us to refuse to even look at them.
“At that meeting, he told us that though he generally disliked strikes, he liked ours because we were not demanding better food or living conditions. He liked that we were claiming our right to participate in decision-making on issues concerning our learning institutions.
So, he said, 'I would encourage you to carry on with your quest, though I must warn you, these people will expel you. They are powerful individuals, and they do not understand the importance of what you are doing, so they will expel you, but I say you carry on because it is a worthy cause...'
“The apparent contradiction in Mwalimu's words did not go well with most of us, but I understood it. There was no way a head of state was going to publicly give us carte blanche to defy authority, but saying he was morally on our side was, to me, more than satisfactory.
What was important for me at this juncture was that Julius Nyerere thought that our struggle was about the right issues. And that we should continue on that path, notwithstanding the perils we were obviously courting.
These were the days of 'Mwongozo', and some of us were really convinced of the paramount importance of having people participate in the determination of their lives.
“One clause of the Mwongozo of 1971 stated: 'Any act that allows people to determine their affairs is an act of progress, even if it does not give them more food or better health.'
“Eventually, the strike eased, and a modus vivendi was found between ourselves and the Msekwa administration, which allowed some of us to graduate early the following year. Shortly afterwards, Akavaga was allowed back on campus to complete his studies.”
Ulimwengu goes on to say that “it is just possible that Msekwa failed to see the university as a world school where faculty could be sourced from anywhere in the world.
Indeed, students had to come from all over East Africa and from the rest of Africa, indeed the whole world. In this narrow view, even Akivaga, a Kenyan, being chosen to lead the students' union was an aberration that had to be corrected immediately, and an excuse was identified to do so.”
Any student of leadership will appreciate how the character of a leader is put to the ultimate test during the hour of his or her succession. Ambassador Mpungwe here shares an amusing anecdote.
“Visiting Mwalimu at Msasani before the 1995 CCM party conference, I told him, You have a very difficult task this year. I was told in 1985 that you were outsmarted. You wanted Salim, but nobody would listen to you." He said, ‘No, no, no. CCM cannot outsmart me. CCM is my creation.
Salim was indeed my preferred choice. Had I wanted him to win, I would have done so. However, I would have set a very bad precedent: an outgoing leader handpicking a successor.
It would haunt you for the rest of your life.
That is why we proposed establishing a process for the nomination of a successor. The idea of a successor being the creation of an outgoing leader is not sound at all’."
It is hardly surprising that Mwalimu dismissed any idea of having been ‘outsmarted’.
He clearly demonstrated that same year his feet of clay by going on to manipulate the race in a manner that paved the way for his preferred choice of candidate by the name of Benjamin William Mkapa.
The former PM, John Samuel Malecela, narrates in the book how he incurred the wrath of Nyerere.
"In a very unusual step, Mwalimu made sure he was invited to the central committee meeting.
When invited by the chairman to address the CC, Mwalimu said, 'If Malecela appears on the list of aspirants you will put forward for the consideration of the national executive committee of the party, I shall leave CCM and establish another party.' That was a solemn statement. In response, I said, 'Comrade Chairman, Mwalimu, I withdraw my name from the list of aspirants to be considered by the CC'."
Ulimwengu derogatorily goes on to say: "In the end, after failing to get his choice, he was content with campaigning for Benjamin Mkapa. However, I suspect all through the campaign rallies he addressed, he carried this feeling that he was selling a second-hand product, not the genuine article he had intended to be peddling."
As a final word, failure on Nyerere’s part gets the usual word of mention by Salim. This was concerning the fierce war in Biafra, Nigeria, in the 1960s.
Says Salim: "When I was in India, I faced a difficult moment. Mwalimu recognised Biafra. In my view, recognition of Biafra was probably his only foreign policy mistake.
His decision was out of personal conviction. To him, the Biafra case was a bona fide one because the Biafrans were treated as second-class people.
I think Mwalimu was concerned about persecutions perpetrated against Nigerians living in eastern Nigeria. But his decision was misunderstood because he was treated as a staunch pan-Africanist.
I was awkward at the time because Mwalimu was seen as a staunch Pan-Africanist."
This period and its aftermath are summed up aptly by Ulimwengu, someone who was intimately involved in Africa’s liberation struggle from Algiers, when he writes: “Historians and commentators have long debated what led Mwalimu to decide to recognise Biafra, which went against one of the most basic tenets of the OAU. In fact, Nyerere himself helped to enshrine the principle of the 'intangibility of colonial frontiers' at the second summit of the OAU in Cairo....
“Whatever caused Nyerere to walk back from his earlier position on colonial borders may never be known, since he never wrote his autobiography.
But what we know is that he realised at the moment when he took the step to make amends with Nigeria that the situation needed mending and that he took the step to mend it. In the process, Mwalimu won a long-lasting friendship with Obasanjo, who had become his country's pre-eminent head of state and diplomat. The two set the stage for fruitful collaboration in search of solutions to Africa's unending problems."
