Sokoine: 33 years on, nation misses the selfless leader

Arusha. On April 12, 1984, Tanzanians suffered a lunch-hour shock: Prime Minister Edward Sokoine had died.

News of the tragic death in a road accident near Morogoro was so shocking that it left the then Morogoro regional commissioner Chrysant Mzindakaya bewildered.

After confirming that the PM was indeed dead, he was traumatised so that he was at a loss on how to relay the information to President Nyerere. On that particular day, Mwalimu was in Dar es Salaam, and apparently, was not that preoccupied with high-profile official functions.

If there was any notable information sent to newsrooms from the State House before the tragedy that day, it was the appointment of Prof Philemon Sarungi as the new director-general of the Muhimbili Medical Centre (MMC).

Eyewitnesses in Morogoro had scant memories of what happened. From the regional hospital mortuary, the RC found his office too far to relay official confirmation of the death to Dar, and instead marched to the nearby Post Office to make a call to the State House.

But to the general public across the country, information may have seemed unbelievable.

If such death could have happened today, some could have been taken as a joke, implying the source (of information) may have tried to gauge Sokoine’s popularity given that he was the force behind an unprecedented grand fight against corrupt officials. There was not much ‘drama’ in the few media outlets as would have been the case had such tragedy happened now with so many newspapers,electronic media and social media.

By late afternoon in what came to be considered a ‘black Thursday’, millions of Tanzanians had to grapple with the reality that the towering Sokoine was no more. The national broadcaster, Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam (RTD) cut its regular programmes to announce the death and relay past speeches by the fallen leader.

In Dar es Salaam the business was usual after the information spread like bushfire though hundreds of people clung on their radio handsets on updates on the death. But there was a significant decrease in movement of traffic after sunset. Many people were more inquisitive on the way a road accident had claimed the life of a leader who endeared himself with the common people. Sokoine was popular among the ordinary people in Dar es Salaam in many ways. In early 1983, a year before his death,he spearheaded the war against hoarders of basic foodstuffs that include the staple maize flour.

The crackdown brought relief and food on the tables of many families of the poor. They would have otherwise gone without enough food on the tables or forced to buy it at prices beyond their reach such that it would deny them other basic necessities. The commuter transport in Dar es Salaam city in those days (the early 1980s) was cumbersome and chaotic at best.

There were simply no enough buses to ferry people to their work or business places and back home despite many ministries and public corporations having large fleets of buses for their employees.

Hundreds of commuters literally across the city would often have to line up in order to squeeze themselves into an UDA bus. The fittest and lucky ones would go through but many would have to wait much longer at the bus stations.

e situation was certainly made worse by the economic crunch in the country that until the 1980s still professed the state-controlled economy. UDA was a state-run corporation.

Out of sympathy with the down-trodden, Sokoine ordered that privately owned buses be allowed to operate commuter service in Dar es Salaam in order to cope with the large number of commuters and UDA’s inability to offer service to the increasing numbers.

In just a few months, the city roads were flooded with all manner of trucks, pick-ups and private vehicles carrying passengers to different directions. Incidentally, that signaled the beginning to economic liberalisation. They were soon to be joined by buses owned by public institutions and which were purchased specifically to ferry employees to their work places.

The workers in government institutions, too, would remember measures taken by the late PM in ensuring they get their food rations in the height of critical shortage of basic necessities.

Mini-shops were opened in work places from where the employees and families in the neighbourhoods would get maize and cassava flour, sugar, soap, cooking oil, batteries for their radio sets and other consumer items which were in short supply.

It was partly due to this that two days after his death (April 14th), that a sea of humanity in Dar es Salaam turned up at the Karimjee Hall to give a befitting hero’s send off to Sokoine before the body was transported to Monduli Juu for burial.

A similar send off was accorded to the Nation Founder Mwalimu Nyerere at the National Stadium in October, 1999 following his death.