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Books by Julius Nyerere
Freedom and Unity /
Our Leadership and the Destiny of Tanzania /
Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism /
Freedom and Development
Africa's Freedom /
Arusha Declaration Ten Years After /
On Socialism /
Crusade for Liberation /
Man and Development
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Julius
Kambarage Nyerere
(1922-1999)
Statesman & Pan-African Leader
Julius K. Nyerere became the President of
Tanganyika (East Africa) in 1962 and was President of Tanzania
(Tanganyika and Zanzibar) from 1964 to 1985.
Once described by an American official at the United Nations
as a "symbol of African hopes, African dignity, and African
successes." President Julius K. Nyerere of the Republic of
Tanzania was among the most respected and influential leaders of
the emerging modern nations of Africa. A former schoolteacher,
he guided Tanganyika through the various steps toward complete
independence after he became the head of the Tanganyika African
National Union (TANU) in 1954. Nyerere, a Socialist and Pan-Africanist,
was a force for moderation and racial harmony. he worked in
close cooperation with the British authorities in his
homeland.
Tanganyika, a former German colony in eastern Africa, came
under a League of Nations mandate administered by great Britain
after World war I and was made a United Nations trusteeship
territory in 1946. Of its estimated population [1963
figures] of 9,237,000 some 98 percent are African, most of them
of Bantu stock, belonging to about 120 tribes. Tanganyika lacked
the racial tensions that mark some of the other African
countries, and its African majority lived in relative peace and
harmony with the European, Indian, and Arab minorities. On may
1, 1961, Tanganyika was accorded internal self-government and
Nyerere became Prime Minister. Complete independence was granted
on December 9, 1961, and a year later the Republic of Tanganyika
was proclaimed, with Nyerere as President. Tanganyika became a
member of the United Nations, and retained its ties with great
Britain in the commonwealth of Nations.
A native of Butiama, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria,
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born about 1923 (other sources give
the year of his birth variously as 1918, 1921, or 1922), one of
the twenty-six children of the aristocratic but illiterate chief
of the Zanaki tribe, Nyerere Burito, who had several wives. The
present chief of the tribe in 1963 was Wanzagi Nyerere, a half
brother of Julius Nyerere. As a boy, Nyereere herded sheep and
led a typical tribal life.
He had practically no contact with the civilization of the
white man until the age of twelve, when he entered a native
Authority school at Musoma twenty-sic miles from his home. After
completing his elementary schooling in three years instead of
the customary four, he obtained his secondary education at a
Roman Catholic mission school at Tabora in the Central Province.
He was baptized in the Roman Catholic faith at the age of
twenty.
Selected for teacher training, Nyerere entered Makerere
college (now the University College of east Africa) in Kampala,
Uganda in 1943. There he organized the Tanganyika Students' and
the Makerere Branch of the Tanganyika African Association , a
nonpolitical organization founded by British civil servants in
1929. After receiving his teaching diploma in 1945, Nyerere
returned to Tabora as a teacher at St. Mary's mission school. In
1949 he became the first Tanganyikan to study at a British
university when eh entered the University of Edinburgh on a
government scholarship. Upon obtaining his M.A. degree in
history and economics he returned to Tanganyika in October 1952
and became a teacher at the St. Francis school in Pugu near Dar
es Salaam.
As his interest in politics grew, Nyere renewed his ties with
the Tanganyika African Association and was elected its president
in 1953. Under his guidance the association developed into a
political organization. On July 7, 1954 it became a Tanganyika
African national union (TANU) and adopted a new constitution,
with the central goal of preparing Tanganyika's natives for
self-government and independence. The constitution stressed
peace, equality, and racial harmony, while opposing tribalism,
isolationism, and discrimination.
The Governor of Tanganyika, Sir Edward Twining, appointed
Nyerere in 1954 to a contemporary seat on the Tanganyika
legislative council. As a member of the council Nyerere called
attention to the limited educational opportunities of the native
population and proposed that council representatives be elected
instead of appointed. In February 1955 he presented the program
of TANU to the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations in New
York.
When the headmaster at St. Francis requested that he give up
politics, Nyerere decided to follow his conscience and gave up
his teaching position instead, to devote his full time to
a political career. (He later resumed teaching on
part-time basis.) Touring the country in a battered Land-Rover,
he solicited support for the program of TANU, which attained a
membership of some 250,000 within a year. Despite his emphatic
disavowal of violence, Nyerere was forbidden to speak in public
early in 1957 because some of his speeches were termed
inflammatory by police. "I am a troublemaker, because I
believe in human rights strongly enough to be one," Nyerere
told a correspondent for the New York Times (March
31,1957). He said that his movement would resort to civil
disobedience if necessary to attain its goals.
Nominated again as a representative member of the legislative
council in 1957, Nyerere resigned after a brief period when it
became apparent that the government was unwilling to consider
his demands for self-government. Later, relations between
Nyereere and the British authorities improved, and in
October 1958 he publicly accepted the new Governor, Sir Richard
Turnbull, as the man who would guide Tanganyika to
self-government.
Meanwhile, in September 1958, some 28,500 voters who met
educational and income qualifications went to the polls in
Tanganyika's first quasi-democratic elections. under a "a
parity" system of representation, each voted for one
candidate of each of the three major racial groups--African,
Asian, and European. Although Nyerere was highly critical of the
system, his TANU party was victorious over the European-backed
United Tanganyika party as well as over the radical African
national Congress. "Independence will follow as surely as
the tickbirds follow the rhino," Nyerere said upon hearing
the result.
After the second stage of the elections was completed in
February 1959, twenty-eight of the thirty elected seats in the
sixty-four member legislative council were occupied by
candidates supported by TANU. (The remaining thirty-four seats
continued to be appointed by the Governor.) Although Nyerere
declined to accept a ministry in the new government, he was the
unquestioned leader of the multiracial elected members
organization, which formed a permanent opposition within the
legislative council. Under Nyerere's leadership an
"unofficial government" also began to take form, to
prepare the country for self-government.
In April 1959 Nyerere went to Zanzibar to attend a meeting of
the Pan-African Freedom Movement of Eastern and Central Africa (PAFMECA),
of which he had previously been elected president. There he was
instrumental in bringing the Arab and African parties closer
together. Speaking at a meeting of PAFMECA at Nairobi, Kenya in
September 1959, he declared that Europeans and Asians were
welcome to remain in Africa as equal citizens after independence
was achieved.
Great Britain's new Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod,
announced in December 1959 that Tanganyika would be given
virtual home rule in late 1960, under constitutional provisions
that would include a legislature with a guaranteed African
majority. Although Nyerere criticized the retention of income
and literacy qualifications, as well as the reservation of a
specific number seats in the legislative council for the
European and Asian minorities, the new plan was seen as a
definite triumph for him and his party.
In the elections of August 30, 1960 TANU won seventy of the
seventy-one seats in the new legislative assembly. Nyerere was
sworn in as chief minister of government under the new
constitution, while Governor Turnbull continued to hold certain
veto powers. At a meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in
London in March 1961 Nyerere joined other African leaders in
denouncing the racist policies of the Union of South Africa and
declared that if South Africa remained in the Commonwealth
Tanganyika would never join. South Africa subsequently withdrew
its membership.
Following a constitutional conference in March 1961, Colonial
secretary MacLeod announced that Tanganyika would become
internally self-governing on may 1 and totally independent in
the following December. Upon being sworn in as Prime Minister on
May 1, 1961 Nyerere called upon his people to concern themselves
with the pressing economic problems of the country and not to
waste time in fighting colonialism, which had already been
overthrown in Tanganyika. Visiting the United States in July
1961, Nyerere warned the West against giving military aid to
African nations and called instead for help in fighting poverty,
disease, and ignorance. He said that if adequate Western aid
were not forthcoming, Tanganyika might be compelled to apply to
the Soviet Union for assistance.
| On December 9, 1961 Tanganyika obtained
complete national independence within the British
commonwealth. When Tanganyika was unanimously accepted
as the 104th U.N. member a few days later, Nyerere
expressed some concern that his country's independence
might slow efforts to attain an east African federation.
On January 22, 1962 he resigned as prime minister and
bestowed the office on his own nominee, former Minister
without Portfolio Rashidi Kawawa. Although it was
rumored that he was forced out by the more radical
elements of his party, his national popularity and
political influence appeared undiminished. |
 |
He later declare that he had resigned to rebuild the
TANU party and to "give the country a new purpose" now
that independence had been achieved.
The Tanganyika government announced on May 31, 1962 that in
the coming December the country would become a republic within
the Commonwealth. Following elections, in which Nyerere was
chosen president by 97 percent of the vote, the Republic of
Tanganyika was officially proclaimed on December 9, 1962--the
first anniversary of national independence. the new
constitution, modeled after that of Ghana, established a
one-party state, outlawed strikes, and greatly increased
Nyerere's personal power. A preventive detention act, aimed at
curbing racist and antiforeign activities, had been passed by
the legislature with Nyerere's approval a few months earlier.
Although Tanganyika appears to have attained a high degree of
political stability, the new nation continued to be faced with
many problems, notably with regard to economic development,
education, medical services, and the shortage of qualified civil
servants. in line with the TANU slogan Uhuru na Kazi
(freedom and work), Nyerere instituted a successful self-help
program, under which roads, schools, clinics, communal farms,
and other projects are being built by teams of volunteer
workers. in late 1961 Nyerere inaugurated a three-year program
for the improvement of agriculture, the exploration of mineral
resources, and the expansion of light industry, aided
financially by great Britain, the United States, and west
Germany. Nyerere pledged also his efforts to preserve
Tanganyika's wildlife.
Nyerere's "Bantu Socialism" is of the pragmatic
rather than dogmatic variety. His conciliatory views on race
relations are contained in his booklet Barriers to Democracy.
Although he admired Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah and the late
Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba, his policies are far less
radical. He is said to have been influenced in his moderate
position by Indian prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and by the
late Mohandas Gandhi. "I have learned how to be a moderate
through observing the inflexible behavior of the
Europeans," Nyerere once told Rolf Italiaander (The New
Leaders of Africa, Prentice Hall, 1961).
While he was still a teacher, Julius K. Nyerere married a
woman from another tribe in an open ceremony, in order to
de-emphasize tribal loyalties. His wife, the former Maria Magige,
runs a small shop in the native quarter of Dar es salaam and is
president of the Tanganyika Council of women. They have five
sons and one daughter. A slightly built man with graying hair
and a small moustache, Nyerere was five feet six and a half
inches tall and weighed 125 pounds. Although he was a practicing
catholic, his sawed-off front teeth indicated his pagan tribal
background. He was described as mild-mannered and unassuming,
with a ready wit and a good sense of humor.
A forceful speaker, given to fiery phrases, he is fluent in
both English and Swahili. in 1963 his translation of
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into Swahili was published in
Dar Es Salaam. He was a chain smoker and liked an occasional
Scotch and soda or gin and tonic, and he claimed that he had
"all the vices." Having living use for pomp, he
preferred to dress informally, in sports shirts, but on public
celebrations he wore his native address.
He was a tireless worker and seldom had time for recreation.
In 1963 he became the first chancellor of the University of East
Africa, formed by three colleges in Uganda, Kenya, and
Tanganyika. In 1959 Duqesne University in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania conferred upon him an honorary L.L.D. degree, as a
statesman and scholar whose determination and vision had
"given new hope to men long weary of racial strife and
unresolved national differences."
Source: Current Biography, 1963 |
