Ali Mazrui pays tribute to Julius Nyerere
Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui was asked to speak at Cornell University about the career of Julius Nyerere after the Tanzanian's recent death. Mazrui, who introduced Americans to the complexities of postcolonial Africa with his PBS television series, "The Africans," first met Nyerere on the campus of Uganda's Makerere University more than 30 years ago. Mazrui is director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton and last saw Nyerere when both spoke at Nigeria's May inauguration of President Olesegun Obasanjo.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere's radical thought was multifaceted. He began as an anticolonial African nationalist on his return home, seeking the independence of Tanganyika, which was at the time a United Nations trusteeship under British administration. In pursuit of self-government and independence, Nyerere helped to form the Tanganyika African National Union on July 7, 1954 (Saba Saba-seventh day of seventh month). The movement had a three-prong strategy-to pressure the British government, to pressure the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations, and to rally general African and international support for Tanganyika's independence. The country became independent on December 9, 1961, with Julius Nyerere as Prime Minister. Nyerere became President on December 9, 1962.
Linked to Nyerere's nationalism from quite early was his Pan-Africanism, a commitment to the pursuit of African unity and the adoption of the principle of African soliderity whenever possible. Sometimes he put his Pan-Africanism ahead of his Tanganyika nationalism, as when in 1960 he offered to delay Tanganyika's independence if this would help achieve the creation of an East African federation of Tanganyika, Kenya, and Uganda. In the end, there was not enough political will in the other two countries (Kenya and Uganda) to achieve such a union. African researchers need to investigate why it has been so difficult to achieve regional integration.
Nevertheless, Tanganyika played host to other major Pan-African activities. It became a frontline state for the liberation of southern Africa from Portuguese rule and from white minority governments. Politically the colony for a while hosted the Pan-African Freedom Movement for eastern, central and southern Africa. Tanganyika subsequently established major training camps for southern African liberation fighters. Much later, Nyerere's Tanzania hosted the sixth Pan-African Congress, an attempt to re-establish the solidarity of Africa and its diaspora worldwide. This was the first of the Pan African Congresses actually to be held in Africa. The fifth was in Manchester in 1945, with participants who included Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, W.E.B. Du Bois, and George Padmore. The Dar es Salaam Congress of 1974 was in a great Pan African tradition.
Nyerere's credentials as official host to liberation movements were put into question in 1964 when he was forced to invite British troops to put down a mutiny of his own army. More radical African heads of state like Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah regarded Nyerere's use of British troops as neocolonial and unworthy of an official host to liberation movements elsewhere. Nyerere defended himself and continued his liberation role, successfully most of the time.
Domestically in Tanzania he inaugurated three reforms-a political system based on the principle of the one-party state, an economic system based on an African approach to socialism (what he called ujamaa, or familyhood), and a cultural system based on the Swahili language.
The cultural policy based on Kiswahili was the earliest and the most durable. Tanganyika (and later Tanzania) became one of the few African countries to use an indigenous language in parliament and as the primary language of national business. Kiswahili was increasingly promoted in politics, administration, education, and the media. It became a major instrument of nation-building-and nation-building became the most lasting of Nyerere's legacies. Yet, Africana researchers have done little work on Nyerere's best contribution.
The political experiment of the one-party state produced good political theory but bad political practice. The theory that the one-party state could be as democratic as the multiparty system and was more culturally suited to Africa was intellectually stimulating-but failed the test in practice. Tanzania became a multiparty state not long after Julius Nyerere left office. He himself accepted what seemed to be the inevitable.
The economic experiment of African socialism or ujamaa, which was launched dramatically by the Arusha Declaration on Socialism and Self-Reliance in 1967, captured the imagination of millions of reform-minded Africans all over the continent and elsewhere. It was also greatly admired by Western liberals, intellectuals, and the governments of such countries as Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. History gave the Arusha Declaration 20 years in which to deliver (1967-1987). By 1987, disenchantment was widespread and the end was near. Far from Tanzania being self-reliant, it was more dependent on aid than ever. And ujamaa had left the country poorer than it might otherwise have been. Liberalization, privatization and marketization were not far behind. But why did ujamaa fail? Was it domestic factors? Was it external pressures? Was Nyerere building socialism without socialists? We need a postmortem on ujamaa.
Nyerere's regional East African legacy is also mixed. Although he was once committed to creating an East African Federation, his socialist ideals clashed with his East African ideals. As he struggled to create socialism in his own country, he had to create barriers against free movement of capital, labour, and resources in and out of Kenya and Uganda. Socialist planning in one country proved to be incompatible with an open-door Pan-East-African policy. Have Africana scholars done enough research on whether socialism in one country is compatible with pan-African integration among several countries?
On the other hand, Nyerere's Tanganyika did form a union with Zanzibar. This remains the only case in Africa of previously sovereign states uniting into a new country-and surviving as one entity for more than three decades. What used to be sovereign Tanganyika and Zanzibar became the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964.
Nyerere strengthened the union when he united the ruling Afro-Shirazi Party of Zanzibar with the ruling party of Tanganyika to form the new Chama cha Mapinduzi, the Party of the Revolution. Will this union of Zanzibar and Tanganyika survive Nyerere's death? Once again have Africana scholars done enough to find out why Africans find it so hard to unite?
Has Nyerere's political behaviour sometimes reflected his upbringing as a Roman Catholic? One school of thought explains his recognition of the secessionist Biafra in 1969 as a form of solidarity with fellow Catholics against a Federal Nigeria, which would have been dominated by Muslims. This was in the middle of the Nigerian civil war. The Igbo of Biafra were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. It seems much more likely that Nyerere recognized Biafra for humanitarian reasons. What about the assertion that Nyerere's military intervention in Uganda in 1979 was motivated by a sectarian calculation to defend a mainly Christian Uganda from the Muslim dictator, Idi Amin? In reality, Nyerere might once again have been more motivated by a wider sense of humanitarianism and universal ethics. He was also defending Tanzania from Idi Amin's territorial appetites.
Most Western judges of Julius Nyerere have concentrated on his economic policies and their failures. Ujamaa and villagisation have been seen as forces of economic retardation that kept Tanzania backward for at least another decade.
Not enough commentators have paid attention to Nyerere's achievements in nation-building. He gave Tanzanians a sense of national consciousness and a spirit of national purpose. One of the poorest countries in the world found itself to be one of the major actors on the world scene.
Nyerere's policies of making Kiswahili the national language of Tanzania deepened this sense of Tanzania's national consciousness and cultural pride. Parliament in Dar es Salaam debated exclusively in Kiswahili. Government business was increasingly conducted in Kiswahili. The mass media turned away from English in favor of Kiswahili. Newspapers had not only letters to the editor but also poems to the editor-in Kiswahili. And the educational system was experiencing the stresses and strains of the competing claims of English and Kiswahili. Nyerere's translation of two of Shakespeare's plays into Kiswahili was done not because he "loved Shakespeare less, but because he loved Kiswahili more." He translated Shakespeare into Kiswahili partly to demonstrate that the Swahili language was capable of carrying the complexities of a genius of another civilization.
Above all, Nyerere as president was a combination of deep intellect and high integrity. Leopold Senghor's intellect was as deep as Nyerere's, but was Senghor's integrity as high as Nyerere's? Nelson Mandela's integrity was probably higher than Nyerere's, but was Mandela's intellect as deep as Nyerere's?
Some East African politicians might have been more intelligent than Nyerere. Others might have been more ethical than Nyerere. But Julius K. Nyerere was in a class by himself in the combination of ethical standards and intellectual power. In the combination of high thinking and high ethics, no other East African politician was in the same league.
He and I deeply disagreed on the merits of ujamaa. He and I once disagreed on East African federation. I thought his socialist policies harmed East African integration. He and I disagreed on the Nigerian civil war. He and I disagreed on the issue of Zanzibar. I thought Zanzibar was forced into a marriage that was not of its own choosing.
And yet Julius Nyerere and I were committed to the proposition that patriotic Africans could disagree and still be equally patriotic.
