BY DANFORD MPUMILWA
I vividly remember how, sometime in 1976, while I was a student at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), we student activists decided to march from the university’s Mlimani campus to State House.
Stirred by the revolutionary theories drilled into our young minds by our many Marxist-Leninist lecturers from around the world, we felt that Nyerere was not doing enough to contain Zambia’s President Kenneth Kaunda, who was still trading with apartheid South Africa.
Obviously, we never reached State House. Somewhere between Manzese and Jangwani, our mission was easily neutralised when heavily armed policemen mercilessly scattered us into the narrow, congested side streets.
Two days later, as we prepared for our afternoon lectures, Mwalimu Nyerere surprised us by literally storming onto our campus and ordering an impromptu general assembly in the famous Nkrumah Hall.
Indeed, a visibly angry Nyerere gave us a lecture unlike any we had heard before. After explaining the harsh realities Zambia faced as a landlocked country — TAZARA was still in its infancy at the time — he turned to our lecturers and thundered: “What are you teaching my students? Look! Now they are looking at the world from the wrong end of the telescope. That is why they do not see the global perspective of the issues afflicting our continent.”
It was at that moment that I recalled the first time I had seen Mwalimu Nyerere. It was sometime in 1960, a year before independence, when the chairman of Chalowe village in Njombe announced that Mwalimu Nyerere would be passing through our village on his way from Mbeya to Njombe. This was part of his series of independence campaign rallies.
All villagers were urged to gather by the roadside to welcome him. Coincidentally, the main gathering point was directly in front of our house.
That morning, my mother woke me up early. I was about five years old and she was bathing me outside in a basin when Nyerere’s entourage arrived. Instinctively, she abandoned me in the washbasin and ran to the roadside to join the welcoming ceremony.
I was not to be left behind. I jumped out of the basin and ran after her. I must have been quite a spectacle: A wet, naked young boy covered in soap bubbles, surrounded by villagers in their Sunday best, welcoming Mwalimu to a remote village.
He saw me, waved at me and smiled. I waved back, shouting, “Mwalimu! Mwalimu!” He smiled again. That was when I realised I was stark naked. I immediately bolted back to my house.
Although I later had the privilege of meeting Mwalimu on several occasions, I never got the chance to ask him whether he remembered that stark naked young boy who had stood by the roadside in a village in Njombe to welcome him during those early years.
Back at the university, a few months after Nyerere’s visit, the globally renowned African scholar, Professor Ali Mazrui, gathered us once again in Nkrumah Hall.
His talk was on the African Triple Heritage and naturally, he soon turned to Mwalimu Nyerere. He acknowledged that Nyerere had served as a teacher and mentor to him and many others since their early interactions at Makerere University in Uganda.
He went on to explain his famously coined term “Tanzaphilia” and the “mystique of Nyerere”, which described the romanticised and often uncritical fascination that Western and regional academics had with Nyerere’s socialist experiments.
While Nyerere championed the ujamaa (African socialism) policy of village collectivisation and self-reliance, Mazrui was a vocal critic of African socialism and Marxist economic models.
Mazrui also advocated a form of liberal capitalism infused with African cultural values. He placed a high value on multiparty politics, critical thinking, free speech and individual liberties over state-led economic centralisation.
It therefore came as no surprise to me that, following Nyerere’s death in 1999, Prof Mazrui eulogised him as “one of the 20th century’s true giants who did bestride this narrow world like an African colossus”. I could not agree more.
As an afterthought, I would not be penning this article today without Nyerere’s policy of universal free education, from primary school to university. Those of my generation, for example, fondly remember the free annual allowance — known as “Boom” — which covered our personal expenses in addition to free tuition, accommodation and meals at university.
May his soul rest in eternal peace!
The author is a veteran journalist and communication expert/consultant.
mpumilwa@gmail.com
