Nyerere was a great selfless mobliser, says Museveni
Jul 18, 2007
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni recently toured in Kenya and Tanzania where he hailed Kenyan vice President Moody Awori and former Tanzanian leader, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Below are his citations
By Yoweri Museveni
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni recently toured in Kenya and Tanzania where he hailed Kenyan vice President Moody Awori and former Tanzanian leader, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Below are his citations
River Katonga is found in Uganda, crossing Kampala–Masaka road at mile 49. A historic battle took place across this river between the patriotic, nationalist forces of the new Uganda. This battle started in September 1985 and ended with the victory of the revolutionary forces in December, 1985. After the historic victory, we created a constellation of medals for outstanding performance, the highest of which is Katonga, given for individual valour and heroism. It is the highest military honour given for service “beyond call of dutyâ€.
Why do we give this medal to the late Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere? It is because he is the greatest African, the greatest black man, in terms of contribution, that has ever lived up-to-date. There are many Africans that have made great contributions to the African cause. These include: Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Muammar Gaddaffi, Sekou Toure, Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia who defeated the Italians in 1896, John Garang and others.
Each of these freedom fighters made a unique contribution to the liberation of the Africans. The greatest of them was and still is, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
He was a great selfless mobiliser who abandoned an academic career in the colonial system to lead a difficult life of a freedom fighter. Although the Tanganyika freedom struggle was peaceful, it was a great sacrifice to disengage from the colonial service to be with the people. His intellectual mind contributed greatly to the eventual stability of Tanganyika and, later, Tanzania.
It could explain the reasons why the governance in Tanzania was always benign, unlike in many other African countries. In other countries, intellectuals preferred to remain in the colonial service thereby leaving the political struggle to the “verandah boys†as they were called in some parts of Africa.
Nyerere was also nationalistic. He and treated tribalism, religious bigotry and all forms of sectarianism with contempt. Could it be the reason he always donned a Moslem cap although he was not a Moslem?
He pioneered the discontinuation of using tribal designation for districts and regions e.g. Buhaya, Sukumaland, and others. Instead, the capital towns’ designations were used — Mwanza, Bukoba etc. We copied those detoxication measures from him.
He was a visionary and a great strategist. He could see that a balkanised Africa could not guarantee the future of the black man and other Africans. Africa had been colonised because it was divided into small tribal kingdoms, clan chiefdoms or segmentary societies that were too small to protect themselves against more organised outsiders.
Mwalimu Nyerere, seeing this strategic imperative right from the beginning, even offered to delay Tanganyika’s independence so that together with Kenya and Uganda, they become independent at the same time and become one union, one country.
On the question of who would lead the Federation, he said he would support any of the other leaders of East Africa with that task. On his part, he would represent the Union at the United Nations forum. It was because of this stand that I decided not to do my university studies at Makerere University, but at Dar-es-Salaam University. I wanted to be near this great visionary strategist.
Eventually, we gained our freedom and we are now 53 independent African states. What is amazing is that for 50 years now, with this new chance of not only survival, but augmenting our position, many of the African leaders have not found it necessary to immunise Africa against any future re-colonisation by creating more viable political units, strategically.
Mwalimu and the late Sheikh Amani Karume were the only exceptions when they created Tanzania in 1964. I salute the people of Tanzania for maintaining this union as an example to the rest of Africa. I remember very well how the reactionaries and myopic elements used to say that Mwalimu was supporting the idea of the East African Federation because he was an “expansionistâ€, “ambitious†and many other labels.
He wanted to be the President of the Federation, they would claim. Thereby, diverting the people’s minds from the core issues: whether political integration was good for Africa or not.
Mwalimu Nyerere and late Mzee Karume, together with the Tanganyika National Union (TANU) and Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), created Tanzania in 1964. Both of them are now dead. Who is benefiting from the union? It is the Tanzanians of this generation. If Tanganyika and Zanzibar had remained separate, there would be a lot of complications which sometimes we do not think about. Take the example of the exclusive economic zones in the ocean according to the law of the sea which is supposed to be 200 Nautical miles. How would Tanganyika and Zanzibar handle that as separate states being so intertwined? The union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964 obviated those problems.
The individuals are temporary. What is durable are ideas, countries and people. Mwalimu and Sheikh Karume had a durable idea. They helped create a durable country with a durable people.
This is one of the reasons Mwalimu’s contribution is unique. Some people think that the idea of East African Community is new.
In fact, it was an ancient reality. There were archeological excavations in Uganda at Ntutsi. They found, among other items, glass beads (enkwanzi) and cowrie shells (ensimbi) in this settlement of 900 to 1500 AD. We were not making the glass beads in Uganda and cowrie shells only come from the ocean. They, therefore, only got to Uganda through the well-known route from Zanzibar, Bagamoyo, Tabora, Karagwe etc. Therefore, the reality of a trade area is ancient but it was briefly interfered with by colonialism, with different colonial powers controlling the coastal area and the hinterland (Germans in Tanganyika, Rwanda and Burundi; British in Kenya and Uganda; and Belgians in Congo). Fortunately, Tanganyika came under the British control, thereby making it possible to reassemble part of the pre-colonial trade area.
However, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo stayed out of the trade area because they were still under the Belgians. With the recent joining of Rwanda and Burundi in the East African Community, we are now getting nearer to the situation before the 1885 Berlin Conference.
Mwalimu and Sheikh Karume were engaged in this struggle of re-assembling this ancient area of African cooperation and this time augmenting it with political cement through merging the sovereignties of the countries in the area. This was because the collapse of the trade area under the pressure of colonialism had shown that economic integration without political integration was not secure.
All these ups and downs of the East African people are due to a low level of political integration. In 1331, an Arab traveller, Ibn Battuta, came to Kilwa and wrote: “After one night in Mombasa, we sailed to Kilwa, a large City on the coast whose inhabitants are black. A merchant told me that a fortnight’s sail beyond Kilwa lie Sofala, where gold is brought from a place a month’s journey inland called Yufi. The city of Kilwa is among the finest and most substantially built-in the World. Its Sultan at the time of visit was Abu’L-Mazaffar Hasan, surnamed the father of gifts, renowned for his humility, generosity and hospitality. I saw at his court many sharifs, from Iraq and the region of Meccaâ€. Here Yufi can only mean Zimbabwe. However, because the geography of the whole of Africa was not well understood, at that time, he mixed it up with Ife in Nigeria.
Mwalimu, long ago, realised that without political integration, there is no way we can guarantee even the modest advances we have made. Kilwa 800 years ago was one of the “finest cities in this worldâ€. How do we describe it now? Ntutsi, in Uganda, in 900 AD, was bigger than the city of London at that time. It is now a bush! Why? It is on account of failing to provide a secure environment in strategic, world class terms; on account of failing to promote adequate political roofs to the immense achievements of our people.
I always ask people: “Who was the political guarantor of the black man's freedom in the past?†None. That is why we were colonised and declined. Who is the guarantor of the black man's freedom today in world class terms? I do not see any. What is the future without a guarantor for our freedom? East Africans should help us answer that question.
The guarantor of the Western system for the last 100 years has been the USA and the USSR. When Mwalimu and other freedom-fighters fought the Portuguese, the Boers and Ian Smith, we got solidarity from the communist countries—China and Russia. It is hope was that we would build our own strategic capacity using our independence. Have we done it? Are we following Mwalimu’s example with Karume in 1964? The National Resistance Movement (NRM), our liberation Movement, is always firmly in the footsteps of Mwalimu’s vision. I discussed all these issues with Mwalimu when he was alive and I have shared those conversations with H.E. J. Kikwete.
A few years ago, Presidents Kibaki, Mkapa and myself had a retreat in Nairobi. After that retreat, we decided to recommend to the East Africans to fast-track the East African Federation. Consultations on that issue are continuing.
Mwalimu was a fearless fighter for African freedom.
He declared: “Tanganyika’s independence is meaningless without the independence of the whole of Africaâ€. Tanzania, under his leadership, played a crucial role in galvanising the frontline states to support the anti-colonial struggle in Southern Africa. This was quite risky because the Western imperialist countries and the Boers of South Africa did not like it. They supported Kambona and all sorts of renegades in order to undermine TANU and ASP.
In 1972, I was staying next to the Selander bridge, in a small guest house, known as “Sun and Sandâ€, when a bomb went off on the bridge – 200 metres away. In one book, The Silent War, it was recently revealed that a South African submarine had dropped saboteurs off the coast who entered Tanzania and planted that particular bomb.
Mwalimu was steadfast. His steadfast stand alongside the struggle of the freedom fighters like Samora Machel, Oliver Tambo, Agustinho Neto, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Sam Nujoma, Kenneth Kaunda and others, led to the defeat of a European power by Africans when in 1974, the Portuguese fascist regime collapsed, leading to the independence of Mozambique. A total of 84 million Africans in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, South Africa and Namibia are now free on account of the crucial contribution of Mwalimu. The 84 million Africans occupy a land area of 4,484,200 sq. kms. If you add Uganda, then the population of Africans freed by Mwalimu’s work is 115 million people in a land area of 4,720,240 sq. kms. This is unprecedented and unequalled in the history of the black race.
Mwalimu, almost single-handedly, stood by the people of Uganda when we were being decimated by Idi Amin. He rejected the notion that Idi Amin has a right to misuse the sovereignty of Uganda and kill us at will. The Uganda National Liberation Front in 1979, and the National Resistance Army (NRA) in 1985, got substantial material support that enabled us to create a new Uganda. No other African has made such a contribution throughout the five million years of our evolution and history.
Mwalimu was a good and shrewd organiser. It is one thing to have a vision or ideas, it is another to have the ability and the discipline to organise people and create institutions to enable you achieve your ideas. This was, for instance, the weakness of people like Dr. Nkrumah.
He failed to manage the army that was used by the imperialists to overthrow the revolution. Mwalimu, in very difficult circumstances, managed to mobilise Tanzanians and non-Tanzanians like us to, on the one hand, protect the democratic will of the people in Tanzania and on the other hand, enable brotherly people in other African countries to overthrow fascism and colonialism.
It is for these reasons that the revolutionaries in Uganda decided to award the highest military honour for individual bravery to Mwalimu Kambarage Nyerere.
His vision is indestructible and will triumph, the zigzag course notwithstanding. In order to secure the future of the black race and other African peoples, the present and future generations of African leaders must do more than the pre-colonial chiefs did, the colonialists did and the post-colonial African leaders have done. They must emulate the action of Mwalimu and Sheikh Karume when they united Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964.
“May His Soul rest in Eternal Peaceâ€
Butiama, July 10, 2007
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni recently toured in Kenya and Tanzania where he hailed Kenyan vice President Moody Awori and former Tanzanian leader, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Below are his citations
River Katonga is found in Uganda, crossing Kampala–Masaka road at mile 49. A historic battle took place across this river between the patriotic, nationalist forces of the new Uganda. This battle started in September 1985 and ended with the victory of the revolutionary forces in December, 1985. After the historic victory, we created a constellation of medals for outstanding performance, the highest of which is Katonga, given for individual valour and heroism. It is the highest military honour given for service “beyond call of dutyâ€.
Why do we give this medal to the late Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere? It is because he is the greatest African, the greatest black man, in terms of contribution, that has ever lived up-to-date. There are many Africans that have made great contributions to the African cause. These include: Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Muammar Gaddaffi, Sekou Toure, Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia who defeated the Italians in 1896, John Garang and others.
Each of these freedom fighters made a unique contribution to the liberation of the Africans. The greatest of them was and still is, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
He was a great selfless mobiliser who abandoned an academic career in the colonial system to lead a difficult life of a freedom fighter. Although the Tanganyika freedom struggle was peaceful, it was a great sacrifice to disengage from the colonial service to be with the people. His intellectual mind contributed greatly to the eventual stability of Tanganyika and, later, Tanzania.
It could explain the reasons why the governance in Tanzania was always benign, unlike in many other African countries. In other countries, intellectuals preferred to remain in the colonial service thereby leaving the political struggle to the “verandah boys†as they were called in some parts of Africa.
Nyerere was also nationalistic. He and treated tribalism, religious bigotry and all forms of sectarianism with contempt. Could it be the reason he always donned a Moslem cap although he was not a Moslem?
He pioneered the discontinuation of using tribal designation for districts and regions e.g. Buhaya, Sukumaland, and others. Instead, the capital towns’ designations were used — Mwanza, Bukoba etc. We copied those detoxication measures from him.
He was a visionary and a great strategist. He could see that a balkanised Africa could not guarantee the future of the black man and other Africans. Africa had been colonised because it was divided into small tribal kingdoms, clan chiefdoms or segmentary societies that were too small to protect themselves against more organised outsiders.
Mwalimu Nyerere, seeing this strategic imperative right from the beginning, even offered to delay Tanganyika’s independence so that together with Kenya and Uganda, they become independent at the same time and become one union, one country.
On the question of who would lead the Federation, he said he would support any of the other leaders of East Africa with that task. On his part, he would represent the Union at the United Nations forum. It was because of this stand that I decided not to do my university studies at Makerere University, but at Dar-es-Salaam University. I wanted to be near this great visionary strategist.
Eventually, we gained our freedom and we are now 53 independent African states. What is amazing is that for 50 years now, with this new chance of not only survival, but augmenting our position, many of the African leaders have not found it necessary to immunise Africa against any future re-colonisation by creating more viable political units, strategically.
Mwalimu and the late Sheikh Amani Karume were the only exceptions when they created Tanzania in 1964. I salute the people of Tanzania for maintaining this union as an example to the rest of Africa. I remember very well how the reactionaries and myopic elements used to say that Mwalimu was supporting the idea of the East African Federation because he was an “expansionistâ€, “ambitious†and many other labels.
He wanted to be the President of the Federation, they would claim. Thereby, diverting the people’s minds from the core issues: whether political integration was good for Africa or not.
Mwalimu Nyerere and late Mzee Karume, together with the Tanganyika National Union (TANU) and Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), created Tanzania in 1964. Both of them are now dead. Who is benefiting from the union? It is the Tanzanians of this generation. If Tanganyika and Zanzibar had remained separate, there would be a lot of complications which sometimes we do not think about. Take the example of the exclusive economic zones in the ocean according to the law of the sea which is supposed to be 200 Nautical miles. How would Tanganyika and Zanzibar handle that as separate states being so intertwined? The union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964 obviated those problems.
The individuals are temporary. What is durable are ideas, countries and people. Mwalimu and Sheikh Karume had a durable idea. They helped create a durable country with a durable people.
This is one of the reasons Mwalimu’s contribution is unique. Some people think that the idea of East African Community is new.
In fact, it was an ancient reality. There were archeological excavations in Uganda at Ntutsi. They found, among other items, glass beads (enkwanzi) and cowrie shells (ensimbi) in this settlement of 900 to 1500 AD. We were not making the glass beads in Uganda and cowrie shells only come from the ocean. They, therefore, only got to Uganda through the well-known route from Zanzibar, Bagamoyo, Tabora, Karagwe etc. Therefore, the reality of a trade area is ancient but it was briefly interfered with by colonialism, with different colonial powers controlling the coastal area and the hinterland (Germans in Tanganyika, Rwanda and Burundi; British in Kenya and Uganda; and Belgians in Congo). Fortunately, Tanganyika came under the British control, thereby making it possible to reassemble part of the pre-colonial trade area.
However, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo stayed out of the trade area because they were still under the Belgians. With the recent joining of Rwanda and Burundi in the East African Community, we are now getting nearer to the situation before the 1885 Berlin Conference.
Mwalimu and Sheikh Karume were engaged in this struggle of re-assembling this ancient area of African cooperation and this time augmenting it with political cement through merging the sovereignties of the countries in the area. This was because the collapse of the trade area under the pressure of colonialism had shown that economic integration without political integration was not secure.
All these ups and downs of the East African people are due to a low level of political integration. In 1331, an Arab traveller, Ibn Battuta, came to Kilwa and wrote: “After one night in Mombasa, we sailed to Kilwa, a large City on the coast whose inhabitants are black. A merchant told me that a fortnight’s sail beyond Kilwa lie Sofala, where gold is brought from a place a month’s journey inland called Yufi. The city of Kilwa is among the finest and most substantially built-in the World. Its Sultan at the time of visit was Abu’L-Mazaffar Hasan, surnamed the father of gifts, renowned for his humility, generosity and hospitality. I saw at his court many sharifs, from Iraq and the region of Meccaâ€. Here Yufi can only mean Zimbabwe. However, because the geography of the whole of Africa was not well understood, at that time, he mixed it up with Ife in Nigeria.
Mwalimu, long ago, realised that without political integration, there is no way we can guarantee even the modest advances we have made. Kilwa 800 years ago was one of the “finest cities in this worldâ€. How do we describe it now? Ntutsi, in Uganda, in 900 AD, was bigger than the city of London at that time. It is now a bush! Why? It is on account of failing to provide a secure environment in strategic, world class terms; on account of failing to promote adequate political roofs to the immense achievements of our people.
I always ask people: “Who was the political guarantor of the black man's freedom in the past?†None. That is why we were colonised and declined. Who is the guarantor of the black man's freedom today in world class terms? I do not see any. What is the future without a guarantor for our freedom? East Africans should help us answer that question.
The guarantor of the Western system for the last 100 years has been the USA and the USSR. When Mwalimu and other freedom-fighters fought the Portuguese, the Boers and Ian Smith, we got solidarity from the communist countries—China and Russia. It is hope was that we would build our own strategic capacity using our independence. Have we done it? Are we following Mwalimu’s example with Karume in 1964? The National Resistance Movement (NRM), our liberation Movement, is always firmly in the footsteps of Mwalimu’s vision. I discussed all these issues with Mwalimu when he was alive and I have shared those conversations with H.E. J. Kikwete.
A few years ago, Presidents Kibaki, Mkapa and myself had a retreat in Nairobi. After that retreat, we decided to recommend to the East Africans to fast-track the East African Federation. Consultations on that issue are continuing.
Mwalimu was a fearless fighter for African freedom.
He declared: “Tanganyika’s independence is meaningless without the independence of the whole of Africaâ€. Tanzania, under his leadership, played a crucial role in galvanising the frontline states to support the anti-colonial struggle in Southern Africa. This was quite risky because the Western imperialist countries and the Boers of South Africa did not like it. They supported Kambona and all sorts of renegades in order to undermine TANU and ASP.
In 1972, I was staying next to the Selander bridge, in a small guest house, known as “Sun and Sandâ€, when a bomb went off on the bridge – 200 metres away. In one book, The Silent War, it was recently revealed that a South African submarine had dropped saboteurs off the coast who entered Tanzania and planted that particular bomb.
Mwalimu was steadfast. His steadfast stand alongside the struggle of the freedom fighters like Samora Machel, Oliver Tambo, Agustinho Neto, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Sam Nujoma, Kenneth Kaunda and others, led to the defeat of a European power by Africans when in 1974, the Portuguese fascist regime collapsed, leading to the independence of Mozambique. A total of 84 million Africans in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, South Africa and Namibia are now free on account of the crucial contribution of Mwalimu. The 84 million Africans occupy a land area of 4,484,200 sq. kms. If you add Uganda, then the population of Africans freed by Mwalimu’s work is 115 million people in a land area of 4,720,240 sq. kms. This is unprecedented and unequalled in the history of the black race.
Mwalimu, almost single-handedly, stood by the people of Uganda when we were being decimated by Idi Amin. He rejected the notion that Idi Amin has a right to misuse the sovereignty of Uganda and kill us at will. The Uganda National Liberation Front in 1979, and the National Resistance Army (NRA) in 1985, got substantial material support that enabled us to create a new Uganda. No other African has made such a contribution throughout the five million years of our evolution and history.
Mwalimu was a good and shrewd organiser. It is one thing to have a vision or ideas, it is another to have the ability and the discipline to organise people and create institutions to enable you achieve your ideas. This was, for instance, the weakness of people like Dr. Nkrumah.
He failed to manage the army that was used by the imperialists to overthrow the revolution. Mwalimu, in very difficult circumstances, managed to mobilise Tanzanians and non-Tanzanians like us to, on the one hand, protect the democratic will of the people in Tanzania and on the other hand, enable brotherly people in other African countries to overthrow fascism and colonialism.
It is for these reasons that the revolutionaries in Uganda decided to award the highest military honour for individual bravery to Mwalimu Kambarage Nyerere.
His vision is indestructible and will triumph, the zigzag course notwithstanding. In order to secure the future of the black race and other African peoples, the present and future generations of African leaders must do more than the pre-colonial chiefs did, the colonialists did and the post-colonial African leaders have done. They must emulate the action of Mwalimu and Sheikh Karume when they united Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964.
“May His Soul rest in Eternal Peaceâ€
Butiama, July 10, 2007