Habari
Siku ya Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere (13 April 1922 – 14 October 1999) was a Tanzanian statesman who served as the leader of Tanzania, and previously Tanganyika, from 1960 until his retirement in 1985.[2]
Born in Tanganyika to Nyerere Burito (1860–1942), Chief of the Zanaki,[3] Nyerere was known by the Swahili honorific Mwalimu or 'teacher', his profession prior to politics.[4] He was also referred to as Baba wa Taifa (Father of the Nation).[5] Nyerere received his higher education at Makerere University in Kampala and the University of Edinburgh. After he returned to Tanganyika, he worked as a teacher. In 1954, he helped form the Tanganyika African National Union.
When Tanganyika was granted responsible government in 1960, Nyerere became Chief Minister. He led Tanganyika to independence a year later and became the new country's first Prime Minister. The country became a republic in 1962, with Nyerere as the country's first president. During the first years, Nyerere created a One-party state and used "preventive detention" to eliminate trade unions and opposition political forces. In 1964, Tanganyika united politically with Zanzibar and was renamed Tanzania, with Nyerere as president of the unified country.[6] He was the sole candidate for president in the unified country's first election, in 1965, and was reelected unopposed every five years until his retirement in 1985.
In 1967, influenced by the ideas of African socialism, Nyerere issued the Arusha Declaration, which outlined his vision of ujamaa (variously translated as "familyhood" or "socialism"; not to be confused with the Swahili word Umoja which means "unity"). Ujamaa was a concept that came to dominate Nyerere's policies. However, his policies led to economic decline, systematic corruption, and unavailability of goods. In the early 1970s, Nyerere ordered his security forces to forcibly transfer much of the population to collective farms and, because of opposition from villagers, often burned villages down. This campaign pushed the nation to the brink of starvation and made it dependent on foreign food aid[citation needed].
In 1985, after more than two decades in power, he relinquished power to his hand-picked successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi. Nyerere left Tanzania as one of the poorest, least developed, and most foreign aid-dependent countries in the world,[7] although much progress in services such as health and education had nevertheless been achieved.[8] As such, Julius Nyerere is still a controversial figure in Tanzania. He remained the chairman of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi for another five years until 1990. He died of leukemia in London in 1999.
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Early life and education
Kambarage Nyerere was born on 13 April 1922 in the town of Butiama in Tanganyika's Mara Region.[9] He was one of 26 children of Nyerere Burito (1860–1942), Chief of the Zanaki.[10] He began attending Government Primary School in Musoma at the age of 12 where he completed the four-year programme in three years and went on to Tabora Government School in 1937. He later described Tabora School as being "as close to Eton as you can get in Africa."[11] In 1943 he was baptised as a Catholic. He took the baptismal name of Julius, which eventually became his given name.[12][13] He received a scholarship to attend Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Here he founded the Tanganyika Welfare Association, which eventually merged with the Tanganyika African Association (TAA), which had been formed in 1929.[14] Nyerere received his teaching diploma in 1947.[9] He returned to Tanganyika and worked for 3 years at St. Mary's Secondary School in Tabora, where he taught Biology and English. In 1949 he got a government scholarship to attend the University of Edinburgh. He obtained an undergraduate Master of Arts degree in Economics and History in 1952. In Edinburgh he encountered Fabian thinking and began to develop his particular vision of connecting socialism with African communal living.[15][16]
Political career
On his return to Tanganyika, Nyerere took a position teaching History, English and Kiswahili, at St. Francis' College (currently Pugu secondary school), near Dar es Salaam.[16] In 1953 he was elected president of the Tanganyika African Association (TAA), a civic organisation dominated by civil servants, that he had been involved with while a student at Makerere University.[4] In 1954 he transformed TAA into the politically oriented Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).[4] TANU's main objective was to achieve national sovereignty for Tanganyika. A campaign to register new members was launched, and within a year TANU had become the leading political organisation in the country.[17][18]
Nyerere's activities attracted the attention of the Colonial authorities and he was forced to make a choice between his political activities and his teaching. He was reported as saying that he was a "schoolmaster by choice and a politician by accident".[19] He resigned from teaching and travelled throughout the country speaking to common people and tribal chiefs, trying to garner support for movement towards independence. He also spoke on behalf of TANU to the Trusteeship Council and Fourth Committee of the United Nations in New York. His oratory skills and integrity helped Nyerere achieve TANU goal for an independent country without war or bloodshed. The cooperative British governor Sir Richard Turnbull was also a factor in the struggle for independence. Nyerere entered the Colonial Legislative council following the country's first elections in 1958–59 and was elected chief minister following fresh elections in 1960. On 9 December 1961, Tanganyika gained independence as a Commonwealth realm and Nyerere became its first Prime Minister. A year later Nyerere was elected President of Tanganyika when it became a republic. A month later, Nyerere declared that to further the interests of national unity and economic development, TANU was now the only legal political party. However, the country had effectively been a one-party state since independence. Nyerere, also, translated Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into Swahili as a gift to the nation to celebrate its first anniversary of independence.
Nyerere was instrumental in the union between the islands of Zanzibar and the mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania, after the Zanzibar revolution on 12 January 1964 which toppled the Sultan of Zanzibar Jamshid bin Abdullah. The coup leader, a stonemason from Lira, Uganda, named John Okello, had intended Zanzibar to join Kenya. Nyerere, unnerved by a failed mutiny of the Tanganyika Army a few days later, ensured that Okello was barred from returning to Zanzibar after a visit to the mainland.
