Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere holds a press conference at the presidential headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on September 17, 1976 (Getty)
Mwalimu Nyerere, meaning Teacher Nyerere in the coastal language, was born in 1922. He is considered the first president of the Federal Republic of Tanzania after independence and the union of the two parts of the country, Tanganyika and Zanzibar. He sought to achieve a societal renaissance in his country through the “Ujamaa” philosophy as a model of socialism derived from African roots and traditions, to combat imperialism. The West that was abandoned and the return to the Western capitalist model after his retirement.
He gained prominent local and international standing for his role in the “African League” conferences that paved the way for the inauguration of the Organization of African Unity, as well as his support for the struggle against colonialism, apartheid, and dictatorial regimes on the continent.
Nyerere was the third African president to voluntarily retire from office in 1985, after Senegalese Leopold Senghor in 1980 and Cameroonian Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982. He died after a struggle with illness in a hospital in London in 1999.
Birth and upbringing
His birth name was Kambarage Nyerere Burrito, but it was changed when he was baptized at the age of 20 in the Catholic Church to Julius.
Nyerere was born in April 1922, in the village of Butiama, near the east coast of Lake Victoria, northwestern Tanzania.
He is one of the 25 sons of his father, the leader of the Zanaki tribe, one of the smallest tribes in Tanganyika.
His mother, Mugaya Nyangombe, the fifth wife of his father's 22 husbands, lived in huts around the tribal leader's house.
In his early years, his family instilled in him tribal traditions. He took care of the livestock, while his mother practiced the agricultural profession. He grew up with the values of sharing and caring for the family, which left a deep imprint that appeared in his adoption of the “Ujamaa” philosophy of African socialism.
Due to his family's leadership of the tribe, he had societal and educational privileges above his peers, as Tanganyika was subject to British guardianship, which granted special privileges to the families of tribal leaders who had an effective role in the British colonial policy based on indirect rule of its colonies.
In 1953, he married Maria Gabriel, and they had five sons and two daughters.
Zanzibar President Abeid Karume (right) and Nyerere sign an agreement to unite their countries to form “one sovereign state” in 1964 (Getty)
Scientific and political study and training
He began his basic education when he was 12 years old in the year 1934, and he had to walk 26 miles to go to a local school in the city of Musoma, the capital of the Mara region (north of the country), before completing his secondary education in a government school in the city of Tabora (central) in 1942.
During his studies, he decided to become a Catholic, so he received Christian education from missionaries, and at the age of 20 he was baptized (a church ritual to enter Christianity) in Tanganyika in December 1943. He was one of the first members of his tribe to profess Catholic Christianity, and at that time He received a teacher training scholarship from Makerere University in Kampala, neighboring Uganda.
In 1944, he participated in founding the Tanganyika African Welfare Association (TAWA), which was his first experience in direct political organization, and at a time when the first movements for the national concept began to appear in his country.
After completing his teachers’ diploma in the capital of Uganda, Kampala, he returned to his tribe in 1945 to work as a teacher at St. Mary’s Catholic Secondary School in the city of Tabora, refusing to join a higher-paid government school, claiming commitment to social justice. He taught biology and the English and Swahili languages, and there he became an official. For the branch of the Tanganyika African Association, which he used to mobilize public opinion against the manipulation of local elections in his country by the British colonial administration.
In 1948, he received a scholarship to study in Britain, then he joined the University of Edinburgh in Scotland the following year, and obtained a Master’s degree in Arts. He was the first Tanzanian to study at a British university, and one of the first to obtain a university degree from outside Africa.
The Scottish experience influenced his political development. From there, he began developing his own vision of linking socialism to African community life. Upon his return to Tanganyika in 1952, he returned to teaching, and was then elected president of the Tanganyika African Association.
In 1959, he returned to Edinburgh and was awarded an honorary doctorate in laws.
Political life
Nyerere's political life and teaching did not mix well, as his political activities attracted the attention of the colonial authorities, so he was forced to choose between practicing politics and teaching. He was quoted as saying, "I was a school principal by choice and a politician by chance," so he resigned from his position at St. Francis College in Dar es Salaam in 1955.
He entered political life on a large scale in 1954, when he worked to transform the Tanganyika African Association into a political party under the name “Tanganyika African National Union” (TANU), which he used for the independence of his country, relying on a policy of “non-violence and peaceful dialogue” with Britain, influenced by the views of the leader. Indian Mahatma Gandhi, who called for not resorting to force when demanding rights.
Nyerere (center) with Cuban President Fidel Castro (left) during a visit to a Cuban-supported agricultural school (Getty)
He found that this method was compatible with his country's energies, and kept it away from repeating the tragedies of the "Maji-Maji" revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, in which thousands were killed. He said about this revolution in his book "Freedom and Unity" that "the pursuit of freedom was one of the most prominent reasons behind its establishment."
Gradually, he began calling for the recognition of Tanganyika as an African country seeking autonomy. He entered the colonial legislative council in 1958, and was elected prime minister in 1960. One year later, Tanganyika was granted autonomy, and Nyerere became the first head of a national government in December 1961.
He played a major role in declaring the union between the islands of Zanzibar and Tanganyika to form the Federal Republic of Tanzania in April 1964, 3 months after a rebellion that overthrew the last Arab sultan of Zanzibar, Jamshid bin Abdullah Al Said.
Issues of African unity and liberation
The issue of African unity has been the most prominent controversial issue since the early days of the African independence movement in the 1960s, and there were two trends to achieve it. The first was a political radical calling for immediate political unity of the continent through an African federal union or a United States of Africa. Its most prominent advocate was Kwame Nkrumah, the first president. Ghana after independence, and Guinean President Ahmed Sekotori.
As for the second trend, it was adopting the achievement of a gradual functional unity for the continent first, especially in the field of economic and cultural integration at the regional and continental levels, which is the trend that was adopted in the end.
Nyerere worked as a mediator between the two trends, and although he supported African political unity, he did not support haste like Nkrumah, and according to his opinion, this goal could not have been achieved without discussing the mechanisms necessary to achieve political union.
In September 1958, he led the establishment of the Pan-East and Central African Liberation Movement, known by the abbreviation “BAFMECA,” in the city of Mwanza, Tanganyika, with the participation of representatives of parties from Zanzibar, Kenya, Uganda, and Nyasaland (Malawi), for the purpose of coordinating regional efforts to achieve independence and confront white settlement and apartheid. .
In February 1962, a second conference of the movement was held, attended by nearly 50 leaders representing independent countries and nationalist movements in East, Central and Southern Africa, along with observers from other countries on the continent. This movement was among the other liberation movements on which the organization was founded. Pan-Africanism in 1963, of which Nyerere was one of the founding fathers.
During his presidency of Tanzania, he received a number of liberation movements in his country, including the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan African Congress (BAC) in South Africa against the apartheid regime, and the Mozambique Liberation Front (Fremelo), which sought to overthrow Portuguese rule. The African National Liberation Army in Southern Rhodesia (Republic of Zimbabwe) led by Robert Mugabe, who led his country's struggle against the white apartheid regime.
In 1979, he led Tanzania to war against neighboring Uganda, which invaded his country in 1978, and contributed to the overthrow of Idi Amin’s rule. He also devoted his country’s foreign policy during his presidency to non-alignment and sparing Africa entangled alliances, especially with the conflicting great powers in the Cold War.
Nyerere says he entered education by choice and politics by chance (Getty)
Arusha Declaration
In February 1967, Nyerere issued a founding statement for his country known as the “Arusha Declaration,” which is linked to the “Ugama” philosophy, and consists of 5 main parts that revolve in their entirety around the formation of a political and economic doctrine upon which socialist countries are based, and in which everyone is equal regardless of race or ethnicity. Religion or position.
In addition to prohibiting capitalism and feudalism, and subjecting the means of production, including land, minerals, and various industries, to the control of workers and peasants through a cooperative government mechanism, in addition to declaring a policy of self-reliance, with agriculture being the basis for achieving development.
Ujamaa as a model of socialism and development
After the independence of African countries, there were no unified ideas for development, but rather they were multiple, until the “ideologies of development” were known as the Third African Revolution. The first was cultural and civilized to restore dignity to the continent in the face of Western racism, and was led by thinkers in the diaspora and within Africa, and the second was political, represented by the struggle against colonialism. It was led by national liberation movements.
The socialist alternative was the most widespread in Africa to achieve development for reasons, most notably capitalism’s connection to the Western colonial legacy.
There were two clear trends during this “revolution.” The first was based on the idea of reconciling capitalist intellectual visions coming from abroad with African reality, and was represented by the Nkrumian philosophy (named after Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana).
As for the second trend, “return to the roots,” represented by Nyerere’s “Ujamaa” philosophy, which called for the revival of the prevailing pre-colonial contents (cooperative villages), as a basis for African socialism, a word that means in the Swahili language the large family or family affiliation.
Intellectual implications of Ujamaa
“Ujamaa” is an intellectual and practical perspective with origins, documented by Nyerere in his writings on African socialist thought, and its intellectual implications include:
African socialism is a mental trend, not a strict political style, that rejects the accumulation and disparity of wealth, and that work is the source of wealth, citing an African Swahili example that says, “Honor your guest for two days, and on the third give him an ax.”
Archive photo of Julius Nyerere from 1961. (Getty)
Ujamaa rejects the capitalist trend, including the rejection of land ownership, whether ownership or rent, with the need to return to the African roots, as it has a socialist nature, based on community solidarity.
Likewise, it rejects the distribution of wealth according to the market value of production. For example, Nyerere believed that what the farmer produces is no less important than the diamonds extracted from the mines, and he doubted the existence of the idea of class struggle or the existence of a word in African languages equivalent to the word class.
Ujamaa is based on the principle that all human beings are one extended family, in which there is no socialist who considers some as friends and others as enemies, as was the slogan of the ruling party in his country, “I believe in human brotherhood in Africa.”
Application of African socialism
Nyerere implemented the idea of Ujamaa in his country in the late 1960s. This was initially voluntary, through the movement of families from cities to the countryside to work as a collective in about 800 cooperative villages. In the 1970s, the matter began to be implemented compulsorily, which increased the number of cooperative villages to about 2700 villages.
However, by the end of the forced collectivization program in 1976, Tanzania had transformed from Africa's largest exporter of agricultural products to Africa's largest importer of agricultural products. While the failure of Nyerere's economic policies was acknowledged, pushing the country toward market economies, other policies succeeded. Among them are health care, low mortality rates, and high literacy rates.
Nile Basin crisis
The first signs of the Nile River water crisis between Egypt and a number of basin countries go back to the establishment of the Tanzanian Republic, when the declaration of the “Nyerere Doctrine” was issued, which included non-recognition of agreements concluded during the colonial era, including the 1929 agreement concluded between Egypt and Britain (representing the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania), and stipulated that no measure would be taken on the Nile, its branches and tributaries without prior agreement with Cairo that would reduce Egypt’s share of the Nile’s waters.
Uganda and Kenya joined this principle, and the three countries asked Egypt to negotiate with them about this agreement. Then Tanzania signed with Rwanda and Burundi the Kagera River Agreement (the most important tributary of Lake Victoria) in 1977, which also includes not recognizing the 1929 agreements, and all of these countries sign On the basin/western tributaries of the Nile River.
In December 2018, Egypt signed a contract to implement the Julius Nyerere Dam project on the Rufiji River in Tanzania.
Julius Nyerere after his arrival at London Airport on November 18, 1960 (Getty)
His voluntary retirement
Nyerere remained President of Tanzania from the founding of the Federal Republic in 1964, until his retirement in 1985. Realizing that his socialist policies related to collective ownership of farms and state ownership of services were not successful, and with his unwillingness to lead the country using an economic model that he did not believe in, Nyerere announced his voluntary retirement and withdrawal. From politics forever.
After retirement, he returned to his childhood village, Butiama, in western Tanzania, continuing to travel around the world, where he met with many heads of government, defending poor countries, especially countries of the Global South. His last prominent role was a major mediator in the civil war in Rwanda and Burundi in the 1990s.
Publications and awards
He published several intellectual and literary works, including his philosophy on “Ujamaa” as an African socialist intellectual perspective, which he collected in books and volumes, most notably “Freedom and Unity” (1996), “Freedom and Socialism” (1968), and “Freedom and Development” (1973). He also translated the masterpieces of the English poet and writer William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice" and "Julius Caesar" into the Swahili language.
Medals and honors
He also received a large number of awards, honors and honors, including:
Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1976.
Nansen Medal for Distinguished Services to Refugees in 1983.
Lenin Peace Prize in 1987.
UNESCO Simón Bolívar International Prize in 1992.
In conjunction with the work of the 37th African Summit on 17 and 18 February 2024, the Nyerere memorial was unveiled at the African Union Commission complex in Addis Ababa.
Death
On October 14, 1999, Nyerere died, at the age of 77, in St. Thomas Hospital in central London, after suffering from a rare incurable disease - lymphocytic leukemia - a disease that results primarily from the continuous multiplication of white blood cells in the blood.
Source: websites