Nyerere’s Challenges On The Path Towards African Socialism

The former Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, died on October 14, 1999, at the St. Thomas Hospital in central London, where he was treated for leukemia. The doctors diagnosed his illness early in 1998 but continued his political career until the last week of September, he entered the intensive care.

His condition finally came to an end after he suffered a sudden stroke in the brain.

Julius Nyerere had spent most of his political career in his country and the African continent remembered him as one of the leaders of the colonial liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s, along with Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Leopold Senghor of Senegal, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.

Nyerere approached the Communist camp at the height of the Cold War but did not become communist. In the same period, he approached the capitalist camp but did not turn to capitalism. In contrast, he tried to establish a system of "African Socialism" to rely on African self as a political and economic system.

Unfortunately, relying on African socialism, destroyed the economic structure of Tanzania, which became one of the poorest countries in the world. The system of the African Socialism ended in Tanzania in 1985, with the voluntary resignation of the author of several books.

His continuation as a symbol of the nation was a mystery, as he had a very close relationship with his people, which he respected. He was called the 'teacher' and 'father of the nation' of Tanzania despite his policies which brought the people to extreme poverty.

Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born on March 1922, in a tribal environment in Putamia, near Lake Victoria. His father was the leader of a small tribe called Zanaki.

His mother was Mugaya, the 18th wife of his father but Nyerere, adhering to the original African tradition did not follow the traditions of the tribal family in marriage. He married one woman, Maria, who gave birth to eight children.

During his 23 years of power, Nyerere put the Tanzanian nation's policy in his hands, convinced that Tanzania's destiny was in African socialism, a combination of African scientific socialism and communism.

Perhaps one of Nyerere's most important social achievements were the adoption of Swahili as an official language, thus dissolving the disparities between more than 100 tribes and ethnic groups united by one language on the coast of the Indian Ocean and spread in the east and center of the continent.

After Nyerere and his party, the Tanzanian National Union, led the country to independence from Britain in 1961, he became the first prime minister after independence. In 1962, he became the first president of Tanganyika.

He first looked at his neighbour, the floating island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, which was also independent of Britain in 1963.

He feared the island, which was full of young men who had studied or trained in Cuba and China, would become a communist state, therefore, in 1964, he and President Abeid Karume, head of the Afro-Shirazi party, agreed to unify Tanganyika and Zanzibar as one state, which they called the Tanzanian Republic.

After the state of the Union stabilized, in 1967, Nyerere launched the 'Political Arusha Declaration' program, which left a huge impact on the future of his country. During the next 20 years, it served as a philosophical theory of the Tanzanian nation focused on making the country one family and one village.

His political ambition was to form other families and villages and gradually unite the continent in the framework of what he called African Socialism.

Nyerere began to realize his African ambition from his own country, seeing in the Union State Zanzibari-Tanganyika' a model that could be withdrawn on the whole continent if completed by self-sufficiency.

He began to nationalize the land and institutions and set up collective farms, but his project collided with obstacles at the height of this process. His plan did not find enough incentives in the traditional Tanzanian society.

He went to China and established strong friendships to fund and rescue his project, at the height of the conflict between capitalism and communism during the Cold War.

Most of his Western friends have left him, and at the same time, he didn’t receive sufficient funding from the Chinese. "There is no socialism without nationalization," said Nyerere, who was angry at the suggestion of one of his ministers.

Nyerere was also involved in neighbouring Uganda in 1979, when the Tanzanian army invaded the country and overthrew the Idi Amin Dada regime, ending one of the most bloody and dictatorial regimes in Africa at the time. Nyerere viewed the behaviour of his neighbour Idi Amin as an embarrassment to him and to all of Africa.

Until the date of Nyerere's departure from power, a complete collapse of the agricultural plan resulted in losses of billions of dollars between 1970 and 1985.

The circle of corruption and bribery in the organs of the state to a degree can no longer control the infrastructure in the country which also deteriorated, and public service institutions collapsed.

Tanzanian markets in 1984 were almost empty of most basic consumer goods, a Tanzanian who witnessed the 1980s said, "Citizens lined up to buy sugar, other lines to buy cooking oil, and so on. At that time, corruption was at its peak."

The 'teacher' decided to step down voluntarily from power despite the absence of any popular movement or within the army against him.

During the next six years, he served as chairman of the ruling party Chama Cha Mpinduzi, the revolutionary party, the country's most powerful political institution and his role remained influential in the political administration of Tanzania.

As he voluntarily relinquished power in 1985, Nyerere surprised his supporters and opponents in 1990, when he issued a pamphlet criticizing his party, Chama Cha Mpinduzi. His successor, then-Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi also criticized him for not being able to lead the country.

He talked about corruption in the country and about the employment of relatives of politicians and their unqualified friends in government agencies. He accused the country's political leadership of being helpless and demanded a change. The Nyerere report was a surprise to politicians in Tanzania and Africa in general.

The Tanzanians say he used to rule the country and run it like a remote control device. In November 1995, the first multi-party elections were held in Tanzania, where Nyerere played a key role and led a campaign for his party's presidential candidate, Benjamin Mkapa, who won the post.

Back row, third from left, Nyerere with other African leaders at OAU Summit in 1963

Many were forced to leave the country and live in exile, even the Marxist intellectual Abdul Rahman Mohammed Babu was forced to flee later after being imprisoned for years. While those that chose to stay in the country to influence Nyerere failed and gradually melted into the political framework of the teacher.

Nyerere was never accused of deliberately destroying, robbing or plundering the country's economy. At the same time, he was an essential and effective participant in leading liberation movements aimed at freeing African countries from colonial rule.

But his luck, according to one Tanzanian, "was a tragedy inside his country, as he tried sincerely to lift Tanzania out of poverty to development, but the international circumstances that surrounded his the rule did not help him to complete his African economic project successfully."

Maybe that's true but he was certainly one of the richest political experiences on the African continent, and his ideas were one of the most prominent theories that have been tried on the continent. Will African leaders benefit from the experiences of the teacher or avoid his mistakes?