Ivor Powell Obituary
It could hardly have come as a surprise to many when former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere died in St Thomas’ hospital in London on Thursday, but many, especially Pan Africanists, were saddened by his nnnpassing.
Nyerere, aged 77, finally breathed his last in the middle of Thursday morning after being described as “brain dead” two days earlier following a massive stroke.
He was admitted to St Thomas’ for leukaemia treatment on September 9. The disease had been diagnosed in August 1998.
Announcing Nyerere’s death, current Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa called on Tanzanians to “maintain unity at this time of grief. There are many who fear that national unity will disintegrate, the union will falter and our relations with our neighbours will deteriorate,” he said.
Nyerere led his country’s largely peaceful and orderly independence from Britain in 1961 and subsequently became one of the leading proponents and founding members in 1963 of the Organisation for African Unity
An educator before he turned to politics, Nyerere earned the nickname of Mwalimu (“teacher”), a role he played with enthusiasm, especially in his home village of Musoma on the shores of Lake Victoria.
He set himself apart in a continent where lavish and excessive lifestyles are the norm for the governing elite by living modestly, even neglecting to organise a pension for himself on his retirement from office.
Initially elected to the Tanganyika legislature in 1958, Nyerere was instrumental in bringing about the union of that territory with Zanzibar and Pemba islands to form the present-day Tanzania in 1963.
Though Nyerere was fondly remembered as a benign humanist and visionary in his latter years, his Tanzania was one of the earliest and least successful one-party socialist states in Africa. He was the author of one of the most disastrous exercises in politico-economic engineering yet embarked upon in the African context.
His ujaama programmes of forced collectivisation of peasant agriculture reduced the country to penury long before he stepped down as president. The current revival of Tanzania’s economy from the devastation of the 1980s is regarded as one of the World Bank’s major African success stories.
Nyerere stepped down as president in 1985 to devote himself to farming and pursue his vision of a Pan Africanist union via international diplomacy. He played a central role through his Nyerere Foundation in attempts to bring peace to the Great Lakes region.
Recently his foundation has been involved in as yet unsuccessful attempts to mediate a solution to the ongoing civil war in Burundi – where more than 200 000 people have died since 1993.
His illness led to delays in the already complex and difficult peace talks in Burundi which have broken down alarmingly in recent weeks. Now his death could open the way to controversy over who should succeed him as chief negotiator.
Nyerere will be given a state funeral and buried in his home village.