Mapokezi ya Nyerere huko Uingereza




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Former Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere, has died in the London hospital where he was receiving treatment for leukaemia.

Nyerere died at 0730gmt on Wednesday at St. Thomas' Hospital where he had been receiving treatment since early September for the condition he had been diagnosed with in August 1998.

Once described as a "symbol of African hopes, African dignity, and African successes" Nyerere was among the most respected and influential leaders in Africa.

After 24 years in power, Nyerere voluntarily gave up the Tanzanian presidency in 1985 and built up a reputation as an elder statesman.

One of Nyerere's last major diplomatic ventures was to try and mediate political and ethnic conflict in Tanzania's western neighbour, Burundi, where more than 200-thousand people had been slain since 1993.

Although frustrated by the intransigency of all parties, Nyerere remained determined to end the conflict.

SOUNDBITE:

(English) "Who will decorate you for killing your own people in a civil war? Burundi has had enough, I believe both the Army and armed groups should now say: "We have killed enough people. Let's sit down and talk."

SUPERCAPTION: Julius Nyerere, former Tanzanian President.

Nyerere was elected to the Tanzanian Legislative Assembly in 1958, becoming leader of the opposition.

He was sworn in as Prime Minister on May 1st, 1961, his primary demand being independence, which was granted in December 1961.

On January 22, 1962 he resigned as Prime Minister and bestowed the office on his own nominee, former Minister without Portfolio Rashidi Kawawa.

A few months later Nyerere was elected president, and the Republic of Tanganyika was officially proclaimed on December 9, 1962 - the first anniversary of national independence.

Two years later, Nyerere merged the former Sultanate of the Indian Ocean islands of Zanzibar and Pemba with Tanganyika and the following year became president of the United Republic of Tanzania.

Nyerere's vision of Tanzania became clear in 1967 when TANU and Zanzibar's Afro-Shiranzi parties merged into the revolutionary party of Tanzania.

A party conference formally adopted socialism as the country's ideology, but with an African twist. All rural development was centred on villages. Private banks and many industries were nationalized.

Long after retirement, Nyerere conceded socialism was a failure, but he never apologized.

Nyerere never shied away from unpopular causes when he believed he had a conviction.

A supporter of liberation movements in southern Africa, Nyerere broke diplomatic ties with Britain in 1965 for its failure to stymie the unilateral declaration of independence in its colony, Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

In 1979 Nyerere defied the Organisation of African Unity and sent troops into Uganda.

His excuse was that Amin had annexed the Kagera region in northwestern Tanzania in late 1978.

Nyerere's aim was to rid Africa of dictator Idi Amin Dada and he succeeded.

During the Cold War, Nyerere maintained good relations with both capitalist and socialist countries.

Although he was harsh with his critics and detained some of them indefinitely without trial, Nyerere never acquired notoriety for human rights abuses.

In a continent known for corrupt leaders who live lavishly off state coffers, Nyerere lived modestly and when he quit politics parliament had to hastily pass a law granting him a pension.

Nyerere was among a handful of African presidents to voluntarily step down.

He also foresaw the futility of single-party rule in Tanzania as the clamor for democracy swept the continent following the collapse of Communist rules in eastern Europe and Russia.

A Roman Catholic, Nyerere was married and had eight children.
 
Kambona and his attempts to overthrow Nyerere
after the 1969 abortive coup​

After the 1969 attempt to overthrow the government was foiled by the Tanzanian intelligence service, Tanzania's former minister of external affairs and defence, Oscar Kambona, was still determined to overthrow – and even eliminate – Nyerere in collaboration with the South African apartheid regime and the Portuguese authorities operating from Mozambique. He also forged links with Idi Amin in pursuit of the same goal. As George Roberts states in his doctoral thesis, “Politics, Decolonisation, and the Cold War in Dar es Salaam c. 1965 – 72,” the University of Warwick:

Oscar Kambona, Tanzania’s enemies, and the June 1972 bombings​

While Nyerere fought fires within Tanzania, he remained concerned by threats from the country’s enemies abroad. After the failure of the coup plot of 1969, Oscar Kambona had sought out new avenues for usurping the Nyerere regime. In 1970, he was introduced to Jorge Jardim, the Mozambique-based businessman who, as shown in chapter 4, was implicated in the assassination of Mondlane. Jardim, in close contact with Portuguese prime minister Marcelo Caetano, identified Kambona as a potential figurehead to overthrow Nyerere and then cast FRELIMO out of Tanzania. With the consent of the South African minister of defence, P. W. Botha, Jardim established Operação OK. This planned the formation of a Tanzanian government-in-exile and military forces which would infiltrate southern from bases in Mozambique. In June 1971, Jardim began to channel funds to Kambona, which reached $8.4 million by the end of the year and $42.4 million by the time of the Carnation Revolution in 1974.

Kambona also turned to Nyerere’s newly established bête noire in Uganda, Idi Amin. In March 1971, a group of exiled Kambona supporters in Kampala asked Amin for aid to liberate Tanzania ‘with the mercy of god from the hands of communism.’ According to Jardim’s biographer, the Portuguese businessman also had a hand in facilitating this meeting. On 6 April, Ngurumo reported that Kambona himself was currently in Uganda. In the anxious climate which followed the Uganda coup, the appearance of such rumours in the Dar es Salaam press stoked fears of an anti-Nyerere alliance between his most outspoken Tanzanian critic and his most dangerous opponent abroad. The day after the Ngurumo story, Kambona published a letter in the Guardian – a newspaper usually staunchly pro-Nyerere – in which he accused Nyerere of crushing the party in merging it with the apparatus of the state. On this occasion, Nyerere declined to respond to Kambona’s criticism.

A more serious indication of the threat facing Nyerere came in October 1971, when Godfrey Binaisa, a Ugandan lawyer, approached the American embassy in Kampala. Binaisa had previously defended several of the accused in the treason trial in Tanzania. He explained that a plot had been prepared, involving groups in Britain and Tanzania, to overthrow Nyerere. The Ugandan foreign minister, Wanume Kibedi, had been informed of these plans. Binaisa asked Ross whether they might arrange a cover job for Kambona – perhaps with an American oil firm – in order to permit his passage to Uganda. Although Ross immediately rejected the idea, the United States did not warn the Tanzanian government about the plot.

Further evidence of Kambona’s deepening relationship with Portugal was provided by a propaganda stunt on 9 December 1971. Two aircraft, flying north from Mozambique, dropped pamphlets written in English and Swahili over the Saba Saba fairground in Dar es Salaam, where crowds had gathered to celebrate Tanzania’s Independence Day. The leaflet was an open letter to Nyerere from Kambona, in which the latter attacked the president’s ‘shameful’ record since independence. ‘The Party and the Militia are under oppressive control of a tyranic [sic] minority working against people’s interest and wellfare [sic]’, Kambona wrote. ‘In [sic] this tenth anniversary of independence Tanzania faces a stage of near civil war’. Kambona implored Nyerere to call free elections and declared his willingness to return immediately to Tanzania to stand as a candidate.

While the government maintained a public silence about the pamphlets, security in Dar es Salaam was visibly increased. The police established checkpoints on the city’s major road arteries and placed a night guard on the Selander Bridge. The impunity with which the aircraft had infiltrated Tanzanian airspace was an embarrassing reflection on the country’s defence capabilities. Although neither explicitly mentioned the incident, Nyerere and Kawawa both made speeches in the following days which criticised those ‘bad leaders’ and ‘self-seekers’ who sought to derail Tanzania’s socialist revolution. An editorial in the Standard said that the party and government were ready to ‘listen to genuine complaints and grievances’, and that ‘those who have chosen to indulge in murmur, rumour, grumbling or leaflets have done so not for want of ways to get their views heard. They have chosen the latter in order to feel free to distort facts to suit their own sinister ends.’ On 16 December, Edward Sokoine, the minister of state in the second vice-president’s office, broke the government’s silence on the pamphlets at a regional TANU meeting in Dar es Salaam. He said that citizens should be on guard against attempts to subvert them and that the leaflets were intended to foment discontent.

The leaflet drop gave rise to an exceptional spate of wild rumours in Dar es Salaam, including stories that various officials had disappeared or been arrested, that Nyerere was gravely ill, that a British warship had been seized by the Tanzanian navy, that a coup was imminent. ‘There is no doubt that there is a jittery atmosphere here and if this is what Kambona wished to achieve by the leaflet raid, then he seems to have succeeded’, noted the British high commission. The assassination of Wilbert Klerru, the regional commissioner for Iringa, by disaffected locals on Christmas Day furthered a sense of disquiet. Klerru’s role in the local implementation of ujamaa villagisation had met widespread resentment.

In June 1972, just as Nyerere was bringing Zanzibar to heel, Tanzania’s enemies moved from paper-based propaganda to state-sponsored terrorism. At 2.10am on 12 June, residents of Upanga and Oyster Bay were woken by an explosion, followed by another blast fifteen minutes later. Daybreak revealed damage to supporting pillars of the Selander Bridge, the main artery into the city centre from the northern suburbs, closing it to traffic. An electricity pylon had also been brought down, which caused a power cut for several hours.

At 5am, a third explosion occurred, when a bomb wrecked a car owned by a Swiss expatriate worker. Another car bomb went off at 3.25pm, on Independence Avenue, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare. This, the British high commission reported, caused ‘near pandemonium among shoppers’. Later that evening, at 7.15pm, a car belonging to a junior member of staff at the British high commission exploded. Although there were no casualties, the scattergun effect of the bombings elicited anxiety among the city’s population. An emergency meeting of TANU’s regional branch on 13 June decided that the militia should be deployed to guard industrial premises and residential areas. The Daily News decried the architects of the bombing as ‘enemies of our revolution and the African revolution’. The explosions were not just ‘acts of destruction’, but had a ‘political purpose’, to ‘deflect us from our chosen path of revolution, of total liberation of the African in Tanzania and on the Continent. They aim to create an atmosphere of insecurity, of fear, of panic.’

The security services calculated that on the night before the explosions the three bombed cars had all been parked outside the same apartment block near the Selander Bridge. A fourth device was found attached to another vehicle there, primed to explode several days later. According to a junior Tanzanian diplomat at its London embassy, a further seven bombs were found under the Selander Bridge, with fuses set for a two-week delay.998 The Tanzanian police established that the bombs were of a ‘NATO make’, which suggested a potential Portuguese hand. In Dar es Salaam, the usual rumours abounded, with much speculation about the role of Kambona. Although the government had no evidence linking Kambona to the attacks, his brothers – who had been released in an amnesty in February, along with Anangisye and Bibi Titi – were re-imprisoned as a precautionary measure. Some made connections between the bombings and a second drop of pro-Kambona leaflets, which had taken place on 31 May over provincial cities in Tanzania.

After the end of apartheid, members of the South African special forces claimed responsibility for the bombings. The Lisbon-Pretoria axis had hoped to undermine the Nyerere regime by demonstrating the militancy of Kambona’s supporters. ‘There was a need to stage incidents on an escalating basis to, hopefully, stir the fires of insurrection’, writes military historian Peter Stiff in his exposé of the operation. A crack squad of troops travelled to Dar es Salaam by submarine, paddled into the city by canoe, and planted their devices on Selander Bridge and a series of vehicles. Stiff’s account suggests that the explosives attached to the car which detonated on Independence Avenue was originally intended to have been affixed to the British high commissioner’s car.

Although Nyerere claimed to be unconcerned by the bombings, telling one inquirer that this was not the way a coup would take place in Tanzania, foreign observers testified to a heightened sense of insecurity in Dar es Salaam over the following weeks. The British high commission reported that certain areas were ‘bristling with armed soldiers in combat dress, who have not hesitated to stop, search and pick up quite innocent passers-by, particularly those with white faces’. Connections were made by the Zambian state press – and relayed by its Tanzanian equivalent – between the Dar es Salaam bombings and a recent parcel-bomb attempt on the life of Kaunda. Elsewhere in Africa, Tanzania’s enemies gloated. The Zairean newspaper Elima set to the bombings against a backdrop of the assassinations of Mondlane and Karume, as evidence of a ‘serious malaise, to which the leadership in Dar es Salaam must provide an urgent solution’. If not, Elima warned, Tanzania would ‘lose its reputation as an island of stability in an African ocean boiling over’. According to Portuguese representatives in Kinshasa, Mobutu’s Zaire was also rumoured to be subject of an inquiry by Tanzanian security forces regarding relations between its ambassador in Dar es Salaam and one of Kambona’s principal agents in the city.

The June bombings provided substance to the language of vigilance which had dominated the government’s rhetoric since independence and especially since the Arusha Declaration. By sheltering the liberation movements, Tanzania had created enemies in Lisbon and Pretoria.

Exploiting circumstances of domestic unrest – itself entwined with events in Guinea and Uganda – Portugal and South Africa aimed to destabilise Tanzanian politics. Through the weapons of propaganda and terror, forces committed to maintaining white minority rule in southern Africa sought to use Dar es Salaam’s reputation as a hotbed of rumour to foment opposition to Nyerere. In Kambona, they found an opportunistic and desperate collaborator, who articulated a critique of Nyerere that was rooted in local discontent with the implementation of the ujamaa programme.

The matter was aggravated by the fact that the Tanzanian security services (and their British colleagues) had lost track of Kambona in late 1971, when he had left London and had last been seen in Rome. In the aftermath of the bombings and leaflet drops, Tanzanian intelligence became increasingly obsessed by his whereabouts. In September, Emilio Mzena, the director of the intelligence services, arranged a meeting with the British overseas police advisor to Tanzania. ‘Time and time again during our conversation Mzena harked back to Kambona and his alleged machinations’, the advisor reported. Around this time, according to David Martin, the Tanzanian government also received dubious reports that a former British army officer had drawn up plans for a joint Ugandan-Portuguese invasion of Tanzania, including the involvement of Kambona.

Border clashes between Tanzania and Uganda had flared up on several occasions since the coup in Kampala, and each side regularly accused the other of plotting an invasion. Then, on 17 September 1972, around one thousand armed supporters of Obote crossed from Tanzania into Uganda, with the secret backing of Nyerere. Amin responded by bombing Tanzanian cities near the border and the invading force was quickly routed. To avoid a wider conflagration, Amin and Nyerere eventually signed a peace settlement, brokered by Somalia’s president, Siad Barre. The Mogadishu Agreement stated that both sides must withdraw ten kilometres behind the border and refrain from supporting forces hostile to the other’s regime.

Kambona was eventually spotted in Lisbon in November 1972, accompanied by Jardim. The American embassy in Lisbon received advanced copy of the text of an interview with Kambona filed to a British newspaper. Kambona explained how Portugal had established and trained an armed group, which infiltrated southwestern Tanzania from bases in Mozambique. The unnamed journalist described Kambona as ‘obviously nervous over the fact his cover had been broken’. On 4 November, the East African Standard ran an interview with Kambona, datelined London, much of which was then repeated in the Tanzanian press. The Daily News reported that Kambona’s appearance in Lisbon ‘only lends weight to the belief held by many progressive people that he is anti-Tanzania.’

Having been rumbled, Kambona’s Portuguese contacts offered him a platform for setting out a scathing criticism of Nyerere. In December, Lisbon’s Diario Popular published a three-part interview with Kambona, supposedly conducted ‘clandestinely along the coast of the Mediterranean.’ The series was syndicated in the Notícias da Beira, a Mozambican newspaper owned by Jardim. Kambona described Tanzania as a police state, governed by a paranoid regime which had sold out to China. He argued that the struggle against white minority rule, which he had supported so fervently as chairman of the OAU Liberation Committee, had achieved nothing and should be abandoned. But his words were not backed by any effective action. Despite continuing to scheme with the Portuguese until the collapse of the Estado Novo, Kambona’s attempts to undermine the Nyerere government fell flat.” - ( George Roberts, “Politics, Decolonisation, and the Cold War in Dar es Salaam c. 1965 – 72,” pp. 198 – 203).

I remember very well the day the explosion occurred in Dar's city centre. I was in a building near the Askari Monument that afternoon when we heard the explosion.

On another occasion, also in the afternoon, two cars went round and round the Askari Monument, one pursued by the other. The pursuit continued on Independence Avenue. It was said the occupants of the car being pursued were Kambona's co-conspirators and those in pursuit were members of the Tanzanian intelligence service.

One of the occupants of the car that was being pursued was said to have been John Lifa Chpaka, Kambona's relative and one of the leaders of the 1969 coup attempt. Others said it was one of Kambona's brothers or both or another relative.

I attended the treason trial. When Senior State Attorney Nathaniel King, a Trinidadian like Chief Justice Phillip Telfer Georges, asked Chipaka during the trial in 1970 what he meant when he said they were going to "eliminate " President Nyerere, Chipaka responded, "eliminate him politically, not physically."

Nathaniel King sneered and laughed when Chipaka said that.

Kambona never abandoned his goal to undermine and overthrow Nyerere. And he failed miserably.

Whatever happened to the millions of dollars funnelled into his coffers to finance his diabolical scheme to oust and probably assassinate Nyerere has never been fully explained. He claimed he lived as a pauper in Britain. He obviously travelled to other countries also as a pauper. And he stated in an interview that he still considered Nyerere to be his friend, while at the same trying very hard to eliminate him.
 

Witness in Tanzanian Treason Trial Says Conspirator ​

Had Links With U.S. Information Service Official​


The New York Times

July 19,1970​


DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, July 18—The president of the Pan African(ist) Congress has testified that there were links between a United States Information Service official in London and a former Tanzanian Cabinet minister, who, the Government says, planned to assassinate President Julius K. Nyerere and overthrow his Government.

Potlako Leballo, head of the South African nationalist movement based in Dar es Salaam, testified this week in the treason trial of five leading Tanzanian political figures and two army officers accused of planning a coup d'état involving the assassination of Mr. Nyerere.

The state charges that the seven defendants tried to persuade Mr. Leballo, whose movement is supported financially by the Tanzanian Government, to recruit men for the planned coup. Instead, Mr. Leballo informed Government officials and agreed to appear to go along with the plot to help the authorities capture the conspirators, according to the nationalist leader's testimony.

A major figure in the trial— although he has not been charged—has been Oscar Kambona, a former Minister of. Regional Administration, who has been living in London since 1967, when he allegedly left the country with a large sum of Government money. The Government charges that Mr. Kambona was the moving power in the conspiracy, which it said lasted from March, 1968, to October, 1969.

Mr. Leballo has testified that he had met frequently in London with Mr. Kambona, who told him of the planned coup. He said that the former minister once showed him a cache of $700,000 and told him that he could “get more where that came from” by communicating with a friend in the United States Information Service in London.

One of the 46 state witnesses in the trial, which has been going on since June 24, is a young woman using the pseudonym of Miss Ashe, who is reported to be a niece of Mr. Kambona and a former telephone operator at the U.S.I.S. office in Dar es Salaam.

Mr. Leballo also testified that Foreign Minister Hilgard Muller of South Africa was informed of the plot by Mr. Kambona in London last year and that the South Africans were willing to support the coup.

The defense has charged that Mr. Leballo took an active part in planning the coup and that he had a grudge against the Tanzanian Government, which had cut off funds from his party following an internal dispute over party leadership.

If the coup had succeeded, Mr. Leballo was to have been appointed a leader in the Bantustans, areas of South Africa reserved for blacks under the apartheid system, the defense charged. It also accused Mr. Leballo of being a South African spy and said that he encouraged the defendants to plot a coup when there was no plan for one.

Mr. Leballo has denied all these allegations.

The seven defendants were in leading positions in Tanzania, and observers say all were disgruntled with the Government, either on their own behalf or on that of Mr. Kambona, with whom all are reported to have family or tribal ties or ties of friendship. Two of Mr. Kambona's brothers. Otini and Mathiya, have been detained since he left the country.

The seven are Michael Marshall Kamaliza, former Minister of Labor; Miss Bibi Titi Mohammed, former head of the Union of Tanzanian Women; William Makori Chacha, former military attaché to Peking; Grey Likungu Mataka, former news editor of the Government-owned Nationalist; John Lifa Chipaka, former leader of the defunct Africa National Congress; Eliya Dunstan Chipaka, former captain in the Tanzanian Army and Alfred Phillip Millinga, a former army lieutenant.
 
Kambona returns

Tanzanian Affairs, Issue 44

January 1, 1993​

Former Foreign Minister Oscar Kambona finally returned to Tanzania after 25 years in exile on September 5th. The Government had earlier announced that it would allow him into the country for three months during which time he would have to clear the question of his citizenship. He travelled on a United Nations document issued by the British authorities. He arrived smiling, with his daughter Neema, and was apparently, surprised at the number of people at the airport to welcome him.

But his appearance, according to Africa Events, greyhaired and overweight, was a shock to Tanzanians “who remembered him as the debonair and jaunty side-kick of Nyerere, whose distinctive hair style was copied by the dashing young men of the time. His press conferences have revealed him as out of touch and preoccupied with settling old scores.”

“Millions in Foreign Banks”​

Addressing a public rally of his party (TADEA) in Dar es Salaam on November 21, he alleged that Mwalimu Nyerere, former CCM Vice Chairman Rashidi Kawawa and Ambassador Amir Jamal had “millions of money deposited in foreign banks”. He claimed that if the money was returned to Tanzania the country would not require to borrow again for the next ten years. For failing to support his allegations with any written evidence some people attending the rally complained that “Kambona amekwisha tuacha kwenye mataa.”

Mwalimu Nyerere later denied Kambona’s allegations and challenged him to produce evidence. He told reporters that Kambona’s utterances at his mass rally constituted a breach of the law. Mwalimu declared before the press that he doesn’t have a penny abroad.

Later, Kambona was required by the lawyers of the three leaders to produce, within fifteen days from December 8, evidence to support his allegations. The letter from the lawyers demanded an apology. If Kambona failed to substantiate his claims he was threatened with legal action.

The Break with Nyerere ​

The Dar es Salaam Express published, two weeks after his return, a lengthy interview in which Kambona gave his version of the main reason why he broke his political partnership with Nyerere. It was because of Mwalimu’s glorification of Mao Tse Tung, he said.

On his return from a visit abroad, Nyerere had wanted to appoint him Minister of Rural Development to establish the kind of communal farming that Mwalimu had seen in China. Kambona refused the offer of the post and was not offered another one.

“Why did you not just become a back bencher in Parliament. Why did you go to England?”

“In order not to create instability. I had a large following especially among the youth. I had to make a statement that I had resigned because of ill health”.

Kambona also indicated in the interview that he was opposed to Nyerere on a number of other issues including the One Party State. He also answered a question about what he had been doing in London these past years.

“I did business. I used to go to the Arab countries. But this did not last…. I then depended on income support in Britain. Every Tuesday you take your book to the Post Office”.

The Army Mutiny ​

Asked in an interview in the Business Times why he had handed back power to Nyerere after the 1964 army mutiny, he replied that it was because he believed that a leader must be elected by the people and Nyerere had been elected.

Kambona, who was Minister of Defence at the time when Nyerere disappeared temporarily from the scene, said that he had been asked by foreign embassies and also by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta whether he was going to seize power. No, he had replied, it was his duty to see that the country remained peaceful.

“Are you still friends with Nyerere?”

“I think that Nyerere is still my friend. We had no personal differences. Our differences were political. He believes in nationalisation and in the control of the economy.. , . I believe that the economy must be free,. . .when my party is registered we will bury the Arusha Declaration”.

‘Stop Blowing Your Own Trumpet”​

An irate reader of the Business Times, Balinagwe Mwambungu, found what he described as “all this mudslinging against our leader and father” too much to bear. He wrote in a prominently displayed letter to the editor:

“Kambona, history has recorded that you were at one time involved in a plot to overthrow the Government of Tanzania by force of arms – ready to spill the innocent blood of the very people you profess to love.

Deep in your heart you know that you did us wrong. Your vaulting ambition to rule would have led this country into chaos….

If Tanzania was under a tyrant, as you claim, and the Arusha Declaration oppressive (why did you have to) go into exile? (Are you) a shepherd that runs away when a wolf attacks the flock? I admire leaders who, despite the country’s poverty, refused to let anyone die of hunger.

Acquaint yourself with the realities prevailing in the rural areas before unveiling the London-made Tanzania Democratic Alliance. Tanzania is a vibrant nation holding itself in esteem. It has a glorious history … I call you a hypocrite because you were the one who led the massive rally that demonstrated in support of the Arusha Declaration two days after its announcement on Sunday February 5th 1967. Remember? You wore a white “Chou en Lai” and had a megaphone in your hand and your voice went hoarse because of the singing and dancing, I was there…..”
 
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