Well said. Nyerere alikuwa na mapungufu yake. Uchumi kwa kweli hakuumudu kabisa na alikuwa hapendi upinzani wowote ule wakati wa utawala wake. Hilo aliwahi kulisema mara kadhaa.
But Nyerere was not a dummy. He was very intelligent and eloquent and well-read. Those who say everything was written fro him dont know Nyerere at all. You could read your "Risala" to Nyerere and he would write nothing however long your "Risala" but when he stood up he would deal with all points raised one by one without reading anywhere. That was Nyerere. He could explain complicated things to novices but he could confront any intelligent person in the world. Reporters who were assigned to interview Nyerere knew very well that they had to do they assignment before confronting him. Some of us remember very well how he dealt with the reporters who came with the US Foreign Minister, Henry Kissinger and how he swayed the world opinion on Cuban involvement in the war in Angola.
Unamkumbuka David Ottaway of
The Washington Post wakati ule? Alikuwa ni mmoja wa waandishi wa habari waliokuja na Henry Kissinger, Dar es Salaam, September 1976. Nakumbuka sana wakati ule pamoja na matatizo tuliyokuwa nayo na freedom fighters fulani kutoka nchi za Afrika Kusini.
David Ottaway aliandika gazetini,
Washington Post, wakati ule kwamba Nyerere alipoulizwa na waandishi wa habari kama Kissinger's mission to Africa was a failure, "Nyerere responded professorially by saying, 'A mission of clarity is not a mission of failure.'"
Kissinger may not have achieved what he wanted to achieve on his mission to Africa. But he learned a lot from Nyerere. In that sense, his mission was successful.
In his meeting with Kissinger, Nyerere explained and clarified his position on Rhodesia and Angola - and the rest of southern Africa - with intellectual depth and magnificent eloquence. Kissinger aliporudi Amerika, alimsifu sana Nyerere na kusema Nyerere "is extremely brilliant." Ottaway also wrote in
The Washington Post that Kissinger got "a dose of African nationalism" from Nyerere.
David Martin, a renowned British journalist who worked in Tanzania for many years, also wrote the following about Nyerere and Kissinger when the two leaders met in Dar es Salaam during that time, a tribute to Nyerere's brilliance and astonishing intelligence:
"When he (Nyerere) met the astute American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for the first time in Dar es Salaam in 1976, the two men began a mental verbal fencing match of David and Goliath proportions.
One began a quote from Shakespeare (some of whose works Nyerere translated into Swahili setting them in an African context) or a Greek philosopher and the other would end the quotation. Then Nyerere quoted an American author. Kissinger laughed: Nyerere knew Kissinger had written the words.
Neither man trusted the other. Kissinger wanted the negotiations (over Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and southern Africa) kept secret. Nyerere, understanding the Americans' duplicity, took the opposite view and as Africa correspondent of the London Sunday newspaper,
The Observer, I was to become the focal point of the Tanzanians' strategic leaks.
That year the newspaper led the front page on an unprecedented 13 occasions on Africa. All the leaks, as Kissinger knew, came from Nyerere. One political fox had temporarily outwitted the other." - (David Martin, "Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere: Obituary," Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC). David Martin, former news editor and deputy managing editor of the
Standard, renamed
Daily News, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was a founder-director of the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) of which Julius Nyerere was patron. He lived in Tanzania for 10 years from 1964 to 1974 and frequently talked with Nyerere through the decades, a period of 35 years, until Nyerere's last days).
Halafu kuna ambao wamejaribu hapa kumtumia Professor Ali Mazrui kumshambulia Nyerere kwa sababu zao, bila kujua au kujali jinsi Mazrui alivyokuwa anamheshimu sana Nyerere na anavyomheshimu hadi leo,ingawa kuna mambo waliyotofautiana, ya kisiasa, siyo ya kidini kama wengine wanavyojaribu kupindua ukweli, kwa mfano kuhusu Biafra na kwa nini Tanzania illitambua, bila kusoma yote Mazrui aliyoandika kuhusu suala hilo.
Sijui ni Ali Mazrui yupi wanayemzungumzia. And I don't know which books or articles by him they are referring to; he is not the Mazrui some of us have known since the sixties when he gained prominence on the African intellectual scene with his brilliant articles published in
Transition, a highly intellectual magazine founded and edited by Rajat Neogy (RIP) in Kampala, Uganda.
Soma hapa chini Ali Mazrui aliyoandika kuhusu Nyerere's intellectual ability and brilliance:
"Julius Nyerere is the most enterprising of African political philosophers. He has philosophized extensively in both English and Kiswahili.
He has tried to tear down the language barriers between ancestral cultural philosophy and the new ideological tendency of the post-colonial era. Nyerere is superbly eloquent in both English and Kiswahili.
He has allowed the two languages to enrich each other as their ideas have passed through his intellect.
His concept of ujamaa as a basis of African socialism was itself a brilliant cross-cultural transition. Ujamaa traditionally implied ethnic solidarity. But Nyerere transformed it from a dangerous principle of ethnic nepotism into more than a mere equivalent of the European word 'socialism.'
In practice his socialist policies did not work – as much for global reasons as for domestic. But in intellectual terms Nyerere is a more original thinker than Kwame Nkrumah – and linguistically much more innovative.
Nkrumah tried to update Lenin – from Lenin's
Imperialism: The Highest State of Capitalism to Nkrumah's
Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nyerere translated Shakespeare into Kiswahili instead – both
Julius Caesar and
The Merchant of Venice.
Nkrumah's exercise in Leninism was a less impressive cross-cultural achievement than Nyerere's translation of Shakespeare into an African language.
Yet both these African thinkers will remain among the towering figures of the twentieth century in politics and thought." – (Ali A. Mazrui in Ali. A. Mazrui, ed.,
General History of Africa VIII: Africa Since 1935, Berkeley, California, USA: University of California Press, 1993, p. 674).
Ali Mazrui again on Nyerere:
"(Nyerere's) great experiments and inspirational ideas are an indication that the mystique of Nyerere is not simply in his being an intellectual. It is also in his being a gifted and imaginative one.
Of all the top political figures in English-speaking Africa as a whole, Nyerere is perhaps the most original thinker....The originality of Nyerere consisted not in the policies advocated but in the arguments advanced in their defense." – Ali A. Mazrui in Alamin M. Mazrui and Willy M. Mutunga, eds.,
Governance and Leadership: Debating the African Condition: Mazrui and His Critics, Volume Two, Trenton, New Jersey, USA: Africa World Press, 2003, p. 85. Ali Mazrui's assessment of Nyerere and his policies, cited here, was first published as an article, "Tanzaphilia: A Diagnosis," in
Transition: A Journal of The Arts, Culture and Society, Vol. 6, No. 31, June – July 1967, Kampala, Uganda, pp. 20 – 26. The article was also republished in Ali Mazrui's book,
Violence and Thought: Essays on Social Tensions in Africa, London: Longmans, 1969. See also Ali A. Mazrui,
On Heroes and Uhuru-Worship: Essays on Independent Africa, London: Longmans, 1967).
Professor Mazrui also gave a lecture on intellectualism in East Africa entitled "Towards Re-Africanizing African Universities: Who Killed Intellectualism in the Post-Colonial Era?" in Nairobi, Kenya, on 14 September 2003, and had this to say about Nyerere:
"The most intellectual of East Africa's Heads of State at the time was Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania – a true philosopher, president and original thinker....
In Tanzania intellectualism was slow to die. It was partially protected by the fact that the Head of State – Julius Nyerere – was himself a superb intellectual ruler. He was not only fascinated by ideas, but also stimulated by debates....
In my own personal life I was respected more as an intellectual by Milton Obote in Uganda and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania than I was by either Mzee Kenyatta or Daniel arap Moi in Kenya.
Even Idi Amin, when he was in power in Uganda, wanted to send me to apartheid South Africa as living proof that Africans could think. Idi Amin wanted me to become Exhibit A of the Black Intellectual to convince racists in South Africa that Black people were human beings capable of rational thought."
Pia soma yafwatayo - Ali A. Mazrui on Nyerere in his article, "Nyerere and I":
"He was one of the giants of the 20th Century.... He did bestride this narrow world like an African colossus....
Let me also refer to Walter Rodney. He was a Guyanese scholar who taught at the University of Dar es Salaam and became one of the most eloquent voices of the left on the campus in Tanzania. When Walter Rodney returned to Guyana, he was assassinated.
Chedi Jagan, on being elected President of Guyana, created a special chair in honour of Walter Rodney. Eventually I was offered the chair and became its first incumbent. My inaugural lecture was on the following topic: "Comparative Leadership: Walter Rodney, Julius K. Nyerere and Martin Luther King Jr."
After delivering the lecture, I subsequently met Nyerere one evening in Pennsylvania, USA. I gave him my Walter Rodney lecture. He read it overnight and commented on it the next morning at breakfast. He promised to send me a proper critique of my Rodney lecture on his return to Dar es Salaam. He never lived long enough to send me the critique....Julius Nyerere was my Mwalimu too. It was a privilege to learn so much from so great a man." - (Ali A. Mazrui, "Nyerere and I," 12 November 2005).
A scholar of Mazrui's stature and intellectual calibre is not going to ask someone to critique his paper, the way he asked Nyerere, if that person is not an intellectual heavyweight himself, mnaodhani Nyerere alikuwa mtupu kichwani au alikuwa ni intellectual featherweight.
Professor Ali Mazrui also had this to say about Nyerere when he was interviewed by
The Gambia Echo, 25 July 2008:
"The fact that Nkrumah had a greater positive impact on me than has any other leader does not necessarily mean that I admire Nkrumah the most.
Intellectually, I admired Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania higher than most politicians
anywhere in the world. Nyerere and I also met more often over the years from 1967 to 1997 approximately.
I am also a great fan of Nelson Mandela. By ethical standards Mandela is greater than Nyerere; but by intellectual standards Nyerere is greater than Mandela."
Mazrui also paid high tribute to Nyerere not only as an intellectual but as a highly ethical leader:
"Nyerere as president was a combination of deep intellect and high integrity...(and) was in a class by himself in the combination of ethical standards and intellectual power. In the combination of high thinking and high ethics, no other East African politician was in the same league." - (Ali Mazrui, "Mwalimu's Rise to Power,"
Daily Nation, Nairobi Kenya, 17 October 1999, also delivered as a lecture at Cornell University).
And a renowned British conservative, Jonathan Power, although an ardent critic of Nyerere, stated in his article, "Lament for Independent Africa's Greatest Leader":
"There was a time when it (Tanzania) was described, in terms of its political influence, as one of the top 25. It punched far above its weight. That formidable achievement was the work of one man (Nyerere), now lying close to death in a London Hospital....
His extraordinary intelligence, verbal and literary originality... and apparent commitment to non-violence made him not just an icon in his own country but of a large part of the activist sixties' generation in the white world who, not all persuaded of the heroic virtues of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, desperately looked for a more sympathetic role model.
Measured against most of his peers, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, he towered above them. On the intellectual plane only the rather remote president of Senegal, the great poet and author of Negritude, Leopold Senghor, came close to him.
Many of us will mourn Julius Nyerere when he is gone. He was, without any doubt...the most inspiring African leader of his generation." - (Jonathan Power, TFF Jonathan Power Columns, "Lament for Independent Africa's Greatest Leader," London, October 6, 1999).
Philip Ochieng' wrote the following about Nyerere:
"Mwalimu Julius Kambarage, son of Chief Nyerere, is the greatest and most successful leader that Africa has ever produced since the European colonial regime collapsed 50 years ago" - (Philip Ochieng',
The East African, Nairobi, Kenya, 19 October 2009).
Yoweri Museveni on Nyerere:
"He was the greatest black man that ever lived. There are other black men such as Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah, but Nyerere was the greatest." - (Yoweri Museveni, quoted by
New Vision, Kampala, 4 April 2012).
Mwalimu Nyerere alikuwa na mapungufu yake; we all do. But give credit where credit is due. You can say all you want to say about him. He was a towering figure in the global arena in political and intellectual terms and nothing is going to diminish his stature.