JULIUS Kambarage Nyerere was a leader of the type of Mahatma Gandhi, Sun Yatsen, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah and Leopold Sedar Senghor, who earned their place in the history of mankind.
Even his miscalculations, about which he repeatedly spoke himself, have special features; they were mistakes of a pathfinder. He belonged to the leaders of a charismatic type, symbolising the ideals and expectations of the people.
We are not just discussing simply the statesman, but the leader-thinker, whose contribution to development of the original Ujamaa concept, and the experience of independent development is a really great one. Therefore, it takes some time to estimate, in a fitting manner, his role and weight in the world history.
All post – colonial history of Africa and, above all, Tanzania is associated with his name. The Nyerere epoch is the period of the struggle of African peoples for independence, construction of the national state, the search for ways of development, and the establishment of democratic foundations in Tanzania.
Nyerere’s political biography is typical of many African leaders. He was born in 1922 in the northern part of the country at a small village not far from Musoma town, to the family of a chief of a small ethnic group, the Zanaki.
After receiving secondary school education, he entered Makerere University, Uganda, and in 1949 – 1952 studied history and sociology at Edinburgh University. During his studies, Nyerere was interested in politics, and got to know some future West African leaders of national liberation movements.
Nyerere’s weltanschaung was formed under the strong influence of Fabian Socialism. On his return home, he worked with the Tanganyika African Association, and for some time he worked as a teacher at a secondary school near Dar es Salaam.
In 1954, he became the head of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). In 1960 he was appointed the Chief Minister, and after the declaration of independence on December 9th1961, the Prime Minister.
One year later he was elected the President of the country. Shortly afterwards, Julius Nyerere became known by the honorable title “Mwalimu” (teacher). In 1964, he became the President of the United Republic of Tanzania. In 1985, of his own free will, Nyerere stepped down as president. He believed that a leader should resign when he is still “intellectually and physically capable to transfer the power to his successor, who was, at the time, Ali Hassan Mwinyi.
Since the early days of independence, the TANU ruling party called upon the people of the country to work persistently on raising the standard of living and eliminating poverty and backwardness inherited from colonialism.
Guided by Nyerere, TANU developed and adopted the plan of “nation-building”, having in view the widespread use, under the socialist slogans, of such communal traditions as common work, mutual help and support, still existing in the African society.
As far back as in the period of national liberation struggle, Julius Nyerere advanced the idea of “African Socialism”, which later evolved into a painful search for ways of development for the newly emerged states. Nyerere’s theoretical concepts reflected the nation’s urgent needs: the requirements of farmers, urban workers, the tiny national bourgeoisie and the intellectuals.
In May 1960, he published an article titled “The Future of African Nationalism”, where he argues for the necessity of a social revolution and the creation of such a society whose foundation would be the wellbeing of all rather than the accumulation of wealth by a few individuals. It means that the new national governments should be socialist in their views and actions.
Nyerere expounded his ideas on the essence of Socialism at a conference on Pan-African Socialism, which took place in April 1962 in Dar es Salaam. His keynote speech was titled “Ujamaa: The Foundation of African Socialism”. The concept of Ujamaa (Familyhood) is among the most influential and interesting theories created by the ideologists of the national liberation movements.
The principal meaning of this word is the type of social organisation, characteristic of the traditional African extended family. Nyerere opined that the traditional way of life in a community is the exact pattern for the social order, in other words, for socialism. Putting in the concept of Ujamaa the various contents depending on a concrete situation, he combined his economic and social-political views in a comprehensive ideology of development.
The reference to socialism as a means to development was intended to be a symbol of national cohesion and unity, an ideology of development, and a legitimisation of the new authority by ideological means.
Many essential elements of the Ujamaa concept were exposed to change during the practical and theoretical activity of its author. The African socialism was intended to look for the synthetic theory within the channel of world social development and to encompassing all that mankind had created in the field of social sciences.
A special place in Nyerere’s theoretical heritage occupies the work “The Arusha Declaration” and TANU’s “Policy on Socialism and Self- Reliance”. Many years after, Julius Nyerere still valued this work highly, saying that two books, the Bible and the Arusha Declaration, were always with him.
He emphasised that the whole community should be self-sufficient both economically and socially, irrespective of the outer world. In his opinion, it would allow keeping the feeling of uniqueness in the environment of technical modernization, would speed up development, and would contribute to saving human and material resources.
In an effort to prevent the bureaucratization and degeneration of the TANU and Government top officials, a kind of a “Code of Leadership” was embodied in the Arusha Declaration, prescribing that no TANU or government leader should hold shares in any company; hold directorship in any privately owned enterprise; receive two or more salaries and own houses which he rents to others. Later, these clauses were extended to all TANU and Government officials and civil servants in the high and middle cadres.
It is opportune to mention here, that one of the determining features of the Ujamaa concept is its “human”, ethical nucleus. At the very onset of independence, Nyerere emphasized the need “to build an ethic of the nation” which should be based on national spiritual traditions. This explains his definition of socialism as an attitude of mind.
In the Ujamaa theory, the individual was put at the center of development; therefore, all plans of development should be measured by the criteria of their conformity to real needs and requirements of the people.
The disregard of the human factor, according to Nyerere’s explanation, was the main cause of mistakes in the political line of Tanzanian leaders.
Given the existing, in Tanzania, of communal solidarity, and the practice of farmers’ teamwork, a mass program of action was launched, aimed at building a new society under the banner of the Ujamaa theory. The creation of Ujamaa villages was conceived as a voluntary form of cooperation of the peasantry that pursued certain objectives.
It was presumed that the resettlement of the peasants on more fertile sites, integration of villages and transition to new methods of management – all this in due course, should increase labor productivity in agriculture and raise the living standard.
The principles of self-management and initiative in Ujamaa should have transformed these villages into schools of political and cultural mass education, which would have made them a strong base of the state and society.
The creation of such villages envisioned the voluntary participation of the peasants in teamwork. However, during the campaign, this major principle was broken. In 1973, the TANU National Executive Committee adopted the decision on resettlement of all peasants into Ujamaa villages as soon as by the end of 1976.
In 1981, the number of registered villages reached 8,180, embracing 14 million people or 90 percent of all the rural population. But the main motive of the creation of these settlements, i.e. the ensuring of food self-sufficiency, failed to materialise.
Nikolai Kosukhin, Dr Sc. (Hist), Professor, Leading Research Fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for African Studies.
