Julius Nyerere

Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born in Butiama, Tanganyika, on the thirteenth of April 1922, the son of a Zanaki chief. He took an MA at the University of Edinburgh — the first Tanzanian to earn a postgraduate degree abroad — returned to teach, and in 1954 co-founded the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) on the strength of a manifesto he had drafted. By 1961, when Britain granted Tanganyika independence, he was Prime Minister; he became President in 1962 and ruled until his retirement in 1985.

His political project was Ujamaa — "familyhood" — an attempt to build socialism on the foundation of pre-colonial African communal traditions rather than imported Marxism. The Arusha Declaration of 1967 nationalized the economy, codified the Ujamaa philosophy, and committed the Tanzanian state to villagization, universal primary education, and equal rural development. Within fifteen years Tanzania achieved literacy rates above ninety percent — among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa — and Swahili was established as a national language without ethnic stratification.

The economic results were uneven. Villagization disrupted agricultural production; coffee exports declined; the country accumulated debt. Nyerere himself, in retirement, acknowledged that "we tried to run before we could walk." But the political results were lasting: Tanzania did not experience a civil war, an ethnic massacre, or a successful coup during his rule, in a region where these were common.

He led the African front-line states against apartheid. Tanzania harbored the ANC, FRELIMO, and SWAPO in exile and provided the logistical base for the liberation of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. He was, for the Pan-African political generation, Mwalimu — Teacher. He stepped down voluntarily in 1985 and chaired the South Commission until his death in London on the fourteenth of October 1999.

He is honored here as the teacher-statesman who built a nation without an ethnic war.