[wanabidii] Nyerere, the militant leader he was!

Nyerere, the militant leader he was!

 By Mobhare Matinyi, The Citizen.            Posted  Friday, October 18  2013 at  00:00

Yes, Nyerere was not a believer of peaceful struggles; he was militant right from the beginning although the independence of Tanganyika made him the president without bloodshed.

As we mark 14 years since the passing of the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, it is wise to recall some of the events he attended and the things he said for the young generation to understand what a great leader this Tanzanian was.

It was on January 26, 1996 when Nyerere became the first recipient of the Mahatma Gandhi International Peace Prize awarded by the government of India. Since then a number of prominent black icons have followed suit starting with Nelson Mandela in 2000 and recently in 2012 the Zambian elder statesman, Kenneth Kaunda.

Two days after receiving the award in New Delhi, Nyerere met with Tanzanians at the residence of the Tanzanian High Commissioner to India, the late Ambassador Alfred Tandau. I happened to be among the invitees and Mwalimu surprised us when he said that he had told Indian leaders that he was so grateful to have received the award because he did not at all deserve it!

He clarified that likening him to Mahatma Gandhi was incoherent because he, Nyerere, supported armed struggles in Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia, and elsewhere like Guinea Bissau. Correctly, Gandhi, the man who willingly lived in abject poverty, preached the philosophy of peaceful struggle, thus, Nyerere thought that award recipients ought to have emulated that philosophy wholeheartedly.

Yes, Nyerere was not a believer of peaceful struggles; he was militant right from the beginning although the independence of Tanganyika made him the president without bloodshed.

In one incident on July 20, 1964 at the summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo, he underlined African problems in two fold; firstly, cleansing Africa of vestiges of colonial rule; and secondly, unity. Patriotically, in that speech he also testified how Tanganyika gave up its sovereignty to unite with Zanzibar.

On the issue of colonial rule, Nyerere said at the time that at least the British accepted that they had colonies in Africa, so it was possible to talk to them, but the Portuguese didn't accept the fact that they were colonizers who deserved to leave; they simply argued that Portugal extended to Africa in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea (Guinea Bissau).

Nyerere added: "In the case of these three colonies, fine words will not do." He further observed: "My plea here, therefore, is for action; action to free the Portuguese colonies."

Looking stone-faced, Nyerere insisted: "Mr Chairman, we must act. We have the means to liberate Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea." Just like that Nyerere declared a war leaving other cowards shocked. That was Nyerere in 1964, a few years after opening military training camps for Mozambican and South African freedom fighters in Tanzania.

Fast forward to November 1978 after Ugandan madman, Idi Amin, made a terrible mistake to invade Tanzania, Nyerere sounded exactly the same. He declared: "We have the means to punish Amin; we have the reason; and we have the will to punish Amin." The rest is history, but surely, on April 11, 1979, Tanzanian troops overthrew the delusional buffoon.

On another occasion in 1978 before Tanzanian troops responded to Amin, Kenya offered to mediate, but instead Nyerere told Kenyans to close the port of Mombasa for Amin or else keep quiet.

Several African leaders including the then Chairman of the OAU, Sudanese President Jaffery Nimeiry, flew to Dar es Salaam or sent their peace envoys to ask Nyerere to spare Amin, but he insisted that murderous Amin must be punished for what he had done unless he withdrew from Tanzania, pay for the damages and vow to never attack Tanzania.

Perhaps more details about Nyerere's militancy occurred between the 1964 summit and the 1978/79 war with Uganda. Tanzania under Nyerere trained freedom fighters from South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe, but more interestingly, is the fact that Nyerere sent Tanzanian troops to fight in several countries, particularly Mozambique, during the liberation struggle and after the independence to pacify out rebellion.

The two island states of Comoro and Seychelles were other places where Tanzanian troops fought successfully in the 1970s to bring back overthrown leaders, and this is not to mention a number of clandestine missions in the neighbouring as mentioned by authors like Simon Baynham in his book, Military Power and Politics in Black Africa.

At one time in the late 1960s Tanzania nearly punished Malawi militarily over the Lake Nyasa border dispute, but President Kamuzu Banda wisely smelled a rat and stayed away from Nyerere forever.

No wonder that Kenyan scholar, Professor Ali Mazrui, said this after his death: "He gave Tanzanians a sense of national consciousness and a spirit of national purpose. One of the small countries in the world found itself to be one of the major actors on the world scene." No doubt he was militant but with a noble cause!

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