As a torture expert trained by the former East German Stasi security police, Juma Ameir performed his job with maximum zeal and exceptional enthusiasm. He practised his infamous profession at Zanzibar's most notorious torture chamber, Kwa Bamkwe, otherwise known as Kwa Mandera, which was within the Zanzibar city centre prison. Nyerere's regime routinely sent political detainees there to be tortured. Most of the victims Juma Ameir physically tortured died because of their injuries. Unsurprisingly, the same Nyerere regime later rewarded him with a diplomatic post as minister-counsellor at the Tanzania High Commission in the United Kingdom.
However, when in mid-July 1997 the Tanzanian government wanted to relocate him to the Tanzanian embassy in Sweden, some survivors of his barbarism attempted to have him brought to trial in Europe. Juma Ameir, of course, never allowed his own victims the right to a trial. But the Tanzanian authorities would not let that happen, so they hastily recalled Juma Ameir back home and cancelled his posting to Sweden.
The international community condemns torture. Moreover, as an integral part of this community, Tanzania is obliged to observe the international conventions which forbid torture. But as outlined in the book, there is incontrovertible proof showing Tanzania to practise torture instead of outlawing it.
Indeed, if Tanzania did condemn torture, Juma Ameir would not have been recalled with such haste back home, where he enjoys total protection from prosecution. Equally, if the Tanzanian authorities did abhor torture, they would have prosecuted government agents who have been positively identified as having taken part in torturing detainees to death. After all, the victims' identities are well known to the authorities that ordered them detained in the first instance. Not only that, but the authorities to date have never given a clear account of how those it ordered detained could have mysteriously vanished from prison without trace. When for forty years Tanganyika was a British mandate territory, no enforced disappearances of people ever happened. Equally, not a single citizen was ever incarcerated without trial during this period. Nyerere himself was never incarcerated because of his political activism. But during Nyerere's twenty-five-year despotic reign, ''killing fields'' sprung up and enforced disappearances became routine, especially in Zanzibar. More tellingly, calls by the victims' families to have those responsible for these crimes held accountable have gone unheeded.
Tanzania's peers, development partners, rights groups and other forces of reason and reform the world over should urge the Tanzanian authorities to hold the perpetrators of these brutal crimes to account. It is the only way to heal the wounds of Nyerere's hidden suppression of his critics which went on whilst European tourists were enjoying their safari holidays.
Indeed, black lives ought to matter even where an African potentate unlawfully kills his own kind or makes them disappear without trace from his execrable dungeons. It would be wrong, very wrong, to invoke the meme only when a person of a different race kills a black person but to remain silent when a black ruler does the same to his own kind. As the campaign to canonise Nyerere shifts to high gear, these issues, amongst others, demand critical appraisal and public discourse. We will be setting a wrong and dangerous precedent for posterity to avoid discussing issues such as these that matter to society, especially at such a critical juncture. Source, Facebook: Julius K Nyerere: Servant of God or Untarnished Tyrant?
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