Mwalimu, 10 years after: Part V

mwalimu with J.F. Kennedy at the White House

Recollections on

President Julius Kambarage Nyerere

by Father Arthur H. Wille, M.M.

During our conversations Julius spoke frequently of Benedicto Mato. He had great respect for Benedicto. He was one of the pillars of the early church in Musoma. He had an important position as Secretary of the Native Treasure under the British District Commissioner in Musoma District. In this position he was over all the chiefs. They had to bring in their reports and tax collections to him. He was a very devout Catholic.

When Musoma Parish was established he became a daily communicant. His home was always opened to priests and religious who needed a place to stay in Musoma before the parish there was established. Julius would stay with him when he was traveling from Mwisenge School back and forth to his home in Zanaki. After independence Julius appointed Benedicto Mato to the commission that had the responsibility to integrate tribal laws and customs into the laws of Tanganyika.

The period of campaigning for independence was a very difficult time for Julius and Maria. Julius refused to take any salary from TANU. He said that the party needed all its funds to gain independence. At the same time Oscar Kambona took a salary to support himself and his family.

Maria opened a small duka (“shop”) to sell soap, sugar, salt, cooking oil etc. in their small home in Dar es Salaam to earn a little money to support the family. She also had a heavy burden of cooking for the many African visitors that came to visit Julius. It is the custom to cook a meal for all visitors. In his position as President of TANU he received many visitors every day. Julius one day told me that any other woman other than Maria would have left him long ago, but Maria stayed during this very difficult time.

Julius was continually traveling around the country to speak to the people about Uhuru (Swahili for “independence”). His slogan was uhuru na kazi (“freedom and work”). From the very beginning in his speeches he taught that everyone should respect each other as brothers. He was violently against any type of discrimination, tribal, racial, social or religious.

In the first speech he gave in Musoma I heard him emphasize that everyone would be respected. There were some Indians, Arabs, and myself in the audience. Before Nyerere arrived, members of TANU made sure that we were given seats for this meeting. He traveled frequently by public buses or Land Rovers that which were hired by TANU or loaned by followers of the party.

Mama Maria with Mwalimu and Samora and Graca Machel

One difficulty arose during this period between Maria and Julius’s sister Sophia. His sister wanted to bring her boyfriends to sleep with them in Marie’s house. Sophia was young and unmarried. Marie forbad her to do this. Sophia turned against Maria and incited the rest of her family to turn against her.

This made it difficult for her with Julius’ family who listened to Sophia. Since Sophia was Julius’ younger sister, he felt responsible for taking care of her. This difficulty continued for a number of years. It ended when Sophia was seriously injured in an auto accident after Julius became president. They were all traveling in a motorcade.

When the front of the motorcade stopped suddenly, police cars that were in the rear raced up to the front to find out what had stopped the motorcade. Unfortunately just at this time Sophia opened her door and stepped out right into the path of a speeding police car. She was struck and seriously injured. She never recovered from this accident. But when she died, the animosity between Julius’ family and Maria disappeared. It had lasted a good number of years.

One day Julius asked me if he could build a house for Maria near Komuge Mission. He was still concerned that if he should die Maria would not have a place to live because of this animosity. He wanted her to be near me and the mission. I agreed. He had a house built just off the mission property for her. Maria lived in this house only on a few occasions.

After Sophia’s death the relationship between Maria and Julius’ family improved so much that it became evident she would not need this house. Maria and Julius then turned this house over to the Komuge Parish. It is now the convent for the Ivrea Sisters who are running the Catechists Training Center at Komuge.

Mwalimu is received in China by Chou en Lai

One day while he was teaching me Julius mentioned that the British would probably put him in prison because of his agitation for independence. He said this because a number of other African political leaders had been already incarcerated because of their political activities.

He expressed concern for Maria and their children. The house that he had built for Maria had a grass roof. These roofs last only a few years and then need to be replaced. The termites usually destroy them.

I offered to loan him money to put on a galvanized corrugated iron roof. He accepted my offer and got his friend Oswald who was working in construction for the government to put on this roof. It cost only a few hundred dollars. I never thought about it after it was completed. Several years later he came one day to return the money I had loaned him. He was very apologetic and said that it had taken him several years to repay me. He told me that he had had no money. He only got this money to repay me when he went to America.

There he was invited to appear on TV with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and on one of Mike Wallace’s talk shows. For each of these appearances he was given a stipend. With this money he repaid me.

During this period of the campaign by TANU the Tanganyika government tried very much to discredit Julius by spreading foul rumors about him. Julius told me that the governor thought that he was a rogue and rabble-rouser. They spread a false rumor that he had taken his personal assistant, Joan Wicken, as his mistress.

She had traveled early in 1957 as a Research Fellow in Somerville College, Oxford to gather information about TANU. Before and after this trip she was the Assistant Commonwealth Officer of the Labor Party. The previous year she had met Nyerere in her office in London. Father Gerald Grondin, a Maryknoll priest who was organizing the Tanganyika Episcopal Conference at the time and had previously been Prefect Apostolic of the Musoma Prefecture where he got to know Julius well, told me that these were pure fabrications to discredit Nyerere.

Because of the volume of work, Julius and Joan Wicken had to work long into the night in the TANU office. This was the reason given for this false accusation that they were together at night. I met Julius at this time because the rumors had reached Musoma where I was living. At lunch I mentioned to Julius what I had heard. He was not pleased to hear of this attack on him.

He told me that these rumors were false. The longer and better that I got to know him over the years convince me of his absolute fidelity to his wife Maria. Joan Wicken continued to be his personal assistant until he retired and was very helpful to Julius in doing research and helping him write his speeches. She came to Dar es Salaam for his funeral.

In March, 1955 when Julius Nyerere went to New York to address the Trusteeship Council meeting on the third United Nations Visiting Mission’s Report on Tanganyika, the British government put pressure on the U.S. State Department to limit Nyerere’s movements in New York to a radius of eight blocks from the United Nations building and his stay to 24 hours of his appearance before the Trusteeship Council.

Nyerere surprised the council with his statement: “TANU’s policy is one not of discrimination but of brotherhood. I believe this also to be essentially the policy of the Administering Authority.”

Nyerere gained great prestige from this appearance before the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations.

Mwalimu with Prince Philip

Before Nyerere went to Trusteeship Council meeting at the United Nations the government tried to get both the Catholic and Protestant churches to forbid their teachers from joining TANU. They refused.

Father Walsh had become the Executive of the Bishops’ Conference in Educational Affairs of the inter-territorial schools that belonged to the whole hierarchy and not to an individual bishop. He was responsible for the staffing of St. Francis, Pugu where Nyerere was teaching.

The government then tried to put pressure on Walsh to forbid Julius from going to the United Nations. A number of leaders in TANU came also to urge Walsh to allow Julius to go. Because Nyerere would be gone for a month, permission had to be obtained from the Department of Education that paid the salaries of all teachers. The head of this department sent Walsh to see Governor Twining.

The governor told Walsh that it didn’t make sense that the government should pay the salary of the man who was working to undermine his own administration. Governor Twining had completely misread Nyerere’ character and activities. Julius himself told me that the governor considered him a rogue and rabble-rouser.

Walsh took the chance and let Julius go to the United Nations. He did not know where the salary would come from. He hoped that the bishops would allow him to look for the money from some other source.

The governor and his ministers continued to try to influence the bishops in not supporting Nyerere and TANU. They replied it would be wrong to deprive a growing and powerful movement among the Africans of just those educated men and women who were the only people capable of acting responsibly and whose influence could be relied upon to support moderate policies.

Finally the chief secretary called in Walsh and asked him to refuse to give Nyerere permission to go to New York because he represented a subversive movement. Walsh replied it was not a subversive movement because only recently the government had passed a law on subversions. It hadn’t used this law against Nyerere or TANU.

At the end of February when Nyerere left for New York he had no difficulty getting a passport from the government.

Mwalimu shares a light moment with Uganda's Iddi Amin Daddah at an OAU meeting in Addis Ababa

It was evident from his actions that Walsh was following the Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops of Tanzania in 1953. In his official capacity Walsh wrote a letter to Nyerere that the Catholic Church was most anxious for Africans to advance to full development. Therefore it would never forbid teachers (except priests) to join TANU or to become TANU office bearers.

As for Nyerere himself, the Catholic Bishops Conference had always found him an excellent teacher, efficient, loyal, and hard working. If he were now to decide that he could no longer afford to be both teacher and leader of a nationalist movement, the conference would see him go with regret and would like him to know of their grateful appreciation of his services.

Nyerere’s reaction was one of gratitude and generosity. On March 22, 1955 he resigned his position as history master and was left without any employment. This was one of the most impressive gestures he made in service of his fellow Africans. He had no possessions at this time, but now had a family to take care of. He had a son Andrew and a daughter Anna.

TANU offered him 420 shillings (equals $60) per month, but he refused. It was at this time that he returned to his village of Butiama in the Zanaki area. I met him and hired him to teach me his Zanaki language.

Two other political organizations came into being at this time. One was the Tanganyika Nation Society. David Stirling and Robin Johnston founded the T.N.S.

It was based on the principles of Capricorn Declarations that took place at the Salima Convention held in Nyasaland (now Malawi) in June, 1956.

The second organization was the United Tanganyika Party. The U.T.P. was founded in the governor’s residence in Lushoto. Ivor Bayldon and several of his European friends founded this party as a multiracial party. It was “the governor’s favorite party.” It also adopted some of the articles of the Capricorn Declarations.

Nyerere attacked both of these parties that had little support from the mass of the African population. He used the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to push for “one man one vote” to demolish both of these parties. They never became any challenge to TANU.

In 1956 Nyerere went to the U.S.A. for the second time at the invitation of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. They invited him to come to give lectures in various universities in Washington, Boston, New York, and Chicago to give him a chance to look for scholarships for his youthful followers.

Father William Collins who had witnessed Julius and Maria’s wedding in Musoma met him when he arrived. This invitation also allowed him to appear at the U.N. On December 20, 1956 he appeared before the Fourth Committee of the U.N. Once again he described the multi-racial situation in Tanganyika where 20,000 Europeans dominated the Executive and Legislative Councils. He pleaded for a common roll and universal suffrage.

If these demands of TANU were accepted, the administration would demonstrate to the people that they could realize their legitimate aspiration through democratic means. In the discussion Nyerere showed that the Asian Association also opposed a system of voting that would give virtually universal suffrage to the minority of the European inhabitants while denying it to the majority. Nyerere stated that there was no conflict between Africans and Europeans. TANU was only opposed to the British policy.
The following year in June, 1957 there was another meeting of the Trusteeship Council on Tanganyika. Governor Twinning sent Sir Andrew Cohen who recently had ended his term as Governor of Uganda, John Fletcher-Cooke, a key minister in the Tanganyika Colonial Administration and Tom Marealle, paramount chief of the Chagga. Africans considered him a British stooge. Marealle was not an official member of the British Delegation.

He voiced the African point of view by asking for independence. Nyerere supported Marealle’s point and went on to prove that TANU was not racial, but had repeatedly declared that they had no intention of applying discrimination against any race. He demanded that 98 percent of the population be given 50 per cent of the unofficial seats in Legco instead of the ten to which they were restricted.

Two per cent of the population, the Europeans and Asians had 20 seats. The government however had no intention of doing this.

To be continued tomorrow...