By Banji Ojewale
Gbolabo Ogunsanwo,
Nigeria’s most captivating columnist of the 1970s who rewrote
history as editor of Sunday
Times of that era, once
returned from Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania and thrilled his compatriots with an
account of the stoic exploits of this illustrious African leader. Just like his
staid gait, Ogunsanwo said, Nyerere had no airs about him to suggest he was the
president of Tanzania .
*Nyerere |
So the Tanzania experience
had to excite this colourful columnist. Through his celebrated style of writing
that nettled bad leaders and won applause from the public, Ogunsanwo said that
if he placed the lifestyle of Nyerere side-by-side with what we had in Nigeria ,
the weight of the East African leader wouldn’t surpass the wealth of a level 9
officer in the Nigerian Civil Service. A shocked Ogunsanwo said something to
the effect that the home of Nyerere had uninspiring furniture compared to what
a middle level civil servant in Nigeria might
offer. Nyerere’s was a study in Spartan decor.
Years later in 1999 when the beloved Tanzania leader
died at 77, the New
York Times correspondent, Michael Kaufman, wrote what has gone
into the books as a most charitable essay by a Western reporter on an African
president who mercilessly chided capitalism as a curse on humanity, thus
confirming Ogunsanwo’s point. He admitted Nyerere’s “habits of modesty and
ethics.”
Kaufman wrote in the influential New
York Times on October 15, 1999: “He (Nyerere) never received more
than 8,000 dollars (about 8,000 naira then) a year as president. He appeared
both abroad and at home wearing a grey or black safari shirt over his trousers
and a white crocheted skull cap… In contrast to many African leaders who often
raced their capitals in motorcades with phalanxes of motorcycle outriders, he
moved around Dar es Salam (the old capital of
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born on April 13, 1922
in a settlement in the
hills of southeast of Lake
Victoria .
His father was 61 when he married his mother at 15. He went to Uganda ’s
famous Makerere University and
the UK ’s Edinburgh University where
he earned a Master’s degree in History and Economics. He went into politics
after a teaching tenure on his return from Scotland .
He led Tanzania into
independence from Britain in
1961, becoming the youngest of a group of Africa’s “triumphant” nationalists
among them the legendary Osagyefo,
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, whose country Ghana attained
sovereignty in 1957.
Tanzanians called Nyerere Nwalimu (Teacher),
for he led a paternalistic life, an exemplary one that taught them to disavow
the corrupting influence of cloying opulence and capitalism. Why should a
leader not identify with the sufferings of his compatriots? Why would a leader
be seen only through the prism of affluence and not through sacrificial service
that should leave him no time to amass wealth or go into so-called business?
Why would public office be a showroom of pomp, pageantry and perquisites? Why
would you be richer after holding public office than before? A true leader
ought to be poorer (lighter) after shedding weight, giving away part of you in
order to serve!
These considerations led Nyerere inexorably to
the conclusion that Africa did
not need the deadly grab-it-all spirit of capitalism and exploitation of man by
fellow man. He came up with Ujamma (familyhood)
socialism, which emphasized what he called “cooperative brotherhood”. Then
came, in 1967, Arusha
Declaration, named after a northern town where Nyerere unveiled the new
deal to party leaders and faithful. The programme, a follow up to Ujamma “called
for a commitment to self-reliance while establishing the leadership code, which
obligated government and party officials to give up all sources of income
for their salaries.”
The enforcement of this law started right in
the president’s household. His wife, Maria, was the head of a woman’s
organisation running a poultry business. She abandoned it immediately, to give
moral armament to this campaign against corruption and rabid love of power and
money. He lived by this declaration he made in Ujamma: “In
acquisitive societies, wealth tends to corrupt those who possess it. It tends
to breed in them a desire to live more comfortably than their fellows, to dress
better and in every way to outdo them.”
On public buildings in Tanzania ,
Nyerere had these slogans inscribed in his war against ostentation, greed and
corruption: Work
is the foundation of progress. A poor country cannot rule itself if it relies
on foreign help. We must run while others walk.
He invested heavily in the education of his
people such that under his rule literacy “rose phenomenally and 83 percent of Tanzania were
able to read and write.” It was also in Nyerere’s time that Swahili became a
recognized national language. He took an unbending stand on the struggle
against apartheid rule in South
Africa and
on the fight for independence in Mozambique , Angola , Zimbabwe and Namibia .
It earned him much global respect.
So what is Nwalimu teaching us as we mark his
posthumous 95th birthday on April 13, 2017? First, African leaders,
as a result of their insatiable greed for power, money and office, are
responsible for their citizens’ poverty, misery and death. Secondly, Africa wouldn’t
need foreign aid if its leaders and elite don’t corner our wealth to feed their
sickening sacerdotal taste. In addition, we should stop blaming Europe for Africa ’s
underdevelopment: it is African leaders and the elites who are under-developing
the continent!
Finally, change in the society does not begin
with the citizen; it begins with my leader.
*Ojewale is a journalist and writer
in Ota, Ogun State .
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