A lasting Nyerere legacy called for his comeback
Dar es Salaam. As an avid student of leadership, I was recently quite intrigued by an analysis of Manchester United Football Club that headlined: “Manchester United pay the price for dismantling Alex Ferguson’s legacy”.
The analysis goes: “In the five years since Alex Ferguson retired, United have gradually become, on the field at least, what many thought they would never be - just another club.
“How has that happened? How have United, unlike their continental peers been unable to maintain continuity as an institution during the inevitable change of managers? The word legacy is over-used and sometimes mis-used in sport, but it is quite literally what was left by Ferguson when he stood down after 27 years, 13 league titles and two Champions League triumphs...”
I couldn’t agree more with the statement that the word “legacy is over-used and sometimes mis-used in sport”. I think actually it is “over-used” in sport and where it is most appropriate - namely the arena of politics, I have for considerable time now found myself interrogating Mwalimu Nyerere’s leadership and by extension his legacy.
Simply going by Mwalimu’s caustic statements of CCM only a couple of years after retirement from office in 1985, a picture emerges of all manner of problems such that a fitting headline back then could read “CCM pay the price for dismantling Mwalimu’s legacy”.
And the “dismantling” was before his own very eyes and to which he painfully stated the wish that at least let them wait for him to die and then undo as they wish to.
To my mind though, it is indeed rather odd that despite Mwalimu achieving monumental things for Tanzania, on the ultimate test of leadership that can define a lasting legacy - namely succession, he fell tragically short.
To illustrate this critical matter, it is worth taking note of a censorious comment made in an interview some five years ago by the late Dr Verdasto Kyaruzi, an eminent Tanzania from the independence era and who was the first permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until quitting on principle.
According to Dr Kyaruzi, “none of the country’s presidents that followed Mwalimu - namely Mwinyi, Mkapa and Kikwete - were people he knew personally but none shared even a quarter of the Father of the Nation’s leadership qualities.”
Bold statement
Such a bold statement coming from a man of long-standing impeccable credentials serves as an eye-opener on just where the rain started to beat us to borrow from the late Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe.
Leadership is simply not a matter anywhere in this world for experimentation or assumption that someone can somehow find a way to cope with its exigencies.
In such circumstances of trial and error, the straight-laced Mwalimu undermined the very house he labouriously strove to build and to which he himself would go on to compare to one that hadn’t been shaken all by a natural disaster.
And following the house of Tanzania shake-up in the Mwinyi era, the cracks were apparent and Mwalimu pointed to five that needed to be sealed lest the edifice giving way!
For the important sake of record, some of the big events that took place between 1990 until 1995 reveal the embarrassing extent to which Mwalimu found himself acting as if he was a headmaster back at Pugu Secondary School where he once taught and was having to go out of his way to ensure the students were on the straight and narrow.
Going off-rails
An indicator of the country going off the rails can be traced to the commanding heights of CCM furtively holding a meeting in Zanzibar that discarded the Arusha Declaration for a so-called Zanzibar Declaration.
Mwalimu condemned the decision and I’d hasten to add that if it were necessary to change the Declaration then why not engage in an open and vibrant discourse at various levels of the party and not that of some people acting as a cabal.
It didn’t take long after that and the nation found itself undergoing a major shift of political system from one-party to multi-party to which Mwalimu himself was so instrumental.
Despite many CCM leaders being in favour of the status quo in private, hardly any of them had the gumption to take a meaningful stand on such an important matter that until today is posing manifold challenges.
It is noteworthy as well that midway through the second term of Mwinyi, some behind the scene attempts were began to amend the constitution in order to allow him to contest for a third term.
Nyerere swiftly thwarted any such moves and made clear that leaders must respect the constitution.
Re-configure the Union
Amid these political developments though, unexpected ingenuity was thrown up on stage in the latter half of 1993 when a group of CCM Union parliamentarians decided to stick their heads above the parapet in what was famously called G55.
The aim being to re-configure the Union political arrangement from a two-tier government that had obtained for many years to a federal government. The reaction of Mwalimu to a matter he felt so strongly on was of high-handedness such that the legislators were, if you like, browbeaten.
To add insult to injury, Mwalimu in a book published in 1994 from Zimbabwe titled, Our Leadership and the Destiny of Tanzania, stated towards the end that: “It was more important for the leaders to want the CCM members to voice the views on our next president rather than on a Tanganyika government of which they were not thinking of.”
Such ridicule was in my considered view over the top but patently Mwalimu had outfoxed the legislators.
I reckon had the MPs had a track record of questioning key areas of CCM policy from time to time, the end result on the Union may have been vastly different. It might even have formed a strong basis for the formation of another political party rather than being a one-off event.
So as the dust settled on the vexed Union matter, so did the country find itself increasingly gripped by disquiet in regard to the question of who would become the third president.
Such indeed was the state of stupor in CCM that Mwalimu was forced to come out incisively on the qualities of the presidential contenders and compel the party to open up its nomination process to any members. Indeed it would have been foolhardy to continue with the one-party methods in a multi-party dispensation.
Evaluate presidential aspirants
In fact, Mwalimu went as far as to urge CCM to ensure that since the party was likely to produce the next president, a mechanism must be in place to ensure that the rank and file members of the party are able to evaluate the presidential aspirants during the shortlisting process instead of the party decision-making bodies engaging in a rushed up process that was tantamount to an ‘ambush’.
The line of defense by some party functionaries was that by reducing the period time they would also save costs. Mwalimu emphatically argued that if they did not believe it is important for the members at large and country to reflect on such a weighty matter, then don’t bring in the cost element.
In the end, Mwalimu’s wish prevailed but not for long as in the 2005 election it was a glaring case of backtracking and come 2015 the situation went from bad to worse.
To all intents and purposes, had Mwalimu not been around in the lead-up to 1995, the trajectory of Tanzania was in all probability an ominous one to start to contemplate. I say this bearing in mind as well the state of the opposition parties then in Tanzania.
Indeed, Mwalimu signed off his aforementioned book on the destiny of Tanzania by stating: “It is possible that the only democracy that will continue to have any meaning in the county whilst we wait for a serious opposition outside CCM, is internal democracy in CCM.
The members of CCM have a responsibility to engage in soul-searching and to see how to enlarge the democratic space. This responsibility is not only to their Party but is a nationalist one for the benefit of the whole nation.”
Well, as things turned out in the end, Mwalimu had his way with his candidate emerging top though paradoxically rumblings of discontent were felt in CCM concerning the process.
One of the more memorable things Mwalimu did was to dramatically threaten to part ways with CCM at the end if a certain name was not excluded from the nomination contest.
At this juncture, when looking back at Mwalimu’s pains in retirement, I am consumed with pity at the brainpower he expended on appealing to the minds of CCM honchos.
I am seriously inclined to believe the man should have read early enough the signs of the party and quit CCM with the clear intention of establishing an alternative political party.
Indeed several reasons came into play - the most fundamental being one that Mwalimu narrated at a press conference in 1995 of a party bigwig who when asked on ‘what the basic policy of their party was, answered it is our secret lest our rivals will eclipse us.’ Mwalimu posed in derision: “Has this secret policy become a rite of passage?”
Competitive scenario
Politics surely in a competitive scenario entails policy platforms that can resonate with the electorate.
Effectively what we were faced with at the time was classic of what someone in a foreign country described as a “poverty of politics”. On this score, I have no doubt in my mind that Mwalimu would have done a sterling job to navigate the country through the nascent waters of pluralism.
It is vitally important to point out that Mwalimu was one of the very few leaders on the continent who believed through and through that a political party must be a vital link between the government and the citizens. In taking the unusual step of resigning as Prime Minister in January 1962, Mwalimu wrote:
“It is also necessary to have a strong political organisation active in every village, which acts like a two-way all weather road, along which the purposes, plans and problems of the government can travel to the people, at the same time as the ideas, desires, and misunderstandings of the people can travel direct to the Government. This is the job of the new Tanu.”
And indeed, to paraphrase Mwalimu in his speech to the youth wing of CCM in Mwanza in 1990 ‘no other party he believes was as successful as CCM in Africa in terms of reaching out to the grassroots.’
In appreciating other qualities that Mwalimu exhibited and in enormous need in 1995, one was aptly encapsulated in a book on the late Sir. George Kahama published in 2010.
It states: “While at Tabora Boys School, George saw Mwalimu J. Nyerere, then teaching at St. Mary’s school. Mwalimu Nyerere often participated in debates at his former school. Sir George remembers him as a brilliant debater who fascinated the boys.”
I believe Mwalimu would have been only too willing to participate in a national debate that would have set the bar extremely high such that in the years to come, other levels of national leadership would have been involved.
Legitimate concerns
On the downside, where for certainty Mwalimu would have found himself facing legitimate concerns in my estimation were in his economic outlook and the Union. In an interview in the journal Africa Forum in 1991, Mwalimu was asked ‘with hindsight, if there are things he would have done differently’?
His answer was: “In the basic things, I would not change a thing. I do not think I would change the Arusha Declaration, with hindsight I would try to implement it differently, possibly in two areas.” These were nationalisation and agriculture.
This was a significant change of heart on his part. On matters Union, Mwalimu was unbending on the two-tier arrangement though to his credit he did call for a coalition government in Zanzibar after the 1995 which points to a realisation of certain realities.
With certainty, one long-standing issue that Mwalimu would have put to bed long ago and in probably the best way possible is the status of the capital city of Dodoma. This was pretty much his idea and therefore a return to power was a sure-fire way to seal it.
International affairs
On international affairs, in a nutshell, Mwalimu would have greatly elevated Tanzania’s standing once again in East Africa and in all likelihood pushed for a region that has minimum standards of governance. Beyond East Africa, Mwalimu would have pushed harder for the integration of Africa as well the reduction of conflicts by working hand in glove with fellow comrades like Mandela. And beyond Africa, just as we saw Mwalimu as the Chairman of the South Commission appear before the CCM NEC to present to them in detail their report, his presidency would have championed their noble work as far as possible.
All told, Mwalimu Nyerere’s lasting legacy, that at its heart was what he wrote when submitting proposals for a Republic on June 28 1962 - namely the National Ethic, demanded simply that Mwalimu make a comeback to power in 1995. As for anyone in any doubt as to the feasibility of staging a comeback, I urge them to follow up the story of one Dr. Mahathir Mohamed in Malaysia who made what was widely reported to be “a stunning comeback” at the grand old age of 92. Although Malaysia’s circumstances compare little to us, there are nonetheless a few lessons to learn.
The writer is a political scientist and acting publicity secretary of the United Democratic Party. Email: [email protected]
