Dar es Salaam. On Tuesday, October 5, 1999, I published an article in a daily newspaper titled ‘The African’ reproduced below. It was published nine days before Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere passed on. I have decided to ask ‘The Citizen’ to republish the article because, to my mind, it illustrates the enduring deep respect and affection many of us, Tanzanians and other people around the world, had for Mwalimu. I still pray to God to bless and rest Mwalimu’s soul in peace.
Since the time Tanzanians learnt about the chronic cancer that is consuming our beloved Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, our country has been gripped in grief, agony and a feeling of emptiness. Our energies are suddenly sapped, and our strengths are weakened. There looms a strange state of anxiety, bordering on fear. Yet, isn’t death natural—an ultimate consequence that we humans expect and endure? Indeed, Caesar, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, boldly reflects upon this state of mortality when he muses:
