Julius Nyerere: Tanzanian President, Statesman, and Intellectual
Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922–1999) was the East African nation of Tanganyika’s (from 1964: Tanzania) central political figure from the struggle against colonialism in the 1950s, through the attainment of political independence in 1961, and into the late 20th century. After briefly serving as Tanganyika’s first prime minister, he was the country’s first president from 1962 until 1985. From these positions and his thirty-five years as the chairman of the ruling party, Nyerere profoundly shaped Tanzania’s political and societal trajectory. Under the guiding ideology of ujamaa (“familyhood”) African socialism, he set out a vision of society built on egalitarian principles and the mutual obligation of its members toward one another. His commitment to this vision saw Nyerere fight for equal rights under inclusive citizenship irrespective of race, ethnicity, and religion in Tanzania and liberation from colonialism and racist rule in Southern Africa. In 1967, the famous Arusha Declaration reinforced the socialist aspects of ujamaa and resulted in nationalizations, the dramatic curbing of the ability of elites to accumulate wealth, and the reshaping of Tanzania’s rural areas in a massive resettlement campaign—notionally a first step in the building of socialist villages. Nyerere was able to override resistance to these policies through a combination of his personal authority with the public and the political class, the ruling party’s institutional monopoly he instituted in the political arena, and resort to usually mild forms of coercion. Thus imposing his vision of a just society over challenges and against resistance that he perceived as illegitimate or misguided, Nyerere practiced a politics that was often in tension with his professed democratic ideals. Although Nyerere was an authoritarian ruler, his voluntary retirement from political office and his support for the 1992 reintroduction of multi-party politics are indications that personal and institutional power had not become an end unto itself for him and that he was willing to relinquish both when holding on to them no longer seemed imperative or, indeed, effective in securing the larger political purposes he pursued.