"This book presents the first truly rounded portrait of Nyerere's early life, from his birth in 1922 until his graduation from Edinburgh in 1952, helping us to see his later political achievements in a new light. It was after returning to Tanganyika that 'Mwalimu' (the teacher) formally entered politics, and led efforts to deliver Tanganyika to independence."--Publishers website.
This is the first comprehensive biography of Julius Nyerere, a national liberation leader, the first president of Tanzania and an outstanding statesman of Africa and the global south. Written by three prominent Tanzanians, the work spans over 1200 pages in three volumes. It delves into Nyerere's early days among his chiefly family, and the traditions, friends and education that moulded his philosophy and political thought. All these provide the backdrop for his entrance into nationalist politics, the founding of the independence movement and his original experiment with socialism. The work took six years to research and write, involving extensive and wide-ranging interviews with persons from all walks of life in Tanzania and abroad. Among these were several leaders in East and Southern Africa who were based in Dar es salaam during their liberation struggles. The authors also visited several British universities and archives with material related to Nyerere and Tanzania, thus enriching the work with primary sources that not available in Tanzania. The book does not shy away from a critical assessment of Nyerere's life and times. It reveals the philosopher ruler's dilemmas and tensions between freedom and necessity, determinism and voluntarism and, above all, between territorial nationalism and continental Pan-Africanism.
The author, who lived and grew up under Nyerere's leadership, remembers how life was in those days in his home country of Tanganyika, later Tanzania. It is more than just a sentimental journey into the past. It is also an assessment of Nyerere's leadership and policies from the perspective of a former journalist. The author worked as a reporter at Tanzania's leading newspaper, "The Daily News," when Nyerere was president. Included in the book is one of the last interviews Nyerere gave not long before he died in which he reflected on his leadership and even on his student days at Makerere University College in Uganda and at Edinburgh University in Scotland. Also included is an interview with former Ugandan President Milton Obote in which he talked about Nyerere and failure of the East African federation.
With vision, hard-nosed judgment, and biting humor, Julius Nyerere confronted the challenges of nation building in modern Africa. Constructing Tanzania out of a controversial Cold War union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Nyerere emerged as one of independent Africa’s most influential leaders. He pursued his own brand of African socialism, called Ujamaa, with unquestioned integrity, and saw it profoundly influence movements to end white minority rule in Southern Africa. Yet his efforts to build a peaceful nation created a police state, economic crisis, and a war with Idi Amin’s Uganda. Eventually—unlike most of his contemporaries—Nyerere retired voluntarily from power, paving the way for peaceful electoral transitions in Tanzania that continue today. Based on multinational archival research, extensive reading, and interviews with Nyerere’s family and colleagues, as well as some who suffered under his rule, Paul Bjerk provides an incisive and accessible biography of this African leader of global importance. Recognizing Nyerere’s commitment to participatory government and social equality while also confronting his authoritarian turns and policy failures, Bjerk offers a portrait of principled leadership under the difficult circumstances of postcolonial Africa.
Drawing on a wide range of oral and written sources, this book tells the story of Tanzania's socialist experiment: the ujamaa villagization initiative of 1967-75. Inaugurated shortly after independence, ujamaa ('familyhood' in Swahili) both invoked established socialist themes and departed from the existing global repertoire of development policy, seeking to reorganize the Tanzanian countryside into communal villages to achieve national development. Priya Lal investigates how Tanzanian leaders and rural people creatively envisioned ujamaa and documents how villagization unfolded on the ground, without affixing the project to a trajectory of inevitable failure. By forging an empirically rich and conceptually nuanced account of ujamaa, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania restores a sense of possibility and process to the early years of African independence, refines prevailing theories of nation building and development, and expands our understanding of the 1960s and 70s world.
For a great leader like the late Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, a single book is not adequate to capture all his thoughts. Nevertheless, The Nyerere Legacy and Economic Policy Making in Tanzania reflects on some of Nyerere's thoughts on poverty, the productive sector, delivery of social services, the external sector, fiscal issues, the environment, and governance issues, specifically corruption.
President Juliys Kambarge Nyerere was the first President of the United Republic of Tanzania and Founder of the Nation. He came into power through the ballot - a democratic process held in 1961, and remained in power for more than two decades. Mwalimu Nyerere was a gifted and morally upright man. He was a true son of Africa - a Pan-Africanist, a nationalist, charismatic orator, steadfast thinker, diplomat and above all a teacher. He chose to be called simply 'Mwalimu - 'Teacher'. Throughout his term of office he gave hundreds of speeches; some were prepared in advance others given extemporaneously. The Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation (founded by Mwalimu Nyerere himself in 1996) has assembled and put his speeches and writings into books. The Quotations in this book are only those picked from the books in Freedom Series and his University Lectures. They are presented and arranged under the following themes: Philosophy of life, Equality of Man, Colonialism, Tanzania's Revolution, Democracy, Self-reliance, Rural Development, Non-alignment, African Unity, the United Nations, Leadership and Education.
In this text, international figures, such as Father Huddleston and Sir Shridath Ramphal, join with Tanzanian scholars to assess, not without criticism, the influential contributions of Julius Nyerere both within his own country and across the Third World. Part 1 provides an overview of the man and his thought. Part 2 focuses on those areas of policy in which Nyerere took a particular interest. Part 3 concentrates on the major social, economic and political issues that have been central to the unique Tanzanian experience - unique because of the man who shaped the first quarter of a century of independence.
