Who is julius nyerere

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Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? Don't have an account? In his heyday as president of Tanzania - which he ruled from to - Julius Nyerere, who has died from leukaemia aged 77, was lion- ised by the liberal left of the world for his impassioned advocacy of his style of African socialism, but mauled by his critics as a priggish autocrat, whose idealism failed to deliver prosperity to his people.

To his credit, Nyerere stepped down peacefully and voluntarily, long before it became fashionable for Africa's self-appointed life presidents to subject themselves to the verdict of their peoples in multi-party elections.

In came Nyerere's Arusha Declaration, his policy on socialism and self-reliance. Its cornerstone was ujamaa, or familyhood, which was imposed on Tanzania in the following years. The aim was to collect people into villages or communes, where they would have better access to education and medical services.

Nearly 10m peasants were moved and a substantial majority were forced to give up their land. But to most Tanzanians, the idea of collective farming was abhorrent. Many found themselves worse off; incentive and productivity declined, and ujamaa was effectively abandoned. It was a measure of Nyerere's international prestige that the failure of this fundamental policy at home in no way dented his global standing. A man of austere and unostentatious personal habits, and instantly recognisable in his Mao tunic, Julius Nyerere was born at Butiama, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, into the small Zanaki tribe.

He was 12 before he first went to school, but was immediately singled out for his lively intelligence by the Roman Catholic priests. After Makerere University, in Kampala, he taught for three years, admitting, later in life, that he was a schoolmaster by choice and a politician by accident. In he became the first Tanzanian to study at a British university, when he went to Edinburgh on a government scholarship.

And it was there, under the influence of post-war Fabian socialists, that he developed his own political ideas of grafting socialism on to African communal existence.

Nyerere left teaching in , formed the Tanganyika African National Union, and campaigned for the nationalist movement. He was elected to the then Tanganyika legislature in , representing East Province, the first time that the country's Africans were enfranchised, and became leader of the opposition. He became chief minister in But it was not until , when he was sworn in as prime minister of the newly-independent Tanganyika that he would be in a position to start putting the ideas into practice.

In the same year, he joined other African leaders in denouncing the racist policies of South Africa and declaring that, if the apartheid regime remained in the Commonwealth, Tanzania would never join. South Africa subsequently withdrew its membership. He broke off relations with Britain, Tanzania's principal aid donor, after its failure to use force when Ian Smith declared UDI in - earning himself the description by Smith of the "evil genius" behind the ensuing guerrilla war.

The unusually principled way in which Nyerere looked upon international politics was again evident in his uncompromising stand against the brutal regime of Idi Amin in Uganda in the late s. Despite almost universal condemnation of the dictator's excesses, it was left to Tanzania to intervene militarily and dislodge Amin. A brief invasion of Tanzania by Amin in late brought a swift reponse from Nyerere: Tanzanian troops, joined by Ugandan exiles, were mobilised to drive back the invaders.

But they didn't stop at the border. On gaining his Certificate, he taught for three years and then went on a government scholarship to study history and political economy for his Master of Arts at the University of Edinburgh he was the first Tanzanian to study at a British university and only the second to gain a university degree outside Africa. In Edinburgh, partly through his encounter with Fabian thinking, Nyerere began to develop his particular vision of connecting socialism with African communal living.

On his return to Tanganyika, Nyerere was forced by the colonial authorities to make a choice between his political activities and his teaching. He was reported as saying that he was a schoolmaster by choice and a politician by accident. Working to bring a number of different nationalist factions into one grouping he achieved this in with the formation of TANU the Tanganyika African National Union.

He became President of the Union a post he held until , entered the Legislative Council in and became chief minister in A year later Tanganyika was granted internal self-government and Nyerere became premier.

Full independence came in December and he was elected President in In this he was helped by the co-operative attitude of the last British governor — Sir Richard Turnbull. In , following a coup in Zanzibar and an attempted coup in Tanganyika itself Nyerere negotiated with the new leaders in Zanzibar and agreed to absorb them into the union government.

The result was the creation of the Republic of Tanzania. As President, Nyerere had to steer a difficult course. Like many others it was suffering from a severe foreign debt burden, a decrease in foreign aid, and a fall in the price of commodities. His solution, the collectivization of agriculture, villigization see Ujamma below and large-scale nationalization was a unique blend of socialism and communal life.

The vision was set out in the Arusha Declaration of reprinted in Nyerere :.