The young Nyerere in the years before he became ‘Baba wa Taifa’

A new biography of Tanzania’ first president, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, is available. Nyerere: The Early Years is the work of a young academic at Edinburgh University, Dr Thomas Molony.

At the book launch in Dar es Salaam recently, a number of Dar-based academics, intellectuals and journalists, as well as members of Nyerere’s family, heard Molony speak of his years of research, which took him to Butiama (Nyerere’s rural home) several times and involved interviewing people who knew Nyerere personally, including his widow, Mama Maria, and son Madaraka.

Fittingly, he opens his “Acknowledgements” with the statement, “This book was written in Edinburgh and Butiama.”

He also examined Nyerere’s personal library, a large collection of books and other documents that, via handwritten notations, occasionally offered clues as to what Mwalimu was thinking as he read the books.

It is clear from the reading of this book that Molony immersed himself body and soul in the most intimate surroundings of his subject’s early life and the socio-cultural influences that formed the future Baba wa Taifa.

The book is not an exhaustive biography of Nyerere, limiting itself deliberately to the first 30 years of the man’s life, that is to say, from his birth in 1922 to the time he graduated from Edinburgh University. It thus does not touch on the heavy political work done by the politician in later years, as Independence campaigner and as African and world statesman.

However, as Molony says, delving into his formative years in the village, at school and in college affords one insights into what could have formed, and informed, Nyerere’s later political agenda and action.

Molony also read extensively earlier biographies of the leader and gave his appreciation of some of them, as he also did with some of Nyerere’s published works.

The book avoids being a hagiography, a song of praise for the great man, and instead interrogates some of the more established traditions regarding a man who, in his later years, came to be regarded with awe by those who came under his influence and charm.

Some of the facts in the book will not surprise those who have studied, or known Nyerere and his family. It is well known that his father had many wives — a fact of life in polygamous African societies — though not many would have suspected the number to be 22.

Not many people either know that a girl, Magori Watiha, had been betrothed to Kambarage, already a young man, when she was three or four years old, and the requisite cows paid as bride price, which in the end would be reimbursed when a new matrimonial relationship was planned with Maria Waningu Gabriel Magige.

The narrative contains a good amount of material relating to Zanaki culture, the origins of the people, sociological organisation and spiritual complexion.

Burito Nyerere, Kambarage’s father was a minor chief and a staunch traditionalist who rejected any attempts to convert to Christianity. His son had to wait till his father’s death before being baptised, though the suggestion is that he had received some training in Catholicism, probably at his primary school in Mwisenge.

Molony recounts the progress of this rural boy, who had to herd goats till he was 12 before going to school. His going to school happened because it was counselled by his father’s friend, Chief Makongoro.

At school he came under the influence of a teacher, James Irenge, one of the people Molony draws on for information.

The teacher, now deceased, gave the recollection of a bright and studious learner who grasped his lessons quite easily and was attracted to books more than anything else. Even in primary school, he would find secluded corners where he could be alone with his books. This trait he took to Tabora Boys, Makerere College and Edinburgh, and kept throughout his life.

The progression from rural goatherd to primary school learner, to Tabora School, Makerere and finally to Edinburgh graduate is examined in ample detail.

Though obviously privileged relative to other Zanaki children, he was born and raised in humble surroundings. With so many people in the household — stepmothers, siblings, and goats and chickens sharing the sparse accommodation — he was brought up to be humble, even though some others who grew up in much the same conditions borrowed attitudes of superiority.

Household chores were something he did even after college, and going home was always an occasion to relink with the village at the level of the village.

From an early age he mastered the art of “Orusoro,” a board game known in Kiswahili as bao, at which he beat his elders, and which he played till his final illness.

At home he conversed in Kizanaki, and was said to be an expert in the language, though his Kiswahili and English skills were matched by few. He remained close to his mother, Mugaya Nyang’ombe, till her death in the 1980s.

Apart from the influences worked on him by his traditional village setting (his father, mother, other relatives and villagers) and the initial inputs of his teachers such as James Irenge and Daniel Kirigini, Nyerere benefited from breaking out into the wider world.

Tabora Boys was considered the Eton of Tanganyika, and there he acquired the art of debating, was a prefect and a Scouts leader (late 1930s).

Makerere put him in touch with students from outside East Africa and marked his maturation into a more intense debater and commentator on political issues beyond the region. Of particular importance were his contacts with students from the Rhodesias and Nyasaland (present-day Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi), whose political struggles he embraced.

It was during his time at Makerere, too, that he got on record with an essay on African Socialism (1943).

Nyerere the teacher

By the time he got to Edinburgh (1949) he had worked as a teacher at St Mary’s Catholic Secondary School and had been in touch with the politics of the Tanganyika African Association (TAA). In addition, he had been close to Fr Richard Walsh, an Irish Catholic missionary and teacher who became an important influence for a long time.

Nyerere’s political inclinations were becoming clearer and his decision to go into politics was forming. His studies of philosophy, politics and economics sharpened his intellect.

The lecturers he interacted with, their courses and the books he read are examined at length, though they may or may not have had the importance suggested in the book in the course that the founder of Ujamaa took in his political career.

There is always the complexity of personal decisions made by leaders at some time or other and the causes those decisions are attributed to. The value of this book is that it suggests a multiplicity of influences, from village life in a very traditional setting to the influence of Catholicism and to the best education the West could offer.

From this mix we get a Zanaki-speaking Rusoro champion and a translator of Shakespeare into Kiswahili, who passed his idle time, till his illness, solving the cryptic crossword puzzles in the London newspapers.

No reductionism is allowed here, and Dr Thomas Molony helps us to broaden and deepen our knowledge.

All these influences are set out in some detail, and the degree to which each contributed to the making of the Father of the Nation must remain largely indeterminate. But they are all important.