Sunday 13 October 2013

Nyerere’s legacy lives on, but not cherished

Emmanuel Rwegasira: The legacy of Mwalimu Nyerere is not cherished by many. 
By Joas Kaijage, The Citizen Correspondent

Posted  Sunday, October 13  2013 at  01:00
In Summary
The great leader was given a fitting burial on October 23 in 199 at Butiama Village where he was born, grew up and retired after a distinguished political career and principled leadership, which both supporters and critics admired and appreciated.


Bukoba. Tomorrow, Tanzanians will commemorate the 14th anniversary of the death of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who died aged 77 at a London hospital of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
The great leader was given a fitting burial on October 23 in 199 at Butiama Village where he was born, grew up and retired after a distinguished political career and principled leadership, which both supporters and critics admired and appreciated.
Emmanuel Rwegasira (82), who witnessed the Mwalimu era and served the nation under him, compares the days of his rule and Tanzania today. Mr Rwegasira granted The Citizen on Sunday an interview recently. Excerpts:
Having been around during Mwalimu Nyerere’s time, what are the things that are happening today in the country that the Father of the Nation would not have allowed to happen or tolerate as a national leader?
From the very beginning, Mwalimu Nyerere identified diseases, ignorance and poverty as the major drawbacks to development. He believed he could achieve the objectives of helping his people in the fight against the three enemies through provision of better education for both the youth and adults.
His ambition saw the inception of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme, the
establishment of secondary schools and teachers training colleges in various parts of the country.
The prime goal was to ensure there was a pool of experts with adequate education to spearhead the country’s development instead of relying on alms from donors. Today’s leaders are relying more on foreign experts instead of producing and making good use of our own experts.
Mwalimu did not allow exploration and exploitation of natural resources like gold, believing that should be done when the country had enough experts with the capacity to ensure these resources were exploited for the benefit of Tanzania. He did not want the natural resources to benefit a few individuals based on their economic classes, race or political status
Rather, he believed that unless local experts were in place, embracing foreign expatriates and technologies could do very little to ensure the natural resources were equitably managed for the benefit of all Tanzanians. Today, the resources are being exploited and Tanzanians getting almost nothing!
Mwalimu was very concerned with the problems and hardships of his people. During his leadership, he insisted that if we wanted to make progress, we had to make sure we elected leaders who were very concerned with people’s interests, not those with inordinate appetite for amassing wealth.
This was the motive behind the inception of the Ujamaa na Kujitegemea (socialism and self reliance) ideology and in fact, Mwalimu saw and considered himself equal with the people he led. His approach in the fight against diseases was basically to encourage preventive rather than curative interventions.
Although Mwalimu believed in provision of education as a means of moulding good leaders and experts for the country’s development, it did not count much for him that the high level of education for someone acquiring a political post would automatically guarantee his quality of leadership.


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