This issue has deeper implications.
First, his accuser: Godfrey Mwakikagile's accuser may have automatically assumed that Mwakikagile did not give credit to the Mozambican author Joao Cabrita simply because he did not see Cabrita's name in Mwakikagile's book.
But that's not even the main point. The name is not the critical issue - the critical issue is the source, and naming of the source. Once you have named the source, as Mwakikagile did, you have acknowledged that the information did not come from you. And if the book has chapter notes as Mwakikagile's does, go to the chapter notes to match the citations in the main body of the work you're reading. You go to identify the source.
But the deeper implications I am talking about here have to do with Mwakikagile's work.
There are people in Mozambique who don't like the book he wrote about Nyerere - I know some of them - because of what he wrote about people like Uria Simango (whom Mwakikagile knew in Dar) and about Lazarus Kavandame and the havoc he wreaked in Mozambique when he waged war against Frelimo.
Even Mwakikagile's accuser has gone to great lengths to mention the fact that Mwakikagile was close to Joauquim Chissano, who later became president of Mozambique, and that Mwakikagile also visited Mozambique during the liberation struggle (I don't know who told him that and where he got that from - it does not say in the article in Wikipedia about Mwakikagile or anywhere else I have read about him). His accuser also mentions the fact that Mwakikagile also knows President Mkapa and that even the vice president of South Africa quoted from Mwakikagile's writings.
I can not discern his/her motives for saying all that. But I do know there are elements in Mozambuque who, unto this day, are not happy Frelimo won and assumed power in Mozambique. This hostility is also expressed in other ways including attempts to discredit some people who have written objective accounts about the liberation struggle in Mozambique - accounts which are deemed to be biased towards Frelimo by those who don't like Frelimo, simply because they are positve accounts and do not unnecesarily attack Frelmo. Mwakikagile is one of those people who has been subjected to such criticism.
I know him and I know people, older people than him and me, who know him very well. He has been the subject of malicious campaigns even before because of some misconceptions of who and what he really is. And I am going to name names here to verify what I am saying.
After we finished high school together at Tambaza High School, Godfrey Mwakikagile worked very briefly at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in Dar in 1971 after completing National Service at Bulombora in Bukoba. I used to talk to him quite often in those days in Dar. He did not want to stay at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and wanted to return to the "Daily News" where he had worked before since his high school days when the paper was still owned by Lonrho and was called the "Standard."
The Director of Information and Broadcasting, Abdallah Riyami, refused to let Mwakikagile go and return to the "Daily News." He told Mwakikagile that they needed him there at the Ministry of Information. Mwakikagile tried again and again, to leave, to no avail. So he went to the "Daily News" and told Sammy Mdee, the editor, that Riyami won't let him go and return to the "Daily News."
Sammy Mdee himself failed to get Mwakikagile out of the Ministry of Information and felt he had to do the only thing he could do. He went directly to President Nyerere and told him that Riyami won't release Mwakikagile to return to the 'Daily News." Nyerere told Riyami to let Godfrey Mwakikagile go and let him return to the "Daily News" right away. It was with President Nyerere's intervention that Mwakikagile was able to go back to the "Daily News" where he wanted to work and where he had worked before.
If you don't believe this story, ask Juma Penza and Uli Mwambulukutu and other senior reporters at the "Daily News" in those days including Joseph Mapunda who late became editor of the paper. Without Nyerere's intervention, Mwakikagile would have been stuck at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting where he did not want to work.
After this story circulated in the editorial office at the "Daily News," saying that President Nyerere had helped Godfrey Mwakikagile return to the "Daily News," some of his colleagues on the editorial staff felt vindicated in their belief, erroneous belief, that Godfrey Mwakikagile was "working for the government," a euphemism which means exactly what it means as you all should know. Some were even scared of him and wondered how did this kid, only 19 years old at the time, was able to get a job on the editorial staff of the largest national newspaper in Tanzania, the "Standard," when he was still in high school at Tambaza. All the other reporters were older than he was. He was the youngest. I was with him In Dar. I remember very well. Now, with President Nyerere's intervention which enabled Mwakikagile to go back to the "Daily News," some people really believed that he was one of them - you know who - Usalama Wa Taifa.
That was a ridiculous charge. Mwakikagile vehemently denied the charge. There were also those who didn't believe it, including the late Reginald Mhango. There was another reporter, Marianus Mbunda, who was not sure and tried to verify this by getting really close to Mwakikagile in social settings and other arenas. He was also finally convinced that Mwakikagile was not what some of their colleagues thought he was. But the rumour persisted, nonetheless.
And there are some people even today, here in Dar - I know some of them - and elsewhere who still want to tarnish him reputation. And they relish when they hear stories such as this one that he stole from somebody else's work - in spite of the fact that he cited the source in his book.
One member here, Kichuguu, has mentioned the fact that Godfrey Mwakikagile was close to national leaders in Dar when he was still in Tanzania during Nyerere's leadership. It is true he was close to them, including a number of cabinet members from what I know. Many people knew that. But it had to do with his job as a news reporter more than anything else as far as I know. And the fact that he wrote a highly acclaimed book about Nyerere has fuelled the mis-perception and misconception among some people that he is biased towards Nyerere and did really work for the government in that capacity - you know what!
And in spite of the fact that he does not live in Tanzania, wrote the book after being gone for more than 30 years, and also wrote it when he was in the United States and not in Tanzania where he could have talked to some national leaders about his project, the perception still persists that he wrote such a book because of his position as "a government agent."
I have heard this rubbish even from some of the people I consider to be very intelligent here in Dar but who are just as paranoid. Also, the fact that Dr. Salim and Joseph Butiku read the manuscript of Mwakikagile's book about Nyerere before it was published, as he himself states in his book, did not help, further fuelling rumours of who and what Mwakikagile really is - besides being what he says he is: a simple African, with no power and no influence, as he has always identified himself.
Yet there are people who still dispute that. They believe he is more than what he claims to be - and not just "asimple African."
That's pure rubbish.
People who know Godfrey Mwakikagile and who are very close to him here in Dar and who have connections at the highest levels in the government have vouched for him and still maintain that he never was, never has been, and is not a government agent despite his so-called connection to Nyerere and other people such as Mkapa.
There has also been the accusation that he wanted a high position in the government. That's more rubbish. If he wanted such a position, why did he stay abroad all these years instead of returning to Tanzania? And why did he not return to Tanzania when Mkapa, who sent him to school in the United States and with whom he was in touch after that, became president or when he was minister of foreign affairs among other ministerial posts, if he really wanted a high position in the government? He could have used his ties to Mkapa to seek such a position. But, instead, he stayed away and did not return to Tanzania for reasons discussed earlier under the thread about him, "Where is Godfrey Mwakikagile?" on the Celebrities Forum.
What benefit is he getting from Tanzanian leaders who support Nyerere by living abroad instead of returning to Tanzania? He did not write the book about Nyerere to please them or to please Nyerere's family. I don't even believe he knows the members of Nyerere's family besides Mwalimu Nyerere's eldest son, Andrew, who went to school with us at Tambaza. He wrote it because he wanted to write a book about Nyerere and his leadership as he states in his book, "Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era."
Now comes this ridiculous charge that he stole from somebody else's writings - in spite of the fact that he named the source of the information - unfortunately, a source which did not have the author's name on it; which explains why Mwakikagile did not, and could not, name the author.
Did he have to invent a name and falsely claim that was the name of the author of the pdf file he used after finding it on the Internet?
He did what any other researcher would and could have done in those circumstances. And that is cite the name of the file itself as the source of his/her information. Mwakikagile did that. And it's in the chapter notes on Mozambique.
He is not here at Jamii Forums to defend himself and I doubt he would have been involved in such skirmishes probably besides referring his critics - and, yes, some detractors - to go to the source he has acknowledged and cited. I have sent messages to him indirectly to try and coax him into joining Jamii Forums but I am told he has refused to do so; I don't know for what reason - may be it's a distraction from what he does, writing, I;m not sure.
But there are some people who relish conflict and confusion. Even some of Mwakikagile's relatives and "friends" don't like the fact that he was written some books. Citation of sources by him in his books to prove that he got the information elsewhere mean absolutely nothing to them. I know some of them and I know about a few others.
I don't know if his Mozambican accuser - or whatever he or she is - has ulterior motives when he levelled the charge against him, in spite of the evidence to the contrary in Mwakikagile's book which refutes the accusation. And I don't believe all the Tanzanians who have responded here have anything against him. But there are times when false accusations and unwarranted charges are levelled against innocent people for different reasons. Right here in Tanzania. Dr. Salim's presidential candidacy was ruined that way; coincidentally, a candidacy Godfrey Mwakikagile supported, a fact which has nothing to do with the fact that he knew Salim back in 1972 when he lived in New York and when Salim was our ambassador to the UN.
But it's also true that, as the saying goes, "it comes with the territory." Godfrey Mwakikagile should be used to that. He has, for example, been attacked by black conservatives in the United States for his incisive analysis and criticism of the black conservative phenomenon in that country in his book, "Black Conservatives in The United States." So he knows exactly what it means when people say - "it comes with the territory."
But criticism should be justified.
