Mapokezi ya Nyerere huko Uingereza

Mapokezi ya Nyerere huko Uingereza

Mzee Mwanakijiji said:
sikusema hivyo; nimesema ni muumini wa misimamo. Kwamba, ikitokea kwa mfano Slaa naye anahakama kambi unafikiri miye nitafanya nini?
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Naam sasa nimekuelewa mkuu. Sasa uko kambi gani maana hiyo ndiyo ishaingiliwa/ishanyewa! Wale wajamaa wenzako wanatafuta mgombea Urais aisee, wewe umri si unatosha?
 
Udadisi said:
i.e. Wewe siyo muumini wa Jemedari Slaa bali ni muumini wa misimamo ya Jemedari Slaa?
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Companero:

Uchaguzi wa mwaka huu upo upande gani? Nimerudi kutoka bongo naona siasa ni vurugu tupu.
 
Zakumi said:
Dogo alinishauri sana nirudi bongo 2005 kwa kauli mbiu ya kasi mpya, mbiu mpya.
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Acha majungu, ile ilikuwa ni 'kejeli (satire)' tu, najua utaenda kuifukua kwenye makavazi (archives) uilete hapa kama ushahidi, tehe tehe!
 
Nyani Ngabu said:
Sishangai sana maana hata Mwanakijiji hiyo mwaka 2005 alimuunga mkono Kikwete.......
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System limeoza. Ni matumaini tu ndio yaliofanya watu wamuunge mkono Kikwete 2005. Na mwaka huu wengine wanaweza kutoa damu kwa ajili ya Lowassa.
 
Udadisi said:
Acha majungu, ile ilikuwa ni 'kejeli (satire)' tu, najua utaenda kuifukua kwenye makavazi (archives) uilete hapa kama ushahidi, tehe tehe!
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That wasn't satire. You were dead serious. lol. Vipi De Soto? bado ana-apply bongo? Nilikuwa bongo nikaona kana kwamba real estate is well over-priced ukilinganisha na per income. Niliziona affordable housing za NSSF (Over 200,000 USD per unit). Je umewahi?
 
Zakumi said:
That wasn't satire. You were dead serious. lol. Vipi De Soto? bado ana-apply bongo? Nilikuwa bongo nikaona kana kwamba real estate is well over-priced ukilinganisha na per income. Niliziona affordable housing za NSSF (Over 200,000 USD per unit). Je umewahi?
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Hamna kitu, mbona sijawahi kuwa mshabiki wa De Soto. Real Estate ya Bongo noma, ni too speculate. Ila Dogo wa NSSF anasifiwa kichizi!
 
Udadisi said:
Hamna kitu, mbona sijawahi kuwa mshabiki wa De Soto. Real Estate ya Bongo noma, ni too speculate. Ila Dogo wa NSSF anasifiwa kichizi!
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Since the government spending is the economic engine there, I am curious what will happen if it decides to implement some sorts of austerity measures. Will the real estate market continue to go up?

Nimeachana na mambo shuleshule, nipo kwenye mabox tu. lol
 
Nyerere's influence as a world leader also had a profound impact on the United Nations where Mwalimu supported Salim Ahmed Salim to be the next UN secretary-general.

African countries supported Salim, as did many others, mainly because of Nyerere's great influence. Salim would not have gone as far as he did in his quest for the UN post had it not been for Nyerere's support; it was also Nyerere who made it possible for Salim to become OAU secretary-general. Nyerere also wanted Salim to be president of Tanzania.

The United States was resolutely opposed to Salim becoming UN secretary-general. David Charles Miller who was the American ambassador to Tanzania from 1981 to 1984 made that clear in an interview years later: Salim was Nyerere's, and Africa's candidate for the job, but the United States refused to endorse him:

"Q: Let's talk about the veto of his candidate. Who was that?

Miller: Salim Salim. That was really very difficult. It was a very difficult and poorly managed situation. As I was going to post (as the new American ambassador to Tanzania), it came time for the African countries to get to nominate for the first time an African candidate to be Secretary General of the UN. They picked Salim Salim, who had been Tanzania's Ambassador to the UN. He had been Zanzibar's first Ambassador to the UN when they were independent. A remarkable man, became an ambassador at the age of 28. He had gone on to become foreign minister of Tanzania and was their nominee to be Secretary General, supported by the African group of countries.

As I was going to post, Secretary of State, Alexander Haig whispered in my ear that, 'oh, by the way, we were going to veto the Salim Salim candidacy.' I knew that that was really going to make my opening weeks, months, or years in Tanzania very difficult.

The veto occurred as I was en route to post. I arrived to present my letters of credence to a head of government whose foreign minister's public career had just gone down in flames before the world. We had just embarrassed the Organization of African Unity that was supporting Salim Salim. In general, we had made a complete diplomatic mess out of an issue where any reasonable diplomatic management would have come up witha different approach. As I went in to present my letters to President Nyerere, I said, 'I hope this is a cordial meeting' because this was literally two or three weeks after this debacle and Nyerere had agreed to withdraw Salim's candidacy. It was just a terrible mess.

Q: Did you see this as the heavy hand of Jean Kirkpatrick?

Miller: It was alleged to be the heavy hand of George Herbert Walker Bush, who was alleged to have become quite annoyed when (Mainland) China finally gained admission to the UN General Assembly.

Salim Salim was alleged to have danced in the aisles - and it certainly looked like that in the photographic records of the event. Salim ultimately said he really didn't mean to dance in the aisles. He was going up and down shaking hands with the delegates who had supported the admission of China.

Those who have reviewed the video tape say he was dancing. Those of us who know Africans well thought he was engaging in a 'victory walk...' going up and down the aisle shaking hands. It probably looked like a dance to the average Caucasian. To the average African, it probably looked like an exuberant walk. That said, there was no instant replay and George Herbert Walker Bush did not like Salim Salim and that was the end of it.

That was the first time I came to understand what a fine man Nyerere was. I was young. I was inexperienced and could have easily spent a miserable time in Tanzania and been knocked off base by Nyerere. In the presentation of credentials we had a wonderful, long conversation about a ton of interesting issues, quite a substantive conversation which was out of character for the initial meeting.

He obviously knew that I liked Africa a lot and we had a wonderful time. He did not bring up the Salim nomination nor did I. I left his office that day unscathed.

But about three days later, a call came in requesting me to come out to his beach residence and see him in the library, which is where he had all serious conversations. I looked at my DCM, David Fischer, and said, 'Gosh, isn't this great? I'm getting to go out to Nyerere's home and chat in the library.' David said, 'I'm willing to bet you a year's pay that what you're going to hear about is Salim Salim.' Of course, I did.

Nyerere's take on it was that it had been horribly managed by the United States. He said, 'Here we had an African candidate we all liked. If you had in any way signaled to us that Salim would not be acceptable, we would have found another candidate. We desperately wanted to have an African running the General Assembly.' As it turned out that time, an African was not picked. We did not have a black African until we had Kofi Annan today.

Boutros Ghali qualifies as an outstanding Egyptian. Kofi Annan has proved to be a tremendous Secretary General.

There is an argument that Salim Salim would have proved to be a very effective Secretary General, but that was not to be. Nyerere was very upset that he had been embarrassed, that Salim had been embarrassed, that the OAU had been embarrassed needlessly by the incompetent diplomatic management of this account by the United States. I heard that in no uncertain terms.

It's not that Julius was ever rude. Julius would not have been rude to somebody with a gun at his head. But you knew that among gentlemen, Julius was upset. And yet once that was done, that was it. This issue never stood between our friendship.

The performance by Salim Salim was equally remarkable when he returned as Foreign Minister. I figured that perhaps he wouldn't be as gracious as Nyerere had been. It turned out that he was. He said that he knew clearly that I had not been involved in arguing for a veto of his candidacy, that he looked forward to working with me, and that he learned as a young man that public life was like this, that he thought he would have made a good Secretary General but it was not to be. Very much like Julius, he set about to help me, which I thought was fascinating.

You have to remember what I looked like. I was 39. I had no previous diplomatic experience. I could have either been a terrible failure and embarrassed my country and myself or I could have been helpful to the people I was working with. For example, Salim Salim said to me, 'You know, David, that you can hand write me a note and that's not viewed as an official transmission. If you wish to communicate with me on some issues that are troublesome but you don't want to come down and leave me with a typed message, feel free to write me a handwritten note and neither one of us will treat that as an official communication. Furthermore, my home is not far from here. Given the importance of the U.S., if you need to see me at home and you don't want people here to know, I'll have you and Mollie over to dinner very quickly. I want you to know my wife. If you need to see me, come knock on the door at home and tell them you want to come see me.'

We developed a great relationship.

Another example involved the air conditioner in his office. The air conditioner in his office didn't work...and it was made by an American manufacturer. We had similar air conditioners in the mission. I said, 'You know, Sir, I can fix your air conditioner.' Hesaid, 'Yes, and it would probably broadcast all the way to Zanzibar. 'I said, 'Well, you'd have to take it apart to find the transmitter.' He said, 'Yes, but it's so hot in here I'm going to take the chance.'

So, we got along fine. We laughed about everything in the world. Of course, he went on to head the OAU. I've seen him recently in meetings. We get along great.

Q: Speaking of this, I've talked to other people who served as ambassadors to Tanzania and Nyerere would consult with the Americans.They would have this relationship. Since Nyerere was off on almost a different track on the socialist non-aligned, why was he giving so much time to the Americans?

Miller: He wanted us to represent him effectively in Washington, which we all did. He had a position on the world that's like Pat Moynihan...he was first and foremost an intellectual and an ideologue.

Pat was accidentally a senator, a White House staffer, a professor at Harvard. Pat could have sat in a cornfield in Iowa and talked to people about the world and it would have been wonderful.

Julius Nyerere was an intellect. He wanted to talk to people about his ideas and what worked and didn't work. The American ambassador was somebody that could act as an amplifier for his views and a contributor to new ideas. So, as somebody said to me when I had not gotten to post, I was, of course, worried about getting along with the president of Tanzania, they said, 'Are you kidding? Nyerere will find some way to relate to you. He finds a way to relate to everybody. He loves talking to American ambassadors.' That proved to be the case. And he did it because it was fun. He wanted us to know that he thought in the long run his system was going to be okay.'" - (An interview with David Charles Miller in Godfrey Mwakikagile, Why Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form Tanzania, pp. 448 - 452).

With regard to Salim Ahmed Salim, Nyerere's choice as his successor, it is very much possible that Mwalimu probably underestimated Salim's political enemies and their intrigues both on the mainland and in Zanzibar, not just in Zanzibar, to undermine Salim and ruin his quest for the presidency.

And here is another perspective on Nyerere:

"Nyerere Resignation to End 23-Year Era in East Africa"

Glenn Frankel, The Washington Post, 9 December 1984

After 23 years in office, Africa's senior statesman and one of the Third World's most eloquent spokesmen is planning to step down.

Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, 63, says he will retire from office next year, becoming one of the few rulers in the short history of independent black Africa to relinquish his post voluntarily.

He does not intend to depart quietly. Last month Nyerere accepted the chairmanship of the Organization of African Unity with a blistering attack on U.S. policy toward white-ruled South Africa, and he later urged African nations to withhold payments on their debts to force western governments and financial institutions to negotiate reforms in the international economic order.

The statements were vintage Nyerere, a leader who has forged a reputation as Africa's most vocal critic of the economic inequality between the First World and the Third. He is also a man of irrepressible intellect and consummate charm who manages to impress even those western diplomats who find his foreign policies unpalatable and his socialist domestic policies unworkable.

"He is a humane, decent person with an extraordinary mind and considerable charm," said a senior western diplomat here, "but he clings to notions that are wrong."

Nyerere first announced his retirement plans early this year in a meeting of the executive committee of his Revolutionary Party. Despite pleas from loyalists to stay on, he has reiterated his intention several times since, most recently in an interview last month with the Egyptian weekly El Mussawar. He said that despite "a lot of pressure," he believed he had done "all that I can do to help my country." He said Tanzania needed new leadership to deal with its "new problems." A top Nyerere aide added in an interview that the president believes a peaceful transition of leadership would be an important achievement of political maturity that he would regard as a significant accomplishment.

If he retires as scheduled, Nyerere will leave behind a tangled and uncertain legacy. Nyerere's Tanzania has been both Africa's leader in the struggle for social equity and one of its most conspicuous economic failures. Nyerere has been sub-Saharan Africa's leading socialist visionary and a chief executive who has presided over his own country's slow but steady financial collapse.

Statistics illustrate both his triumph and shortcomings. Tanzania boasts black Africa's highest adult literacy rate -- 70 percent -- thanks to his unswerving commitment to public education. Average life expectancy has increased by 10 years during the last generation through improvements in health care and clean water supplies. At the same time, however, per capita food production has declined 12 percent in the last decade; food imports are rising while exports have fallen steadily and Tanzania is $2.6 billion in debt.

Nyerere claims to revere grass-roots democracy, yet he imposed a centralized economic system and a stifling bureaucracy on a nation of 20 million peasants who appear to have little use for either. He is famous for the learned treatises he has written on underdevelopment and for periodic bursts of self-criticism. Yet knowledgeable Tanzanians say he generally has surrounded himself with aides who echo his own thoughts.

While a scrupulous defender of the rights of refugees, last year he engineered a swap of political fugitives with neighboring Kenya that U.N. refugee officials have termed a violation of international law.

Above all, there is a strong streak of paternalism in the mwalimu -- Swahili for teacher, the honorific Nyerere chose for himself when he became president.

When peasants balked at moving to collectivized villages in the early 1970s, they were forced to relocate, and the result was agricultural disaster. When they refused to grow crops for the legal marketplace because prices were too low, laws were passed forcing each village to produce a certain amount, but the laws proved unenforceable. Nyerere has conceded that his policies raised peasant expectations beyond the government's ability to fulfill them.

There are other, less ambiguous achievements, however. By stressing national institutions and a nationwide public school system, by eschewing favoritism in dealing with Tanzania's 100-plus tribes, and by imposing Swahili as a national language, Nyerere has helped construct one of Africa's rarest entities: a true nation.

By stressing socialist equality, he has given his country a sense of mission, and by invading neighboring Uganda and overthrowing dictator Idi Amin in 1979, he has given Tanzania an epochal moment of moral triumph that may be enshrined in African history as the defeat of Hitler is cherished in Europe.

"For all its problems, this is a remarkably stable country, with dignified, intelligent people, a high degree of religious and ethnic tolerance and many of the attributes of nationhood," said a western diplomat here.

Nyerere has blamed most of Tanzania's economic woes on outside forces beyond his control. Alternate years of droughts and crippling floods, the 1977 collapse of the East African Community, forcing the country into expensive capital investments for railways and power lines, and the $500 million price tag for the war against Amin are all cited as major contributors to Tanzania's plight.

Most of all, Nyerere sees inequities in a world trade system in which the exportable commodities of poor nations such as Tanzania have steadily lost value during the past decade while oil, and vital imports from the industrial West, have increased sharply.

In 1972, Tanzania spent 5 percent of its foreign exchange earnings on imported oil. Last year it spent nearly 60 percent, even though it has cut oil consumption by nearly one-third.

"It is as if we had been robbed," Nyerere has said. "To buy a seven-ton truck in 1981, we had to produce and sell abroad about four times as much cotton, or three times as much cashew, or three times as much coffee, or 10 times as much tobacco as we had to produce and sell in 1976."

He has also said, "It is true internationally that the rich are rich because the poor are poor. The inevitable oversimplification of that statement does not invalidate it."

Nyerere's supporters dismiss the idea that his socialist policies have contributed to Tanzania's problems, pointing out that capitalist countries such as Kenya and the Ivory Coast also are suffering from extreme economic shocks.

"Other countries don't have our policies and they are suffering too," said a top presidential aide.

In a recent interview with South, a London-based monthly magazine, Nyerere conceded he had made "two major mistakes" in the 1970s: abolishing local governments and disbanding local agricultural cooperative unions in favor of large, state-controlled corporations.

"We were impatient and ignorant," he said. "We had these two useful instruments of participation and we got rid of them. . . . The real price we paid was in the acquisition of a top-heavy bureaucracy. We ended up with a huge machine that we cannot operate efficiently."

Nonetheless, many analysts contend that Nyerere is not prepared to dismantle most of the socialist apparatus he personally constructed in Tanzania. They predict that there may be a showdown soon between him and his supporters and a younger generation of pragmatists who are seeking drastic cutbacks to halt the country's decline.

"The president has always tried to maintain a coalition of pragmatists and dreamers," said the Nyerere aide. "He's always tried to combine the two, but he is still very committed to his dream. It's probably true that the balance has shifted for the moment toward the pragmatists, but only a bit."

The aide said Nyerere is determined to honor his promise to retire when his present five-year term expires next year, although he is expected to retain his position as chairman of Tanzania's sole legal political party, the Revolutionary Party, until 1987. But others predict that there will be intense pressure on him to remain, especially from top bureaucrats who fear that their influence and their jobs may be at risk once he leaves.

Nyerere's relations with the United States, which improved dramatically during the Carter administration, have deteriorated under President Reagan. Nyerere has been harshly critical of U.S. support for South Africa and has accused the Reagan administration of encouraging South African aggression against its black-ruled neighbors.

Some of his top aides say that they believe that the United States is encouraging the International Monetary Fund to coerce Tanzania into politically risky austerity measures and that the Americans are quietly gloating over the failure of Nyerere's socialist experiment.

American diplomats have insisted that such views are mistaken, but the United States has halted further foreign aid expenditures in Tanzania because the Tanzanians have been tardy in paying an $8 million debt.

Last April Nyerere's heir apparent, prime minister Edward Sokoine, was killed in an automobile accident. In many African states, the loss of such a national figure might create an unfillable void. But there were several credible candidates to succeed Sokoine.

The man Nyerere chose, former foreign minister Salim Ahmed Salim, a veteran diplomat of international stature, is now attempting to build a base of political support inside Tanzania. He has trod a careful path so far, refusing to commit himself publicly or privately, according to close aides, on the country's future economic direction for fear of alienating popular support or -- perhaps more important -- Nyerere himself.

"Julius has been in charge for too long, but people love him and they don't want to embarrass him," said a senior diplomat. "Salim's trick will be to allow Nyerere to maintain his image as the George Washington of Tanzania while gently rotating the economy from under him."
 
Ni dhahiri kwamba mapokezi ya Mwalimu Nyerere Uingereza yanaonyesha jinsi alivyokuwa anaheshimiwa sana hata nje ya bara letu la Afrika. Hakuwa kiongozi wa kawaida. Nimefanya makusudi kuwanukuu watu mbali mbali – viongozi na wengine - ambao hawakukubaliana na Nyerere katika masuala mengi badala ya wale ambao walikubaliana naye kuonyesha kwamba hata wapinzani wake walikuwa wanamheshimu sana. Ningewanukuu wengi waliokubaliana naye, kuna watu ambao wangesema wanampendelea wanapomsifu.

Ni muhimu pia kujua Nyerere alikuwa na vision gani ya bara letu: liwe la aina gani na lielekee wapi. Lakini hakuwa peke yake kuwa na fikra hizo miongoni mwa viongozi wa bara la Afrika. Kiongozi mwingine aliyejulikana sana kuhusu suala hilo ni Nkrumah.

Licha ya Nyerere na Nkrumah, kulikuwa na kiongozi mwingine ambaye anatajwa nyakati mbali mbali kuwa ni mmoja wa viongozi wa Kiafrika ambao walikuwa na vision ya bara letu liwe bara la aina gani na liwe na identity gani katika jumuia ya kimataifa. Kiongozi huyo ni Leopold Sedar Senghor.

Lakini miongoni mwa viongozi wote wa Kiafrika wanao heshimiwa sana, ni Nyerere ambaye alikuwa na imani sana na uwezo wetu kuimairisha na kuendeleza utamaduni na identity yetu ya Kiafrika kama alivyothibitisha na uwezo wake kueleza philosophically kuwa kuna hata kitu ambacho ni African socialism. Alisisitiza sana utu na Uafrika wetu.

Nkrumah alikuwa ni tofauti ingawa naye anatajwa, pamoja na Nyerere na Senghor, kuwa ni kiongozi aliyetaka kutekeleza sera za African socialism. Ukweli ni kwamba Nkrumah alikuwa ni Marxist-Leninist. Lakini alisisitiza zaidi u-Marxist wake. Professor Ali Mazrui aliandika na kueleza kwamba Nkrumah alikuwa ni Leninist Czar.

Mazrui stated the following in his article, "Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar," in Transition, a scholarly magazine published in Kampala in the sixties, founded and edited by Rajat Neogy when Mazrui was a professor of political science at Makerere:

"Kwame Nkrumah's first important publication twenty years ago was inspired by Lenin's theory of imperialism. The publication came to be entitled Towards Colonial Freedom. Nkrumah's last publication in office is his new book, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. That too owes its doctrinal inspiration to Lenin's theory of imperialism.

There is little doubt that, quite consciously, Nkrumah saw himself as an African Lenin. He wanted to go down in history as a major political theorist – and he wanted a particular stream of thought to bear his own name. Hence the term 'Nkrumahism' – a name for an ideology that he hoped would assume the same historic and revolutionary status as 'Leninism.' The fountainhead of both Nkrumahism and Leninism was to remain Marxism – but these two streams that flowed from Marx were to have a historic significance in their own right.

Like Lenin, Nkrumah created 'the Circle' – a group of friends to discuss ideas and formulate theories of revolution. Like Lenin, Nkrumah encouraged the emergence of a Marxist newspaper called Spark. It is true that The Spark in Ghana came to be more purist in its Marxism than Nkrumah himself. Nevertheless, the idea of such a newspaper was directly inspired by Iskra (Spark), the Marxist paper which was founded in 1901 through Lenin's initiative.

But while Nkrumah strove to be Africa's Lenin, he also sought to become Ghana's Czar. Nor is Nkrumah's Czarism necessarily 'the worse side' of his personality and behaviour. On the contrary, his Czarism could – in moderation – have mitigated some of the harshness of his Leninism. It is even arguable that a Leninist Czar was what a country like Ghana needed for a while.

Nkrumah's tragedy was a tragedy of excess, rather than of contradiction. He tried to be too much of a revolutionary monarch." - (Ali A. Mazrui, "Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar," Transition, Kampala, Uganda, 1966, p. 26).

Nkrumah also tried very hard to be acknowledged as a top-notch intellectual and as a philosopher instead of waiting to be accorded such status. Hence his claim to Nkrumahism that would immortalise him as one of the world's great political thinkers; unfortunately, he was not. He tried to study for a doctorate in philosophy at the University of London but dropped out. His supervisor in the doctoral programme said Nkrumah was not really a philosopher and did not have an analytical mind.

He was just an average intellectual but very passionate, charismatic, dynamic, militant, daring, and outspoken on African and international affairs; attributes which, together with his forceful personality and oratorical skills, thrust him into the international spotlight and kept him there throughout his political career.

Nkrumah's Pan-Africanist mentor, C.L.R. James, in a letter he wrote to George Padmore in 1945 to introduce Nkrumah when Nkrumah moved to London where Padmore was living, bluntly stated: "He is not very bright." But he asked Padmore to help "this young man (who) is coming to you" because he "is determined to throw the Europeans out of Africa." That is exactly what Nkrumah went on to do when he returned to the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1947 after staying in London for about 2 years. He left the United States in May 1945 where he first went in 1935 to study at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. As he stated in his autobiography about the ambition he had when he was still a student in the United States: "My first duty is to return to Africa and join in the struggle for its liberation from the tentacles of colonialism."

He was deeply committed to the liberation of Africa and was continentalist in outlook even when he led the struggle for independence in his home country. When the Gold Coast won independence on 6 March 1957 and became Ghana, he declared:

"The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa."

C.L.R. James and George Padmore were childhood friends in Trinidad (as Kenneth Kaunda and Simon Kapwewe were, in Chinsali, in the Northern Province, Northern Rhodesia). Both became giants in the Pan-African movement and enduring symbols of Pan-Africanism. C.L.R. James also taught Eric Williams in secondary school in Trinidad. Eric Williams became the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago after the island nation won independence from Britain in 1962.

C.L.R. James also wrote the following about Nkrumah:

"He used to talk a lot about imperialism and Leninism and export capital, and he used to talk a lot of nonsense." - (C.L. R. James, in Tony Martin, The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond, Dover, Massachusetts, USA: The Majority Press, 1983, p. 168. See also C.L. R. James, "Document: C.L.R. James on the Origins," Radical America, Vol. II, No. 4, July – August 1968, p. 26, cited by Tony Martin, "C.L.R. James and The Race/Class Question," p. 185).

He said basically the same thing about Jomo Kenyatta. In a lecture as late as 1973, C.L. R. James said the following about Kenyatta:

"At the time (in the 1940s), and even today, he was not very bright."

He also provided the context in which he made those remarks. In his lecture, "Reflections on Pan-Africanism," on 20 November 1973, in which he also talked about Kenyatta, C.L.R. James said the following about Nkrumah:

"Padmore decided to hold a conference in Manchester. He invited them all up and they came. By himself he could never have had that conference (the Fifth Pan-African Congress in 1945)....a very famous conference. At that conference there was Kenyatta, there was Nkrumah, and there was laid down at this conference the policy which Nkrumah carried out afterward in the Gold Coast.

Now I have to tell you how Nkrumah got in touch with Padmore and how that organization came to have these two men together. I was in the United States in 1941 and a member of my political organization came to me and told me:

'There is a young African here and he says he would like to see you.' I said, “Well, why should he say he would like to see me?' 'Well, I told him about you and he has read your book and I told him I could take him to see you and he said his name is Francis Nkrumah.'

So Nkrumah turned up, very neat, very graceful, very assured, he always has been, and we got together and we got to be friendly. And he spent two years with us. We used to go down to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (where Nkrumah was a student), he would come up to New York and spend some time with us. We were very close until in 1943 (1945) he said he was going to England to study law and I wrote a letter, a letter that is famous in our annals.

I said, “Dear George, there is a young African coming to England to study law. He is not very bright, but nevertheless he is determined to throw the imperialists out of Africa. Do what you can for him.'

George met him at Waterloo station and there began that combination. Now, why did I say that he was not very bright? Nkrumah used to talk about surplus value, capital instead of commodities. He had picked up these from some superficial quarters. He did not understand them really. About two years afterwards I saw Nkrumah and had read an article that he had written on Imperialism. He had learned from Padmore’s extensive library and all sorts of papers and clippings. It was fully organized particularly in regard to the colonial policies of the African powers.

And Nkrumah was able to learn and was educated a great deal by Padmore. In addition to that, Nkrumah brought much creative energy and knowledge of Africa and instinctive political development which fortified Padmore and the two of them became a tremendous power together in the movement." - (C.L. R. James, "Reflections on Pan-Africanism," 20 November 1973, C.L. R. James Archive).

Nkrumah was not an original thinker, with an analytical mind like Nyerere and Senghor, although he obviously wanted people to think he was one. Nyerere never claimed such distinction even implicitly. It was the people, including his critics, who acknowledged his intellectual power. In fact, he made exactly the same point in a speech at a conference at Diamond Jubilee Hall in Dar es Salaam - the audience included foreign delegates - in 1970 in which he said don't tell people you are intelligent, or even imply you are; let other people say you are.

Even some of Nyerere's critics who also admired him because of his astonishing intelligence, high ethical standards, and commitment to African liberation and independence, said he surpassed Senghor in terms of intellectual capacity. As Jonathan Power, a British conservative, stated – when he wrote about Nyerere's high intellectual calibre – in his article, "Lament for Independent Africa's Greatest Leader":

"Measured against most of his peers, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, he towered above them. On the intellectual plane only the rather remote president of Senegal, the great poet and author of Negritude, Leopold Senghor, came close to him." – Jonathan Power, TFF Jonathan Power Columns, "Lament for Independent Africa's Greatest Leader," London, 6 October 1999).

British journalist Trevor Grundy, another critic of Mwalimu Nyerere who once worked in Tanzania for a number of years, wrote the following about Nyerere's intellectual capacity:

"He went on to use his Edinburgh years to great advantage, bewildering - some might say bamboozling - liberal-minded journalists in the 1960s and 1970s with his formidable intellect....He had a blotting paper brain. Hardly a soul at Edinburgh guessed he would turn into Africa's number one brain box in years to come....Statesmen and journalists were amazed at his knowledge....The Rhodesian leader Ian Smith several times referred to Nyerere as Africa's 'evil genius.'"

Professor Mazrui, who said Nyerere was the most intellectual African leader, also stated the following in an interview with The Gambia Echo, 25 July 2008:

"The fact that Nkrumah had a greater positive impact on me than has any other leader does not necessarily mean that I admire Nkrumah the most. Intellectually, I admired Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania higher than most politicians anywhere in the world. Nyerere and I also met more often over the years from 1967 to 1997 approximately."

Among African leaders, Nyerere was in a class by himself as a formidable intellectual, unlike Nkrumah.

There are also questions about the authorship of some of Nkrumah's works. The renowned Ghanaian philosopher, Dr. Willie Abraham who wrote The Mind of Africa, a highly acclaimed philosophical text, helped Nkrumah write some of his books, including Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution which was first published in April 1964, about two years before Nkrumah was overthrown in February 1966. In fact, he is the one who wrote the book. When the book first came out, there were whispers, right away, saying Dr. Willie Abraham was the one who wrote it; only to be confirmed later that he was indeed the one who did.

At the book's launch in Accra, Ghana, on 2 April 1964, and in Nkrumah's presence, Dr. Willie Abraham said among other things:

"Kwame Nkrumah has spoken time and again of the un-flowering of the African genius in conditions of independence. In this unflowering, he is himself making a contribution that is already astonishing. He has already proved himself a strategist, a thinker, and a statesman. Now, by his book Consciencism, he establishes himself firmly as a philosopher....In Consciencism, he has at length presented us with the matrix and theoretical sanction of his practice.

Consciencism opens with a discussion of philosophy. The author admits that it is possible to look at philosophy in diverse ways, but singles out two ways of treating it for extended development. The first which occupies the first chapter of the book is called by him the academic treatment. This, he says, arises from an attitude to philosophy as if there were 'nothing to them but statements standing in logical relation to one another.'

What this means is that the conclusions and the purpose of philosophical utterance are in this treatment made of less significance than the logical connections between the sentences. A whole philosophy can through being treated like this be made to hang in thin air having no connection with anything concrete or consequential. Philosophy thus becomes a kind of parlour-game, a mere intellectual jousting.

To develop philosophy like this, Kwame Nkrumah could have used the plain historical method, moving from philosopher to philosopher. This would have been excessively laborious, repetitious and without much profit. His method was instead to identify the basic questions of philosophy, and to follow these questions through the characteristic treatment given to them by academic philosophy.

These questions are identified by Kwame Nkrumah as the question 'what there is' and the question how 'what there is' might be explained. If these are the basic questions of philosophy, then the answers to them must already determine the character of the entire philosophy of man. When such a claim is made, it is naturally needful to substantiate it. The claim gains substantiation in both the first and the fourth chapters; but especially in the fourth chapter where the author painstakingly shows how step by step his own answers to the two questions determine his ethical, political, and epistemological position.

Still developing the academic treatment, Kwame Nkrumah divides answers to the first question according to their treatment of matter. Those which accord to matter an absolute and independent existence, he groups together as materialism. And with this group he contrasts idealism.

Always going to the root of the matter, he avoids for the time being a headlong engagement with idealism, until he has identified its sources. These he finds in solipsism and in a theory of perception. He distinguishes two stages of solipsism, complete and incipient. I quote part of his discussion of complete solipsism:

'In complete solipsism the individual is identified with the universe. The universe comes to consist of the individual and his experience. And when we seek to inquire a little of what this gigantic individual who fills the universe is compounded, we are confronted with diverse degrees of incoherence. In solipsism, the individual starts from a depressing scepticism about the existence of other people and other things. While in the grip of this pessimism, he pleasantly ignores the fact that his own body is part of that external world, that he sees and touches his own body in exactly the same sense that he sees and touches any other body. If other bodies are only portions of the individual’s experience, then by the same magic he must disincarnate himself. In this way, the individual’s role as the centre of solipsism begins to wobble seriously, he is no longer the peg on which the universe hangs, the hub around which it revolves. Solipsism begins to shed its focal point for the universe. The individual begins to coalesce with his own experience. The individual as a subject, the sufferer and enjoyer of experience, melts away, and we are left with unattached experience.'

This passage is one of many which illustrate the author’s succinctness of expression and vividness of thought. It is from this combination added to the accuracy of exposition and cogency of argument that consciencism derives its power.

Incipient solipsism is illustrated from the philosophy of Descartes. Kwame Nkrumah argues that when Descartes proposes to doubt everything that could be known through the senses or through reasoning, because both avenues of knowledge are full of pit-falls, and decides that he who is busy doubting things must exist in order to doubt, and therefore claims to exist, he claims too much. And now I quote:

'Though Descartes is entitled to say: Cogito, ergo sum – 'I think therefore I exist' – he would clearly be understanding too much if he understood from this that some object existed, let alone Monsieur Descartes existed. All that is indubitable in the first section of Descartes' statement is that there is thinking. The first person is in that statement no more than the subject of a verb, with no more connotation of an object than there is in the anticipatory 'it' of the sentence 'It is raining.' The pronoun in this sentence is a mere subject of a sentence, and does not refer to any object or group of objects which is raining. 'It' in that sentence does not stand for anything. It is a quack pronoun.

And so once again we have unattached experience, thinking without an object which thinks.

And as the subject is merely grammatical, it cannot serve as a genuine principle of collection of thoughts which will mark one batch of thoughts as belonging to one person rather than another…'

Discussing the other source of solipsism, Kwame Nkrumah writes:

'It is more normal to found idealism upon some theory of perception. Here, the idealist holds that we only know of the external world through perception; and if matter be held to be constitutive of the external world, then we only know of matter through perception. Quite gratuitously, the conclusion is drawn that matter owes its existence to perception. Granted that perception is a function of the mind or spirit, matter ends up depending on spirit for its existence.'

The author goes on to point out that the conception of perception involved is one which takes place by agency of our senses. And as our bodies are themselves parts of the external world, if body, being matter, exists only through perceptual knowledge, 'it could not at the same time be the means to that knowledge; it could not be the avenue to perception'....

Kwame Nkrumah does not content himself with attacking idealism at its roots. He also seeks to establish that idealism is jejune; that it cannot explain anything, and that it is incompatible with science and the existence of ordinary things like apples and oranges. His reason is that the idealists dismantle the world, and find that they cannot put it together again....

There are two aspects of the philosophical materialism of Consciencism. In its first aspect, it is a combative theory, seeking to destroy philosophical idealism to which it stands opposed. In its second aspect, it is ampliative. It seeks to give a general philosophical account of the world in exactly the same way as idealism is ampliative. Hence Consciencism not merely denies the theses of idealism: it substitutes for them its own theses.

Consciencism describes idealism variously as 'intoxicated speculation' and 'the ecstasy of intellectualism.'

In contrast, materialism is sober philosophy. The initial theses of materialism, according to Consciencism, are first the absolute and independent existence of matter; and second the assertion of the capacity of matter for spontaneous self-motion. And yet Consciencism criticises materialism"....

Dr. Willie Abraham was talking about himself, and about his own book, not about Nkrumah and Nkrumah's book. Excerpts from Consciencism make that clear. Those who knew Nkrumah well knew, right away, that was not even his language and reasoning. He was not known for such philosophical profundity like Dr. Willie Abraham. That was not even his writing style. There is a big difference between the excerpts above – from the book, Consciencism - and Nkrumah's own writings in terms of style, substance, and reasoning.

If Nkrumah had a reputation for such intellectual depth, he definitely would have been able to formulate his own philosophy and ideology, based on his own original ideas, instead of relying on Marxism-Leninism as the basis for Nkrumahism – which was no more than an African name for scientific socialism, the intellectual product of Karl Marx more than anybody else – in a futile attempt to indiginise or Africanise Marxism.

Simply known as the mighty Abraham in some circles because of his formidable intellect, Dr. Willie Abraham was very close to Nkrumah and was the intellectual force behind a philosophy club founded by Nkrumah. He was also the club's leading philosophical theorist. In fact, he was Nkrumah's court philosopher and was brutalised by the new military rulers after Nkrumah was overthrown. Born in May 1934, he was almost 32 years old when Nkrumah was ousted and was vice chancellor of the University of Ghana during that time.

In the theoretical realm, Nkrumah's writings are a repetition of Marxist arguments and analysis so common among Marxists despite his attempt to formulate his own philosophy which would be distinctly his and reflective of African realities and relevant to African conditions. He was not an intellectual lightweight. But he lacked theoretical insights which would have enabled him to formulate and develop such a philosophy.

Even after years of refinement by its adherents – Kwame Ture being foremost among them - and their attempts to define it, Nkrumahism remains a nebulous concept. What is Nkrumahism? What is its essence? What are its underlying principles and essential elements as an original philosophy and ideology? Even those who profess to be Nkrumahists have a hard time trying to define it and identify it as a distinct philosophy and ideology - except in general terms as a collection of Nkrumah's thoughts and ideas which collectively constitute a philosophy and an ideology called Nkrumahism for the establishment of a socioeconomic and political system of continental relevance. Yet its underlying principles are no more than scientific socialism enunciated by Marx and Engels, repeated by Nkrumah. Without scientific socialism, there would be no Nkruhamism. Therefore, without Marx and Engels, and without Lenin, whose ideas inspired Nkrumah, there would be no Nkrumahism. And there would be no Nkrumah as a socialist thinker.

What would he be, as "an original thinker", without scientific socialism or if he had never even heard of it since that is what formed the foundation of "his own" philosophy?

Kofi Baako, one of Nkrumah's most trusted lieutenants who served as Leader of the House and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and who also was the ruling party's ideologue – of the Convention People's Party (CPP) – put it "succinctly" when he defined Nkrumaism in an attempt to give it a distinct character in his article, "Nkrumaism – Its Theory and Practice," published in The Party, CPP Journal, Accra, 1961:

"I would define Nkrumaism as a nonatheistic socialist philosophy which seeks to apply the current socialist ideas to the solution(s) of our problems – be they domestic or international – by adapting these ideas to the realities of our everyday life. It is basically socialism adapted to suit the conditions and circumstances of Africa." – Kofi Baako, "Nkrumaism – Its Theory and Practice," in The Party, CPP Journal, Accra, Nos. 4 – 7, April, May, June and July, 1961; reprinted in Paul E. Sigmund, Jr., ed., The Ideologies of the Developing Nations, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1963, p. 188; see also pp.188 – 196. See also Kofi Baako, in Ebenezer Obiri Addo, Kwame Nkrumah: A Case Study of Religion and Politics in Ghana, Lanham, New York, Oxford: University Press of America, Inc., 1997, p. 159, when he made a futile attempt to define Nkrumaism as a distinct ideology in his address to Ghanaian envoys on 4 February 1962).

The last statement itself is a concession that the socialist ideas Kofi Baako wrote about did not come from Africa.

A staunch Nkrumaist who worked with Nkrumah right from the beginning when they and their colleagues including Komla Gbedemah formed the Convention People's Party (CPP) in 1949, Kofi Baako was an avowed socialist who played a critical role in the formation of the CPP.

It was he who mobilised the youth to form a group which became the nucleus of the CPP, around which the party was formed. For that alone, he may even be credited for being the "founding father" of the Convention People's Party which led Ghana to independence and in pursuit of a socialist agenda; although it was Nkrumah's idea to form the party when he left the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) where he served as secretary-general; with Komla Gbedemah being acclaimed as the best CPP campaigner and mobiliser especially when Nkrumah was in prison.

The question is: Where did the socialist ideas Kofi Baako was talking about come from?

The socialism he was talking about came from Europe, ideas conceived by Karl Marx, unsuited to African conditions. That was in sharp contrast with Nyerere's socialism which was indigenous and suited to African conditions.

So, what made those ideas – from Europe – Nkrumaist? Why would they constitute Nkrumaism as a philosophy and as an ideology when they were not Nkrumah's original ideas?

Mere application of those ideas, even successfully, does not give legitimacy to the claim by Nkrumaists that it was a Nkrumaist ideology. It is the origin of ideas which gives an ideology a distinct character and identity. If they were Nyerere's, they would be Nyerereist. If they were Nkrumah's, they would be Nkrumaist. If they were Mao's, they would be Maoist. If they were Marx's, they would be Marxist – as they indeed were in this case.

Nkrumahism was a product of Marxism and Leninism, not of Nkrumah's own original ideas; hence Nkrumah's own admission that he was a Marxist and scientific socialist, unlike Nyerere who did not seek or get inspiration - and ideas - from outside Africa to formulate his own philosophy and ideology of African socialism known as ujamaa.

No other African leader attempted to do what Nyerere did in Tanzania – radically restructure society along socialist lines, including relocating large numbers of people in order to build ujamaa villages. Yet he did not – nor did anybody else in official circles – call this policy, Nyerereism, or a Nyerereist philosophy or ideology.

Also, there were other leaders who adopted Marxism-Leninism the way Nkrumah did. Yet they did not appropriate it and name it after themselves, except Nkrumah who called it Nkrumahism (or Nkrumaism).

Nkrumah's ideological compatriots, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea and Modibo Keita of Mali tried to implement Marxism suited to local conditions. Yet they did not rename it after themselves. It was not called Toureism or a Toureist ideology and philosophy in Guinea; nor was it called Keitaism or Keitaist in Mali.

Mengistu Haile Mariam tried it in Ethiopia. He did not call it Mengistuism or Mariamism. Mathieu Kérékou tried it in Benin. Yet he did not call it Kerekouism. Samora Machel in Mozambique did not call the Marxism-Leninism he tried to implement – Samorist or Machelist. It was only Nkrumah who renamed the Marxism-Leninism he was trying to implement in Ghana – Nkrumaism (or Nkrumahism).

It is also true that socialism was the preferred ideology in many African countries soon after they won independence. Almost all the countries which tried to implement socialism adopted some form of Marxism or Leninism, except Tanzania under Nyerere. As Professor Mazrui stated in his book, Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition:

"No ideology commands respect so widely in Africa as the ideology of 'socialism' – though, as in Europe, it is socialism of different shades.

In Guinea and Mali a Marxist framework of reasoning is evident. In Ghana Leninism was wedded to notions of traditional collectivism. In Tanzania the concept of Ujamaa, derived from the sense of community of tribal life, is being radicalized into an assertion of modern socialism.

In Kenya there is a dilemma between establishing socialism and Africanizing the capitalism which already exists. In Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda some kind of allegiance is being paid to the ideal of social justice in situations with a multi-party background.

There are places, of course, where no school of socialism is propagated at all. But outside the Ivory Coast there is little defiant rejection of the idea of 'socialism' in former colonial Africa." – (Ali A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967, p. 97. Cited by A. Mazrui, see also William H. Friedland and Carl G. Rosberg, Jr., eds., African Socialism, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964; Kenneth W. Grundy, "Marxism-Leninism: The Mali Approach," International Journal, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Summer 1962; L. Gray Cowan, "Guinea," in Gwendolen M. Carter, ed., African One-Party States, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1962; Kenneth W. Grundy, "Nkrumah's Theory of Underdevelopment: An Analysis of Recurrent Themes," World Politics, Vol. XV, No. 3, April 1963; Kenya Government Paper, African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya, 1965; Africa Report, Special issue on African Socialism, VIII, May 1963).

No other African leader tried to implement an indigenous form of socialism the way Nyerere did, despite professions even by capitalist-oriented leaders such as Tom Mboya that African socialism was real and was the only form of socioeconomic system that was best for Africa. They did not go as far as Nyerere did, yet acknowledged the existence of socialism or socialist elements in traditional societies across the continent. As Mboya stated in Transition, Kampala, November 1963:

"I have not suggested that we have to go delving into the past seeking socialism. It is a continuing tradition among our people. Does the writer of the letter think that socialism had to be given a name before it became a reality? It is an attitude towards people practised in our societies and did not need to be codified into a scientific theory in order to find existence." – (Tom Mboya, Transition, Vol. 3, No. 11, November 1963, p. 6, cited by A.A. Mazrui, ibid., pp. 101, and 262).

Mboya was responding to a critic, C. N. Omondi (pen name), who wrote a letter to the editor, Transition, questioning the validity of the claim that socialism was indigenous to Africa. Omondi's letter was first published in Kenya Weekly, 2 August 1963.

In spite of Mboya's spirited defence of the existence of socialism in traditional societies across Africa, there is no question that socialism, in any form, was never practised in his home country, Kenya, as official or unofficial policy even when he was minister of economic planning. Among all African leaders, it was Nyerere who became the most articulate exponent and theorist of African socialism and its most consistent practitioner at the national level.

Nyerere said people in traditional societies across Africa lived on the basis of socialist values and principles, yet they had never even heard of Karl Marx. He elevated that to the national level and said we can build modern nations on that basis. Nkrumah said it had to be done on the basis of scientific socialism - hence Marxism; even if modified to suit African conditions, it was still an alien ideology imported from Europe whose relevance to Africa was questionable even though it inspired Nkrumah. That was the basis for Nkrumahism, also known as Nkrumaism and its exponents as Nkrumaists or Nkrumahists.

Marxism itself is now a discredited ideology, refuted by historical experience, as has been demonstrated by the collapse of communism around the world. Yet Nkrumahism continues to seek sustenance and validity from Marxism.

Nyerere gave an appropriate response to the disciples of Karl Marx and proponents of scientific socialism in the African context when he said Karl Marx was not an infallible divinity. He said Africans don't need to be taught socialism by Karl Marx or by any other scientific socialists - it already existed in traditional societies across the continent. He went on to explain that it makes no sense to try to build our nations based on what Karl Marx wrote more than 100 years ago and on his analysis of conditions which prevailed in Europe, not in Africa, during his time when we can think for ourselves and find solutions to our problems based on our own analysis of the conditions which exist in our societies today. Nkrumaists say they already have answers - provided by Karl Marx more than 100 years ago.

Nkrumahism as a philosophy and as an ideology can not stand on its own as a product of an original thinker – there is nothing original about it. And it has failed to stand the test of time, unlike Marxism and Leninism. It has been shunted into oblivion. It is moribund at best. It may be in the political lexicon of Nkrumahists and a number of other militant or radical Pan-Africanists but hardly as a distinct ideology that is original and uniquely African like ujamaa expounded by Nyerere. Nkrumah himself was not even sure how to proceed in his quest for a doctrine that would define and underlie his political thought that would be distinctly his. As Colin Legum stated in his chapter,"Socialism in Ghana: A Political Interpretation," in African Socialism:

"(There were) growing divergences between The Spark and Nkrumah, especially during 1963 and the opening months of 1964, (which) have baffled outsiders. But it now seems clear that Nkrumah was deeply engaged in the search for a doctrine of socialism that would be of general application to Africa. His need was to reconcile his own socialist ideas with Pan-Africanism through a philosophy that would establish his position as a messianic leader on the continent.

He wished to do for Africa what Marx and Lenin had done for Europe and Mao Tse-tung for China. While willing to learn from them, he was unwilling to accept their philosophies. He therefore established his own Philosophy Club, with Professor Willie Abraham, a Ghanaian Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, as the main theoretician.

These philosophers, though sympathetic to Marxism, believed that neither the 'scientific socialists' nor the Western philosophers had supplied a doctrine that reflected the needs of Africa: these could come only from an understanding of African society.

Such an approach was not wholly acceptable to The Spark Marxists. While they were willing to cloak their 'scientific socialism' in kente cloth, they were opposed to thoroughgoing revisionism. They approached Africa entirely through Marxist eyes; the philosophers preferred to approach Marx through African eyes." – (Colin Legum, "Socialism in Ghana: A Political Interpretation," in William H. Friedland and Carl G. Rosberg, eds., African Socialism, Stanford, California, USA: Stanford University Press, 1964, p. 155).

Nkrumah himself approached Africa through Marxist eyes although in an attempt to adapt Marxism to African conditions. But the ideology was still Marxist and therefore not Nkrumah's or African. He himself said he was a Marxist even back then and maintained the same position throughout his life. He was not an African socialist like Nyerere whose socialist ideas were derived from the African traditional way of life based on the extended family and communal living, not from Marxist interpretations of the dynamics of society across the spectrum.

As a form of scientific socialism, Nkrumahism is irrelevant today, unlike Nyerere's African socialism since socialist elements still exist in traditional societies across the continent. The people in those societies continue to cherish, foster, and implement socialist values as they always have throughout our history, especially before the advent of colonial rule. But Nkrumahism may have legitimacy in the political arena on the basis of three factors associated with Nkrumah: his quest for immediate continental unification, although it was and remains an unattainable ideal; formation of an African high command, first proposed by Nkrumah and which was a more realistic goal; and the concept of neocolonialism, advanced by Nkrumah and validated by experience; although the phenomenon itself – neocolonialism – had already been discerned by Nyerere as well who, in a speech in Dar es Salaam about three months before Tanganyika's independence in 1961, warned of the Second Scramble for Africa which would take place after African countries emerged from colonial rule.

In fact, Nyerere used the term "neo-imperialism" in June 1960 to describe the same phenomenon Nkrumah did when he coined the term "neocolonialism" later.

Therefore, what was new was not the phenomenon but only the term "neocolonialism" Nkrumah coined to describe it. He probably coined it in 1963, when it was first used, or just before then, while Nyerere used the term "neo-imperialism" three years before then to describe the same phenomenon. As Nyerere stated in June 1960:

"In the struggle against colonialism the fundamental unity of the people of Africa is evident and is deeply felt. It is, however, a unity forged in diversity in a battle against an outside Government.

If the triumph in this battle is to be followed by an equal triumph against the forces of neo-imperialism and also against poverty, ignorance and disease, then this unity must be strengthened and maintained." – (Julius K. Nyerere, "Freedom and Unity,"Transition, Volume 0, Issue 14, 1964, Kampala, Uganda, pp. 40 – 45. This was a republication of what he wrote earlier in June 1960 before he led Tanganyika to independence the following year. For an analysis of cooperation among the three East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, see also Donald Rothschild, Politics of Integration: An East African Documentary, Nairobi, Kenya: East African Publishing House, 1968).

As a theoretician, Nkrumah did not attain stature comparable to Karl Marx, Lenin and Mao in the global arena as he hoped he would, especially as Africa's "messianic figure." But he was in the same league with Nyerere as one of the world's historical giants. As Professor Mazrui stated in his eulogy of Nyerere: "He was one of the giants of the 20th century....He did bestride this narrow world like an African colossus." So did Nkrumah, but not as an original thinker like Nyerere.

Also, Nkrumah did not really write his most controversial book, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (published in October 1965 to coincide with the OAU Accra summit), which infuriated American leaders and was one of the reasons they decided to overthrow him. The book, which was an extension of Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, was actually written by other people although in collaboration with Nkrumah. They included Shirley Graham Du Bois, an African American who was the widow of Dr. W.E. B. Du Bois; Dorothy Pizer, a white British woman who was the partner of George Padmore, Nkrumah's adviser on African affairs; and Hodee Edwards, a white American woman who was a renowned Marxist and whose husband was an African American. Hodee Edwards also worked for the Ghanaian government to provide an intellectual rationale for scientific socialism and refute the validity of African socialism, a position articulated by Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu in the Tanzanian context – outside officialdom.

They all lived in Accra during that period and worked closely with Nkrumah. But Nkrumah's contribution to the book was minimal, in terms of writing, besides supporting the work's central thesis which was elaborated by Hodee Edwards. She played the biggest role in writing the book. Details on the exploitation of Africa by the United States, especially by American corporations, and other facts about the imperial nature of the world's most powerful country came from her; and partly from other pro-Nkrumah Americans such as Shirley Du Bois who was not even allowed to visit the United States to see her friends and relatives soon after Nkrumah was overthrown. She was denied a visa by the American embassy in Accra. She and her husband moved to Ghana in 1961. They became citizens in 1963 shortly before Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois died. They moved to Ghana at the invitation of Nkrumah. Nkrumah also asked Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois to be the leader of a team that was working on a major project about Africa and the African diaspora: compiling the Encyclopedia Africana about the Pan-African world.

Dr. Du Bois is considered by many people in the Pan-African world to be the father of Pan-Africanism because of the role he played in organising Pan-African conferences and championing the cause of African independence. Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe were among the people he inspired when they were students in the United States. He died in Accra in August 1963 and was buried there. He was 95 years old. Had he lived longer, it is possible he could have moved to Tanzania and become a Tanzanian with his wife after Nkrumah was overthrown and replaced by a regime that was hostile to them because of their support for him. Tanzania was held in high esteem by many people in the Pan-African world and elsewhere because of Nyerere's leadership but also incurred the wrath of the imperial powers because of its anti-imperialist stance.

The refusal by the American authorities to allow Shirley Du Bois to go to the United States showed their hostility towards those who supported Nkrumah. Also, the decision by the Du Boises to renounce their American citizenship was not well-received by the American leaders; it was considered to be an insult to them and their great country.

The problems Shirley Du Bois faced when she tried to get a visa to visit the land of her birth, where she had lived her entire life before moving to Ghana, also showed the extent to which the United States was willing to go to punish Nkrumah's allies and supporters.

She even became a citizen of Tanzania and travelled on a Tanzanian passport. But that did not help her enter the United States. The United States did not have very good relations with Tanzania. Also Nyerere, like Sekou Toure, was known to be a strong supporter of Nkrumah. He even offered him asylum but Nkrumah decided to go to Guinea. Nyerere also strongly condemned the coup against Nkrumah when he spoke at a press conference in Dar es Salaam about Nkrumah's ouster.

Nyerere and Nkrumah were also greatly admired by many black Americans (African Americans) and had basically the same attitude towards the United States as an imperial power which wanted to dominate Africa. About 10 years after Nkrumah was overthrown, Shirley Du Bois, who greatly admired Nyerere as much as she did Nkrumah, even wrote a book about Nyerere, Julius K. Nyerere: Teacher of Africa, published in 1975. As Professor Gerald Horne states in his book, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, about the problems Mrs. Du Bois had with the American authorities:

"Weeks before the coup (against Nkrumah and which was engineered by the United States), she applied for a thirty-day visa to visit the United States, noting that she had not been to the 'land of my birth' since October 1961, but now she wanted to 'visit my brothers in California, friends in the New York area,' and others...Her visa was denied....

In 1970 she and David (her son) had gone to the Ghanaian embassy in Cairo to renew her passport; unfortunately, they 'were received with extreme discourtesy.' By this point Kwame Nkrumah, who initially had been seen as a virtual co-leader of Guinea with Sekou Toure, was old news; she concluded with sadness that 'it would appear' that Nkrumah 'no longer has any influence where he is,' so a Guinean passport seemed out of the question.

Eventually she was to obtain a Tanzanian passport, but this nation did not have ideal relations with Washington either.

Ultimately she was to receive a visa to return to the United States, but not without considerable lobbying and protest. She returned to a land that in some ways seemed light years away from the nation she had departed only a few years earlier....U.S. authorities were worried that 'a refusal of a visa to Mrs. Du Bois might lead to adverse reaction in certain African nations as well as in the U.S.'" - (Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 212, and 252 - 253).

Shirley Graham Du Bois died in Beijing, China, on 27 March 1977, as a Tanzanian. She was was accorded a state funeral:

"It was Saturday of April 1977 in Beijing, China. The auditorium at the Paposhan Cemetery for Revolutionaries was full. The vice premier, Chen Yung-kuei, and the widow of former premier Zhou Enlai were among the dignitaries present. The Communist Party chairman, Hua Kuo-feng, sent a wreath to this 'memorial meeting,' as did the embassies of Tanzania, Ghana, and Zambia.

These leaders and ordinary citizens had come to mourn the passing of a woman, born an African American, who died in China as a citizen of Tanzania.

Shirley Graham Du Bois—the name that most knew her by—was eighty years old and had come to the Chinese capital for medical treatment....

China was also quite close to Graham Du Bois’s eventual adopted home, Tanzania; according to one analyst, Dar es Salaam by the early 1970s 'had probably developed more extensive ties with that country than with any other non-African state'....

Many of her duties as an activist and a writer concerned her 'motherland,' Africa. At a time when many African Americans shunned the continent in embarrassment because of its underdevelopment, she was presenting an alternative vision....

She wrote biographies of leading African personalities, worked at the shoulder of Nkrumah when he was seeking to build a 'United States of Africa,' and became a citizen of Ghana, then Tanzania....

(She eventually settled in Dar es salaam, Tanzania, although) Nkrumah advised her, recommending that she stay away from Tanzania in her search for a post-coup home, for 'East Africa at the moment is filled up with American agents—CIA and so forth. I don’t trust these 'guys'....

She encountered many...exiles in Dar es Salaam, a frequent port of call for her after 1966 (the year she left Ghana soon after Nkrumah was overthrown). She became quite friendly with the nation's leader, Julius Nyerere, whom she addressed as 'my dear Mwalimu' or teacher.....When she traveled to the southeast African republic, she would meet with him 'not only in his office, but with the family in his home.' Her affection for the Tanzanian leader was revealed in her hagiographic biography of him." - (Ibid., pp. 25, 27, 29, 217, and 251).

Her support for Nkrumah had cost her dearly. But Nkrumah remained a respected figure in the African-American community; his stature as a Pan-Africanist icon enhanced by the belief that it was the United States which was behind the military coup against him; a coup that was partly attributed to Nkrumah's bitter criticism of the United States in his book, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. As Robert Smith, a former American ambassador to Ghana, stated in an interview:

"Nkrumah dropped the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, in that he published a new book called Neo-Colonialism (The Last State of Imperialism)...which was simply outrageous. It accused the United States of every sin imaginable to man. We were blamed for everything in the world.

The book was so bad that I remember the then Assistant Secretary (of state for African affairs), G. Mennen Williams, called me up and gave me that book and said, 'Bob, I know this is bad. I don't know how bad. I want you to take it home tonight and read it. You're not going to get any sleep and I apologize for that, but on my desk, by eight o'clock tomorrow morning, I've got to have a written summary of this because I have called the Ghanaian ambassador in at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. We're going to protest this book.'

There had already been advance publicity so we knew it was bad, but we hadn't had our hands on a copy. And it was everything we feared it would be. It was awful.

And the next morning – of course, he had me in on this meeting as the note taker – a lovely, old man, Michael Ribiero, was the Ghanaian ambassador. Hated Nkrumah privately, but was a good soldier trying to put the best face on this, a career officer in their foreign service and very respected here and in Ghana.

Governor Williams, of course, was a relatively mild-mannered man. I had never heard Soapy Williams raise his voice until that conversation. Neither have I ever heard an ambassador get a tongue lashing like Ribiero got from Assistant Secretary Williams that morning. He, unfortunately, tried a couple times to interrupt the governor when he was making a point. He had my notes in front of him. And at one point, when Ribiero interrupted him, he said, 'Just a minute, Mr. Ambassador, don't interrupt me. I'm not through.' And he continued to go on.

He was raising his voice. He was shaking his finger in the ambassador's face. And it was a very painful, hour-long interview. To put it mildly, he protested vigorously the contents and publication of this book.

I think the publication of that book might also have contributed in a material way to his overthrow shortly thereafter." - (Ambassador Robert P. Smith, interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy, 28 February 1989, The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, pp. 12 – 15).

The book was Marxist in terms of analysis and Leninist in ideological orientation with regard to the imperialist nature of capitalism as a predatory system and imperialism being the highest stage of capitalism, thus in accord with Nkrumah's thinking although it was ghost-written. But it was Nkrumah who propounded the work's central thesis. Also, it was he who coined the term "neo-colonialism" to describe the insidious nature of the machinations of the imperial powers to dominate and control former colonies after they attained sovereign status.

The central thesis of Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism also reflected Nkrumah's profound mistrust – perhaps even hatred – of the United States as an imperial power ruthlessly exploiting Africa and wreaking havoc across the continent; a belief that was reinforced by what happened during the Congo crisis, including Lumumba's assassination, for which the United States was largely responsible. He gave a passionate speech at the United Nations, accusing imperial - Western - powers of interfering in African affairs in an attempt to control the destiny of the continent, and even wrote a book, Challenge of the Congo: A Case Study of Foreign Pressures in an Independent State, to explain what happened in "the bleeding heart of Africa" during that period and what needed to be done for African countries to be genuinely independent.

His memory is invoked even today whenever there is a crisis in Africa attributed to disunity among Africans and whenever there is foreign intervention in continental affairs to serve the interests of external forces; the lesson being: had African leaders agreed to unite their countries under one government as Nkrumah advocated, none of this would be happening. And although many of his arguments lacked originality, there is no question that he was very good at using Marxist arguments in different analytical contexts to justify his position.

He was also probably the most daring African leader in the continent's post-colonial history, demonstrated by his passionate call for immediate continental unification under one government and for the invasion of Rhodesia by Ghanaian troops to overthrow the white minority regime; goals most of his colleagues thought were unrealistic and even reckless as well as premature considering the fact that other African leaders were not ready to relinquish power for the sake of continental unity, and the invasion of Rhodesia by Ghanaian forces would have been a logistical nightmare without the direct involvement of Tanzania and Zambia.

May be he thought by using the Ghanaian army to try and free Rhodesia, other African countries would have been forced to send troops to the combat zone had Nyerere and Kaunda supported his mission to use Tanzania and Zambia as operational and rear bases; an unlikely prospect during that time. Also, apartheid South Africa would have entered the war to support the white minority regime in Rhodesia. But that was Nkrumah, the visionary.

Yet, some of his lofty ideals did not correspond to reality; his quest for immediate continental unification in the sixties being the most unrealistic.

He ignored the formidable opposition he faced from other African leaders who did not want to unite their countries under one government; most of them didn't. They were not even interested in forming an exploratory committee which could have helped chart the course towards unification. That is why Nyerere told Nkrumah "We are not going to have an African Napoleon" who is going to force other African leaders to unite their countries now – or even in the future - if they were not ready or if they did not want to do so. A regional approach towards unity – for example, by forming economic blocs even before considering regional federation under one government - seemed to be more acceptable to some of them. As Nyerere stated in his speech in Accra on the 40th anniversary of Ghana's independence in March 1997:

"Prior to independence of Tanganyika, I had been advocating that East African countries should federate and then achieve independence as a single political unit. I had said publicly that I was willing to delay Tanganyika’s independence in order to enable all three-mainland countries to achieve their independence together as a single federated state.

I made the suggestion because of my fear, proved correct by later events, that it would be very difficult to unite our countries if we let them achieve independence separately.

Once you multiply national anthems, national flags and national passports, seats at the United Nations, and individuals entitled to 21-gun salute, not to speak of a host of ministers, prime ministers, and envoys, you will have a whole army of powerful people with vested interests in keeping Africa balkanized. That was what Nkrumah encountered in 1965.

After the failure to establish the union government at the Accra summit of 1965, I heard one head of state express with relief that he was happy to be returning home to his country still head of state. To this day I cannot tell whether he was serious or joking. But he may well have been serious, because Kwame Nkrumah was very serious and the fear of a number of us to lose our precious status was quite palpable.

But I never believed that the 1965 Accra summit would have established a union government for Africa. When I say that we failed, that is not what I mean, for that clearly was an unrealistic objective for a single summit. What I mean is that we did not even discuss a mechanism for pursuing the objective of a politically united Africa. We had a Liberation Committee already. We should have at least had a Unity Committee or undertaken to establish one. We did not. And after Kwame Nkrumah was removed from the African political scene nobody took up the challenge again."

One of Nyerere's critics and admirers, Professor Ali Mazrui, stated in some of his lectures and writings that it was Nyerere, not Nkrumah, who was vindicated by history on how African countries should pursue the goal of continental unity.

A few years before he died, Professor Mazrui also said "Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar" was the most controversial - and most influential - article he ever wrote that was still being debated in academic circles and elsewhere decades later.

He was strongly criticised by some of Nkrumah's supporters and admirers who denounced him as "an imperialist agent." Nkrumah himself, who read the article when he was in exile in Conakry, Guinea, said it was written by a black neo-colonial intellectual. The two first met in 1961 when Mazrui was a student at Columbia University in New York where he was studying for his master's degree in political science and got the chance to ask Nkrumah a question at a meeting of African students which the Ghanaian leader also addressed. Nkrumah spoke at Columbia during his visit to New York where he also addressed the United Nations. He also visited Harlem where he once lived when he was a student in the United States.

Mazrui angered even more Ghanaians when, in a lecture at the University of Ghana and elsewhere in Accra in the 2000s, and in some of his writings, he stated: "Nkrumah was a great African, but not a great Ghanaian." According to Mazrui himself:

"Most Ghanaian intellectuals seem aware of my notorious article of 1966 titled, 'Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar.' The article has two controversial arguments. Firstly, while Nkrumah was ideologically a Leninist, he was in style of governance a Czar when he was in power. An even more explosive paradox of mine was that Nkrumah was a great African, but not a great Ghanaian.

In 2007, as during my earlier visits to Ghana, I was repeatedly questioned about those two assertions. Militant Nkrumahists and members of his old party (the C.P.P.) were outraged by my views and argued back vehemently both at my lectures and during radio phone-in interviews.

At another lecture I gave at the W.E.B. Du Bois Pan-African Cultural Centre in Accra the debate about Nkrumah exploded into a walkout by a couple of enraged Nkrumahists.

But we should remember that Ghana continues to be deeply divided about Kwame Nkrumah, their most illustrious post-colonial son and their founder president. There are at least as many Ghanaians who agree with my conclusions about Nkrumah as disagree.” - (Ali A. Mazrui, Mazrui Newsletter No. 32, Spring 2008, p. 13).

It is a highly contentious subject, especially when one takes into account the fact that it was Nkrumah who laid the foundation for modern Ghana – the infrastructure, industrialisation, and so on. Yet the argument persists that "he was not a great Ghanaian" because he pursued his Pan-African goals at the expense of Ghana, including liberation and continental unification under one socialist government, probably a Marxist one since he was a Marxist himself; a position that was somewhat different from Nyerere's in terms of continental unity. As Nyerere stated in an interview with Ikaweba Bunting of the New Internationalist:

"For me liberation and unity were the most important things. I have always said that I was African first and socialist second. I would rather see a free and united Africa before a fragmented socialist Africa. I did not preach socialism. I made this distinction deliberately so as not to divide the country.

The majority in the anti-colonial struggle were nationalist. There was a minority who argued that class was the central issue, that white workers were exploited as black workers by capitalism. They wanted to approach liberation in purely Marxist terms. However, in South Africa white workers oppressed black workers. It was more than class and I saw that....Even now for me freedom and unity are paramount." - (Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, in an interview with Ikaweba Bunting, New Internationalist, Oxford, UK, January-February 1999).

Unlike Nyerere, Nkrumah was a Marxist throughout his political career. In fact, he embraced Marxism in the early forties when he was a student in the United States. Years later, he even wrote a book, Class Struggle in Africa, based on Marxist analysis.

Colin Legum, in his review of Nkrumah's first book, Towards Colonial Freedom, also clearly stated that Nkrumah's political thought – at least a substantial part of it on social, political and economic theory - was a product of Marxism and Leninism. As he stated:

"Towards Colonial Freedom is a restatement of imperialism as propounded by Lenin. Dr. Nkrumah has, of course, never concealed his own Marxist beliefs." - (Colin Legum, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 1, Issue 01, March 1963, pp. 125 – 126).

Nkrumah's book, whose whole title was Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against World Imperialism, was first published in London in October 1947 when Nkrumah was not yet actively involved in politics in his home country, the Gold Coast. He returned to the Gold Coast – from the UK – on a ship with his friend and classmate at Lincoln University, Ako Adjei, in November 1947. Ako Adjei himself played a major role in the struggle for Ghana's independence - he was one of The Big Six who led the anti-colonial struggle as members of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) - but later fell out with Nkrumah and was imprisoned by him.

Besides Lenin, Nkrumah's book (Towards Colonial Freedom) and his analysis of imperialism was also based on the work of another prominent Marxist, Rosa Luxemburg.

Nkrumah himself, in acknowledgement of his Marxist beliefs, embraced scientific socialism – developed by Marx and Engels – as the only form of true socialism, thus differing with Nyerere who espoused African socialism. As Ama Biney states in her book, The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah:

"During the four years Nkrumah spent in Conakry, through his letters to various individuals, his thinking on many social, political, and economic issues can be delienated.

When his research assistant, June Milne, expressed an interest in writing a book on Nkrumaism, Nkrumah wrote, 'The most tantalising part of it will be my Marxist or socialist ideology. You know I am a Marxist and scientific socialist. But I don't consider myself in this particular sense a Leninist. Leninism is an application of Marxism to the Russian milieu. But the Russian milieu is not the same as the African milieu. And here the question of communism comes in – whether I am a communist or not. I am a scientific socialist and a Marxist and if that is tantamount to being a communist then I am. But not a communist of the Marxist-Leninist type.'

Here Nkrumah openly acknowledged his Marxist beliefs. He considered Marxism to be a nondogmatic tool applied to different social and economic conditions. However, he did not define what type of communist he was and, therefore, ambiguity remains as to his definition. In short, Nkrumah was undoctrinaire in his application of Marxist analysis to African realities." – (Ama Biney, The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 162 – 163).

Sharply contrasted with that is Nyerere's position on Marxism-Leninism and scientific socialism. His position is rooted in indigenous thought, instead of embracing imported -isms such as Marxism to find solutions to African problems. He was not a doctrinaire socialist like those who espoused Marxist dogma. As he stated in his book, Freedom and Socialism:

"There is no theology of socialism. There is, however, an apparent tendency among certain socialists to try and establish a new religion – a religion of socialism itself. This is usually called 'scientific socialism' and the works of Marx and Lenin are regarded as the holy writ in the light of which all other thoughts and actions have to be judged....Its proponents are often most anxious to decry religion as the 'opium of the people,' and they present their beliefs as 'science.' Yet they talk and act in the same manner as the most rigid of theologians.

We find them condemning one another's actions because they do not accord with what the priests of 'scientific socialism' have decided is the true meaning, in modern terms, of books written more than 100 years ago.

Indeed we are fast getting to the stage where quarrels between different Christian sects about the precise meaning of the Bible fade into insignificance when compared with the quarrels of those who claim to be the true interpreters of Marxism-Leninism!

This attempt to create a new religion out of socialism is absurd. It is not scientific, and it is almost certainly not Marxist – for however combatant and quarrelsome a socialist Marx was, he never claimed to be an infallible divinity! Marx was a great thinker. He gave a brilliant analysis of the industrial capitalist society in which he lived; he diagnosed its ills and advocated certain remedies which he believed would lead to the development of a healthy society. But he was not God.

The years have proved him wrong in certain respects just as they have proved him right in others. Marx did not write revealed truth; his books are the result of hard thinking and hard work, not a revelation from God. It is therefore unscientific to appeal to his writings as Christians appeal to the Bible, or Muslims to the Koran.

The works of Marx and Lenin are useful to a socialist because these men thought about the objective conditions of their time and tried to work out the actions necessary to achieve certain ends. We can learn from their methods of analysis, and from their ideas. But the same is true of many other thinkers of the past.

It is no part of the job of a socialist in 1968 to worry about whether or not his actions or proposals are in accordance with what Marx or Lenin wrote, and it is a waste of time and energy to spend hours – if not months and years – trying to prove that what you have decided is objectively necessary is really in accordance with their teachings.

The task of a socialist is to think out for himself the best way of achieving desired ends under the conditions which exist now. It is his job to think how to organize society, how to solve a particular problem, or how to effect certain changes, in a manner which will emphasize the importance of man and the equality of man.

It is especially important that we in Africa should understand this. We are groping our way forward towards socialism, and we are in danger of being bemused by this new theology, and therefore of trying to solve our problems according to what the priests of Marxism say is what Marx said or meant. If we do this we shall fail.

Africa's conditions are very different from those of the Europe in which Marx and Lenin wrote and worked. To talk as if these thinkers provided all the answers to our problems, or as if Marx invented socialism, is to reject both the humanity of Africa and the universality of socialism. Marx did contribute a great deal to socialist thought. But socialism did not begin with him, nor can it end in constant reinterpretation of his writings.

Speaking generally, and despite the existence of a few feudalistic communities, traditional Tanzanian society had many socialist characteristics. The people did not call themselves socialists, and they were not socialists by deliberate design. But all the people were workers, there was no living off the sweat of others. There was no very great difference in the amount of goods available to the different members of the society. All these are socialist characteristics.

Despite the low level of material progress, traditional African society was in practice organized on a basis which was in accordance with socialist principles.

These conditions still prevail over large areas of Tanzania – and indeed in many other parts of Africa. Even in our urban areas, the social expectation of sharing what you have with your kinsfolk is still very strong – and causes great problems for individuals! These things have nothing to do with Marx; the people have never heard of him. Yet they provide a basis on which modern socialism can be built. To reject this base is to accept the idea that Africa has nothing to contribute to the march of mankind; it is to argue that the only way progress can be achieved in Africa is if we reject our own past and impose on ourselves the doctrines of some other society.

Nor would it be very scientific to reject Africa's past when trying to build socialism in Africa. For, scientific socialism means finding out all the facts in a particular situation, regardless of whether you like them or not, or whether they fit in with preconceived ideas. It means analysing these facts, and then working out solutions to the problems you are concerned with in the light of these facts, and of the objectives you are trying to achieve.

This is what Marx did in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century; if he had lived in Sukumaland, Masailand, or Ruvuma, he would have written a different book than Das Kapital, but he could have been just as scientific and just as socialist. For if 'scientific socialism' means anything, it can only mean that the objectives are socialist and you apply scientific methods of study in working out the appropriate policies.

If the phrase does not mean that, then it is simply a trap to ensnare the unwary into a denunciation of their own nature therefore into a new form of oppression. For a scientist works to discover truth. He does not claim to know it, nor is he seeking to discover truth as revealed – which is the job of the theologian. A scientist works on the basis of the knowledge which has been accumulated empirically, and which is held to be true until new experience demonstrates otherwise, or demonstrates a superior truth which takes precedence in particular situations.

A really scientific socialist would therefore start his analysis of the problems of a particular society from the standpoint of that society. In Tanzania he would take the existence of some socialist values as part of his material for analysis; he would study the effect of the colonial era on these attitudes and on the systems of social organization; he would take account of the world situation as it affects Tanzania. After doing all that he would try to work out policies appropriate for the growth of a modern socialist state. And he could well finish up with the Arusha Declaration and the policies of ujamaa!

A scientific socialist could do all this with or without a knowledge and understanding of Marx and Lenin – or for that matter Saint-Simon, Owen or Laski. Knowledge of the work and thinking of these and other people may help a socialist to know what to look for and how to evaluate the things he sees; but it could also mislead him if he is not careful.

Equally, a knowledge of history may help him to learn from the experience of others; a knowledge of economics will help him to understand some of the forces at work in the society. But if he tries to use any of these disciplines and philosophies as a gospel according to which he must work out solutions he will go wrong. There is no substitute for his own hard work and hard thinking." – (Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism: A Selection from Writings and Speeches 1965 – 1967, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 14 – 17).

C.L.R. James hailed the Arusha Declaration, which Nyerere wrote in an attempt to transform Tanzania into a socialist society, as "the highest stage of resistance ever reached by revolting Blacks."

When Nyerere himself was asked in an interview in December 1998, "Does the Arusha Declaration still stand up today?", he said in response:

"I still travel around with it. I read it over and over to see what I would change. Maybe I would improve on the Kiswahili that was used but the Declaration is still valid: I would not change a thing.

Tanzania had been independent for a short time before we began to see a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in our country. A privileged group was emerging from the political leaders and bureaucrats who had been poor under colonial rule but were now beginning to use their positions in the Party and the Government to enrich themselves. This kind of development would alienate the leadership from the people. So we articulated a new national objective: we stressed that development is about all our people and not just a small and privileged minority.

The Arusha Declaration was what made Tanzania distinctly Tanzania. We stated what we stood for, we laid down a code of conduct for our leaders and we made an effort to achieve our goals." - (Nyerere, and C.L.R. James, New Internationalist, ibid.)

C.L.R. James had this to say about Nyerere and Tanzania under Mwalimu's leadership:

"The opportunity arrived for me to go to Tanzania. I spent eight or ten days there. I talked to a lot of people, I travelled about a lot, I had an interview with Nyerere and I am satisfied that what they are doing is something entirely new, not only for Africa but in the political systems of the world that we have known. Nothing like it has appeared since Lenin died in 1924....

Nyerere has understood what has been the cause of the collapse of the other African states and knew that if he didn’t put blocks in the road of that he was going to go the same way. This is the reason why this has taken place....Nyerere...has introduced policies which strike at all the weaknesses of the colonial African state, all the weaknesses that have remained....

Nyerere and TANU are beginning to find out, to restore, the African family, and to understand that this special group of people who are educated, who become bureaucrats, they are the ones who must be separated, they must be educated so as to become part of the population and bring the knowledge that they have as part of the population which the majority of the people constitute....Nothing like that has ever taken place in Africa anywhere.

Nkrumah, it seemed at the beginning, hoped to do something of the kind, but he didn’t make these drastic changes in the economic and social structure that Nyerere has made, and it is my belief, I have talked to Nyerere, that he did it because he realized that unless these fundamental changes were made and the old structures and the ideas that the British and the French had left behind, unless these were completely cleared out and the people given another perspective, the degeneration of the African state was bound to continue....

There is one of the most important features of political development in the world today, not only for the underdeveloped countries but, I am positive, I have examined it, the advanced countries, in their systems of education in particular, have a lot to learn from what is taking place in Tanzania." - (C.L.R. James, "Reflections on Pan-Africanism," ibid.)

Nkrumah did a lot for Ghana in the few years he was in power. But he did not do enough to radically transform Ghana into a socialist society the way Nyerere did in Tanzania.

Still, like Nyerere, Nkrumah left a legacy, especially with regard to the continent's destiny, that is still being debated: Where would Africa be today had the continent united under one government in 1963 or soon thereafter, as he strongly advocated? Was it a realistic goal? Or was a regional approach to continental unification a more viable option? Would socialism have been adopted on a continental scale had African countries succeeded in uniting under one government? As Nyerere stated:

"Kwame Nkrumah and I were committed to the idea of unity. African leaders and heads of state did not take Kwame seriously. However, I did. I did not believe in these small little nations. Still today I do not believe in them. I tell our people to look at the European Union, at these people who ruled us who are now uniting.

Kwame and I met in 1963 and discussed African Unity. We differed on how to achieve a United States of Africa. But we both agreed on a United States of Africa as necessary. Kwame went to Lincoln University, a black college in the US. He perceived things from the perspective of US history, where 13 colonies that revolted against the British formed a union. That is what he thought the OAU (Organisation of African Unity) should do.

I tried to get East Africa to unite before independence. When we failed in this way, I was wary about Kwame’s continental approach. We corresponded profusely on this. Kwame said my idea of 'regionalization' was only balkanization on a larger scale. Later, African historians will have to study our correspondence on this issue of uniting Africa." - (Nyerere, New Internationalist, ibid.)

Yet Nkrumah himself formed a regional federation – of Ghana, Guinea and Mali ( with Guinea in 1958, and Mali joining in 1961) – but it collapsed; in fact, it was more symbolic than functional.

It was only after he failed in his attempt to form a functional union of the three West African countries that he started opposing regional federations, claiming they were no more than balkanisation of the continent on a grand scale. Even when he was in London for two and a half years, after he left the United States in 1945, he worked with other West Africans in the UK in an attempt to form a West African federation in the future.

He did not see all that as balkanisation of Africa on a larger scale – until Nyerere tried to form a federation in East Africa and seemed to be succeeding. Nkrumah did not like that. He wanted to be the first, but failed in his regional attempt to form a federation in West Africa.

He was resolutely opposed to formation of an East African federation and did everything he could to sabotage it. This infuriated Nyerere who, in pointed reference to Nkrumah, publicly stated at a press conference in Nairobi in June 1963 after the three East African leaders – Kenyatta, Obote and Nyerere himself – met to discuss forming a federation:

"We must reject some of the pretensions that have been made from outside East Africa. We have already heard the curious argument that the continued 'balkanisation' of East Africa will somehow help African unity.... These are attempts to rationalize absurdity." – (Julius Nyerere, quoted by Richard Cox, Pan-Africanism in Practice: An East African Study, Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 77; A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana, op. cit., p. 71).

Nkrumah's interference in East African affairs angered Nyerere so much that he even wrote Nkrumah about it:

"His meddling became so apparent that on 6th August, 1963, President Nyerere of Tanzania wrote him a very angry letter on this subject." – Donald S. Rothchild, Politics of Integration: An East African Documentary, Institute of Development Studies, University College of Nairobi; East African Publishing House, Nairobi, Kenya, 1968, p. 112).

Nkrumah's interference in East Africa to frustrate and neutralise Nyerere's attempt to form an East African federation was one of the biggest mistakes of his political career and demonstrated that he was determined to undermine other African leaders who did not agree with him. As Basil Davidson stated in his book, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah:

"Some, like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, chastised Nkrumah for his interference. East Africa, Nyerere believed, could best contribute to continental unity by moving first towards regional unity.

Although knowing little about East Africa, Nkrumah not only disagreed but actively interfered to obstruct the East African federation proposed by Nyerere.... It was one of Nkrumah’s worst mistakes." – (Basil Davidson, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah, Allen Lane, London, 1973, quoted by Geoffrey Mmari, "The Legacy of Nyerere," in Colin Legum and Geoffrey Mmari, eds., Mwalimu: The Influence of Nyerere, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, 1995, pp. 179 – 180).

Renowned Kenyan socio-political analyst, Philip Ochieng, who once worked as a columnist of the Daily News, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in the early seventies, stated in his article,"Did Nkrumah Kill Off the First EA Community?," in The East African, Nairobi, 28 March 2009:

"According to the story that I kept hearing...from top-level academics...at the University of Dar es Salaam... known to enjoy direct links with Mwalimu’s State House, it was because Dr Nkrumah wanted to be the father figure of all the regional initiatives, that he sabotaged the East African chapter....

Nkrumah himself sponsored a West African initiative similar to the proposed East African federation...composed of his Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Toure’s Guinea and Modibo Keita’s Mali....As long as he was the paramount leader of such an initiative, there was no problem.

In East Africa, Nyerere was also taking serious steps to restructure his society. Tanzania (under Nyerere), indeed, is the African country that has gone farthest in dismantling the political, economic and intellectual pillars of colonialism....

Nkrumah...wanted to be the dominant figure in every regional initiative. Like Joseph Stalin for all of the world’s non-Maoist communist parties, Nkrumah wanted to be chief policy-maker and policy implementer for every one of the regional groupings. The probable idea was that, if all those regional groupings decided to unite into a single continental government, no individual would be in a position to vie with the Ghanaian leader to be its first president.

That was why Nkrumah could not trust Mwalimu Nyerere as the intellectual spirit behind the East African proposal. For, although they seemed like ideological comrades, the old Tanganyikan schoolteacher was completely independent-minded and would never have been prepared to act as Nkrumah’s regional poodle.

With Nyerere thus dismissed and Mzee Kenyatta accused of having surrendered Kenya as a backyard of corporate Britain, the Ubungo intellectuals explained that, in Nkrumah’s eyes, Obote now appeared as the only one not too committed one way or the other. That was why – according to the story – it was Obote that Nkrumah latched onto to frustrate all the plans to federate."

Also, the Marxism Nkrumah advocated, suited to African conditions, did not last in Ghana; nor did Nyerere's ujamaa, derived from the traditional way of life and developed into a national ideology. It is equally true that Nkrumah's political thought can not be understood without understanding the role Marxism-Leninism played in the evolution of his thinking; it played no role in the case of Nyerere. And like Nyerere, Nkrumah remains one of the most admired leaders in the history of post-colonial Africa; he is also one of the most controversial. But both are giants in African and world history. As Professor Mazrui stated:

"Julius Nyerere is the most enterprising of African political philosophers. He has philosophized extensively in both English and Kiswahili.

He has tried to tear down the language barriers between ancestral cultural philosophy and the new ideological tendency of the post-colonial era.

Nyerere is superbly eloquent in both English and Kiswahili. He has allowed the two languages to enrich each other as their ideas have passed through his intellect.

His concept of ujamaa as a basis of African socialism was itself a brilliant cross-cultural transition. Ujamaa traditionally implied ethnic solidarity. But Nyerere transformed it from a dangerous principle of ethnic nepotism into more than a mere equivalent of the European word 'socialism.'

In practice his socialist policies did not work – as much for global reasons as for domestic. But in intellectual terms Nyerere is a more original thinker than Kwame Nkrumah – and linguistically much more innovative.

Nkrumah tried to update Lenin – from Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism to Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nyerere translated Shakespeare into Kiswahili instead – both Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice.

Nkrumah's exercise in Leninism was a less impressive cross-cultural achievement than Nyerere's translation of Shakespeare into an African language.

Yet both these African thinkers will remain among the towering figures of the twentieth century in politics and thought." – (Ali A. Mazrui in Ali. A. Mazrui, ed., General History of Africa VIII: Africa Since 1935, Berkeley, California, USA: University of California Press, 1993, p. 674; Ali A. Mazrui, African Thought in Comparative Perspective, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, p. 22).

Kuhusu Senghor, alikuwa ni Mfaransa mweusi, na hakuwa mjamaa halisi, ingawa alijulikana pia as a leading proponent of Negritude.

Pia Senghor alijulikana kuwa ni mtu mwenye akili sana kama Nyerere, ingawa kuna ambao wanaosema Nyerere alikuwa na akili zaidi.

Although Senghor was known to be a proponent of African socialism like Nyerere and was critical of capitalism saying it was against African traditional values of communal living and sharing, he was not really a socialist; nor did he genuinely try to implement any form of socialism leading to radical transformation of society when he was president of Senegal. He was also strongly anti-Marxist.

With regard to African identity, it was Senghor who added a controversial dimension to it with his concept of négritude; an assertion and affirmation of black identity that has been hailed and ridiculed through the years by some Africans and non-Africans alike. What is négritude? Critics ask. Some of them have even tried to answer the question in their attempt to dismiss the concept as something hollow, meaningless, and irrelevant.

Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka condescendingly dismissed those who promote négritude when he said, "A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude."

Ghana's minister of foreign affairs, Alex Quaison-Sackey, defended Négritude and gave it forceful expression in his book, Africa Unbound, which was published during the same time he and renowned Ghanaian philosopher, Dr. Willie Abraham, worked under Nkrumah, a leader who and his Senegalese counterpart, Senghor, were ideologically poles apart.

Although the concept of Négritude is mainly associated with a significant number of intellectuals in Francophone Africa and their counterparts in the Caribbean, especially Martinique, its underlying philosophy has also inspired some people in Anglophone Africa, Quaison-Sackey being one of the most prominent while his fellow countryman, Dr. Abraham, is one of its most ardent critics.

French philosopher Jean-Paul Satre hailed négritude as "anti-racist racism," as did Senghor himself, a paradoxical compliment that continues to stimulate and fuel debate on this philosophy and intellectual movement started by black intellectuals in Paris, in the very heart and soul of the colonial power that was ruling their countries during their lifetime.

They came from Africa and the Caribbean – mainly Martinique. And they together asserted their humanity by proclaiming pride in their identity as black people who had a common African ancestry, with a proud history and civilisation, which was no less noble than that of their conquerors.

In defining Négritude, Senghor also emphasised the imperative need for mankind to have a civilisation of the universal, to which black Africans could make a contribution like any other people, as opposed to a universal civilisation imposed on all mankind by the members of one race. As he stated in his speech, "What is Negritude?," at Oxford University in October 1961:

"Paradoxically, it was the French who first forced us to seek its essence, and who then showed us where it lay...when they enforced their policy of assimilation and thus deepened our despair....

Earlier, we had become aware within ourselves that assimilation was a failure; we could assimilate mathematics or the French language, but we could never strip off our black skins or root out black souls. And so we set out on a fervent quest for the 'holy grail': our collective soul. And we came upon it.

It was not revealed to us by the 'official France' of the politicians who, out of self-interest and political conviction, defended the policy of assimilation....

Negritude is the whole complex of civilized values – cultural, economic, social, and political – which characterize the black peoples, or, more precisely, the Negro-African world. All these values are essentially informed by intuitive reason, because this sentient reason, the reason which comes to grips, expresses itself emotionally, through that self-surrender, that coalescence of subject and object; through myths, by which I mean the archetypal images of the collective soul; and, above all, through primordial rhythms, synchronized with those of the cosmos.

In other words, the sense of communion, the gift of mythmaking, the gift of rhythm, such are the essential elements of Negritude, which you will find indelibly stamped on all the works and activities of the black man....

In opposition to European racialism, of which the Nazis were the symbol, we set up an 'antiracial racialism.' The very excesses of Nazism, and the catastrophes it engendered, were soon to bring us to our senses. Such hatred, such violence, above all, such weeping and such shedding of blood produced a feeling of revulsion. It was so foreign to our continent's genius: our need to love. And then the anthropologists taught us that there is no such thing as a pure race: Scientifically speaking – races do not exist.

They went one better and forecast that, with a mere 200 million people, we would in the end disappear as a 'black race,' through miscegenation. At the same time, they did offer us some consolation. 'The focal points of human development,' wrote Tellhard de Chardin in 1939, 'always seem to coincide with the points of contact and anastomosis of several nerve paths' – that is, in the ordinary man's language, of several races.

If, then, we were justified in fostering the values of Negritude and arousing the energy slumbering within us, it must be in order to pour them into the mainstream of cultural miscegenation - the biological process taking place spontaneously. They must flow toward the meeting point of all humanity; they must be our contribution to the civilization of the universal....

Today, our Negritude no longer expresses itself as opposition to European values, but as a complement to them. Henceforth, its militants will be concerned, as I have often said, not to be assimilated, but to assimilate. They will use European values to arouse the slumbering values of Negritude, which they will bring as their contribution to the civilization of the universal....

Nevertheless, we still disagree with Europe: not with its values any longer (with the exception of capitalism), but with its theory of the civilization of the universal....

In the eyes of the Europeans, the 'exotic civilizations' are static in character, being content to live by means of archetypal images, which they repeat indefinitely. The most serious criticism is that they have no idea of the pre-eminent dignity of the human person....

If European civilization were to be imposed, unmodified, on all peoples and continents, it could only be by force. That is its first disadvantage.

A more serious one is that it would not be humanistic, for it would cut itself off from the complementary values of the greater part of humanity. As I have said elsewhere, it would be a universal civilization; it would not be the civilization of the universal.

Our revised Negritude is humanistic. I repeat, it welcomes the complementary values of Europe and the white man, and, indeed, of all other races and continents. But it welcomes them in order to fertilize and reinvigorate its own values, which it then offers for the construction of a civilization which shall embrace all mankind.

The neohumanism of the twentieth century stands at the point where the paths of all nations, races, and continents cross, 'where the four winds of the spirit blow.'" – (Leopold Sédar Senghor, "What is Negritude?," excerpt from a speech at Oxford University, England, October 1961, reprinted in West Africa, 4 November 1961, and in Paul E. Sigmund, Jr., ed., The Ideologies of the Developing Nations, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1963, pp. 248, 249, and 250).

Although he was ridiculed by some people for being a proponent of négritude – he was, besides Aimé Césaire, its leading advocate on the global stage – he remains, like Nyerere, one of the most prominent thinkers and intellectuals in the history of Africa since the advent of colonial rule.

In his book On Heroes and and Uhuru-Worship: Essays on Independent Africa, Professor Mazrui described Nyerere as "the most original thinker" among all the leaders in Anglophone Africa; Senghor in Francophone Africa. And there are those who say Nyerere was "Africa's most original thinker" among all the leaders in the post-colonial era.

Tukiangalia suala la ukombozi wa bara letu, ni wazi kwamba Nyerere ndiyo kiongozi aliyekuwa mbele kuliko viongozi wengine katika ukombozi wa nchi za Afrika kusini. Hakuna kiongozi mwingine, hata Nkrumah, aliyemzidi Nyerere katika juhudi na jitihada yake ya kusaidia kuwakomboa ndugu zetu wa nchi za kusini mwa Afrika waliokuwa wanakandamizwa na wakoloni pamoja na makaburu wa Afrika kusini.

Mmoja wa viongozi wa Kimarikani, Henry Kissinger, alipotembelea bara letu mwaka 1976, alikutana na Nyerere mara tatu mwaka huo kujadili suala hilo la ukombozi wa nchi za Afrika kusini.

Kissinger alisema kuna viongozi wawili wa Kiafrika waliomvutia sana alipokutana na viongozi mbali mbali wa bara letu mwaka ule. Mzee Jomo Kenyatta alikuwa ni mmoja wa viongozi aliokutana nao. Pia alikutana na Kenneth Kaunda, Joaquim Chissano, na viongozi wengine. Lakini kati ya viongozi wote wa Afrika ambao alikutana nao, Kissinger alisema viongozi waliomvutia sana walikuwa ni Nyerere na Senghor – as superb intellectuals and because of their different and competing visions of Africa.

Kissinger also acknowledged Nyerere was independent-minded and very influential as a leader. As he states in his book, Henry Kissinger: Years of Renewal, in a section entitled, "Julius Nyerere and Tanzania: The Ambivalent Intellectual":

"Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere proceeded to arrange an official reception that could not have been more cordial. The motive, however, was altogether different from Kenyatta's. Nyerere...was, at heart, deeply suspicious of American society and American intentions.

In international forums, Tanzania's ministers frequently castigated us. Nyerere would not have described friendship with the United States as a national priority; instead, he tended to think of relations with us as a necessary evil....

Brilliant and charming, Nyerere had an influence in Africa out of proportion to the resources of his country, proof that power cannot be measured in physical terms alone....Because Tanzania was involved in the armed struggle that was taking place in Rhodesia, and because of Nyerere's intellectual dominance, Nyerere would be a key to any solution....

Many of Nyerere's American admirers thought he and his colleagues were the embodiment of American values and liberal traditions. By contrast, his American critics viewed Nyerere as a spokesman for Communist ideology. Neither view was accurate. Nyerere was his own man. His idiosyncratic blend of Western liberal rhetoric, socialist practice, nonaligned righteousness, and African tribalism was driven, above all, by a passionate desire to free his continent from Western categories of thought, of which Marxism happens to be one. His ideas were emphatically his own....

For our first meeting, Nyerere, a slight, wiry man, invited me to his modest private residence. It was a signal honor, and he introduced me to his mother and several members of his family. He was graceful and elegant, his eyes sparkling, his gestures fluid.

With an awesome command of the English language (he had translated Julius Caesar into Swahili), Nyerere could be a seductive interlocutor. But he was also capable of steely hostility. I had the opportunity to see both these sides during my three visits to Dar es Salaam....

Nyerere was the key to the front-line states....

The two most impressive leaders I encountered on this trip, Nyerere and Senghor, were at opposite ends of the African spectrum. In a sense, they represented metaphors for varying approaches to African identity.

Nyerere was a militant who used ideology as a weapon; Senghor was an intellectual who had taught himself the grammar of power.

Nyerere considered himself as a leader of an Africa that should evolve in a unique way, separate from the currents in the rest of the world which Africa would use without permitting them to contaminate its essence. Senghor saw himself as a participant in an international order in which Africa and négritude would play a significant, but not isolated, role.

When all is said and done, Nyerere strove for the victory of black Africa while Senghor sought a reconciliation of cultures within the context of self-determination." - (Henry Kissinger, Henry Kissinger: Years of Renewal, New York: Touchstone, 1999, pp. 931 – 932, 936, 949 – 951).

After his meeting with Nyerere, Kissinger was asked at a press conference in Dar es Salaam:

"Mr. Secretary, we've just come from a press conference with President Nyerere which was, to say the least, not encouraging for your mission. On both the Namibian and the Rhodesian questions, he said he received nothing of encouragement. In fact, on the Namibian question he said he is now less hopeful than before. Does this reflect your views on the future?...Isn't the fact alone that nothing has changed since last week an unhopeful sign?"

In his response, Kissinger said, among other things:

"The purpose of my visit here was to get clear about the views of Tanzania." - (Henry Kissinger, at a press conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in Hanes Walton Jr., Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Bernard Rosser Sr., eds., The African Foreign Policy of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: A Documentary Analysis, Lanham, Maryland, USA: Lexington Books, 2007, p. 243).

Asked at a separate press conference earlier, if he thought Kissinger's mission was a failure, Nyerere responded:

"A mission of clarity is not a mission of failure."







 
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Kissinger said Nyerere was deeply suspicious of American intentions towards Africa. But it was not just the United States Mwalimu was suspicious of; he was suspicious of world powers, especially Western, which wanted to perpetuate imperial domination of Africa.

Therefore he had reasons to be suspicious; for example, given America's track record - from supporting white minority regimes in southern Africa to undermining governments the United States did not like including engineering and supporting military coups and assassinations of African leaders, and so on.

Behind all these plots and schemes was the CIA - as is still the case today - which Kissinger himself used in pursuit of American interests in Africa and elsewhere.

The CIA even sponsored African students to study in the United States. The scholarship programme was administered by the African-American Institute based in New York City and was funded by the CIA. Many African students, including some from Tanzania, were beneficiaries of the programme, although they probably did not know they were sponsored by the CIA. All they knew was that they got scholarships from the American government to study in the United States.

Even the school for refugee children from the countries of southern Africa, Kurasini International Education Centre which was a secondary school in Dar es Salaam, was established by the African-American Institute, hence by the CIA.

The African-American Institute was established by the American government in 1954 to promote American interests in Africa. But the institute was administered and funded by the CIA.

It was during a period when agitation for independence in Africa was at its peak; it was a continental phenomenon. American leaders knew that it was the dawn of a new era. Colonial rule was coming to an end. Therefore, it was important for them to be on good terms with the leaders - and the people - of the countries which were emerging from colonial rule, especially at a time when the United States was locked in an ideological competition with the Soviet Union for influence in Africa and other parts of the Third World during the Cold War.

Like the United States, the Soviet Union also provided scholarships to many African students during the same period. The Soviet government even established the People's Friendship University in Moscow in 1960, renamed Patrice Lumumba University in 1961, to provide education to students from Africa and other parts of the Third World in an ideological rivalry with the West which reached its peak in the sixties, the decade of African independence. Most countries across the continent had won independence by 1968.

In the case of the United States, the African-American Institute which was in the forefront of this ideological war against the Soviet Union for influence in Africa, also published an influential bi-monthly magazine, Africa Report, to provide favourable coverage of the continent in pursuit of American interests. It was the CIA which paid for the publication of the magazine.

By providing scholarships to African students through the African-American Institute, the CIA, hence the American government, hoped that once the recipients of those scholarships returned to Africa after finishing their studies, they would help to promote American interests in their home countries, especially if they occupied high government positions, as many of them eventually did; although not all worked as stooges of the American government and the CIA. But there were those who did, including some who were not even beneficiaries of the CIA scholarship programme and who did not even go to school in the United States.

The US State Department worked closely with the African-American Institute. For example, the American ambassador to Nigeria, Donald Easum who was very close to Henry Kissinger when Kissinger was the secretary of state, later on became head of the African-American Institute and maintained close ties with African diplomats at the United Nations. The institute had its headquarters just across the street from the UN.

Even in the seventies, the CIA was busy, working on American college campuses in an attempt to recruit foreign students to work for the agency. There were reports during that period stating that the focus was on the young nations of Africa. A report in one American newspaper, the Detroit News, in 1975 on the recruitment of African students by the CIA bluntly stated:

"The emphasis is on the emerging nations of Africa."

There is no question that a number of African students were recruited by the agency.

Tanzania itself under Nyerere was of great interest to the CIA. Neighbouring Kenya was also of great interest to the CIA but for different reasons. Some of the CIA operations against Tanzania were directed from Nairobi where the agency had a large contingent, especially during the Cold War. In fact, Nairobi had the largest CIA station in East Africa. Kenya was unabashedly pro-Western even at the expense of African interests. The CIA even paid Mzee Jomo Kenyatta a lot of money for being a loyal servant of the United States and for doing whatever the agency asked him to do. Tom Mboya was another leader who was given some money by the CIA.

Besides being a CIA stooge like Mobutu and a number of other African leaders, Kenyatta was also a tribal chauvinist who ruled Kenya with an iron fist at the expense of non-Kikuyus. He instituted a Kikuyu ethnocracy during his reign and the Kenyan state became synonymous with Kikuyu power dominated by the Kiambu Mafia. He was such an unreconstructed tribalist that he even turned down an offer by Nyerere and Obote to be president of an East African federation because he felt that he and his people, the Kikuyu, would not have as much power and influence in such a large political entity as they had in Kenya under their ethnocratic regime. As Nyerere stated in an interview with Ikaweba Bunting of the New Internationalist in January-February 1999:

"I respected Jomo immensely. It has probably never happened in history. Two heads of state, Milton Obote and I, went to Jomo and said to him: 'Let's unite our countries and you be our head of state.' He said no. I think he said no because it would have put him out of his element as a Kikuyu Elder." - (Julius K. Nyerere, interviewed by Ikaweba Bunting, "The Heart of Africa: Interview with Julius Nyerere on Anti-Colonialism," New Internationalist, Issue 309, January-February 1999).

Also, Kenyatta did not support the freedom fighters in southern Africa and Guinea-Bissau the way Nyerere did and was virtually in the same camp with Kamuzu Banda in spite of being hailed as the Grand Old Man of the Kenyan – and even the African – independence movement. Even after independence, Kenya remained British property, subservient to the neocolonial master unlike Tanzania under Nyerere.

Britain, where Nyerere was given a cordial reception during his visit in 1975, did not view Tanzania favourably mainly because of its strong support for the liberation struggle in southern Africa, threatening Western interests in the region.

Nyerere will go down in history for his principled stand on a number of issues vital to the well-being of Africa as a whole, including his decision to sever diplomatic ties with Britain - Tanzania being the first country to do so - when the British government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson refused to use force to oust Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith, when he unilaterally declared independence for Rhodesia to maintain white domination of the country. Coincidentally, Mwalimu's visit to Britain took place almost ten years after Rhodesia declared independence on 11 November 1965.
 
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Mkuu Nondo ulizomwaga hapa , Nakufananisha Prof. PLO LUMUMBA. Maana ni kali si mchezo.
 
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