...Kawawas book by Magotti reads like a long CCM report drab, dry and uninteresting.
It is not that Kawawa had nothing to tell. It is not that Kawawas life history is one long uninteresting political career. Kawawa participated in the struggle for Tanganyikas independence as a trade unionist.
Kawawa served under Mwalimu Nyerere for many years, one of the most able, charismatic and authoritarian leader Africa has known.
Surely there must have been a lot of interesting stories to tell, of intrigues, trading of favours, shifting alliances, changing horses mid stream common in the murky game of politics.
Kawawa was there when Nyerere defeated his opponents and enemies one by one playing his cards close to his chest putting them on the table just about the right time. Kawawa knew these people first hand some of them have passed on and some are still living.
There is a lot of material which Kawawa if probed could have provided information to make his book interesting.
The book carries nothing on relationship between Kawawa and Nyerere though the grapevine has reported that there were times the two did not speak to each other for days.
I do not know Mzee Kawawa well to the extent that I can pick up a pen and write about him.
I can only comment on the book on him from notes and audio cassette I made when I was researching on the life of the late Abdulwahid Sykes.
During that research I managed to get the mood and feeling of the times going through the papers in the custody of the Sykes family.
Ally Sykes gave me a heap of old files and loose documents others dating back to 1950s. He told me to read those files and then after finishing we can sit down for interviews. This is how I met Kawawa.
In one of the files I came across a hand written letter from Bukoba which Kawawa wrote to Ally Sykes in 1952. There were also other correspondences by Kawawa dating 1951. These documents have very interesting information. I wish to share this information with readers. Ally Sykes told me on tape reminiscing of the times he was working with Kawawa in the colonial civil service:
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[TD] ''In 1951 I was elected General Secretary of TAGSA (Tanganyika African Government Servants Association). The association was formed in 1927 with the objective of promoting understanding between Her Majestys Government and us African Servants.
Thomas Marealle was president and Rashid Kawawa was committee member. The constitution of TAGSA provided for annual elections, and I was returned to office as secretary four times until October, 1954 when I had to resign after being transferred to Korogwe as punishment for being among the seventeen TANU founder members.
The presidency always changed hands and Stephen Mhando and Dr. Wilbard Mwanjisi were at various times elected presidents.
Among active members of TAGSA were Dr Michael Lugazia and Rashid Kawawa who was elected secretary to replace me. That experience put Kawawa in a good position for he was later elected to the post of General Secretary of Tanganyika Federation of Labour (TFL)...''
It is strange that Kawawas book does not have references to his personal papers which are not only important to Kawawas life history but to the history of Tanganyika as well.
Magotti did not even interview Kawawas contemporaries still living like Ally Sykes and Victor Mkello a fellow trade unionist now on his death bed.
This was Magottis greatest omission.
Had he done that he would have come across Kawawas other contemporaries and names of other patriots who Kawawa had worked with in TAGSA like Dr. Wilbard Mwanjisi, Dr. Michael Lugazia, Dr Kyaruzi and others.
Kawawas contemporaries are aware of the conflict and hatred between Dr. Mwanjisi and Nyerere which lasted many years forcing Dr. Mwanjisi to run away from Tanzania to seek employment in Kenya.
Dr Mwanjisii was a person known to both Nyerere and Kawawa.
Efforts to mediate between the two did not bear any fruits. What was the reason for that conflict was it a case of personality clash or what?
On the basis of these personalities he would have probed Kawawa to talk about them and it is obvious each name would have a story waiting to be told.
This would have added flavour to the book. For instance Dr. Lugazia was an active member of TAA during that time when the association was drafting the TANU constitution.
Hailing from Bukoba he wanted Bukoba to be one of the provinces represented at the TANU founding meeting in July 1954 but unfortunately Ali Migeyo who was the most active leader in the Lake Region was in prison and as a result of this TAA in Bukoba lost momentum.
The story of Ali Migeyo is among the sad chapters in the history of Tanganyikas independence struggle. Migeyo who was a leading voice in the Lake Region was imprisoned by the colonial government for mobilizing the people against British colonialism.
After independence Migeyo was detained by Nyereres government for his political activities.
It would have been very interesting to hear from Kawawa why Nyerere took the decision to imprison a fellow patriot and one of the leading figures who spearheaded the struggle for Tanganyikas independence.
On the same breath it would have been interesting to know how he felt when in 1964 leaders in the trade union movement, patriots like Victor Mkello, Paul Pamba, Abdallah Mwamba, Hassan Khupe, Salum Abdallahand many others who he had worked with during the struggle for independence were detained and while in detention the government outlawed the trade unions they were leading and formed a new organisation NUTA lead by handpicked personalities within the TANU echelons.
There is an interesting part in which the book portrays Kawawa as a government servant working in the Mau Mau camps set up by the colonial government to detain Kenyans suspected of being Mau Mau living in Tanganyika.
These camps were opened up soon after the declaration of emergence in Kenya when Kenyatta and other patriots the famous Kapenguria Six - Bildad Kaggia, Jomo Kenyatta, Kungu Karumba, Achieng Oneko, Paul Ngei and Fred Kubai were arrested.
Among the Mau Mau detainees at Handeni Camp where Kawawa was working were two TANU members although they were Kenyans.
These were Dome Okochi Budohi and Patrick Aoko. Budohis TANU card was no. 6.
Budohi and Aoko were arrested in 1955 soon after the formation of TANU. They were detained at the Central Police Station in Dar es Salaam and interrogated for six months. The two were kept in chains.
Kawawa if propped could have talked about these Kenyan patriots who struggled for Tanganyikas independence and about his experiences with them in the Mau Mau camps and what became of them when both Kenya and Tanganyika were liberated from the British.
Budohi and Kawawa were both entertainers of their time, the cool, elegant young men of Dar es Salaam of 1950s. Budohi was a talented musician playing with the Skylarks of which young Ally Sykes was the band leader and Kawawa was an actor.
The band was very popular at that time as it was the only band which played popular western style music such as jazz, waltz, and the like.
The band later changed its name to the Blackbirds and the band was a regular feature in the local radio station Sauti ya Dar es Salaam'' when broadcasting began in Tanganyika in 1951.
Kawawa like all other young men in Dar es Salaam was a regular patron when Blackbirds played at Arnatouglo Hall during week ends.
Budohi and Kawawa therefore knew each other very well. The two had acted together in a movie Wageni Wema let alone that both were budding young politicians.
Kawawa surely must be having a lot of fond memories of those days long gone.
The times when Kawawa was acting in mid 1950s was the time which the British after World War Two had embarked on opening certain avenues to Africans particularly in music and other entertainment activities like broadcasting and film making.
This was the time when an Englishman by the name of Hugh Tracey from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was making rounds in the colonies and in his travels he was recording African music.
Tracey discovered Mwenda Jean Bosco from Belgian Congo (now DRC) and George Sibanda from Southern Rhodesia and recorded their music which came to be very popular in East Africa during the 1950s and early 1960s.
This music was played in radio stations in British African colonies like Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria.
George Sibanda acted in a movie which the theme is very similar to the one which Kawawa acted in Muhogo Mchungu.
The music in that movie was from the songs and guitar played by Sibanda and flute played by the legendary Spokes Mashiane the King of Kwela from Johannesburg, South Africa.
This was the time when Peter Colmore discovered Frank Humplink in Moshi and recorded his music in Nairobi.
One of Humplinks songs came to be TANUs clarion and was banned by the colonial government and had young Humplink arrested only to be released when Chief Thomas Marealle of the Chagga intervened with the British.
It was the times when music played by Africans mingled with politics to the chagrin of colonialists.
These are the stories of the times which Kawawa not only witnessed but was also a key player. This was not reflected in Magottis book.
Some of the music, films, photographs and documents of those times are in the custody of the estate of the late Peter Colmore at his Muthaiga residence in Nairobi other documents and photographs are in the custody of Ally Sykes in Dar es Salaam.
The movies which Kawawa made with the help of a South African company were in the custody of the Audio Visual Institute but for lack of proper facilities of film stowing the films have been damaged beyond repair.
They cannot be put on a projector.
This withstanding copies of the film must be in existence in some film libraries in South Africa were the films were processed and some copies must be lying somewhere in Britain.
The door is still open for researchers to enter and write about the life history of Rashidi Mfaume Kawawa because his biography is yet to be written.
But I congratulate the author for writing this book because it is from this book that I derived the strength to write the little that I know on the times of Mzee Kawawa.
Surely Kawawa has beaten all of them in Tanzania he has two books on his life but again his is a tale of two books and the book that never was.[/TD]
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