NYERERE'S SECRETS

by Martin Walsh

Nyerere as leader of the Legislative Council of Tanganyika

The dead can't slap super-injunctions on the living, but being the much-revered first President and 'Father of the Nation' provides fairly good insurance against scurrilous gossip, especially when your party is still in power, the Roman Catholic church is proposing your beatification, the national airport is named after you, and hip-hop artists continue to sing your praises. Julius Kambarage Nyerere continues to enjoy a very positive image, and hagiographies have proliferated in this era of the 50th anniversaries of the transition to Tanganyika's Independence and the political Union with Zanzibar. None of this is surprising, though I've always been dismayed by the extent to which older academics and Tanzaphiles have bought into the Nyerere Narrative. The good news is that a younger generation of scholars has been less willing to accept the received image (e.g. Fouéré 2009).

In Tanzania itself, multi-party politics, a freer press, and the new medium of the internet, have introduced alternative views and started to lead to the recovery of old histories as well as the invention of some new ones. This is especially so in Zanzibar, where there are even more political secrets to hide about the circumstances of the Revolution and the Tanganyika Mutiny, the hurried Union agreement, and the way in which political enemies were dealt with (cf. Fouéré 2010). During the Popobawa panic on Pemba island in 1995 it was said that trapped spirits, manifestations of the shape-shifting evil genie, had declared that they had come from Butiama, Nyerere's home village (Walsh 2009: 28). This provided cause for pointing the finger of blame at Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), the ruling party, and was just one part of a counter-narrative that demonised Nyerere and his political heirs as the enemies of democracy and Pemban self-determination under the banner of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF).

My favourite popular pricking of the Nyerere balloon is a book I picked up in Iringa town in February 2000, a few month's after Mwalimu's death the previous October. Munga Tehenan's Siri za Nyerere, 'Nyerere's Secrets', is undated; the author himself died in 2008. His chapter headings give the flavour:

Nyerere's Secrets

1. Nyerere alikuwa ni Mrundi? [Was Nyerere a Rundi?]
2. Roho yake ilikoswa mara tano [His heart stopped five times]
3. Nyerere hakuwajali wanaye [Nyerere didn't care for his children]
4. Watoto wake ni walalahoi [His children are homeless]
5. Kifimbo chake na nguvu za kichawi [His stick and the power of witchcraft]
6. Kwa nini Mwalimu aliitwa 'Haambiliki' [Why is Mwalimu called 'He-can't-be-told']
7. Maisha yake Butiama yalishangaza zaidi [His life at Butiama was even more astonishing]
8. Butiama: mkulima halisi [Butiama: the dedicated farmer]
9. Nyerere na Waislamu wa Butiama [Nyerere and the Muslims of Butiama]
10. Mama wa Nyerere alikuwa mchawi [Nyerere's mother was a witch]
11. Mwalimu kama rafiki wa wote [Mwalimu as everyone's friend]
12. Mali zake Butiama [His wealth in Butiama]
13. Mwalimu: maradhi na utani [Mwalimu: illnesses and joking]
14. Nyerere alikuwa mdini [Nyerere was a religious person]

A lot of this is tittle-tattle about Nyerere's home life in Butiama. I've no doubt that more could be dredged up about his life abroad. But Nyerere's worst kept secrets were his Machiavellian political machinations and the economic ruin of the country in the name of Ujamaa, his personal version of state socialism. I first lived in Tanzania in 1980-82 when the ill effects of Nyerere's hubris and pernicious policies were all too evident. Whether or not he and others around him dabbled in the dark arts, it's difficult to forget the corruption and the queues, and especially the shortage of essential medical supplies and the consequent lack of basic healthcare, with all the deleterious consequences that this had and continues to have. Although I touched on some aspects of this in publications that arose from my doctoral research in Usangu (e.g. Walsh 1983; 1985), I haven't really written much about it. Perhaps I should.

Acknowledgement
Tom Molony is to blame for setting me thinking about the public and private images of Nyerere, but bears no responsibility for the rest. See also my earlier post about 'Okello, Babu, Mo, and photographic propaganda' (14 March 2011).

References

Fouéré, Marie-Aude 2009. J. K. Nyerere entre mythe et histoire: analyse de la production d’une mémoire publique officielle en Tanzanie post-socialiste. Les commémorations de la disparition du père de la nation. Les Cahiers d’Afrique de l’Est 41: 197-224.

Fouéré, Marie-Aude 2010. Sortie de clandestinité des années sombres à Zanzibar (1964-1975). Cahiers d'Études africaines 50 (1): 95-121.

Tehenan, Munga Undated. Siri za Nyerere. Dar es Salaam: M & N Publishers.

Walsh, Martin 1983. Fanta, Coca Cola and tea (three sugars) in the political economy of rural Tanzania: notes from Utengule-Usangu. Cambridge Anthropology 8 (3): 69-75.

Walsh, Martin 1985. Village, state and traditional authority in Usangu. In R. G. Abrahams (ed.) Villagers, Villages and the State in Modern Tanzania. Cambridge: African Studies Centre. 135-167.

Walsh, Martin 2009. The politicisation of Popobawa: changing explanations of a collective panic in Zanzibar. Journal of Humanities 1 (1): 23-33.

KOJANI VERSUS POPOBAWA

One of the places I now wish I’d visited when I lived on Pemba island in 1994-96 is Kojani. It's one of the least accessible villages, located on an islet off the eastern coast of the main island. At the last count Kojani was home to more than nine thousand people. New arrivals are liable to be met by throngs of excited children wading into the water to ogle at them. The menfolk of the village are often absent for months on end fishing up and down the East African coast, while their wives and other family members are left behind to farm and eke out a bare living. And bare it is, because this is the region of Pemba most prone to periodic drought and famine and recurrent problems of public health and nutrition (Walsh 2009b).

Kojani is one of a handful of comparatively remote Pemban villages that has resisted the spread of Kiunguja, the dialect of Swahili that is spoken in Zanzibar town and throughout the plantation areas of both Unguja and Pemba (Whiteley 1958: 8). When the late John Middleton surveyed the systems of land tenure in Zanzibar in 1958 he thought that Kojani was probably the part of Pemba “least affected by clove growing and modern change” (1961: 56). Another mark of this is the survival of various aspects of traditional political organisation and community ritual. A few days ago I stumbled across Odile Racine-Issa’s (2001) fascinating description of the annual mwaka or New Year ceremony in Kojani, a three-day rite of passage and communal cleansing during which the islet is effectively closed to visitors.

One of the explicit purposes of this and other Swahili mwaka ceremonies is to refresh the relationship between the community and its guardian spirits. Interestingly, Kojani was one of the few villages on Pemba that resisted penetration by Popobawa, the malevolent entity that caused mass panic on the island in the run-up to the first multi-party national elections in 1995 (Walsh 2009a). I heard two different versions of what had happened. The first was related by Salim, my watchman-cum-gardener in Limbani, who’d been told this story at Chwale junction. A mainlander from the Tanga area had appeared there one day asking the way to Kojani. He had a scar right round his neck and spoke in a faint throaty voice. People asked him who he was going to see in Kojani and he said a local mganga or healer. But no one believed this and they accused him of being Popobawa, following which he was seized and brought to the police at Wete. Salim didn’t know what had subsequently happened to him, but thought it likely that he really was an innocent visitor in search of traditional treatment.

The second, much longer version, was recorded by my research assistant, Jamila. On this account a stranger had appeared one day on the shore by the ferry crossing to Kojani. For a long time he just stayed there watching people being ferried to and fro. Eventually an old man approached him and asked if he wanted to go across to Kojani himself. “Yes, I do want to go there” he replied, pointing towards Kojani. But he didn’t budge, and was still there clutching his bag when the sun went down. Meanwhile, in Kojani itself, a local man had fallen into a possession trance and his possessory spirit announced that Popobawa was trying to cross to the village. However, the benevolent spirits of Kojani had tied up his tongue and the rest of his body, and he was unable to move. “If you want to confirm that he really is Popobawa, then go and open his bag and look inside!”

Hearing this the men of Kojani jumped into their canoes and sped across to the main island. Without further ado they laid into the stranger on the shore, some with sticks and stones, and he was thoroughly beaten. Some of his assailants grabbed hold of his bag and found that it was full of the paraphernalia of local medicine and perhaps sorcery: the roots of plants, charms, and something that looked like a face-mask. Eventually sailors from the local detachment of the Anti-Smuggling Unit (KMKM, Kikosi Maalum cha Kuzuia Magendo) intervened to stop him from being beaten further.

The Kojani men wanted to finish him off, and told the sailors to examine the contents of his bag. They were shocked by the horrible smell of one of the charms: the same stinking odour that was said to follow Popobawa during his nocturnal assaults. When the sailors quizzed the roughed-up stranger he claimed to be on his way to Kojani to seek traditional treatment after a long period of hospitalisation and the prescription of modern medicines had failed to cure him of illness. But he was unable to name anyone in Kojani or explain satisfactorily why he hadn’t crossed to the islet. And he was unable to explain the contents of his bag, claiming that he hadn’t visited any mganga since falling ill.

Following this the local KMKM commander decided that he should be handed over to the police, and his staff telephoned the station in Wete. The police came in a vehicle at around 9 o’clock at night and interviewed everyone present before taking the stranger away. Afterwards it was said that the police only kept him in gaol overnight for his own safety. He was released early the next morning and – or so many people thought – allowed to continue his nefarious activities as a manifestation of Popobawa. This just helped to confirm the widespread belief that the authorities were themselves responsible for bringing Popobawa to the island, to punish Pembans for supporting the opposition and distract them from political campaigning.

Thus ends Jamila’s account. This wasn’t the only occasion in 1995 when a stranger was identified as Popobawa and attacked by a mob. In Zanzibar town and elsewhere on Unguja island this led to a number of deaths, the most notorious of which was widely reported (Jansen 1996). Whatever the truth behind the Pemban narratives of victimisation and/or political conspiracy that I’ve paraphrased here, it’s striking that they support the perception that Kojani is indeed a spiritual fortress, guarded by the very spirits that the annual mwaka rituals are intended to appease. And they carry a warning to would-be travellers to Kojani: don’t go there without good reason, especially if you look weird and have strange stuff in your bag.

References

Jansen, Henriette 1996. Popobawa is Dead! Tanzanian Affairs 53: 22-24.

Middleton, John 1961. Land Tenure in Zanzibar (Colonial Research Studies No. 33). London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Racine-Issa, Odile 2001. Le Mwaka de Kojani (Pemba). In Bridget Drinka and Derek Nurse (eds) African Language and Culture in Historical Perspective: Essays in Memory of Edgar C. Polome. Special Issue of General Linguistics 38: 199-229.

Walsh, Martin 2009a. The Politicisation of Popobawa: Changing Explanations of a Collective Panic in Zanzibar. Journal of Humanities 1 (1): 23-33.

Walsh, Martin 2009b. The Use of Wild and Cultivated Plants as Famine Foods on Pemba Island, Zanzibar. Etudes Océan Indien 42-43: 217-241.

Whiteley, W. H. 1958. The Dialects and Verse of Pemba: An Introduction (Studies in Swahili Dialect IV). Kampala: East African Swahili Committee.