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.

THE USANGU METEORITE MYSTERY

One of the most puzzling reports that I heard when I lived in Utengule-Usangu in the early 1980s was that a meteorite had fallen to earth somewhere to the east of the village. This event was supposed to have taken place in the early hours (around 2.30-3.00 in the morning) of Thursday 12th November 1981. The first I knew about it was later that day when I joined my usual kikao or drinking group in the main village club and listened to intense speculation about what had happened. Was it really a meteorite that had fallen out of the night sky? Could it have been a plane crash? Or an explosion of some kind, a bomb perhaps? No one was sure.

The next day the Village Secretary (the CCM-appointed Katibu wa Kijiji) came to the kikao with the news that the cause of the loud noise that people had heard was indeed a “star” (Swahili nyota) that had fallen in the vicinity of Rujewa, the administrative centre of what was then Mbarali Sub-District. Needless to say on Saturday 14th debate in the kikao continued. The most detailed account I could obtain was from Paulo, a young Sangu man who had relatives in the area in question. The meteorite had fallen at Uyelevala, beyond Ubaruku village, and it was now being guarded by soldiers. People as far away as Luhanga, the village to the north of Utengule, had seen the earth light up at night, and some of them had thrown themselves to the ground, thinking that the world was coming to an end.

My fieldwork in Usangu was drawing to a close, and I left Utengule at the end of the year none the wiser about this seemingly apocalyptic event. Was it a meteorite that blazed its way to earth in a fireball? Thousands of meteorites are thought to fall to the earth every year, but only a small proportion of these are observed, located, and officially recorded and reported. The 5th edition of the Catalogue of Meteorites (Grady 2000) lists a mere 1,005 meteorite falls (the technical term for meteorites that have actually been seen falling to earth) and 21,502 meteorite finds (meteorites discovered on the ground but not observed falling). Only nine meteorites are listed in current databases for Tanzania, eight of them observed falls, and one a find – the famous Mbosi (= Mbozi) Meteorite, one of the largest iron meteorites in the world (Sassoon 1967). But only two meteorite falls have been reported since national independence (one in 1963 and one in 1988), and none are recorded in Usangu.

It is possible, I suppose, that a meteorite did fall but wasn’t reported to the wider scientific community: after all the Tanzanian state in 1981 wasn’t the most open of societies. Otherwise I find myself continuing the lively speculations of my drinking companions in Utengule. Was it a plane or even a piece of military hardware that had dropped out of the sky? Is that why soldiers were guarding the site, and was the meteorite story merely a cover? Or was something more sinister going on? Is Uyelevala Tanzania’s Roswell? And should I start writing more creatively (von Däniken-style) about Sangu cosmology; the belief that pangolins are sent down to earth by the ancestors, the complex of ideas about chiefship and fertility that this connects to (see Walsh 1995/96; 2007; also 2010), including the announcement of the death of a chief with the statement that “the sky has fallen down” (Sangu uwulanga wagwa)? Turn my ethnographic knowledge into a cross between The X-Files and The Gods Must Be Crazy? Answers in a bottle please.

Acknowledgement
The photo of the Mbozi Meteorite (above) is from the Maisha ni Vita blog.

References

Grady, Monica M. 2000. Catalogue of Meteorites (5th edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sassoon, Hamo 1967. Guide to the Mbozi Meteorite. Dar es Salaam: Department of Antiquities.

Walsh, Martin 1995/96. The Ritual Sacrifice of Pangolins among the Sangu of South-west Tanzania. Bulletin of the International Committee on Urgent Anthropological and Ethnological Research 37/38: 155-170.

Walsh, Martin 2007. Pangolins and Politics in the Great Ruaha Valley, Tanzania: Symbol, Ritual and Difference / Pangolin et politique dans la Vallée du Great Ruaha, Tanzanie: Symbole, rituel et différence. In Edmond Dounias, Elisabeth Motte-Florac and Margaret Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? / Animal symbolism: Animals, keystone of the relationship between man and nature? Paris: Éditions de l’IRD. 1003-1044.

Walsh, Martin 2010. Red Velvet from Heaven. East African Notes and Records, 13 June 2010.