Who would ever have believed it? An opposition presidential candidate states, in effect, that he will do what the ruling party’s founding father Julius Nyerere did when he was in power — provide free education for all Tanzanian children.

The ruling party retorts by stating vehemently that that is an impossibility, the government cannot afford it, even Nyerere failed in that quest..

Strange things tend to happen at election time, and this is one of them. Like the ghost at the banquet in Macbeth, Nyerere has got into the habit of making appearances that disconcert the party he founded — disconcerting because he tends to be smuggled into the banquet hall by members of the Opposition, who have effectively claimed him as their own, a fact that has somehow prompted the ruling party to disown him.

The issues of free education and free health care are not even the most important of the questions that have exercised hearts and minds, making Nyerere a point of reference during these long, long electoral campaigns.

There has been much rhetoric regarding the integrity of candidates on the ruling party’s list, especially individuals who are either in court on corruption charges or whose names have been persistently linked to this or that scam.

The view of many commentators is that the ruling party has plumbed the depths by allowing all sorts of shady characters to contest these elections, signalling a radical departure from the principal tenets of Nyerere’s teaching, for Nyerere was nothing if not an indefatigable anti-corruption campaigner to the very end.

Some 40 years or so ago, at the height of Nyerere’s power, we, as young and enthusiastic intellectuals, would engage in speculation over the future ideological wars that would be fought over what Nyerere really stood for, each protagonist positing an interpretation to fit their political enterprise.

Still, we never foresaw that Nyerere’s own party would treat him as an inconvenience, allowing the opposition to clothe itself in his prestigious raiment.

Yet the rulers in Dar es Salaam have reason to be wary of the man who refuses to stay among the dead.

As official corruption and profligacy have escalated, and as poverty has spread and deepened, signs of social disintegration have become starker.

A small clique of Tanzanians has become filthy rich while many, many more are joining the battalions of the dirt-poor.

Governance systems have frayed, justice delivery systems have a market price and a restless cluelessness pervades the atmosphere. People are desperate for leadership, and they seem to find it beyond the curtain in the grave of a known soldier in Butiama.

The mystique of Nyerere may escape those who now claim him and those who may wish him to stay dead and quiet, but it’s so simple it’s painful.

Nyerere’s mystique does not lie in the number of kilometres of road he built, nor is it to be found in the number of water points he commissioned.

In fact, I dare say, of all the four presidents to have led Tanzania to date, Nyerere is probably the one who built the least number of road kilometres.

His mystique lies in the fact (or perception) that he built a proto-nation out of diverse ethnic groupings, giving them a sense of belonging and pride.

His mystique lies in the fact (not perception, here) that although he wielded immense, unquestioned power, he never used it to enrich himself or his family, that he lived a humble material life but led an elevated intellectual and moral life, a titan who shunned the mundane trivia that have caused serious vertigo in lesser minds.

Until the rulers in Dar learn to appreciate Julius Nyerere’s mystique in all its complexity, they will continue to wonder why there is little appreciation of the number of kilometres of road built, and why an upstart opposition party has successfully appropriated for itself the mantle of the founding father of the ruling party.
Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political commentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]