What is saddening about the history of Tanganyika’s struggle for independence is the fact that, more than four decades after achieving freedom, that important period of the people’s resistance to foreign domination has yet to be written about.

The few attempts made so far to write that history have focused on hero worship and idolising Nyerere.

What we thus have is a one-sided official history full of distortions and even half-truths.

Meanwhile, vital documents and photographs of the times still remain in private hands and will soon be destroyed or lost for ever.

It is now 50 years since the Tanganyika African National Union made the historic decision in Tabora in 1958to take part in the first general election to the Legislative Council under extremely discriminatory conditions — an ultimately wise decision that came to be known as Uamuzi wa Busara.

In that election, seats were contested not only along racial lines but also saw the locking out of candidates who did not have a formal education or were not employed in a recognised profession.

But what incensed the people most was the condition that Africans would have to vote for a European, an Asian and an African. Mohamed Said’s new book tells the story of that election.

The conditions set by the colonial government seemed on the face of it unacceptable for Tanu.

The conference deliberations in Tabora, a small town in the then Western Province, threatened to split the party into two camps —moderates in favour of participating in the elections; and radicals calling for a total boycott.

But Tanu and indeed Nyerere survived an internal crisis that swiftly took on religious and racial undertones.

Radicals like Sheikh Suleiman Takadir, chairman of the Tanu Elders, and Zuberi Mtemvu, then Tanu organising secretary, were all set to stage a coup against Nyerere and take over the party.

And they would have succeeded were it not for the ingenuity of Mwalimu and a group of Tanu members from Tanga handpicked by Nyerere to confront the onslaught.

There are no existing records to give us an insight into Nyerere’s own position on the tripartite voting nor is there any indication that he even discussed the issue at the headquarters privately with Sheikh Takadir and Mtemvu, or close associates Idd Faiz, Haidar Mwinyimvua, Dossa Aziz, Bibi Titi Mohamed and the Tanu propagandist Ramadhani Mashado Plantan, owner of the radical paper Zuhra – Nyererere’s mouthpiece. Indeed, it would seem Nyerere played his cards close to his chest right up to the voting.

So, what was Nyerere’s strategy — the one he never revealed even privately in later life?

The book attempts to solve this mystery through interviews with Tanu veterans, fleshing out a picture of Nyerere “riding” the wave of opposition within Tanu and neutralising radicals like Mtemvu and Sheikh Takadir.

That was the first test of his capabilities as a leader of a mass party and the young Nyerere passed with flying colours.

The writer takes the reader through a labyrinth of intrigues, plots and counter plots that eventually led to Tanu and Nyerere triumphing in the tripartite voting over the Tanganyika United Party — a political grouping dominated by whites that had been cobbled together by the government to counter Tanu.

Nyerere’s opponents resigned from Tanu, with Zuberi Mtemvu forming the African National Congress and Ramadhani Mashado Plantan and a group of Muslims forming the All Muslim National Union of Tanganyika — raising the spectre of racial and religious conflict.

Mtemvu’s policy was Africa for Africans while Plantan’s group wanted assurances about the future of Muslims in free Tanganyika.

These long forgotten players in Tanganyika politics seem to live again in the pages of this book.

What Said brings out, though, is how Nyerere and Tanzania weathered this delicate passage thanks to the many Muslims patriots who remained committed to the original vision.

Said has moving stories to tell of patriotism and sacrifice.

There is the story of Tanu stalwart Mzee Mshume Kiyate, whose contribution as party financier and close friend of Nyerere’s family has never been acknowledged.

Kiyate was a prominent fishmonger at Kariakoo in Dar es Salaam when he met Nyerere in early 1950s; he was to become friend and mentor to the young leader.

Also forgotten are patriots like Said Chamwenyewe, who presented Tanu’s appeal to the United Nations Visiting Missions to the Mandate Territories when it visited Tanganyika in 1955.

Chamwenyewe had earlier mobilised the first Tanu members from Rufiji in 1954, visiting villages on a bicycle to campaign for Tanu, collecting funds from members and turning the money over to Tanu treasurer Idd Faiz Mafongo without asking anything for himself. Nothing is today known about the fate of these people.

The book contains a number of rare photographs collected from private hands.

There are pictures of a young Nyerere surrounded by Muslims townsmen in kanzu and other paraphernalia — people like Issa Nassir, Sheikh Haidar Mwinyimvua, Mwinjuma Mwinyikambi, Jumbe Tambaza, Sheikh Suleiman Takadir, Mshume Kiyate, Said Chamwenyewe and many others.

There is one touching photograph of Nyerere with Mzee Mshume Kiyate taken soon after the army mutiny of January 20, 1964, showing Mshume covering Mwalimu with a piece of cloth traditionally worn by people from the coast known as “kitambi” or “msuli.”

The gesture was a show of support by Tanu elders in the face of the mutiny that almost overthrew Nyerere’s government. Mzee Mshume died in the early 1970s, alone, poor and forgotten.

The book ventures into the uncharted terrain of Islam as an ideology of colonial resistance, depicting the central role of Muslims in the struggle against the British, a topic still considered a no-go zone in Tanzania.

The writer portrays Nyerere in a light unfamiliar even to his fervent admirers, narrates how during the tripartite voting campaigns the young leader participated in Islamic rituals specifically conducted to safeguard him and the movement against enemies.

Mohamed Said deserves kudos for documenting this important chapter in the history of nationalism in Tanganyika.

He puts meat on the skeleton of Tanu’s history in a book that, once you start reading, you will not put down until you get to the end.