In EA, only Tanzanians understand nationalism

Why has nationalism proved such a failure in Africa?

This is among the important questions likely to be raised in a symposium organised in Dar es Salaam to mark 10 years since Julius Nyerere’s death.

It is not an easy question because nationalism has conflicting definitions.

For instance, were Mwalimu and Daniel arap Moi talking about the same thing when they invoked that term — which both did frequently?

Was the former Kenyan president using it correctly when, last week, he urged Kenya’s warring leaders to avoid tribalism and, instead, sue for “nationalism”?

Yes and no. Yes, because the European colony was almost always multi-tribal.

And the colonial regime daily sowed robust seeds of discord between the tribes to prevent the emergence of any single multi-tribal anti-colonial movement. But, evidently, this divide and rule policy did not fully succeed.

Since the colonial regime was the single direct target of any Independence-minded tribal movement, the leaders of all the colonial tribes learned very early on that only if they united to conflate their political energies could they fight the colonial regime effectively.

Thus the political unification of tribal leaders into a single national anti-colonial movement is one of the more important definitions of nationalism.

This is the only way in which Moi’s usage can be defended. But, on the other hand, this usage is completely misleading because, clearly, it is a definition only of tactics.

Although the Nationalists unleashed a Niagara of words about “uhuru,” they were at best vague on the question of economic strategy.

They never spelt out how exactly they intended to liberate their peoples from what one of the more solid nationalists — Jawaharlal Nehru — called “the unholy trinity of hunger, ignorance and disease.”

That is why each nationalist movement lost its purpose and became totally meaningless as soon as the colonial regime — the common enemy of all the tribes — had been defeated.

Having fulfilled its historic mission, nationalism appeared to have come to an end.

But only as a tactic. For, in truth, every nationalist movement has an unstated long-term strategy that begins only with the hoisting of that flag.