Looking for Julius, but really the point is not to find him
Tuesday October 16 2018
Tanzania's founding president Julius Kambarage Nyerere died on October 14, 1999 at the age of 77 after a battle with cancer. PHOTO | NMG
It was barely months before Y2K, and technology already had us living under the shadow of impending doom. Someone let it slip out online. In a hospital, in London, the messages said. Was he gone? The rumour oozed like a puddle of tar across the small online Tanzanianist community.
What does one do with incomplete news that heralds the end of an era?
Full and creative use of both the free high-speed LAN and a year’s training in how to travel the World Wide Web sniffing out clues proved futile.
Silence is an answer. In Tanzania, silence is always an answer. I was looking for Mwalimu, but the shroud had already descended.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere died on October 14, 1999 at the age of 77 after a battle with cancer. This year will be the 19th year that we celebrate his life and legacy on the anniversary of his official passing. The obligatory praise songs have already started.
The ululations abound, metaphorical ashes have been smeared on faces, the reverence is distressingly moist and florid. Oh! Father of the Nation! What would you think of how we are now? He sleeps on in Butiama.
I am still looking for Mwalimu, from the rear end of a generation that glimpsed a slim dude full of life and a delightful penchant for mischief. Officially speaking, he is not hard to find.
Material on him is everywhere, the country is still littered with people who knew him, worked with him, lived with him, had coffee with him, debated him, grew up calling him “uncle,” resented him, and now miss him.
Mzee Kifimbo, we teasingly nicknamed him, for his vain affectation. You can still jump off a bus at Kwa Nyerere in Dar es Salaam, make a pilgrimage to his native Musoma. His portrait hangs in every office and shop.
He is not hard to find, but he is surprisingly hard to grasp. With the charming ease and accessibility of those who are naturally gifted with popularity, he perfected the beautiful arts of complexity and contradiction.
Don’t take my word for it; the dependably cynical Economist magazine wrote him an obituary published on October 21, 1999 that is shockingly warm.
It ends thus: “He was a magnificent teacher: Articulate, questioning, stimulating, caring. He should never have been given charge of an economy.”
From a neoliberal institution, that is practically a declaration of love for an unabashed socialist.
I am still looking for Mwalimu, because I need to believe in benevolence as a principle one can live by. Not perfection, no. And in this 19th year, it has finally occurred to me that is the point. Mwalimu is becoming timeless because he was an idealist who somehow made the transition to becoming an ideal.
When people ask, “What do younger Tanzanians know about Nyerere?” I am now inclined to hear his cheeky giggle in the background. This sly old man is still making us work for it, work to understand how to be better people if we are to earn the title of “being like Mwalimu.”
Of course, nobody was like Mwalimu, not even the very real, flawed and human Julius Kambarage Nyerere himself. But here he is, still teaching us from the grave. I hear you, Mzee. I get it. We will be looking for Mwalimu for the rest of our lives because finding him isn’t the point, the effort to do so is.
Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report. E-mail: [email protected]