Julius Nyerere, the chief's son a headmaster found 'too kind' to be prefect
At Tabora Government School, teachers recommended Julius Nyerere as head prefect, but the headmaster vetoed him as too kind. The bookish son of a Zanaki chief, who learned Swahili only at school, went on to lead Tanganyika to independence and govern Tanzania for more than two decades as its Father of the Nation.
Nyerere was born on 13 April 1922 in Butiama, in the Mara region of British-ruled Tanganyika, one of 25 surviving children of Chief Nyerere Burito, whose name meant caterpillar after a plague of them at his birth. Julius's mother was the fifth of the chief's 22 wives. Named first Mugendi, walker, he was soon renamed Kambarage after a female rain spirit, and grew up herding goats and cattle and farming millet and cassava. Life in his father's compound, he later felt, taught him the value of communal living.
Colonial officials encouraged schooling for chiefs' sons, hoping to prop up the chiefly system. Nyerere started at a native administration school in 1934, skipped a grade within six months and topped the whole region in his final exams. At Tabora he read constantly, taught himself excellent English from the library, founded a Scout troop and starred in the debating society. After his father died in 1942 he was baptized a Catholic, taking the name Julius, though he later called the practice of dropping tribal names silly.
At Makerere College in Kampala from 1943 he studied chemistry, biology, Latin and Greek and was most influenced by John Stuart Mill, winning a prize for an essay applying Mill's ideas on the subjugation of women to Zanaki society. That July he wrote to the Tanganyika Standard that capitalism was alien to Africa. Back home he chose a lower-paid mission teaching job, gave free English lessons, and was banned from a rival school after beating its teachers in a debate about colonialism. He later studied at Edinburgh.
In 1954 he helped found the Tanganyika African National Union, preaching Gandhi-inspired non-violence, and won independence through negotiation in 1961. After union with Zanzibar created Tanzania in 1964, his 1967 Arusha Declaration launched Ujamaa socialism: nationalized banks, expanded schools and clinics, but communal farms that hurt food production. He kept Tanzania stable and unified, though critics point to a one-party state and detention without trial. He stepped down in 1985 and died on 14 October 1999.
Source: Julius Nyerere
