By KT Reporter
Renowned Tanzanian opposition politician, Tundu Antiphas Mughwai Lissu says Mwalimu Julius Nyerere should never be canonized because he was never a saint.
Popularly known as Tundu Lisu, the two- member of the Tanzanian Parliament and opposition chief whip on Thursday surprised law students and scholars at Makerere when he openly accused Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of human rights violations and abuse of power.
He was delivering a talk on debating Mwalimu’s influence on the constitutional and political development of our East African countries at Makerere University.
“I’m saying we should humanize him. He never was a saint. He would be the first to admit that he never had anything to do with religious sainthood. He was a political leader first and foremost. These attempts to put him on religious pedal store. They are doing it because a great man is dead. He would have protested” he said.
He argues that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere never said that he a religious leader. “Why are they trying to make him one? He was a Catholic, I’m a catholic too. I’m not sure that Mwalimu was not sinful. I don’t think he wasn’t. He was a human being” he said.
“The attempts to canonize him whether as a secular saint or religious one, are attempts to dehumanize Mwalimu. What we should do. And what we should make sure we do is to humanize Mwalimu Nyerere” he suggested.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was the first President of Tanzania. He ruled the country for 24 years before retiring in 1985.
He died on 14th October 1999. Some of his family members and some Catholics in Tanzania have for the last twenty been leading a cause for beatification to determine whether he was worthy of beatification or to turn him into a saint.
Some of those efforts have been supported by President Museveni and his family. Maria Nyerere, the wife to the Tanzanian statesman has been in Uganda for several years to participate at the Uganda Martyrs day commemorations.
However, Tundu Lisu says those leading a cause for beatification shouldn’t just be doing it because Nyerere died. He says like many post-colonial leaders, Nyerere fingers equally soiled by dirty blood.
“He committed very fundamental mistakes. There are stories if told, may lead us to ask some of his motive. Because it is always told that the intentions were good. But we should remember that the road to hell is curved with good intentions,” said Tundu Lisu who said he wouldn’t have been allowed to deliver such a lecture at the University of Dar es Salaam where he studied law.
Tundu Lisu chairs CHADEMA (Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo, Party for Democracy and Progress), the largest opposition party in Tanzania. He like other critics of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere believe that TANU and later Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s political philosophy advisedly affected Tanzanians and other African nations including Uganda.
“The way our leader are behaving today. This an accountable and criminal behavior on the part of our leaders has everything today with the constitutional foundations that were laid by Mwalimu in 1962. Which created a president who was only accountable to his God. How good could that be? ” he asked.
While Julius Nyerere is over the years been hailed for having created a nation in Tanzania out of over 120 tribes, Tundu Lisu instead argues that Nyerere instead created a state.
“I’m not very sure whether state is the same thing as the nation. Do we still have our 12o tribes? We were not fighting our selves during the 80 years while we were under colonialism. We have not fought ourselves in the 64 years that we have been independent” he said “The post-colonial stability in Tanzania original e from the German colonialism. In Mwalimu’s state, if you examine it closely, you see a striking continuity between the colonial state and the post-colonial state.” he added.
He observed that the hallmark of the colonial state was its violent oppressive character, characterized by a regime of right-less law.
“Characterized by state orchestrated violence of the instruments of violence of the colonial state. The police, the army, the prisons, the courts. How do they differ from today’s whether in Uganda or Tanzania?”
He argues that the one thing that unites post-colonial leaders in Africa is their authoritarianism not the political courts that they wore at one. “What they have in common is the oppression of their people. Under Mwalimu Nyerere , we will never know possibly hundreds or thousands were detained without trial” he noted.
Tundu Lisu revealed that even the British Colonial state in all its oppressiveness, it never had preventive detention laws.
“That is the creation of independent Tanganyika. Mwalimu borrowed it from Ghana’s Nkurumah. Because the preventive detention law was enacted by Kwame Nkrumah in 1960”
Speaking about Mwalimu Nyerere’s foreign policy influence on Uganda, Tundu Lisu says he at some moment acted like a kingmaker determining on who should rule Uganda especially after President Iddi Amin had been defeated by the Tanzanian forces in 1979.
He argues that President Museveni in ruling Uganda adopted most of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere leadership stance. “Museveni’s own statement and they are too numerous. He looks at Mwalimu like his political father figure. Which is fine, but where has Muaeveni left the great notes of Mwalimu the great leader ?” -URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
