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  • Africa’s Liberation: The Legacy of Nyerere
  • Stephen Agyepong
Chachage, Chambi, and Annar Cassam, eds. 2010. Africa’s Liberation: The Legacy of Nyerere: Pambazuka Press; and Kampala: Fountain Publishers. 195 pp. £12.95

Tanzania’s first president, Julius K. Nyerere, the Mwalimu, died in 1999, yet his good leadership and deeds have followed his name: whenever any aspect of modern African history is mentioned, he stands tall among his colleagues and peers. Publishers of Africa’s Liberation: The Legacy of Nyerere aptly assert, in a back-page summary: “Nyerere was not simply a player on the national terrain. He was a Pan-Africanist and an internationalist—in thoughts, writings and, crucially, in his practice. A unique advocate, strategist and leader, Nyerere spoke out loud against injustices across the world.”

Among scholars and commentators who have agreed with the foregoing assessment by contributing to this book are former Commonwealth Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku, Nawal El Saadawi of Egypt, the late sociology professor Seithy Chachage of the University of Dar-es-Salaam, and Syracuse University professor Horace Campbell. Madraka Nyerere offers readers a short biography of the Mwalimu, since he did not write his autobiography (pp. xvi–xvii). The book has been coedited by Chambi Chachage, an independent researcher in Dar-es-Salaam, and Annar Cassam, the Mwalimu’s personal assistant.

Most importantly, it includes contributions from leading scholars, commentators, colleagues of the Mwalimu, and Dr. Nyerere himself, in his own words. For example, in “Why we wish you were here,” Firoze Manji, Pambazuka editor-in-chief, pays a special tribute to the Mwalimu (pp. ix–xi). In an introduction (pp. xii–xiii), Cassam offers what can be termed a “living memory” tribute. In the introduction, she discusses several aspects of the tributes, concluding: “The contemporaneous quality is evident” in them (p. xii). Several of the contributions have such personal touches that readers will benefit tremendously from them, in a variety of ways. Professor Campbell, a leading scholar of the Pan-Africanist tradition, does not merely discuss the Mwalimu as a Pan-African leader: instead, he writes about him under the thematic title “Between state-centered and people-centered Pan-Africanism” (pp. 44–60). At the end of his essay, he poses what he terms “Pan-African questions of today” (pp. 57–59).

Well covered are topics dealing with Dr. Nyerere and liberation, leadership, human rights, land issues, education, and international diplomacy. El Saadawi, comparing the Mwalimu to Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah, Egypt’s President Abdel Gamal Nasser, Congo’s martyred Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, Yugoslavia’s Field Marshal (President) Tito, and [End Page 121] India’s Prime Minister Nehru, feminist and radical Egyptian writer Nawal points out that those leaders “led the two huge continents of Africa and Asia towards unity within the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of African Unity,” now the African Union (p. 7). Noting that she made a 1964 speech at Cairo University, El Saadawi wrote that both presidents “Nkrumah and Nasser were getting impatient with the ‘reactionaries’ in our continent, but I said we should not have a confrontation with other African countries; they were a part of us and we all had to live with each other” (p. 9). The rest of her contribution is an illuminating interview with Dr. Nyerere (pp. 9–15).

Apart from the contributed essays, most of the writers provide useful endnotes, which explain much and offer readers copious information and other sources. The section on the contributors’ backgrounds is also useful. The pages (pp. 189–195) constituting the index are essential, as they pinpoint topical matters, including subjects and names for readers to have easy access. Africa’s Liberation: The Legacy of Nyerere can benefit researchers, students of varied age groups, and general readers; it is written in such a beautiful but uncomplicated language that even secondary or high school students, as well as college students and researchers, should be encouraged to have access to it. It is a publication that I highly recommend to all and sundry.

Stephen Agyepong
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
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