Julius Nyerere

Biography

Julius Nyerere was born in 1922 at Butiama in British-ruled Tanganyika, the son of a Zanaki chief. He trained as a teacher at Makerere College in Uganda, taught in Tabora, and from 1949 to 1952 studied at the University of Edinburgh. Back home he taught history at St Francis' College near Dar es Salaam and in 1953 became president of the Tanganyika African Association.

In July 1954 he turned the association into the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and campaigned for independence by non-violent means, assuring European and Asian minorities that they would have a place in the new state. TANU swept the 1960 elections; Nyerere became chief minister, then prime minister at independence in 1961, and in 1962 the first president of the Republic of Tanganyika.

After the Zanzibar Revolution he united Tanganyika and Zanzibar as Tanzania in 1964 and governed it as a one-party state. His 1967 Arusha Declaration set out ujamaa, a programme of African socialism and self-reliance: banks and major firms were nationalized, schooling and health care expanded, and villagers were moved into communal farms, which hurt food production. He backed liberation movements across southern Africa and in 1978-1979 fought the war with Uganda that overthrew Idi Amin.

Nyerere stepped down as president in 1985 but chaired the ruling party, by then Chama Cha Mapinduzi, until 1990, when he supported the move to multi-party politics. In his last years he mediated in Burundi's civil war. He died in 1999 and is honoured in Tanzania as the Father of the Nation.