Samia leads AU leaders in Nyerere statue event

The event was an auxiliary item for the 37th ordinary session of the assembly of the Heads of State and Government, as Mwalimu, who led the country for 24 years, was among the founding leaders of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and presided over its pivotal OAU Liberation Committee, a key illustration of his legacy.

President Samia said ahead of the unveiling ceremony that unveiling the statue recognizes Mwalimu’s contributions to African liberation, unity and peace, and manifests Africa’s overall pride in that heritage.

Nyerere's sculpture is the third statue erected on the premises of the AU headquarters next to the late Emperor Haile Selassie, and Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, independence leaders of Ethiopia and Ghana, respectively.

She asserted that no African country can achieve real prosperity without a prosperous Africa, affirming that Africa’s uniqueness matches its inter-dependence.

Complementing political liberation with economic transformation is important for our future to be secured," she stated before a gallery of other leaders, including former president Jakaya Kikwete, Angolan President Joao Lourenco, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and AU Commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat.

Mahamat said Nyerere, Nkrumah and the Ethiopian emperor are credited with ad a pioneering role in the establishment of the OAU in 1963, a milestone event in pursuit of African unity.

The sculpture was designed, built, and transported to the AU headquarters in cooperation with the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) which grew out of the liberation era solidarity, along with, Nyerere's family and the government, he said.  

Samia urged Africans to realize that unity and prosperity is in the numbers and that no one can have lasting prosperity without a prosperous Africa.

"It is my hope that the memory of Mwalimu Nyerere will inspire the current and future generations to light their own torch in search of hope, love and dignity where these values are absent," she said.

 Mwalimu Nyerere had a great vision and made sacrifices to have a free and peaceful Africa, placing the interests of the continent before his personal interests or those of his country.

"This is even reflected in our national anthem, where we pray first for the well-being of mother Africa and then for Tanzania," she explained, while indeed the anthem, common to South Africa, Zambia and Tanzania in its opening stanza, shows a spirit of Pan-Africanism as underlining its composition.

Even after leaving office, Nyerere continued to support work for conflict resolution and African causes at the global level, especially as chairman of the South Commission uniting a wide range of socialist leaders among the developing countries.

Mwalimu’s personal admiration of the Chinese revolution and agrarian socialist drive was an inspiration to Ujamaa villages policy from 1967, leading to Tanzania’s key role in canvassing for China’s readmission into the United Nations and taking over the Security Council seat then held by Taiwan. 

This event fostered a lasting friendship between China and African even as commitment to liberation was placing the country on the road to a coup as with Dr Nkrumah in Ghana, mid-1966, leading to major reorientation of state outlook to remobilise the population with the idea of socialism and self-reliance.

Ghana and Tanzania were the only OAU member states to have broken diplomatic relations with Britain despite an OAU resolution to that effect when Britain failed to take action to stop the unilateral declaration of independence by the minority whites in Southern Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe.

Nyerere rattled African leaders with his recognition of breakaway Biafra during the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970, while scores of African leaders loudly grumbled at the way Tanzanian forces, in the wake of a take-over by an Ugandan unit of the Kagera salient, went into Uganda along with Ugandan resistance groups, removing Gen. Amin in 1979.

The model was later used by an alliance of Rwandese and Ugandam forces, plus Congolese resistance groups led by Laurent Kabila, to remove the 30 odd years’ regime of then Zairean President Mobutu Seseseko.

Kabila took office as the new leader, while like Ugandan resistance leader Yoweri Museveni, he spent most of his years of exile in Tanzania.