President Yoweri Museveni has hailed the late Julius Nyerere's ideal to unite the African people, quoting him as having said, "Unity won't make us rich, but it will make it difficult for Africans to be humiliated and disregarded."
He said he decided to put all his three university-entry application choices at Dar es Salaam University because he wanted to live near Nyerere and learn more about his values and style of work.
He added, "Nyerere's ideas inspired and nurtured many African revolutionaries; especially his strong belief that coalescing small efforts leads to large action, and that true strength is attained through unity."
The president was closing a two-day 'Symposium Celebrating Makerere and Nyerere @100' held at the Freedom Square, Makerere University on October 13 and 14, 2022. He was represented by Maj Gen Kahinda Otafiire, the minister of Internal Affairs.
Hosted by the Julius Nyerere Leadership Centre (JNLC) in partnership with Uganda Management Institute and Makerere University, the symposium ran under the theme, 'Pan-Africanism: Imagining together an African future led by Africa's youth'.
Makerere University was established in January 1922 as Uganda Technical School, changing name to Makerere College in August of the same year, while Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born on April 13, 1922. So, the two share 2022 as their centenary anniversary year. Nyerere himself is an alumnus of Makerere in the 1940s and also once served as its chancellor from 1963 to 1970.
Dr Suzie Nansozi Muwanga, the executive director of JNLC, said further support for the symposium attended by many foreign delegations came in from the Tanzanian High Commission in Uganda, Tanzanian Students Associations in Uganda, Future Generations Trust (FGT), Caleb and Jovia Foundation (C&J), Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the Tanzanian Community in Uganda and Private Education Development Network (PEDN).
FOREIGN YOUTH DELEGATIONS
Sixteen foreign youth delegations attended, 15 of which were from African countries. They were from Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan and Tanzania, among others.
The keynote speaker was Prof Eddy Maloka, the CEO of Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Continental Secretariat; his topic being, 'Pan-Africanism: History, identity, youth and leadership'.
The symposium had three discussion panels, two fashion shows, three poetry readings, musical entertainment, a speech from the Nyerere family by his niece Neema Nyerere-Drago and a tribute to Nyerere by Mzee Joseph Butiku, the board chairman of the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation.
Based at Makerere University, the Julius Nyerere Leadership Centre is a presidential initiative intended to spread the ideals of servant leadership. It is co-managed by Makerere University and Uganda Management Institute (UMI). It was launched on October 6, 2018, by President Museveni, who is also its patron. Muwanga told the symposium that Museveni rejected the proposal to name the centre after him, insisting that it be named after Nyerere as a larger luminary than him.
CONTINUE THE DIALOGUE
The symposium plotted a dialogue between the youth of today and elders like Nyerere, and Butiku (aged 84) and Prof Tarsis Kabwegyere (81) who were at the event and called for it to continue and intensify in vigour and scope. The debates showed concern about a youth generation that care little or not at all about Africa's history and elders that don't feel secure handing over responsibilities to a younger generation.
For example, Neema Nyerere-Drago noted with grief, "The youth seem to be lost. They seem to know what they don't want, but they don't know what they want! With this failure to know where they are coming from and where they intend to go, it's a sad situation. We see South Africans [derogatorily] calling us 'Africans' as if they are not Africans! Yet [other] Africans sacrificed and suffered a lot for their liberation. It is really hurting to some of us who hosted them as refugees, educated them in our schools and shared with them the little we had."
In fact, the communiqué at the end of the symposium summarized the present state of the lull of pan-Africanism and disappointing outcomes in places like Haiti, South Africa, Libya, Somalia and Central African Republic. It noted that the debates and dialogue must continue with the supreme goal of drastically accelerating the pace at which Africa is rising.
NYERERE THE MAN
A lot of time was devoted to explaining to the young people who Nyerere was, what he believed in and what he achieved in his lifetime. For example, Kabwegyere, who also sits on the board of Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation, described him as "a thinker, prospective saint, an enduring presence, a glowing presence, an absent presence, an invisible visibility, a feasible tomorrowness" among other descriptions.
Kabwegyere described Nyerere as "a man who fell in love with honesty, humility, integrity, ..."
Kahinda Otafiire called Nyerere a great philosopher who understood human society, whose ideas were not dreams, and who taught self-reliance not as an ideal to be imported but one that is rooted in our history and traditions.
"He taught the philosophy of self-reliance; that no one in this world owes us a living; that we are on our own. He taught that our tormentors want us to stay where we are - poor - and they stay rich. That we must use our intellect to deny them continued exploitation of us and our resources. That no one wants Africa stabilized."
Otafiire added, "Nyerere's policies were not wrong; it's you [young people] who are wrong because you don't care to find out what [the situation] he was dealing with. Our debt is to actualize what he left unfinished; not fighting over holy water and holy rice of [confused pastors] or over whether Arsenal, Man-U or Liverpool will win. As he often said, we must die a little so as to be free."
Mzee Butiku, a man who worked at State House for decades, said, "Nyerere was a man of the people... He was an ordinary human being like you and me, and he believed in it; for him, it was a belief."
While stressing that Nyerere's contributions and achievements make "a very long story, a story that requires research and dialogue", Butiku read a number of quotations from Nyerere about how he wanted to be remembered.
One long quote from 1996: "There are many good and honest people who believe that ideas associated with me should be dead and buried... They are not my ideas, I never invented them.... I am simply a believer in history and human beings... I am an ardent believer... All human beings are my brothers and sisters... If you are rich and I am poor, or vice versa, don't you think there is something between us to discuss? Yes, there's, but it must be orderly."
AFRICANS DESERVE PLACE IN THE SUN
Otafiire challenged the youth to imagine Africans as a people that deserve a place of dignity and equality.
"We must stop being [contented with being] Ugandans and be Africans, and think of ourselves as a people that deserve a place in the sun... [As Uganda] We have flag independence, but do we have political independence? No! Because we don't have economic independence...."
He argued that lamentations will leads us nowhere. "With computers, there is knowledge everywhere which you can pick to change your people's fate. Stop being dependants on other people! To go to the moon or to develop nuclear capacity, our individual countries cannot afford it, but if we unite or pool resources together, it becomes easy."
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He added, "Those people going to the moon and outer space have moved from the balance of power to the balance of terror. You Africans are not part of the terror club; so, you limit your anger to lamentations! What they did to Libya is what they fear to do to Russia [because they know Russia has the capacity to retaliate]... As long as Libya weeps, the rest of Africa can't be okay... We must prepare for all these eventualities."
He, however, admitted that the old generation has not performed to expectation.
"We are a very rich continent, but I must blame our generation for not using our resources to benefit our people. [Instead] Our people are paying money to go and become slaves in Europe [and other places]!"
Nyerere-Drago called upon the elders to guide the youth with pan-Africanist zeal to know what can assist them and what they should desire. Elders have failed to spot and grow individual talents and potential to promote science, technology and innovations. As a person who worked 17 years at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), she said there is plenty of knowledge around, but the leaders and institutions in Africa must change how this knowledge is accessed and transferred. After all, all African countries are members of IPO where all that data of knowledge is stored.
Nyerere-Drago called for protection of Africa's resources. "We need to dominate and guard our resources here; we don't necessarily need to migrate to outer space."
"[President John] Magufuli's achievements, so many and so great in a short time, were possible because he was walking in Mwalimu's footsteps... The projects were conceived by Mwalimu but they were sabotaged and sat on until Magufuli came on stage," she asserted.
