Holding On in Africa
KWITNY, JONATHAN
Holding On in Africa We Must Run While They Walk: A Portrait of Africa's Julius Nyerere By William Edgett Smith Random House. 296 pp. $7.95. Reviewed by Jonathan Kwitny Specialist in African...
...Occasionally Smith allows the ruler's own opinions to run on unchallenged, making his success appear more closely related to ideology or real accomplishments than is actually the case...
...Sixty (!) British soldiers managed to foil the rebellion, missing only one young revolutionary who turned up at a Dar es Salaam telegraph office trying to cable the following message to U Thant: "Tanganyika rifles captured by unknown troops help quickly send un troops...
...The visitor to Dar es Salaam is struck by the admiration foreign residents have for his integrity...
...For example, Nyerere repeatedly assures us that the one-party system does not stifle dissent or the democratic process...
...A more technical shortcoming of Smith's book is the lack of chapter headings and an index...
...Smith's account of the pathetic Army coup marshaled against Nyerere in 1964 accurately illustrates the pre-cariousness of most African governments...
...Largely because Tanzania's villages exert few conflicting pressures on him, too, he has succeeded in emphasizing his continuing closeness to local life...
...On the whole, however, We Must Run While They Walk is well worth reading, both as a profile of an African country and its ruler, and as a useful history of Tanzania...
...Reviewed by Jonathan Kwitny Specialist in African affairs A decade ago, nothing in particular distinguished Tanzania's Julius Nyerere from all the other new African leaders who were declaring their faith in one-party government and African-style Socialism...
...The publisher could have aided both the casual reader and the researcher by supplying these, since one inevitably wishes to refer back from time to time when confronted by so many unfamiliar names...
...Only in passing, toward the end of the book, do we learn that Parliament cast its first vote against a Presidential recommendation a full seven years after independence...
...The third reason for Nyerere's survival in office is pure luck...
...Moreover, it left me wondering once again whether devotion to the national interest and resistance to corruption?rather than particular programs or ideological stances—are not the most crucial factors in the ultimate success or failure of political leaders...
...Smith, who stresses this quality, argues that the most important part of Nyerere's famous Arusha Declaration was not its socialization measures, which received the most attention overseas, but the austerity code it imposed on members of Parliament and other national leaders, including the President...
...First, Tanzania contains no tribe so big that the others fear it will dominate national politics...
...It all sounds amusing, yet one clever man with a determination to rule could sweep Nyerere from office by showing up in the right place at the right time...
...And he does not even question whether this reorganization of ownership is advantageous in a country where much land remains unproductive and a great many business opportunities continue to go begging...
...Second, a good part of Nyerere's prestige rests on his reputation for personal honesty and his refusal to tolerate corruption among those around him...
...And this volume by William Edgett Smith, a former Time correspondent in East Africa, examines the three factors that seem to explain the phenomenon...
...He also fails to represent the views of entrepreneurs whose creative energies have been stilled by Socialist restructuring...
...Smith demonstrates how important this is for the head of a young African nation by detailing Nyerere's boyhood environment and describing a minor riot the President's half-brother sparked in an effort to install himself as the chief, or rainmaker, of their relatively tiny tribe...
...A few hundred soldiers, confused as to their own purpose, successfully forced the President to flee for his life for several days...
...But today, following a dizzying whirl of coups and countercoups that toppled most of his contemporaries, Nyerere still rules...
...This enabled Nyerere to establish the authority of the central government without arousing the tribal jealousies that have dashed such efforts elsewhere...
...Similarly, the standard of living of the average Tanzanian villager remains below that of his counterpart in comparable African countries, but Smith neglects such comparisons...
Vol. 55 • June 1972 • No. 13
