Remembering Nyerere: Political Rhetoric and Dissent in Contemporary Tanzania

This article examines the changing uses of political rhetoric around the burial of Julius Nyerere in 1999. It argues that the ruling party uses rhetoric as a means of ‘soft power’, but also documents how this rhetoric, though geared towards legitimizing Nyerere’s successors, employed tropes that were rejected by some people and were used by others to critique leaders who were perceived to lack the selfless integrity attributed to Nyerere. The article compares funerary songs by a government-sponsored band, popular at the time of Nyerere’s death, with memories of Nyerere in rural areas in the early to mid-2000s. While the image of Nyerere in the funeral songs as a benign family patriarch writ large still persists, it coexists with strongly divergent constructions of Nyerere as an authoritarian ruler or a self-seeking profiteer. Moreover, the ‘official’, benign Nyerere has been employed not only by government and party faithful, but also by striking workers, opposition politicians, and critical newspapers as a measure of the shortcomings of his successors. The invocation of Nyerere as a paragon of an endangered ideal of virtue in public office indicates widespread anxieties towards a state that often disappoints but occasionally delivers, in unpredictable turns, and the limits of the government’s ability to shut down dissent. THIS ARTICLE IS AN EXAMINATION of the views and attitudes expressed around the death in 1999 of Tanzania’s first President, Julius Nyerere, and the memories of Nyerere in rural areas in the early to mid-2000s. It draws on interviews, informal conversations, and newspapers from the thirteen years since his death to analyse two phenomena. One is the promotion by officials, and by state and private media, of a particular *Felicitas Becker ([email protected]) is in the History Faculty, University of Cambridge. I would like to thank Rita Abrahamsen, Nic Cheeseman, Carola Lentz, John Lonsdale, Megan Vaughan, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the article, Jim Giblin for pointing me towards MwanaHalisi and Raia Mwena and providing a copy of the cartoon, and Zuhura Mohamed for research assistance. Thanks also to the EU FP7 programme for the Marie Curie career integration grant No. 303556 that supported the research. 1. The five interviews referred to in more detail below form part of a collection of about 400 interviews, many of which mentioned Nyerere in passing. I chose this subset because it dealt most explicitly with Nyerere’s policies as President. African Affairs, 1–24 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adt019 © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved 1 African Affairs Advance Access published March 13, 2013 at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from interpretation of Nyerere’s life and legacy. Tanzania’s ruling ‘Party of the Revolution’ or Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) made a well-prepared attempt to claim his memory before his body had even returned to the country from the London hospital where he had sought treatment for his final illness. The focus of the official presentation of the former President is summarized in the title of one of the commemorative songs which a CCM-sponsored band put out as soon as his death was announced: Lulu ya amani, ‘The pearl of peace’. During the weeks after Nyerere’s death, the heritage of peaceful societal relations that he was said to have bestowed on Tanzania – and of which the CCM claims to be the enduring guarantor – became the focus of a sustained media campaign characterized by discreet cooperation between state and non-state actors. The ruling party has consistently returned to this vision ever since. The second focus of this article is the limited reach and varied uses of this rhetoric, and what it can tell us about the dynamics of state–society relations in Tanzania. Its use by CCM may appear an obvious political ritual, merely affirming the party’s rarely challenged dominance. The following pages, though, start from the proposition that notwithstanding this dominance, agents of the Tanzanian government manage their state’s relative weakness partly by actively seeking and building consensus among the governed. The governed, conversely, produce interpretations of Tanzania’s politics that diverge significantly from official ones. In particular, they evoke Nyerere as the embodiment of civic virtue in public office to criticize the perceived lack of the same qualities in his successors. Thus some observers were openly dismissive of the benign patriarchal role attributed to Nyerere in many official and private statements at the 2. Press coverage of Nyerere during the month following his death is assembled at (11 December 2012). Although this website is clearly pro-Nyerere and so is much of the press coverage, it includes some critical comment, mainly from abroad (for an example, see the obituary from The Economist). 3. One telling aspect of these media images that cannot be fully discussed here for reasons of space is the religious language deployed, which arguably was carefully tailored to sidestep religious tensions in Tanzania at the time, both within Catholicism (Nyerere’s affiliation) and between Christians and Muslims. Islamist criticism of Nyerere merits its own article and is not included here. On religion in Tanzanian politics, see David Westerlund, Ujamaa na Dini: A study of some aspects of society and religion in Tanzania, 1961–1977 (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Stockholm, 1980); on invective against Nyerere as anti-Muslim see Mohamed Said, The Life and Times of Abdulwaheed Sykes (1924–68): The untold story of the Muslim struggle against British Colonialism in Tanganyika (Minerva Press, London, 1998); on his role in the Zanzibari revolution, execrated by Islamists, see Sauda Sheikh Barwani et al., Unser Leben vor der Revolution und Danach: Maisha yetu kabla ya mapinduzi na baadaye (Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Köln, 2003); on tensions among Tanzanian Catholics that extended into Nyerere’s family, see Panafrican News Agency, ‘Nyerere’s daughter denied holy communion’, 20 October 1999, (12 December 2012). 2 AFRICAN AFFAIRS at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from time, and even where observers operated within the frame of reference set by official rhetoric, there were tensions within and between official and popular views of Nyerere’s legacy. At first sight, the notion of Nyerere as the founder of a peaceful, consciously non-violent polity appears to sit quite well with another description of him that quickly became ubiquitous in Dar es Salaam during the preparations for his funeral, and has persisted since: Nyerere the mbabe wa wanyonge, the ‘champion of the downtrodden’ (wanyonge denotes both monetary poverty and a lack of social status and connections; mbabe is ‘lord, strong patron, strongman’). This memory is easily derived from the notion of Nyerere as a family patriarch writ large. Nevertheless, the two descriptions of Nyerere have potentially conflicting implications. For CCM officialdom, the invocation of Nyerere as the champion of peace serves as a potential legitimization for crackdowns on dissent: the message is ‘Don’t rock the boat; do not squander Nyerere’s peaceful heritage’. Conversely, the notion of Nyerere the champion of the downtrodden can also be used to legitimize dissent against perceived social injustice, allowing non-elite citizens to invoke Nyerere against CCM grandees. Official efforts to exploit Nyerere for consensus building show an arguably under-studied facet of politics in Africa at large, and Tanzania in particular: the use of persuasion, and more specifically, of relatively discreet persuasion, by politicians. Persuasion, or the use of rhetoric, amplified through mass media, by government representatives or sympathizers to create broad-based consensus, is recognized as a core element of politics in states where elections decide political fortunes. Given the autocratic nature of many postcolonial political regimes in Africa, it has been less frequently explored in this context; the focus has instead been on political networks and patronage. Where persuasion is recognized as a factor in African politics, most often in the form of ‘performative’ politics, it is often heavy-handed, and geared towards the political advantage or survival of individual autocratic rulers: Mobutu’s self-styling or the celebrations surrounding Robert Mugabe come to mind. Funerals have also been known to be manipulated in this way. 4. See Michael D. Cobb and James E. Kuklinski, ‘Changing minds: political arguments and political persuasion’, American Journal of Political Science 41, 1 (1997), pp. 88–121; Richard Perloff, The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and attitudes in the twenty-first century (Taylor and Francis, London, 2003). 5. For example, see Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa (Longman, London, 1993); Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1982). 6. For a general characterization of this style of politics, see Jean-François Bayart, ‘Africa and the world: a history of extraversion’, African Affairs 99, 395 (2000), pp. 217–67. For a careful examination of a more collectivist, but still strongly hierarchical, form of political theatre in an East African context, see Angelique Haugerud, The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993). 7. Florence Bernault, ‘Colonial bones: the 2006 burial of Savorgnan de Brazza’, African Affairs 109, 436 (2010), pp. 369–90. REMEMBERING NYERERE 3 at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from Tanzania was undeniably autocratic for much of its post-colonial history, governed between 1964 and 1992 by a one-party state that deployed widespread coercion in its rural resettlement campaign (‘villagization’) and attempted transition to ‘African socialism’ (ujamaa) between 1968 and about 1986. Following the official end of this phase of state interventionism, observers have attributed the resilience of social order during the era of political liberalization and structural adjustment predominantly to non-state actors. Given this, and the fact that the CCM has remained dominant despite the reintroduction of multipartyism, one might think that the government does not have much work to do to create consensus. The present discussion, by contrast, takes cues from Catherine Boone’s insistence that post-colonial African governments have actively to manage relations with local, often informal power brokers, and with wider publics. Boone demonstrates that the same government may use very diverse strategies in different regions. Arguably, similar variations can occur over time and between contexts, as well as over space. Taking off from this insight, this article examines the different ways that Nyerere’s memory has been constructed as a case study of the way that political persuasion has been used in Tanzania alongside more authoritarian methods of political control. In a sense, ruling politicians’ persistent invocation of Nyerere’s legacy indicates that despite the relative quiescence of Tanzanian politics, they do not take their audience for granted. At the same time, the failure of the ‘official’ version of Nyerere to dominate the conversation exclusively offers openings to trace political attitudes among ‘non-elite’ Tanzanians. This description covers a very diverse population, in which the levels of marginality are very finely graded. This article focuses on an aspect of popular political discourse that is salient across this spectrum: the tendency to deplore the decline of civic virtue in public office from the end of Nyerere’s reign onwards, while reaffirming the essential role of the state in society, above all in the interest of the weak. With pronounced moralist overtones, this way of pressing claims on the state can sound naïve and anachronistic. In this regard it resonates with 8. Aili Mari Tripp, Changing the Rules: The politics of liberalisation and the urban economy in Tanzania (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997); Bruce Heilman and Paul Kaiser, ‘Religion, identity and politics in Tanzania’, Third World Quarterly 23, 4 (2002), pp. 691– 709. An increase in social and political conflict has been warned of repeatedly, but so far has not been realized: Paul Kaiser, ‘Structural adjustment and the fragile nation’, Journal of Modern African Studies 34, 2 (1996), pp. 227–37. 9. Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial authority and institutional choice (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004). 10. This is not to suggest that there was no dissension within CCM and government. For factionalism in the 1980s and 1990s, see Tripp, Changing the Rules, Chapter 4. 4 AFRICAN AFFAIRS at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from the proposition, made most explicitly by Goran Hyden, that pre-capitalist (‘pre-modern’) forms of political and economic reasoning coexist with the formal (‘modern’) institutions of government in Tanzania and shape their actions. There are two competing uses of the positive image of Nyerere at work here: he is either a patriarchal precursor validating the current government, or a paragon of public virtue highlighting the shortcomings of his successors. In as much as both of these uses implicitly affirm Nyerere as a benign patriarchal figure they resonate with the concept of ‘economy of affection’ that Hyden employed to summarize his understanding of Tanzanian society as being predominantly ‘pre-capitalist’ and organized according to an informal moral economy. Closer examination of the rhetoric around Nyerere, however, shows that rather than being a mere holdover from a more communal past, the moral and familial terms described here are partly a product of the sphere of formal government, and of its efforts to accommodate international policy prescriptions with their emphasis on ‘good governance’. They also reflect Tanzanians’ concrete present-day experience of a state that often disappoints but occasionally delivers, in unpredictable turns, and to which anyway there is no alternative. In this regard, the present study elaborates on James Giblin’s insistence that the ‘idiom of kinship’ has always been political and has come to be used in post-colonial Tanzania to critique those in power. In line with Priya Lal’s recent re-examination of villagization, it finds a polyphony of elaborations on the official terms of politics produced by people marginal to the making of policy. In consequence, it also shows that the use of ‘big-man’ imagery in African politics does not always succeed in dampening down dissent. The ‘official’ Nyerere and his observers Julius Nyerere left Tanzania in early September 1999 to seek treatment at St Thomas’s hospital in London for leukaemia or, as Tanzanian media put it, kansa ya damu (cancer of the blood). He died in this hospital on 14 October. His body was repatriated to Tanzania and lay in state in a 11. Goran Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1981). 12. Hyden’s ‘economy of affection’ is a kindred spirit of the ‘moral ethnicity’ described in Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey, Oxford, 1992), Volume 2, chapters 11–12. 13. James Giblin, A History of the Excluded: Making family a refuge from state in twentiethcentury Tanzania (James Currey, Oxford, 2006). 14. Priya Lal, ‘Self-reliance and the state: the multiple meanings of development in early post-colonial Tanzania’, Africa 82, 2 (2012), pp. 212–34. 15. Here Tanzania appears to differ from the DRC; compare with Michael Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, family, food (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2001). REMEMBERING NYERERE 5 at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from coffin with a plexi-glass window. Tanzanians queued up for hours for the opportunity to walk past. Subsequently, the body was taken to Nyerere’s home village of Butiama in the Lake Victoria region for burial. During his illness his health had been a regular topic on national news. His death was announced in a speech by his successor Benjamin Mkapa, much repeated over the following days. It set the tone for the heavy focus on unity in the official interpretation of Nyerere, with Mkapa imploring his fellow citizens to believe that the foundation of unity the deceased had laid was strong enough to hold beyond his death. Led by the Prime Minister, and making use of the country’s interventionist media laws, the government also declared a period of national mourning and suspended regular broadcasting. The state TV channel switched to a solid diet of Nyerere footage, partly taken from his life, and partly from the ongoing funerary process. Private broadcasters followed the lead: one of them covered a live ‘wake’ held by the popular musician Remmy Ongala. Sitting on the floor of a darkened room in what was presumably his own home, in a shirt and loincloth with his legs outstretched before him, Remmy gently shook his dreadlocked head and hummed a tune. In this way he exactly recreated the subdued atmosphere of a house in mourning. By most standards, this was poor TV, but clearly the Tanzanian broadcaster felt it worked, as Ongala’s wake was broadcast for days. Meanwhile the popular CCM-backed band, Tanzania One Theatre (TOT), led by the singer Captain Komba, produced three funeral songs, audiotapes of which appeared on the streets in apparently unlimited numbers within hours of the death being announced. The same tunes came from every one of the wooden carts selling music on street corners. One of these songs was ‘Pearl of peace’; the others were entitled Buriani Mwalimu, ‘Rest in peace, Teacher’, and Awamu ya kwanza, ‘The first era’. During the weeks following Nyerere’s death, the obituary songs by 16. Benjamin Mkapa, ‘Presidential address’, 15 October 1999, (17 December 2012). 17. On media law, see Kelly Askew and John Francis Kitime, ‘Popular music censorship in Tanzania’, in Michael Drewett and Martin Cloonan (eds), Popular Music Censorship in Africa (Ashgate, London, 2006), and Martin Sturmer, The Media History of Tanzania (Ndanda Mission Press, Ndanda,1998). 18. On public perceptions of Remmy Ongala, see Werner Graebner, ‘Whose music? The songs of Remmy Ongala and Orchestra Super Matimila’, Popular Music 8, 3 (1989), pp. 243–58. 19. Remmy Ongala, who died in the late 2000s, was, at least until his conversion to bornagain Christianity around 2004, a very popular figure who gave his name to a daladala route taxi stop in his neighbourhood, Sinza (‘kwa Remmy’). 20. For the intricate personal and professional connections between TOT, Captain Komba, and CCM, see Laura Edmondson, Performance and Politics in Tanzania: The nation on stage (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2007). 6 AFRICAN AFFAIRS at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from Captain Komba and TOT became by far the most salient commentary on the meanings of Nyerere’s life and death. They deserve to be quoted at length. Buriani Mwalimu ‘Rest in peace, Teacher’ Ndugu Watanzania Fellow Tanzanians Sasa yametimia Now it has come to pass Yamealikwa na mwenyezi Mungu It has been ordained by the almighty God Aliye[inaudible] na kipenzi ya watu He who [inaudible] and the love of the people Mwalimu Nyerere sasa ametuaga Teacher Nyerere has bid us goodbye Ndugu Watanzania Fellow Tanzanians Tumebaki yatima We have remained behind as orphans Ndugu Watanzania Fellow Tanzanians Sasa tufanye nini Now what shall we do? Tudumishe amani Let us perpetuate the peace Aliyeyogombania That he [Nyerere] fought for Nguzo wa umoja na utulivu Pillar of unity and calm Dunia haitakusahau daima The world will never forget you This song was the one most widely heard during the weeks after Nyerere’s death. In keeping with common ways of speaking about death, it evokes God’s will before Nyerere has even been mentioned by name. It also brackets Nyerere the guarantor of peace with Nyerere the patriarch, the quasi-parent (whose death ‘orphans’ Tanzanians). Leo tunaagana na rafiki yetu Today we say goodbye to our friend Mwenzetu, ndugu yetu One of ours, our relative Mwalimu Nyerere Teacher Nyerere Taifa linahuzunika The country is saddened Afrika yahuzunika Africa is saddened Dunia yahuzunika The world is saddened Pamoja twasema kwa heri Together we say goodbye Kwa heri mwalimu... Goodbye teacher... Sasa tuende wapi tukapate ushauri... Now where shall we go for advice... Ulitutoka wakati twakuhitaji... You left us at a time when we needed you... Eee, Mungu umpokee mtumishi wako Eee, God receive your servant Again, Nyerere is spoken of as a family member and elder: a source of advice. Moreover, the transition from ‘the country’ to ‘the world’ REMEMBERING NYERERE 7 at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from emphasizes his global standing, suggesting that even in death he had the ability to turn the eyes of the world upon Tanzania. Lulu ya amani ‘The pearl of peace’ Lulu ya zamani ya amani The pearl of old of peace Imejificha wapi tutafute Where has it hidden itself, let us search Lulu ya zamani ya upendo The pearl of old of love Imejificha wapi tutafute Where has it hidden itself, let us search Amani imetoweka Afrika Peace has disappeared from Africa Amani imetoweka dunia Peace has disappeared from the world Tanzania imejichimbia In Tanzania it has made itself at home. Here, Tanzania is set in a global comparison and its political stability identified as an asset any nation would cherish. Although this ‘peace’ is not explicitly attributed to Nyerere’s good works, the association of the song with the rest of the audiotape’s content drives home the point: Nyerere has bequeathed peace to Tanzania, which is a source of national pride. The songs were very carefully tailored to popular tastes. They were an exact rendering of the musical style known in Tanzania as ‘kwaya’ from the English word ‘choir’: the soloist’s voice is answered by a women’s choir in close harmony. The origins of this style lie in church music, but it was among the first to become widely available commercially. It is very ‘local’ to Tanzanians, but does not fit clearly into a roster of traditional vs modern. The songs also persistently position Nyerere as a ‘man of the people’ – ‘one of us’, a relative and friend, whose death affects all Tanzanians personally as well as collectively. At the same time, and without any apparent sense of contradiction, they elevate Nyerere to a heroic and indeed saintly status: he has ‘gained us respect’, he is ‘a pillar of unity and peace’ a source of advice as well as pride, and a servant of God. Together, these songs are strong evidence of the CCM leadership’s concern to transform Nyerere into a source of civic pride and, above all, restfulness; of consensus with their own stewardship of his political heritage. 21. An explicit campaign to have Nyerere declared a saint has reportedly been under way since 2006. See The New Sudan Vision, ‘Tanzania: Nyerere fit to be a saint – Museveni’, 2 June 2009, (23 August 2011). 22. For CCM’s concerted efforts to assert control over TOT, see Edmonton, Performance and Politics. 8 AFRICAN AFFAIRS at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from Most of the Tanzanians I interacted with in 1999 received this message positively, while also elaborating it beyond official meanings. At the time, I lived in a household in central Dar es Salaam that contained five adults. The household head was a medical doctor, while the other grown-ups had varying levels of secondary education. Too cloistered for their own liking, they treated the former President as a legitimate topic for conversations between chores. During his illness they asked questions such as what exactly was blood cancer? Did he have any chance of survival? How come the symptoms of his drawn-out illness, according to some rumours, so much resembled those of AIDS? How were his children coping? Much of this was ordinary gossip, with a hint of extra drama added by the political and moral authority of the dying man. It confirmed Nyerere’s importance while also humanizing and banalizing him. Together, the carefully put-together TV content and the way it was integrated into everyday conversation had the effect of both enshrining Nyerere’s death as a singular national event, and making it intelligible in the same terms as the death of a neighbourhood notable. Perhaps the most banal element in the media campaign, but also one that was very effective in showing how widely the death was noted, was the Nyerere kanga cloth: in the national colours, with a smiling portrait of Nyerere surrounded by the dates of his birth and death. As a women’s dress, it became very visible for the remainder of the year. In quite a concrete way, Tanzanians ‘owned’ Nyerere’s death. An element of careful planning is evident in the prompt production of ‘themed merchandise’ (audiotapes and kangas), as well as the funerary ceremonies and their broadcasting. It succeeded in minimizing any sense of crisis and aided in spreading a particular understanding of Nyerere, characterized by the equation of national politics with the small-scale, personal interactions characteristic of families and neighbourhoods. International journalists commented on the genuine grief shown by many ‘ordinary’ Tanzanians. However, the people capable of getting to the queue to see Nyerere’s coffin, or of accessing Internet forums to express 23. In a sense, this is the opposite of the colonization of formal institutions by informal, often kin-based networks that observers of African politics often comment on: a politician who, by all accounts, kept politics and personal relationships separate, was reinvented as everyone’s family member. For the personalization of African politics, see Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as a political instrument (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1999); Bayart, The State in Africa. 24. The Times (London), ‘Thousands flock to see Nyerere’s coffin’, p. 49, 19 October 1999, (23 August 2011); The Independent, ‘Tanzania weeps for father of the nation’, p. 52, 20 October 1999, (23 August 2011). For overwhelmingly positive views on Nyerere from East Africa, see BBC Online, ‘Email tribute’, p. 40, 18 October 1999, (23 August 2011). REMEMBERING NYERERE 9 at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from their sense of loss, were not quite ‘ordinary’, as few Tanzanians at the time enjoyed Internet access. Nevertheless, the intense public interest and popular participation in Nyerere’s obsequies suggests that the official representation ‘worked’ for many people in the country. The obliging participation of the private media, including Remmy Ongala whose wide popularity and relative economic security granted him a degree of independence, highlights the ability of CCM officialdom to recruit support from beyond the state sector. For somebody like Ongala, it need not have been merely about politics; his sympathies with Nyerere are consistent with the focus on ‘ordinary people’ and their troubles in his lyrics. A similar commonality of purpose between officialdom and the private sector, with a slightly more opportunistic bent, is evident also in the background of a 2001 pamphlet on Nyerere’s funeral. With Nyerere’s portrait superimposed on a scene from his funeral, the inclusive message is: ‘Tanzania, we will remember you forever, father of the nation. You have left us [rule of] law, unity, peace, love and cooperation’ (Figure 1). Its author, Michael Mwakilasa, is a businessman who is not directly involved in politics. In a 2009 newspaper profile of his bio-fuel company, he nevertheless stated that ‘people should stop blaming the government [for their poverty] but work hard instead. The government should only create an enabling environment for people to realize their full potential’ – while also acknowledging that ‘the Ministry of Energy and Minerals supports me a lot’. He thus epitomizes the fact that part of the entrepreneurial middle class, rather than presenting an independent alternative to state actors in the economy, is closely aligned with them. The voices immediately surrounding Nyerere’s death, then, suggest that very diverse sets of people converged around the official representation of Nyerere as the originator of a peaceful political culture and protector of the weak. Yet while this image was supported by a groundswell of popular sympathy and appreciation for the deceased, parts of it were also very carefully put together and put about. Moreover, from the start this narrative contained a number of different overtones – some tending towards the egalitarian, some towards the authoritarian – that permitted very different elaborations of Nyerere’s memory. 25. The Sunday Citizen, 10 May 2009, (10 September 2012). For Mwakilasa’s participation in the Davos Economic Forum, 2010, see (18 December 2012). 26. On the rise of the African middle class, see Stephen Ellis, Season of Rains (Hurst and Co., London, 2010). 10 AFRICAN AFFAIRS at :: on M ay 1, 2013 http://afraordjournals.org/ D ow nladed from