Chambi Chachage

His is still the most popular name in Tanzania today. He nowadays arouses citizenry sentiments on any contemporary issue. A humble man, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere would shy away from such glory.

'My observation – which I fully expect will be strongly contested – is that there has ever been one major direction in the motion of human history: empire building.' Wole Soyinka

Makwaia wa Kuhenga’s recent call to use plain Kiswahili deserves our attention, not least because of its goodwill. However, the road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions.

The Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week has come to a close. It has proved to be what it promised to be, a moment of reflections on the Arusha Declaration in the time of a crisis of capitalism.

Recent developments in Zanzibar's politics require serious historical scrutiny. It is not by accident we are now being bombarded with what transpired before and during the revolution. Why now?

Zanzibar is back on the national and international agenda. Of course it has always been on the agenda. But it’s a long time since it was such a mysterious agenda.

It has become so predictable, this thing we call ‘power rationing’. We in Tanzania had it in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It is here in 2009. If the yearly trend continues then we shall surely experience it in 2010.

His is still the most popular name in Tanzania today. He nowadays elicits citizenry sentiments on any contemporary issue. Himself, a humble man, Nyerere would shy away from such glory.

You could see it in their eyes, that strong urge to prove something wrong, to show that ‘yes, we can’ be successful Tanzanians. Surely Tanzania can be a success story.

It is indeed a hot seat. They say it was especially set up for someone who never sat, nay, stood, on it. Indeed little did the current prime minister know, then, that he would be its first victim.