Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 November 2007

Latest: Nkwazi's Thought Provoking Blog

Mhhh...
An interesting writer with alot to say about present African society.
I have just been reading his blog and find it extremely thoughtful and interesting. Ideas, views, thoughts and nail biting political analysis. Nkwazi Nkuzi Mhango calls his blog Free Thinking.

Some of you might have read his articles in This Day.
Check him out. You might learn a thing or two.
My favourite take on this guy's work is the balance between good language and catchy content.

Sunday, 26 August 2007

...BEFORE MANDELA THERE WAS MWALIMU NYERERE

A PHOTO FROM THE PAST
Nyerere in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, June 1991...
Mwalimu Nyerere flanked by assistants, officials and bodyguards asking Freddy Macha about  life in Brazil. Pic by Vantoen Perreira...

When we speak of great Africans and role models, an image of a smiling Nelson Mandela with those troubled but noble, yet kind shining eyes, comes to mind. Nelson Mandela is the chap that everyone wants to take a photo with. Twenty six years in jail for sticking his tongue at racial hatred, then stepping out of jail, waving a hand, smiling, saluting the world, forgiving…
Before Nelson Mandela there was Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
But who is Nyerere?
Many do not recognise the name. Known in his time as "Mwalimu", which means teacher in Swahili, Nyerere was born in 1922 and while still at Makerere University, Uganda, at the tender age of 21, started an association for the improvement of Africans. Those were colonial days. Two years passed. He wrote an essay: “The Freedom of Women.”
His father, a tribal chief, had 22 wives. It was part of the “idea of moving towards freedom theoretically,” he told Dr. Ikaweba Bunting of the Internationalist magazine in one of his last major interviews in 1999.
On July 7th, 1954, Mwalimu Nyerere formed TANU which led Tanzania to independence. Here the idea of using Swahili as a unifying language was hatched and fundamental in keeping the peace as there are more than hundred tribes and languages in Tanzania. “The only tribalism that exists in Tanzania is teasing each other.” Nyerere would say in one of his speeches, decades later. Between all this he found time to translate two works of William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar and Merchants of Venice) to Swahili.