In 1996 Mwalimu Julius Nyerere with others founded the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation. On 14 September 1996 the foundation held a fund-raising dinner at the Kilimanjaro Hotel (long before it became the Kempinski Hotel). Mwalimu Nyerere was the guest of honour and the main speaker at the function. The hall was packed, full of people who were eager to see and hear Mwalimu. Drinks started flowing. After a few preliminaries and introductions, dinner was served. The first course, followed by an intermission; the second course, another intermission; and the third, and again an intermission. Someone was apparently closely observing Mwalimu, and noticed that during all this time, he had touched neither food nor drink. The waiters who placed plates and glasses before him had to remove them, as clean as they had brought them. Just before coffee was served, Mwalimu was invited to speak. With his usual eloquence he made a plea for those present and the wider world to support the foundation in all aspects. Only after he had given his speech did he take a sip of the water placed before him.

The next day board members held an informal meeting at the foundation offices chaired by Mwalimu himself. The idea was to have a post-mortem of the previous night. But before we started, Al-Noor Kassum asked Mwalimu: 'But Mwalimu, I didn't see you eating or drinking last night. Was there anything wrong?' It was then that Mwalimu surprised us with his revelation. Apparently he got jittery before making a public speech. He could only relax when the speech was over. In fact, he said, at dinner parties he preferred to speak first and then have dinner served. That was the rule during state banquets at State House when he was president.

We were all amazed. None of us had even an inkling of this. Having watched him over the decades, delivering dozens of speeches, addressing thousands of people, in sombre or jolly mood, but always supremely confident, we had assumed that it all came easy to him, water off a duck’s back.

How wrong we were! I couldn’t help wondering what else we had gotten wrong about Mwalimu.

* This article first appeared in the maiden issue of CHEMCHEMI, Bulletin of the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Editorial Board of CHEMCHEMI.
* The late Haroub Othman was professor of Development Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.