By Chris Oke ,The Citizen Correspondent
In Summary
In December, last year, President Kikwete stole the
show at the burial ceremony of the first South African President Nelson
Mandela in his Qunu birthplace when he took mourners down memory lane of
the African liberation movements.
Dar es Salaam. Mr Mejah Mbuya
hops off his bike outside a building that seems to be unoccupied. “There
used to be a plaque around here somewhere,” he murmurs, searching in
vain. The building is in central Dar es Salaam, the country’s steamy
port city and commercial capital, and looks like many of the other older
buildings in the area, in need of repair and dwarfed by proliferating
highrises. “Anyway,” Mbuya says, “this is the former head office of
Frelimo.”
The Mozambique Liberation Front, or Frelimo, was
founded in Dar es Salaam in June 1962. The movement used Dar es Salaam
as its home base for 13 years, until Mozambique achieved independence in
1975.
Mbuya is the co-founder of a unique tour company
called Afri Roots. Along with safaris and treks, it also offers walking
and cycling tours in Dar es Salaam—the country’s booming economic and
cultural capital with about 5 million people— that is also steeped in
the history of Africa’s revolutionary past and struggle against
colonialism, as well as the struggles of African-Americans.
Tanzania, which marked its 50th Union golden
anniversary last Saturday, once served as the headquarters for Nelson
Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and the fight against
apartheid, something that has been all but forgotten by many South
Africans and even many Tanzanians.
Mbuya hopes to change that.
“I want Tanzanians to know their history. It’s
something that they should know and be proud of,” said Mbuya, who looks
much younger than his 39 years, dressed in cargo shorts and an Afri
Roots T-shirt, his dreadlocked hair bound in a do-rag.
“But I also want to share this history with the
rest of the world, especially those in South Africa. There’s a lot of
xenophobia in South Africa right now. They’re worried that people from
other parts of Africa will come and take their jobs. I want South
Africans to remember the huge debt they owe to Tanzania, and other
African countries as well -- the price that others paid for their
freedom.”
In 1960, after the Sharpeville Massacre, both the
ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were banned by the apartheid
regime. Its members fled into exile and many were welcomed into
Tanzania, then the newly independent and African Socialism-inspired
nation of Tanganyika. Mandela himself arrived in 1962 seeking financial
and military support, and the ANC set up their office in Dar es
Salaam—just across the street from the Frelimo building. Military
training camps were set up in the towns of Morogoro, Mbeya and Bagamoyo.
In December, last year, President Kikwete stole
the show at the burial ceremony of the first South African President
Nelson Mandela in his Qunu birthplace when he took mourners down memory
lane of the African liberation movements.
His speech wrapped up almost everything pertaining
to strings linking Tanzania and South Africa as well as their
liberation parties of African National Congress and Tanganyika African
National Union now Chama Cha Mapinduzi, respectively.
President Kikwete eloquently narrated the down
memory lane story as he recalled those old days when the late Mandela
used Tanzania as a base for the ANC liberation struggles. It dates back
to 1962 when Mandela arrived in Tanzania first through Mbeya as an
illegal immigrant determined to achieve an outstanding mission.
President Kikwete revealed that Mandela was a Tanzanian citizen who
owned the country’s passport to avoid being detected by the then
apartheid regime. With a Tanzanian passport and name Mandela could
travel throughout the continent, Mr Kikwete told the mourners. “The ANC
found a new home in Tanzania from where it operated, organised,
spearhead and executed the armed struggle,” he added. Mwalimu Julius
Nyerere, a pan-Africanists himself, provided a home for a number of
African movements during their liberation struggles. Besides ANC other
beneficiaries included PAC, Zapu, Zanu, Swapo, Frelimo and MPLA. Each of
this was given access to Radio Tanzania to broadcast messages to its
respective country.
Tanzania allowed Umkhonto we Sizwe - Spear of the
Nation, the ANC military wing better known as MK, to establish camps as
transit centres for cadres training in the Soviet Union, China and
Czechoslovakia. Mandela founded the MK to prosecute a terrorist war
against the then South Africa’s apartheid regime. One young man wants to
nurture and preserve the role played by Tanzania during the liberation
struggle in Africa.
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