From
Tanzania to Kansas and Back Again
by Walter Bgoya
The
following essay is excerpted from the book, No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American
Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000, the publisher Walter Bgoya tells
of his years fighting racial inequality in the U.S. in the 60s, and of mutual
discovery between Tanzanians and some of the American activists involved in
African liberation movements during the 60s and 70s.
The
essay originally appeared in allAfrica.com
and noeasyvictories.org
"I thought it strange that there were separate churches
for black and white people."
At the end of July 1961, I and several hundred other African
students left our different countries on scholarships offered by the African
American Institute. I was placed at the University of Kansas. Before going to
the university I stayed for a month with a generous and deeply religious white
family in a little town called El Dorado. The stay with this family offered me
the first experience of living in the United States.
I was taken to church every Sunday and stood in line with
the priest after service to shake hands with the whole congregation, as the
African student who was staying with the Cloyes. Not having seen any black
person in the church, I was intrigued and asked my hosts if there were any
black people in the town. Yes, I was told, there were Negroes (the term in use
then), but they had their own churches. I thought it strange that there were
separate churches for black and white people, but I did not want to embarrass
my family any further so I did not pursue it. I did, however, ask if I could
meet a family of black people and arrangements were made.
The visit did not go well, unfortunately, perhaps because
neither they nor I were prepared for it. Only one member of the family greeted
and sat with me - quite uncomfortably, it was obvious. The others went on with
their business, oblivious to my presence, not even greeting me, which as an
African I found insulting. Perhaps the fact that I had been brought there by a
white family made me part of the white world with which they had problems. I
was deeply disappointed. I learned later that relations between Africans and
African Americans were complicated and that it would take special efforts to
make friends with people of my own race.
Going to the university in September was the beginning of
four years of intense involvement in the struggle against different forms of
racial discrimination at the university and in the town surrounding it, leading
to the 1964 takeover of the administration building. Protesters were arrested,
tried, and acquitted. The story has been told in This Is America? The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas, by Rusty
Monhollon (2002).
"I learned that relations between Africans and African
Americans were complicated and that it would take special efforts to make
friends with people of my own race."
The struggle at the university exposed me to unpleasant
experiences with rightist groups, including the John Birch Society and the Ku
Klux Klan, who burned a cross outside my apartment. I was called all sorts of
names in threatening letters and phone call - I was a "communist" and
a " foreign agitator" - and I was advised to take these threats
seriously. But while my involvement in a leadership position in the campus
civil rights movement was deeply resented by right-wing white people, we had
great support from liberal and progressive white students and faculty members.
I returned to Tanzania in 1965, having learned many lessons
from my years in the United States. I had immersed myself in the struggle for
rights and human dignity regardless of my status as a foreign student. I
rejected the notion that as a foreigner I had no business getting involved in
black people's struggles; after all, I was not spared the indignities of racial
discrimination in housing or refusal of service in restaurants and other
places. I learned to speak up and to challenge authority when I believed it was
wrong.
Back home, my outspokenness did not endear me to my
superiors at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where I was assigned to work, or
to politicians who did not accept that their ideas could be challenged. A one
party state under the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), Tanzania was
hierarchical and authoritarian, and one was expected to conform and to do as
one was told.
It was clear after a short time in the foreign ministry that
I needed to make some alliances at the workplace and outside if I was to
survive. A group of youth leaders had been invited by Mwalimu Nyerere soon
after the 1967 Arusha
Declaration (TANU's policy on socialism and self-reliance) to form the TANU
Study Group, a kind of think tank for the ruling party. I was asked to join and
we met once a week on Sundays to discuss current political and economic issues,
both national and international, and to forward recommendations to the party
leadership.
"Tanzania was hierarchical and authoritarian, and one was
expected to conform."
Major issues during that period were the struggles for
liberation from Portuguese colonialism in Angola, Mozambique, and
Guinea-Bissau; settler colonialism in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South West Africa
(Namibia); apartheid in South Africa; and issues in other places such as French
Somaliland (Djibouti), Comoros, Sahara, and, outside Africa, East Timor. The
Vietnam War, the struggle for admission of the People's Republic of China to
the United Nations, the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and
support for Cuba were among the other issues that exercised us.
In the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs I was assigned to the Africa desk and it was there that I had
the opportunity to meet and work with liberation movements and their leaders. I
also worked with the OAU's Liberation Committee, which had its headquarters in
Dar es Salaam.
Not all Tanzanians supported the government's policy of
supporting the liberation movements. There were some high officials and
politicians who thought Tanzania was unduly exposing itself to dangers and was
expending financial and other resources it could ill afford in support of the
wars of national liberation in Africa. They did not say this openly - who would
dare question Mwalimu Nyerere? Nevertheless they slowed things down, frustrated
the more radical supporters of the liberation movements, and even occasionally
resorted to calling them CIA agents as a way to discredit them.
"Some high officials and politicians thought Tanzania was
unduly exposing itself to dangers and was expending financial and other
resources it could ill afford in support of the wars of national liberation in
Africa."
Relations between the Tanzanian government and the
liberation movements were generally good but difficult situations did sometimes
arise, especially where there were two or more liberation organizations from
the same country. Cold War politics influenced debates and decisions in
international forums inside and outside Africa. There were also contradictions.
On one hand, the liberation movements were grateful for the support they
enjoyed from Tanzania and from Mwalimu Nyerere; on the other hand, they feared
that Tanzania might exert undue influence on their "internal affairs."
A good example of this was the response of the liberation movements to the 1969
Lusaka Manifesto.
The document, which had been written by Nyerere and adopted
by the leaders of the Frontline States, put forward the position that the heads
of state would dissuade the liberation movements from continuing the armed
struggle if the Portuguese and South African regimes accepted the principles of
independence and majority rule and agreed to start the process of negotiations
to that end. The liberation movements were incensed by this position. In the
first place, they argued, it had been taken without consulting them. Second,
the decision on the means by which to pursue the struggle was a sovereign
decision that only they and no one else could take. Third, each struggle had
its own character and there could not be one position that would fit all.
The Lusaka Manifesto was adopted by the OAU. We argued with
the liberation
movements that armed struggle was not an end but a means toward
an end, and if that end could be secured peacefully, there would be no reason
for war. But the liberation movements never quite accepted the position. In
1971 I had the honor to be assigned to draft the Mogadishu Declaration, which
nullified the Lusaka Manifesto. The declaration argued that since the
Portuguese colonialists and the apartheid regime had not responded positively,
frustrating the hopes of the OAU, there was no alternative but to continue to
support the armed struggle.
The 1960s and 1970s were exciting times in Tanzania's history.
Because of Mwalimu Nyerere's leadership and his desire to build an African
socialist society based on the African concept of ujamaa, he attracted many
Western intellectuals. For African Americans, Tanzania came to embody many of
their historical aspirations, including the possibility of returning to Africa
to stay, which a few of them did.
African Americans coming to Tanzania often arrived with
names of individuals and institutions to contact, including in some cases the
foreign ministry, and I was privileged to be one of the individuals who was
contacted. It was a period of mutual discovery between those African Americans
and Tanzanians, with unresolved questions and frustrations but also
fulfillment, especially in 1974 around the time of the Sixth
Pan-African Congress.
"For African Americans, Tanzania came to embody many of
their historical aspirations, including the possibility of returning to Africa
to stay."
Some members of the Drum and Spear group - Charlie Cobb,
Anne Forrester, Courtland Cox, Geri Stark (Augusto), Jennifer Lawson, Kathy
Flewellen, and Sandra Hill - stayed for short periods of time. Others, such as
Bob Moses and Professor Neville Parker, stayed longer and made invaluable
contributions to Tanzania in the field of education. Bill Sutherland stayed the
longest, followed by others such as Monroe Sharp and Edie Wilson. Walter
Rodney, who was at the University of Dar es Salaam, had great influence on
discussion and debates around the period of the Pan- African Congress.
I left the foreign ministry in 1972 to join and manage the
Tanzania Publishing House. There, my involvement in liberation support
activities actually increased, as I was now less constrained by diplomatic and
civil service orders. Publishing became another front in the struggle. Looking
back after the end of apartheid and the liberation of the continent, we salute
those who bore the brunt of the enemies' blows, and we remember with respect
and pride those who paid the supreme price. Among those who worked together,
friendships and comradeship endure, along with a feeling of connection to a
larger network. On all continents there are still many who remain committed to
freedom and to inevitable victory of the next stage of the African revolution.
As before, victory will not be not easy, but it is essential.
Walter Bgoya is the managing director of Mkuki na Nyota,
an independent scholarly publishing company in Dar es Salaam, and chairman of
the international African Books Collective. From 1972 to 1990 he directed the
Tanzania Publishing House, which played a major role in making Dar es Salaam a
center for progressive intellectuals from around the world. Its publications
included Walter Rodney's How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa, Agostinho Neto's Sacred
Hope, Samora Machel's Establishing
People's Power to Serve the Masses, and Issa Shivji's Class Struggle in Tanzania.
Mr. Bgoya's book
No Easy Victories is available from http://www.noeasyvictories.org and http://www.africaworldpressbooks.com.
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