Introduction

DURING a period when many people in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania - as well as in Rwanda and Burundi - are talking about forming an East African federation under one government, with Arusha as the capital, it may sound anachronistic when some of us in Tanzania are nostalgic about the good old days as life was in Tanganyika before the union with Zanzibar which led to the creation of the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964.

But that is indeed the case. And in many fundamental respects, they were the good ol' days! And we remember those days with nostalgia. And that is where we now turn to.

This work focuses on Tanganyika in the fifties. My focus was partly dictated by my interest in the autobiographical aspect of this enquiry because the fifties were some of the most important years of my life.

They were my formative years, as were the early sixties, and had a great impact on the development of my personality. What I am today has a lot to do with what happened, and what I learnt, during those years.

The fifties were also a turning point in another respect. The years signalled the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.

It was the decade in which colonial rule was finally coming to an end. It was also the decade in which direct European influence reached its peak after decades of colonial rule since the 1890s when the Germans acquired the territory which came to be known as German East Africa or Deutsch Ostafrika as the Germans called it.

The years before the fifties also witnessed a transformation in the lives of Africans because of the political, social and economic impact colonial rule and European influence had on them.

Roughly speaking, it was a transition from the traditional to the modern way of life. The people basically lived the same way as they did before the coming of Europeans but there were some changes in their lives which had never been witnessed before.

Therefore the years before the fifties provide an important background which helps us better understand what happened during that very important decade which is remembered, probably more than anything else, as the last years of colonial rule in Tanganyika.

The social transformation of Tanganyika had been a gradual process through the years. Although it began in most parts of the country with the advent of colonial rule when the country was first colonized by Germany, there is no question that most of the changes which took place occurred during the British colonial period.

The British ruled Tanganyika longer than the Germans did, and they had an impact on the country which last longer. Even today British influence is clearly evident in many parts of what is now Tanzania.

Probably the only exception in terms of early penetration by foreigners was along the coast where Africans had been in contact with the Arabs and other foreigners mainly from Asia for centuries long before colonization by Europeans.

The Portuguese also had early contacts with the coastal people in the 1500s but their impact was minimal compared to that of the Arabs whose culture became dominant especially after the introduction of Islam.

But my focus is on the fifties not only because of the significance of the decade as an integral part of my life but also as a very important period in the history of Tanganyika which witnessed the beginning of the end of colonial rule in the largest country in East Africa.

It is a bygone era, yet relevant to my life today as it was back then.

The perspectives I have on things and how I look at the world and other people all have their beginning in the fifties more than in any other period in my life.

It is a crucible in which my personality began to develop and in which it was shaped; it is also a decade, especially the late fifties, which was the beginning of my political awakening even though I did not have any firm political beliefs because of my young age.

But I began to see things, although from the perspective of a child, in a way I did not before because I listened to the news on the radio and read some newspapers published in Kiswahili. The kind of awakening or awareness I had was mainly about important historical events and current affairs we were taught in primary school and which my father also taught me and told me about at home.

It was not the kind of awareness which entailed analysis of those events and the news. That is why, for example, when independence came on 9 December 1961, it was just another day of celebration for me, as much as it was for other children, since I did not understand and did not have the political maturity to comprehend the significance of this momentous event in the history of our country.

All I heard was that we were now free. We were going to rule ourselves. The British were no longer our colonial rulers. Fine words indeed! But what next? I had no answer to that. Nor did many others including adults.

Apart from the autobiographical aspect, the fifties were also very important in another respect. It was a landmark on the road towards independence for most African countries. It was in the fifties that political agitation was most intense, and sustained, across the continent in the quest for freedom from colonial rule. And Tanganyika was no exception.

The fifties were also critical in yet another fundamental respect. As the struggle for independence gained momentum not only in Tanganyika but in other African countries as well, race relations came into sharp focus because it was a period of reflection and introspection. It was also a period of transition involving whites who monopolized power as the colonial masters and non-whites, especially black Africans, who were determined to end such monopoly.

Thus, the struggle for independence had unintended consequences and sometimes conveyed the wrong message as if it was a conflict between whites and blacks or between whites and non-whites; which was not the case. It was simply a struggle for equality transcending race.

Yet, important as this struggle was for all those involved regardless of race, I decided not to focus on that in this study but instead chose to highlight stories of human interest from the fifties if for no other reason than that as human beings we have a lot of things in common, far more than we want to admit, and which we sometimes ignore or overlook when we focus on our differences or when we have arguments.

We share the same emotions, we feel the same pain, we all cry and laugh and know how to love and hate. No race has a monopoly on that. It is a common denominator which unites and defines us as human beings and as mere mortals with frailties.

While politics and ideologies, religions and cultures can and do divide us, human emotions and common feelings unites us. And while man has an almost infinite capacity for evil, the opposite is equally true that he has an enormous capacity to do good. That is one of the most significant things about Tanganyika in the fifties.

Even if only in a limited way, there is no question that Tanganyika in the fifties demonstrated the brighter side of human nature, for, with all the differences we had as Tanganyikans during colonial rule in a society that was defined and structured on the basis of race by the colonial authorities, we were still able to find common ground on which we recognized each other as fellow human beings even if some people felt that they were better than others.

But the mere fact that the people usually - although not always - got along fine shows that there was a recognition on the part of all the races that there was something inherently good in every human being and it could bring us together provided there was a will to do so.

I remember Mandela saying that even some of the most racist whites in South Africa - or anywhere else for that matter - had some good in them; a point he underscores in his autobiographical work Long Walk to Freedom. I would also hate to believe that all the bigots we had in Tanganyika among all the races were pure evil like Hitler!

Although Tanganyika was a colonial society, it was definitely not apartheid South Africa. There were no laws prohibiting racial intermingling, although this was rare by choice and because the colonial authorities - which does not mean all whites - did not encourage it. Racial separation was also sanctioned by custom, not by legal strictures, and many people of all races in Tanganyika were more comfortable living with their own kind, although there is really only one kind, and that is mankind.

And because Tanganyika was a UN Trusteeship territory, the British colonial rulers knew that they were obligated to guide the country towards independence even if they dragged their feet for various reasons including the desire to maintain the privileged status of the white settlers as long as they could.

But even under the worst of circumstances in terms of race relations as was the case in apartheid South Africa before that abominable institution was abolished, there were people of all races who worked together to create a better world in which all human beings would be treated as equals.

It happened in South Africa; it happened in Kenya where in spite of Mau Mau there were whites and blacks who worked together; and it happened in my own home country, Tanganyika, where we did not even have racial tensions and animosities which could have driven the races even further apart and plunged the country into chaos.

Paradoxically, we were so close yet so far apart.

All that was needed was to break down racial barriers, accept each other as fellow human beings on equal basis, and end colonial rule which had instituted a hierarchical society based on race to the detriment of race relations; although, I must concede, there were people who were not interested in improving race relations even under the best of circumstances because they were bigots, and so blinded by prejudice that they couldn't even see that the different races united us, more than they divided us, as fellow human beings.

Tanganyika in the fifties demonstrated this simple truth in both ways but, ultimately, justice prevailed.

The bigots even among whites were outnumbered by people of goodwill in the white settler community. Many of them saw the coming of independence not as a triumph of black supremacy over white supremacy - both of which are equally evil - but as a victory for equality and justice for all. In fact, the majority of whites stayed in Tanganyika after the country won independence.

Many of them left in the following years but usually for reasons other than race, although the policy of Africanization was interpreted, or misinterpreted, as a racial assault on whites. Still among all the East African countries, Africanization was slowest in Tanganyika, and deliberately so, under the leadership of Julius Nyerere. And his definition of Africanization included people of all races who were citizens of Tanganyika, therefore African, just like the rest of us with a black skin.

The biggest disincentive to staying in Tanganyika among most whites and other people - including many black Tanganyikans - was economics when the country started implementing socialist policies and enforcing stringent measures to achieve nationalization.

But it is also true that there were bigots among Africans who made their position very clear during the struggle for independence, especially after they broke away from the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) in 1958 to form the African National Congress (ANC) which, in spite of sharing the same name with the ANC of South Africa, was radically different from its counterpart.

The South African ANC embraced people of races like TANU did under Nyerere in Tanganyika; while the ANC in Tanganyika did not. And there was a battle between these two competing visions for the future of Tanganyika.

But the bigots who wanted Tanganyika to be the exclusive domain of blacks, like their counterparts among the white settlers who wanted to perpetuate white domination, also lost under sustained assault by true multiracialist leaders such as Julius Nyerere and other stalwarts in TANU, the party which led the campaign for independence on the basis of racial equality and which was open to members of all races even in the leadership positions of the party at the national level.

All this happened in the late fifties, years which became a defining moment in the history of Tanganyika, charting out a new course and pointing where the country was headed in the future after winning independence.

It was also an important lesson in human relations, not just in race relations, since there were differences among whites themselves, bigots versus non-bigots, as much as there were among blacks who also had their own share of bigots. And from all this emerged a vision focusing on humanity transcending race.

And it is a vision that sustains us today wherever we are as human beings. For whether we like it or not, we are all bound by our humanity regardless of the differences we may have in terms of background, outlook and beliefs which have caused so much misery and suffering throughout history when people choose to focus on their differences instead of focusing on what they have in common. As Dr. Martin Luther King said: “We must all learn to live together as brothers (and sisters) or we will all perish together as fools.”

Born in Tanganyika

THE period during which I was born witnessed some of the most important events and changes in the history Tanganyika, the land of my birth, and indeed of the entire African continent. It was the dawn of a new era.

It was only a few years after the end of the Second World War in which many Africans, including two of my uncles, fought and in which many of them died; fortunately, both of my uncles survived and returned safely to Tanganyika.

It was also a period of political ferment in which the campaign for independence started in earnest in Tanganyika, the largest British possession in East Africa, and in other colonies on the continent.

I was born at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, 4 October 1949, in Kigoma, a port on Lake Tanganyika in what was then the Western Province in western Tanganyika. It was during British colonial rule and Tanganyika in those days had seven provinces: Western, Central, Lake, Northern, Coast, Southern and the Southern Highlands. The capital of the Western Province was Tabora.

My parents came from Rungwe District in the Southern Highlands. Rungwe District is in the Great Rift Valley and is ringed by misty blue mountains and is home to the Nyakyusa, my ethnic group, who today are one of the largest in Tanzania with more than one million people.

My father worked as a medical assistant during British colonial rule and that is how he and my mother ended up in Kigoma. Before I was born, my parents also lived in other parts of Tanganyika where my father worked. They lived in Handeni, Amani, Muheza, and Kilosa. They were also in Tanga for some time.

I am the first-born in my family. I was born in a hospital in Kigoma.

I don't know if my father worked at that hospital and I don't even remember whether or not my parents told me where he worked when I was born. But I do know that it was he who filled out my birth certificate. And it was he who always reminded me of my birthday every morning when I was growing up that October 4^th was my birthday. My mother also reminded me of that, but not as much as my father did and was not as punctual. As soon as I woke up, my father would remind me if it was my birthday.

He was one of the few Africans in Tanganyika in those days who had secondary school education. He went to Malangali Secondary School in Iringa where he completed standard ten and excelled in school. And he would have gone to Tabora Secondary School where he would have completed standard 12 but couldn't go any further because of family obligations. Instead, he went to Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam in the mid-1940s for medical training and qualified as a medical assistant.

The hospital was then known as Sewa Haji and was later renamed Princess Margaret Hospital. It has always been the country's only national hospital and was renamed Muhimbili National Hospital after independence.

My father's assignment to Kigoma after working elsewhere in Tanganyika turned out to be one of the most important events in my life because that is where I was born. And it will always remain an important part of my life as my birth place more than anything else.

Unfortunately, in all the years I lived in Tanganyika, later Tanzania, I never got the chance to visit Kigoma as a youngster or as an adult. And I still haven't unto this day.

My parents never went back to Kigoma and I did not get the chance to go there even when I worked as a news reporter in Tanzania.

But I have two very important items with me which always remind me of Kigoma as my birth place.

One is my photograph taken when I was one year and three months old. It also has my father's handwriting on it in black ink, still legible 57 years later which was my age when I was working on the second edition of this book in 2007. He wrote in English: "Fifteen months old."

In this photograph, I'm standing looking at the camera, chubby and wide-eyed, and he's holding my right hand in front of the house in which we lived. It was a wooden house with a grass-thatched roof.

When I look at that picture, I can see how much I have changed through the years. I look chubby when I was a baby less than two years old, yet when I was growing up, I never gained much weight and was always slim. Many people said I was skinny. I thought my weight was in proportion to my frame. And I have always been that way, slim.

Another item I cherish so much is my birth certificate which my father gave me when I became a teenager and was attending Mpuguso Middle School in Rungwe District in the Southern Highlands from 1961 to 1964.

Also on my birth certificate are reminders of two other important historical events in my life: when I was baptised, by whom, and in what church.

I was baptised by Reverend Frank McGorlick on 25 December 1949, on Christmas day, two months and three weeks after I was born. My birth certificate also bears his name in his own handwriting. It was issued by CMS, the Church Missionary Society, which did a lot of missionary work spreading Christianity in Tanganyika and in many other parts of Africa.

Reverend McGorlick came from Victoria, Australia. Decades later, I was able to get in touch with his wife Barbara in Australia who told me that they lived in Tanganyika, later Tanzania, until the early 1990s and that her husband died in 1993. I got in touch with her in 2005, as I did with their son Richard who also lived in Victoria, Australia. He grew up in Tanganyika, later Tanzania, as did the other children.

I remember when I was growing up that my parents used to tell me I was baptised as a CMS member. That was also the church my parents attended when they lived in Kigoma even before I was born until they returned to Rungwe District years later as members of the Moravian Church which was well-established in that district. They were members of the same church before they left Rungwe District.

The Moravian Church in Rungwe District was established in the late 1880s by the Germans who were also the first colonial rulers of Tanganyika, while CMS was British in origin.

The Church Missionary Society (CMS) was founded in 1799 by a group of activist evangelical Christians. One of the founders was William Wilberforce, a prominent leader of the movement which was launched to abolish slavery. He was asked to be the first president of this missionary organisation but declined to take the offer and instead became its vice president. CMS was also supported by another prominent abolitionist, Dr. David Livingstone of the London Missionary Society, who was Scottish himself like Reverend McGorlick who baptised me.

Years later, when I became familiar with some Scottish names, I came to the conclusion that the minister who baptized me, Reverend McGorlick, was probably Scottish. And I was right. Before I found out about him, I don't know if he spent the rest of his life in Tanganyika, later Tanzania, or “returned to Britain” since I assumed that's where he came from. I was wrong. But there is no question that he left an indelible mark on me as the one who baptised me.

The Church Missionary Society of Australia effectively dates from 1916 when the individual CMS associations in the Australian states were amalgamated into a national organisation. CMS had sent missionaries to many countries by this time, including China, India, Palestine and Iran, but by 1927 they had particular interest in North Australia and Tanganyika.

After I was born in Kigoma, my parents moved to Ujiji which is only a few miles away. It was there, in that very small yet famous place, where my sister Maria was born a year-and-half after I was. She was born in April 1951.

It was also in Ujiji where Henry Morton Stanley uttered those famous words on 10 November 1871 when he found the famous Scottish missionary doctor and explorer: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Dr. Livingstone had been missing for three years and the Royal Geographical Society sponsored an expedition to look for him in Africa.

Although I never got the chance to visit Kigoma and see the place of my birth, my sister Maria ended up living in Kigoma years later with her husband who was sent by his church to work there as a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor while she worked as a nurse. And I have always been interested in learning as much as I can about Kigoma - as well as other parts of the country - not only because it is my birth place but also because it is an integral part of my home country Tanzania. But because it is my birth place, there is no question that I have special interest in Kigoma in a way I don't in other parts of the country.

And it has an interesting history. For example, not many people in Tanzania know that Kigoma was once a part of the Belgian colony of Ruanda-Urundi. Had it remained under Belgian control, my history would probably have been different. My father would never have been sent by the British colonial government to work in Kigoma, since it would not have been a part of their territory of Tanganyika. I would not have been born in Kigoma, or I may not even have been born at all!

But obviously, that was not my destiny. And Kigoma always brings back memories of my childhood in the fifties because that is where it all began, this short journey of mine into this world where we are mere mortals and which reminds me of one song by Jim Reeves, also sung by others, I used to listen to when I was a teenager in Tanzania in the sixties: "This world is not my home, I'm just passing through, my treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue..."

But short as our presence is, in this world, we have to make the best of it. And in my case, my early life in Tanganyika played a critical role in determining what type of person I came to be years later. It is this land which I love from the very depth of my being, heart and soul. And it is this land that I will always love for the rest of my life.

It was in Tanganyika where I was born, and it was in Tanganyika where I was brought up. And it reminds me of another song we sang in Kiswahili in school and sometimes during national celebrations: Tanganyika, Tanganyika, nakupenda kwa moyo wote. In English it means: "Tanganyika, Tanganyika, I love you with all my heart."

It was also in Tanganyika where I spent one of the most important decades in my life and in the history of the country: the fifties. The fifties were my formative years. They were also the years when Tanganyika began its peaceful transition from colonial status to independence.

I witnessed some of those events during the transitional period especially in the late fifties. But I was still too young to understand exactly what they meant. I looked at things from a child's perspective, and simply having fun - chasing grasshoppers and butterflies - was more important to me than politics. And that is what I remember the most.

Even if they told me, I don't know if I would have been able to fully understand what was meant by siasa, which is a Swahili word meaning politics. And when I saw white people as child in the mid- and late-fifties, I saw them just as people. Yes, they looked different in terms of skin colour, but I still saw them as people nonetheless; and not as rulers or anything else.

Difference in skin colour meant absolutely nothing to me and other children in terms of an individual's worth as a human being, although even at that young age we noticed that white people had material things we didn't have. But we did not associate that with power or skin colour.

If someone tried to explain to me and other children the connection between skin colour and wealth or social status, we would have been confused. We just didn't understand why white people had things we didn't have, or why they lived in better houses than we did. Colonialism meant nothing to us at that age when we were under 10 years old.

And I had no reason to ask why white people were there, in Tanganyika, or where they came from, or why they had a different complexion. After all, there were Arabs and Indians in Tanganyika who also had a light complexion and even some Africans who had a light brown complexion.

Even my own mother had a light brown complexion. So did my brothers, some of my sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts; not white-looking or light-complexioned like the Indians and the Arabs we saw around when we were growing up but not dark-skinned either. Still, all that meant nothing to me.

I even remember my mother telling me when I was a young teenager in the early sixties that when we lived in Mbeya around 1953 and 1954, a British couple used to give me some cake and sweets and other things now and then whenever we passed by their house. And that only reinforced - even if not consciously - whatever notions I had, as a child, of a colour-blind society; which was, of course, not entirely the case as older people of all races knew very well. As a colony, Tanganyika was a colour-conscious society. Yet to a child, such colour-consciousness meant something different, if anything at all, even though it was a fact of life for all of us since our status was defined by racial identity.

Still, in spite of all that, there were people of all races who got along very well. They got along very well at work; many white families and their African servants were on very good terms and even their children played together, especially when house maids took their children with them to work or if they lived on the same premises although under separate roofs. A house maid is called yaya in Kiswahili.

Sometimes good relations between Africans and whites went beyond accepted norms. There were those who even ate and drank together, although usually in private, and whites who did that would normally avoid doing so in front of other whites. They did not want to be seen getting too friendly with Africans who were by colonial definition no more than servants of whites. And they did not want to be alienated from the white settler community of which they were an integral part simply because they wanted to be friends with Africans and people of other races.

Yet, there were those who defied convention. They were not the majority but they did exist, although no one cannot be sure how many in terms of numbers or percentage. For example, I remember my mother telling me in the late fifties and early sixties that there was a British couple who wanted to take me with them to Britain as a child to provide me with education and told my father that they would bring me back to Tanganyika every year on holidays but I would have the benefit of excellent education in the UK beginning at a very early age. She said my father seriously considered doing that, but she was strenuously opposed to the idea saying I was too young to go so far away.

They knew my father very well. They also knew my mother but they dealt with my father more than they did with my mother. Language was also a barrier on my mother's part. She did not know English like my father did. He spoke English fluently and even taught me the language at home when I first started learning English in 1961 at the age of 11. And that gave me an advantage over other pupils.

I don't remember exactly where or when this took place. But I know it was in the early fifties, either in Morogoro in the Coast Province or in Mbeya in the Southern Highlands when my parents and the British couple discussed the possibility of my going to school in Britain at a very early age under their guardianship.

And there was something about this British couple which stayed in my mind through the years, especially when I was growing up in Kyimbila in Rungwe District in the Southern Highlands about four miles from Tukuyu.

Their interest in my education showed that there were ordinary whites in Tanganyika, who were not colonial administrators but simply ordinary people who lived and worked there, who were concerned about the well-being of Africans yet couldn't do anything to improve the situation because they did not have the power or the means to do so. It was probably only a minority of them but there were such people.

In fact, some of them never left Africa. They stayed in Tanganyika even after independence because it was their home even if they were not born there, although some of them were, or they moved to other parts of Africa, mainly South Africa. Some also moved to what was then Southern Rhodesia and a few to Kenya. Their heart was, and still is, in Africa.

And when I was writing this book while living in the United States, I got in touch with some ex-Tanganyikan Britons and other whites living in different parts of the world including Britain, Australia and the United States who still had relatives or friends living in Tanzania and involved in various activities, including philanthropic work, together with black Africans. They told me that their relatives and friends never left Tanganyika after the country won independence.

Even some of those who left Tanganyika after independence still maintained strong ties with the country and were involved in various activities helping the people in different parts of what is now Tanzania today. As Marion Gough stated in her email to me from England on 17 January 2006:

Tanganyika was my home and is still very much in my blood. I try to get back as much as I can and am in the process of fund raising to help the building of an Orphanage.

I have sent two shipments of text books, papers and pens to two different schools, together with several computers (used). I had such a happy, if not, lonely, childhood that I feel I must return the privilege.

And as she stated in another email on 21 January 2006:

Jambo Godfrey,

I am raising funds for the building of an Orphanage in Mufindi and going to get all the info ready to contact big companies to see if they would be willing to help, after a little research of course. If you know of any that are sympathetic to Africa please give me a nod. The Charity in USA is called Mufindi Orphans.

It is going to be built by the Foxes. Geoff Fox (father) lives in Mufindi and has done so for 40 years. He has four sons and each helps run the company and safari camps in Ruaha, Mikumi and Katavi ,also a Highland lodge in Mufindi. They look after several villages by employing a lot of staff and they grow their own food for the camps, use local craftsmen and materials for the camps.

Bruce lives in Gloucester which is 1/2 hour away from me and we keep in close touch. Great family so enthusiastic for Africa. Bruce has stopped a lot of poaching and is also fighting to keep the Ruaha River flowing as a lot of water has been taken off for the rice fields! Therefore a lot of the wetlands has been destroyed which makes the land flood instead of sinking into the water table.

Sorry could go on for ever, will close here before I get carried away.

Hope the pics don't come out too big.

Take care,

Marion

I, of course, almost left Tanganyika myself even before independence when I was still a child.

Had I left with the British couple and gone to school in Britain at so early an age when I was under 10 years old, my life would probably have taken a different turn and I don't know where I would have ended up eventually. But it was not meant to be. Instead, I remained and grew up in Tanganyika although I did not stay there. As fate would have it, I ended up in the United States after spending my first 23 years of my life in Tanganyika, later Tanzania. But that is another story.

Yet when I look back at all those years since my childhood in Kigoma and Ujiji in western Tanganyika, I know - and I am glad - that I was exposed to other people and other cultures when I was growing up and in such a way that I ended up being what I am today as an open-minded person tolerant of other people's views and values as well as beliefs as long as they don't interfere with my well-being. As the saying goes, the right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.

But it was with the innocence of a child that I looked at the world, and it was with this kind of innocence that I left Kigoma with my parents when my father was transferred to Morogoro in the Coast Province in the early fifties.

Although I hardly remember Kigoma to enable me to compare the life there with the life in Morogoro, I know that Morogoro was different. It was in the Coast Province with a strong influence of Islamic culture and only about 120 miles from Dar es Salaam, the capital, from where almost everything new started before spreading to other parts of the country.

By remarkable contrast, Kigoma was far in the hinterland - it's still there, of course, just as Morogoro is where it was back then - and being a port on Lake Tanganyika, it was linked to what was then the Belgian Congo just across the lake and played a major role as a hub of activity in the cross-cultural interaction between Congo and Tanganyika as much as it still does today.

It was also in Kigoma where Che Guevara had a supply base during his mission to the Congo in the mid-sixties and to where he sought sanctuary after his mission failed.

Although it was far from the coast, Kigoma was linked to Dar es Salaam by a railway which ran - and still runs - across the country from east to west forming the main artery of the railway network in what was then Tanganyika and which is now Tanzania. Although sparsely populated, Tanzania is a large country, bigger than Nigeria in terms of area, and Kigoma is more than 700 miles from Dar es Salaam.

While my memories of Kigoma are virtually none since I was only a baby under three years old when I was there, my recollections of some of the events in Morogoro are vivid mainly because of the "traumatic" experiences I had as a child in that "coastal" town.

It was also in Morogoro where my brother Lawrence was born in September 1952. He was the third-born but, tragically, he died in August 2005 in Mbeya. Coincidentally, it was also in Mbeya where my sister Gwangu was born in 1954 when we lived there after leaving Morogoro. She was the fourth-born. But her life also ended in tragedy. She died in Rungwe District in July 2004. And my mother died at home in our village of Mpumbuli, Kyimbila, in November 2006 about one month before her 77^th birthday.

All these tragedies were compounded by the fact that they occurred when I was far away in the United States.

And whenever I think about my siblings who passed away, I also remember them in terms of the fifties. We all had our beginning in the early fifties, although I was born two months before the beginning of the decade in which both of them were born.

But it was in the early fifties that I really became aware of my existence in this world and when my personality started to be formed.

And it was in Morogoro where my memories of the fifties started to crystallize and reflect some of the most vivid images of my life which I clearly remember even today.

My Early Years: Growing Up

in Colonial Tanganyika

LIFE in Tanganyika in the fifties meant different things to different people - African, European, Arab, and Asian (mostly Indian and Pakistani), the four main racial categories in the country. But it had one thing in common. Life was simpler, and the people, friendlier. There was less crime in those days, far less than what you see today.

But it was also colonial life, although sometimes barely perceptible. To children like me under 10 years old, it meant very little in terms of racial domination. Life went on as usual as if all the people got along just fine. And they did on many occasions but not all.

Even for those who got along just fine, it was still colonial rule. We all lived in a tiered society, racially stratified, with whites on top, Asians and Arabs in the middle constituting some kind of buffer zone, and blacks at the bottom.

It was a heap of vast black masses at the bottom. And they are the ones who propped up this lopsided structure with their cheap labour made even more abundant because of their numerical preponderance in a country that was overwhelmingly black.

Yet, in spite of all the interdependence, with Europeans and Asians - and sometimes Arabs - providing goods and services needed by a significant number of Africans especially those living in towns, and the cheap labour and raw materials provided by Africans to sustain the colonial system, there was little interaction among or between the races. The most that you could see was between Africans and Asians. And that was only during business transactions when Africans went to Indian shops in towns to buy the items they needed.

In the case of Tanganyika, the distance between the races, especially between Africans and Europeans, seemed to be even greater than in neighbouring Kenya because of the smaller number of the white settlers in the country. The distance was magnified even in terms of perception.

Whites were not only fewer in Tanganyika than in Kenya but were also less visible because of their smaller number, yet no less dominant as colonial rulers. But, the fewer they were, the farther they also were from Africans in terms of interaction, although that was not true in all cases. Still, it was extremely rare for Europeans and Asians to socialize with Africans. The races were in most cases far apart and preferred things to be that way.

However, there was one fundamental difference. The difference in this relationship was between the Europeans on the one hand and the Africans as well as the Asians and the Arabs on the other. And it had to do with power.

It was the Europeans who instituted the social hierarchy based on race and who sanctioned the asymmetrical relationship between the races to their advantage as the rulers of Tanganyika in order justify colonial rule. In that sense, the Asians and the Arabs were equally victims of racial domination by whites even if some of them did not think that they were being victimized like blacks.

But although there is no question that the Europeans were the rulers of a country that was overwhelmingly black African (there are also white Africans and Africans of Asian and Arab origin as well as others on the African continent), for many blacks, life went on as it did before the coming of the white man.

That was especially the case in the rural areas, including villages near towns and not only those far away from the urban centres, where the most visible alien intrusion in traditional life since the advent of colonial rule was the tax collector and sometimes, although rarely, a black policeman in khaki uniform and black boots coming on foot to make an arrest.

However, there was fundamental change in institutions of authority in the sense that an alien power had been imposed on us. All of us including traditional rulers became colonial subjects. African chiefs and other traditional rulers lost their power. They no longer had the same power they had before as the ultimate authority in their traditional societies.

Therefore the biggest change which took place when colonial rule was introduced was political. Africans lost power and independence. Attitudes towards life in general, and even towards traditional authority, also changed, although gradually, because of the dominant role European rulers played in the political arena. So it was a dramatic change when power shifted from Africans to Europeans.

Less perceptible were the changes which took place in other areas of life. One was the cultural arena.

Most of the people in the rural areas did not see themselves as victims of cultural imperialism in the same way the few educated Africans did. Their traditional way of life and values remained virtually intact unlike that of their brethren who lived in towns or those who acquired some education especially at the secondary school level and beyond.

The more education one had, the more acutely aware one became, of the racial disparities and introduction and sometimes imposition of alien values by Europeans.

But in many cases it was also far less of an imposition than a willingness by many Africans who had some education to accept European ways of life as some kind of achievement in life. In fact, a significant number of them saw it as a badge of honour to be Europeanized, live and act like Europeans.

It showed that they were now "civilized," or more "civilized" than their brethren - those who continued to live the traditional way of life in the villages and even in towns and also those who had less education.

Yet nationalist sentiments were strong especially among some politically conscious members of the African elite, although even they were not dismissive of all aspects of alien cultures including British in spite of their uncompromising stand in defence of the African traditional way of life. As Julius Nyerere said:

A country which lacks its own culture is no more than a collection of people without the spirit which makes them a nation. Of all the crimes of colonialism there is none worse than the attempt to make us believe we had no indigenous culture of our own; or that what we did have was worthless...

A nation which refuses to learn from foreign cultures is nothing but a nation of idiots and lunatics... But to learn from other cultures does not mean we should abandon our own.

Nyerere was quoted by Dr. Graham L. Mytton, former head of the BBC's International Broadcasting Audience Research (IBAR), in his book Mass Communications in Africa, and by Don Moore in his article, "Reaching the Villages: Radio in Tanzania," published in The Journal of the North American Shortwave Association.

And as one British official in Tanganyika admitted in 1955: "We ignore their tribal dances and try to give them cricket. I'ts awful." He was quoted by American journalist John Gunther in his book Inside Africa.

Gunther visited Tanganyika in 1954. Among the places he visited was the newly established radio station in Dar es Salaam.

The station was founded in 1951 in response to a proposal by a BBC official who felt that there was a need for such a station which should produce programmes for a native audience in Kiswahili. It was named the Dar es Salaam Broadcasting Station (DBS) and was later renamed the Tanganyika Broadcasting Service (TBS) and then the Tanganyika Broadcasting Corporation (TBC).

And as Sala Elise Patterson stated in a dissertation for a master's degree submitted to the School for Oriental and African Studies at the University of London entitled, "State Control, Broadcasting and National Development," focusing on Tanzania as a case study :

Radio broadcasting began in Tanganyika in July 1951 in an unused attic of a house in Dar es Salaam. Aimed at city residents, the unit was called the Dar es Salaam Broadcasting Station (DBS).

One year later the colonial government invested 10,000 GBP to upgrade the radio service realizing the importance of broadcasting in the territory to further the colonial process. Another 55,000 GBP was invested from the colonial fund in 1954.

Then on May 8, 1956, the colonial authorities inaugurated the new and improved Tanganyika Broadcasting Service (TBS) with a 20-kilowatt transmitter that increased broadcasting capability to reach as far as Johannesburg.

In July of the same year, the government consolidated their national broadcasting and established the Tanganyika Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) officially as an independent broadcasting body that took over the functions of the TBS.

The colonial government closely monitored programming and the Governor had absolute power to prohibit the broadcast of any programme deemed inappropriate.

When Gunther visited the station in 1954, he was highly impressed by the staff's performance. It was a professional operation totally staffed by native Africans, in spite of the fact that the station had started, as Gunther wrote, "with little more equipment than a microphone and a blanket hung over a wall." It became so successful that it served as a model for broadcasting services in many other British colonies in Africa and elsewhere.

I remember listening to TBC when I was growing up in Rungwe District in the Southern Highlands in the 1950s and early sixties. And I still remember the names of some of the radio announcers, mainly David Wakati and Eli Mboto. Although the reception was poor most of the time, we still were able to listen to the news and to a variety of music, mostly Swahili and Congolese, broadcast from Dar es Salaam more than 300 miles away.

At first, there was not much interest in establishing a radio station because of the relatively small European population in Tanganyika, unlike in neighbouring Kenya where there was a significant number of white settlers. The British government did not encourage its citizens to emigrate and settle in Tanganyika mainly because the territory was not a typical British colony like Kenya but a UN trusteeship territory under British tutelage only for a limited, though not specified, period of time after which the country would become independent.

There were, however, some parts of Tanganyika which attracted a significant number of white settlers. For example, even before the British took over Tanganyika from the Germans after World War I, Lushoto in the Usambara mountains in the northeastern part of the country was a kind of "winter capital" for the Germans.

But, in spite of the relatively small number of whites in Tanganyika, there was an obvious need for a radio station for the indigenous population, although the broadcasts had a short radius and were initially limited to Dar es Salaam, the capital, which itself had Africans in the majority.

Even in the capital Dar es Salaam, European influence on the lives of most Africans was limited when compared to what happened in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, and elsewhere in Kenya especially in the "White Highlands" in the Central Province which had the largest number of white settlers in the country including Boers from South Africa. In fact, it was Boers who founded one of Kenya's most well-known towns, Eldoret.

In the case of Tanganyika, British cultural influence was very limited in terms of everyday life and only had significant impact on the elite. The most visible change in the African way of life was in the towns which were the administrative centres for the colonial rulers. That is where the District Commissioner, whom we simply called DC, and his white staff worked and lived if the town was the district headquarters. If the town was the capital of a province, you had the provincial commissioner, known as PC, as the head.

That is where you would see the colonial rulers and other whites, working and living there, although in some parts of the rural areas, there were also whites who owned farms and hired black labourers to work on coffee and tea plantations and other large farms.

In Tanganyika, white settlers could be found in places such as Lushoto in the Usambara mountains in the northeastern part of the country where they owned coffee farms and also a school exclusively for white children known as Lushoto Prep School; in Arusha in northern Tanganyika where they also had large farms and a school for white children called Arusha School; in Moshi near the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro of majestic splendour where they also had a primary school exclusively for white children; and in the Southern Highlands Province where they also built the most prestigious school for white students in the whole country called St. Michael's and St. George's School in Iringa District near the town of Iringa, and another one in the town of Mbeya known as Mbeya School in the same province.

Mbeya School, which is in my home region, was established in 1942 in buildings which were once a German School. It was closed in 1963 as an exclusively European school and became a secondary school for students of all races after Tanganyika won independence. But it became almost exclusively black after students of other races sought education elsewhere.

Besides the German School which became Mbeya School, another European school which was founded in Tanganyika to educate pupils of the same national origin was the Greek School in Moshi where there was a number of Greek farmers and other Greeks engaged in different pursuits.

The school also served Greek children from Arusha which also had a significant number of Greek settlers. As Gregory Emmanuel whose family settled in Tanganyika stated in his article "Grandfather Gregory Emmanuel 'Nisiotis' (1875 - 1977)":

A large number of Greeks, many from Tenedos, came to Tanganyika, where Greeks became the second largest expatriate European community (Germans being the largest group).

In both Moshi and Arusha there were thriving Greek communities and the need arose for a Greek school.

As the house at Lambo was vacant, Grandfather leased it to the Greek community and it became the first Greek school in East Africa. It was a boarding school and was the first school attended by my father, Costas. (He told me that a student who sleepwalked was taken during the night by a leopard.)

Coincidentally, another school, Kongwa School, which was open to white children of all nationalities started as a primary school on 4 October 1948, exactly one year before I was born on 4 October 1949.

It evolved from the abortive groundnut scheme funded by the British Overseas Food Corporation at Kongwa.

After the groundnut scheme failed and was abandoned in 1954, its buildings were converted into a secondary school, upgraded from a primary school. Then in 1958, the students at Kongwa School were transferred to a new school in Iringa, St. Michael's and St. George's.

All the European schools in Tanganyika were co-educational, attended by white children and students of all ages depending on the kind of school they went to. For example, St. Michael's and St. George's was a secondary school. And it was highly competitive with a reputation for academic excellence.

Many of its former students became very successful in life in different parts of the world, including Tanganyika itself, which became Tanzania, and have been holding reunions now and then to renew ties and reminisce on life in Tanganyika in those days.

In many ways, they were the good old days. Life was also much safer and simpler, and the people a lot friendlier than they are nowadays when everybody is busy fending for himself, with a large number of individuals preying on others in different ways besides robbery.

Although I did not attend St. Michael's and St. George's School after independence, there are many things which the former students and I agree on in terms of how life was in school and in Tanganyika in general in those days.

And we have another thing in common. They went to school in the same province where I come from: the Southern Highlands.

Even after independence, St. Michael's and St. George's stood out among all the schools in Tanzania. It had students up to Form VI (standard 14) and was renamed Mkwawa High School and admitted students of all races, which was not the case before Tanganyika became independent in 1961.

It was in the area of education where the colonial authorities instituted some of the most rigid structures of racial separation in the country.

They sanctioned inequality in the allocation of funds and provision of facilities including teachers which ensured that the children of the white settlers would get the best education and enjoy a privileged life style at the expense of Africans and, to a smaller degree, Asians whose status was no better than that of the Africans as colonial subjects; although they were treated better than Africans in many cases.

Arabs had their own Koranic schools and were not really an integral part of the mainstream in terms of formal education in the Western intellectual tradition.

But the bottom line was that even if the Asians - as well as the Arabs - were treated better than the Africans, they were still colonial subjects, therefore not equal to whites. And provision of separate educational facilities and funds affected their lives as well; although even in this case they were favoured by the colonial government when compared with Africans. As David Nettelbeck states in "Educational Separatism and the 1950s" in his book, A History of Arusha School:

Because of the Government's lack of resources and unwillingness to take a strong initiative in educational provision, and in pursuance of the G.I.A. policy, there grew up three racially distinct systems of African, Asian and European education with each of the three subdivided into state controlled, state aided, and wholly private schools.

In the African sector for example in 1937, there were 9,500 pupils in Government schools, 19,500 in aided schools and 100,000 in private schools. These latter were often sub-standard bush schools, and catechetical centres or Koranic schools along the coast. It was not until 1955 that the Government required these kinds of schools to be registered.

In the same year, there were 985 places in Government schools for Indian children and another 3,318 in grant aided schools. The Indian community were quick to take advantage of the G.I.A. system and fulfil the requirements thus only 320 of their children were that year in private schools.

For the European community in the 1930s, the Government made direct provision in three ways. Arusha School, primarily for boarders, opened in 1934; a correspondence course was based in Dar es Salaam; and there was also a junior primary school in Dar es Salaam. The enrolment figures in 1937 show 59 children in the latter two, and 60 pupils at Arusha School.

There were in addition 704 grant-aided places for European children, a significant proportion of these being in national community schools for the Dutch, German and Greek children. Another 15 places were in a private school. The above figures are taken from the enrolment statistics 1931 - 1948 in Appendix G.

There is another way of looking at these statistics and that is to see the percentage of children being educated from each community. Listowell states that in 1933, 51% of the European children, 49% of the Asian and 2% of the African were at school.

By 1945 7.5%, of the African children attended school though few got beyond the fourth primary grade and none could attempt the entrance exam for tertiary study at Makerere in Uganda. By 1959, 40% of African children attended at least the first four years of primary education, and in 1961, 55% of the age group entered the first primary grade.

The present Government of Nyerere aims at universal primary education by 1980. (The comparative cost per head of population has been referred to above and is detailed in Appendix J.)

In 1930 an Education Tax was introduced with the primary object of affording security to the Government for the repayment of loans made to non-African communities. In 1932 the Indian and European communities were taxed for their education on a poll Tax basis and, in addition, fees were charged at their schools. Nevertheless the Government was making a far more generous per capita provision for European and Indian children than it was for African children.

The table in Appendix J shows the total expenditure for each community and the per capita cost from 1931 - 1937. Also the table in Appendix K shows that in 1955/56, 33.7% of the money spent by the Government on European education was collected in fees, 15.4% came from the European Education Tax and 49.1% from Central Revenue. In 1959 the central revenue provided for European Education an amount equivalent to 1% of the total territorial expenditure.

In 1956, £3,618,555 held by the Custodian of Enemy Property from funds collected from confiscated properties during the Second World War was distributed equally between the Tanganyika Higher Education Trust Fund for establishing tertiary education facilities, St Michael's and St George's School, a lavish secondary school for European children at Iringa, Indian education, and African education.

This 4 way split seem superficially fair but as President Nyerere has pointed out, the allocation on a per capita basis was equivalent to shs- 720/- to each European, shs. 200/- to each Asian and shs. 2/- to each African.

In 1948 and 1949, the three existing education systems described above were formalized by two ordinances, the Non-Native Education Ordinance and the Non-Native Education Tax Ordinance. This legislation brought into being an Indian Education Authority and a European Education Authority, each composed of representatives of the communities they were to serve.

They were responsible for the development and general over-sight of the systems, and for managing the education funds according to the budget approved by the Legislative Council.

There was also an Advisory Committee for Other (non-native) Education, which included Goan, Mauritian, Seychellois, Anglo-Indian, and Ceylonese children.

What began in 1948 as a very minor offshoot of basic Government responsibility for the development of the country with only 8,000 Asian and 300 European children, had become by 1961 a major concern catering for 28,000 Asian and 2,500 European children.

The three educational systems established along racial lines for Europeans, Indians and Africans - in descending order in terms of quality - were formalized in the 1940s and 1950s. And they mirrored the racial hierarchy in colonial Tanganyika instituted by the British colonial rulers. They were abolished in January 1962, soon after the country won independence on 9 December 1961, and all schools in Tanganyika were opened to students of all races.

Although the British constituted the largest group of whites during colonial rule, the white settler community in Tanganyika was a constellation of nationalities. It included many other whites such as Greeks, Germans, Italians, Afrikaners, Jews, Poles, Swedes, Danes, Russians, and Lithuanians. And that is not an exhaustive list. The white settler community was in some ways a microcosm of Europe.

There were even a few Americans in Tanganyika; for example, the first owner of the New Arusha Hotel, Kenyon Painter, a millionaire banker from Ohio. He went to Tanganyika for the first time in 1907 and started building the New Arusha Hotel in 1927. It was completed in the same year.

The hotel was formally opened in January 1928 and the opening ball - in December 1927 - was attended by the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII.

Painter continued to live in the United States but he made several hunting trips to Tanganyika, especially Arusha. He died in 1940.

Before he arrived, there was only one tiny hotel in Arusha owned by a Jewish couple, Jane and Goodall Bloom, and they named the hotel, Bloom's, and it was the first Arusha Hotel. That's why when Kenyon Painter built his hotel, he called it the New Arusha Hotel.

Kenyon Painter bought 11,000 acres of land near the town of Arusha and he played a major role in establishing coffee farms in the region. He also built the first post office in Arusha, a church, a hospital, and a coffee research centre at Tengeru, 16 miles from Arusha.

The New Arusha Hotel became a historic landmark and a centre of social activity for many people including Hollywood stars such as John Wayne whose famous movie, "Hatari," which means danger in Kiswahili, was filmed in Arusha in 1962. There was also a sign in front of the New Arusha Hotel which said:

THIS SPOT IS EXACTLY HALF WAY BETWEEN THE CAPE AND CAIRO AND THE EXACT CENTRE OF KENYA, UGANDA, AND TANGANYIKA.

Arusha also was, and still is, one of the famous towns on what is known as The Great North Road from C to C, that is, from Cape Town to Cairo. And as someone described the two main hotels in the town of Arusha and the town itself in 1957:

Also in the main street were Arusha's two famous hotels.

The New Arusha displayed a board announcing that it was exactly midway between Cape Town and Cairo, and the Safari Hotel boasted an unusual copper topped bar to which a baby elephant had been led in for a drink in a recent Hollywood film Hatari (Danger).

Mount Meru overlooked the pretty garden town beyond the golf course and the main road to Nairobi to the north.

The streets in the residential areas were lined with purple jacarandas and the well kept gardens displayed a profusion of tropical zinnias, petunias and marigolds mixed with the roses, hollyhocks, ferns and carnations of England.

At 5000 feet above sea level, the climate was perfect after the sultry heat of the coast and the early mornings were a delight with dew-dappled lawns, mists and a nip in the air, mingled with the fragrant scent of cedar hedges.

It was the kind of climate which attracted many whites to the region. Today Arusha is the headquarters of the East African Community (EAC) comprising Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi and is virtually the capital of East Africa and of the proposed East African Federation to be formed by 2013, if at all.

Other whites who lived in Arusha included Germans, Greeks, South Africans, Italians, and the British. They had farms around Arusha and some of them had small businesses in town.

Some of the crops grown in this fertile region included cereals, cherries, apples, citrus, coffee, cocoa, vanilla, and rubber. They were grown mostly by the Germans but other Europeans participated as well.

At the beginning of World War II, there were about 3,000 Germans and Italians living in Tanganyika. That was out of a total population of about 8,000 whites in the country. During the war itself, there were about 3,000 Italians including those who were held as prisoners of war in camps in Tanganyika; 9,000 Poles, 500 Greeks, and 180 Cypriot Jews, among many others.

According to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the total number of Italians who were interned in Tanganyika, mainly in Arusha and Tabora, and in Uganda and Southern Rhodesia during World War II was almost 15,000. The number given in May 1945 was 14,900.

Many whites came to live in Tanganyika after the Second World War. Also after Germany was defeated in World War I, she lost her colony of German East Africa which became Tanganyika, taken over by the British, and Ruanda-Urundi, by the Belgians. After the British took over the colony, they also used it for detaining prisoners of war (POWs) who included Germans and their allies.

Many of them ended up staying in Tanganyika. The Italians, for example, did not have any historical connection to Tanganyika like the Germans who were the first colonial rulers did, but they settled in the country in significant numbers. Most of them had been preceded earlier by a group of Italian missionaries as far back as the 1920s.

The Italians who were interned in Tanganyika during World War II were sent back to Italy after the war ended but many of them returned because they liked living there. They also felt that Tanganyika had better prospects for them than Italy did.

Many of them were craftsmen and worked in technical fields and in construction and knew that their skills were in great in demand in an underdeveloped colonial territory like Tanganyika. In fact, some of them had done the same kind of work when they in internment camps in Tanganyika.

The situation got even much better for them and the other prisoners of war or detainees in Tanganyika after 1947 when the property which had been confiscated from foreigners including some Italians by the "Custodian of the Enemy Properties," in essence the British colonial government itself, was returned to them.

Therefore the 1950s was a period when Tanganyika witnessed the arrival of a significant number of Italians who came to settle in the country in addition to the ones who were already there.

Some of them were employed on farms, for example on sisal plantations in Morogoro in the Coast Province, on tobacco farms in Iringa in the Southern Highlands, and in the cultivation of coffee and pyrethrum in Arusha and Moshi in the Nothern Province.

Other Italians went to work in the mines, mostly gold. They went to Geita in the Lake Province where they worked for the Gold Mining Company, in Musoma where they were employed by Tangold Company, and in the diamond mines of Mwadui in Shinyanga where they worked for the Williamson Diamonds Ltd. of Mwadui. There were, of course, people of other nationalities as well working in these mines, including the British and Afrikaners.

It was also during the same period that another development took place which improved prospects for a number of Italians seeking employment in Tanganyika in the 1950s.

Two projects were launched under the direction of the M. Gonella Company based in Nairobi. These were the construction of some oil depots at Kurasini in Dar es Salaam and of the first sewerage system also in Dar es Salaam, the country's capital in the Coast Province.

An average of about 200 Italians came to Tanganyika every year in the fifties to live or seek employment. The number may have been small but when looked at in the larger context of all the immigrants who came to Tanganyika in those years, we see that the figure was not really that small and Italy was one of the main countries of origin of the immigrants who settled in Tanganyika in the 1950s.

In 1952, a census was done and it showed that there were 17,885 Europeans living in Tanganyika. A total of 12,395, or 69.3 percent of the white population in the country, were British. Greeks were the second largest group with 1,292 people, followed by the Italians with 1,071; the Dutch, with 515; the Germans, 499; the Swiss, 496; and the Americans, with 331.

Other sources arrive at pretty much the same figure showing that the population of white settlers in Tanganyika in the fifties was much closer to 20,000. That was about a third of those in Kenya.

Some cited a higher figure. For example, Time magazine, in one of its 1965 editions stated: "Tanzania, which as Tanganyika once had 22,700 whites, now has 17,000."

But all these settlers had one thing in common. They were white and therefore members of the white settler community. Although they settled in significant numbers in only a few parts of Tanganyika, the areas where they settled were mostly in the fertile and cooler regions at high altitudes with temperatures most whites were comfortable with. There were, however, also significant numbers of whites in Dar es Salaam in the Coast Province because it was the capital and commercial centre of colonial Tanganyika.

Other whites were spread throughout the country living in different places such as Lindi, Nachingwea, Masasi and Mtwara in the Southern Province and other parts of the region; Kilosa in the Coast Province; Dodoma in the Central Province; Tabora in the Western Province; Mwanza and Bukoba in the Lake Province and other parts of Tanganyika.

Yet, even in areas with significant numbers of whites such as the Southern Highlands which were "extensively" occupied by the British, there was little interaction with Africans besides servants, farm labourers and house boys and maids, whose relationship with whites was defined by their subordinate status. There was also some interaction of the master-servant type in towns as well where whites lived and worked.

And the relationship couldn't be anything but that in a colony and racially stratified society dominated by Europeans even if most Africans in Tanganyika rarely saw a white person in their lives or at least during the period of colonial rule. Most of them lived in villages and spent their entire lives without going into towns where whites were.

And even when they went into towns to buy and sell things, they did not always see white people, although many of them did on a number of occasions now and then in their lives.

I remember when I was growing up in Rungwe District in Mpumbuli Village, Kyimbila, about four miles from the town of Tukuyu which was the district headquarters, I rarely saw whites when I went into town. That was in the late fifties when I was under 10 years old and quite often ventured into town, walking or sometimes catching the bus.

The only time we saw quite a few whites was when they played golf and tennis in the town of Tukuyu. I remember when we passed by as children, they now and then gave us tennis balls which we used to play with as soccer, popularly known as football. And it was the right size of "football", or "soccer ball," for us as little boys between 6 and 9 years old.

To us the whites, who were mostly British, were friendly and we saw them simply as white people who were in town playing golf and tennis. Politics was the last thing on our minds. We did not have the slightest idea of what was going on. We didn't even know why they came to Tanganyika all the way from Europe.

Even our knowledge of geography was very limited at that age. To us, our home district was the entire world. We couldn't envision anything beyond the misty blue mountains which form a ring around Rungwe District in the Great Rift Valley. Next to that, as our world, after we grew a little older and learnt more about geography, was our province, the Southern Highlands Province; and then Tanganyika, our country.

We hardly knew about the rest of East Africa when we were six and seven years old and did not even know much about the neighbouring countries of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia which border our region.

We did not learn that in standard one and standard two until later when we were in standard three and standard four. And why whites were in Tanganyika, and when they came to Tanganyika and to Africa in general, was in the realm of history and politics far beyond our knowledge at that age.

The whites who came to Tukuyu to play golf came from Mbeya, about 45 miles away. Some even came from Northern Rhodesia, which is Zambia today. And there were, of course, those who lived in Tukuyu, although not many. From what I remember, it was only a few of them who lived in the town of Tukuyu.

The town was first built by the Germans, the first colonial rulers, and was named Neu Langenburg. They are the ones who first made it the headquarters of Rungwe District. The town was destroyed twice by earthquakes, first in 1910, and again in 1919, but was rebuilt by the British after they took control of Tanganyika after the end of the First World War. And it is still the headquarters of Rungwe District today.

Among the whites whom I remember when I was growing up in Rungwe District in the late fifties were the District Commissioner (DC), the most powerful man in the town of Tukuyu and in the whole district of no fewer than 300,000 people during that period; the manager of Shell BP petrol station, a British like the DC, also in the town of Tukuyu where my father once worked under him as an assistant manager in the late fifties, and about whom I have more to say elsewhere in the book; and the manager of Kyimbila Tea Estate and his wife, both British, about a mile-and-a- half from our house whom I also address in another chapter in this book.

He and his wife lived on the premises at Kyimbila next to Kyimbila Moravian Church of which my family and I were members and whose pastor, Asegelile Mwankemwa, was my mother's uncle. He is also the one who helped raise my mother and her brothers after their parents died. My grandmother, my mother's mother, was his sister.

I don't remember any of the names of the whites I just mentioned except one, although when we were in primary school - I went to Kyimbila Primary School from 1956 to 1959 about two miles from Tukuyu and two miles from our home - we knew the name of the district commissioner (DC) of Rungwe District.

But I do remember the name of one provincial commissioner, Mr. J.T.A. Pearce. He was PC in the late 1950s and lived in Mbeya which was then the capital of the Southern Highlands Province. The former capital was Iringa but it was moved to Mbeya, although I don't remember exactly when; it was sometime in the late fifties, I believe.

The most visible symbol of colonial authority I remember when I was eight and nine years old in the late fifties was a wooden sign on the outskirts of the town of Tukuyu which said, "Native Authority." I remember it very well, almost 50 years later, and even exactly where it was. It was a white sign with black capital letters.

It was on the right-hand side of the road right at the foot of a small hill when on the way to Tukuyu, and on the left on my way home; on the same road that went all the way to Kyela, a town near the border with Nyasaland. It was very close to a junction where there was an Anglican Church. The other road led to a place called Makandana which was only about a mile from the town of Tukuyu.

I did not know what kind of sign it was - for direction, warning, or what - and it meant absolutely nothing to me. I had not even started learning English during that time, until later when I went to Mpuguso Middle School. It was a boarding school. I first went there in 1961, the same year I started learning English. I was 11 years and three months old when I started learning the language in January.

I was a day student from 1961 to 1962 before I was enrolled as a boarder in 1963. It was an all-boys school with a reputation for rigorous intellectual discipline and was one of the best middle schools in the Southern Highlands Province and in the whole country. It was also one of the oldest.

Among its alumni was Jeremiah Kasambala, son of a chief from the area who later became one of the first cabinet members under Nyerere when Tanganyika won independence. Another cabinet member, David Mwakyusa who once was a professor of medicine and President Nyerere's personal physician, was also a product of Mpuguso Middle School. He served as minister of health under President Jakaya Kikwete, Tanzania's fourth president since independence.

Other alumni through the years included doctors, lawyers and academics; and a general in the Tanzania People's Defence Forces (TPDF), my first cousin Rhodfrey Owen Mwambapa, who also became head of the Tanzania Military Academy, an officers' training school in Monduli, northern Tanzania, whose students came from other parts of Africa as well.

Another cousin of mine, Oscar Mwamwaja, who became one of Tanzania's first airline pilots, was also a product of Mpuguso Middle School.

And it was not until a few years later after I was at Mpuguso Middle School that I understood what that (Native Authority) sign meant after I learnt some English, and even much later before I understood its political significance as a demarcation line between the colonizer and colonized.

It symbolised colonial power enforced by indirect rule, a system of administration first introduced by Lord Lugard in Northern Nigeria under which the colonial government ruled vast expanses of territory through native rulers including chiefs in my home district of Rungwe.

The town of Tukuyu was under direct rule by the district commissioner (DC), and the rest of the district under indirect rule through native authority; hence the sign, "Native Authority," showing where direct rule ended and where indirect rule began. Africans and Indian shopkeepers who lived in the town of Tukuyu were under direct rule of the white colonial administrators who also lived there.

But if the colonial authorities felt that direct intervention was warranted, they did not hesitate to exercise their power.

I remember one tragic incident in the late fifties when two Nyakyusa chiefs and their people in Kyela were involved in a bloody conflict, the exact nature of which I never understood; some said the conflict was over land, which seemed to be a plausible explanation, given the scarcity of land in Rungwe District of which Kyela was then an integral part; today Kyela is a separate district and has been one for years.

When the conflict erupted, an urgent message was sent to Mbeya, the provincial capital, and within the same day, the colonial authorities dispatched a contingent of Field Force Units (FFU) to stop the fighting. The FFUs, which still exist in Tanzania today, specialize in riot control and in stopping other violent conflicts and have a reputation for being tough and using weapons when necessary.

It was one of those instances during my life time when the British invoked Pax Britannica in the quest for peace under the Union Jack in their colony of Tanganyika. The FFU riot policemen were black but their officers white.

There were other whites I remember in Rungwe District including missionaries; for example, Catholic priests at Kisa Catholic Mission about five miles from our home. They used to walk most of the time all the way from Kisa to Tukuyu and back. I remember they were dressed in black robes.

There was also another white man whom I remember very well. He used to drive down the road near our house on his way to Ilima coal mine and back to Tukuyu and Mbeya. They said he was the owner of the coal mine which was about 15 miles from our home and the Nyakyusa called him Tojilwe, obviously a corruption of his name, whatever it was; today, it sounds like Trujillo or Torrijos to me.

He could have been Spanish, I don't know, if his name was indeed Trujillo or Torrijos, what my fellow Nyakyusas called Tojilwe.

The mine was almost mid-way between Tukuyu and Kyela, a town near the Tanzania-Malawi border, and the road goes all the way to Malawi, which was then Nyasaland in those days.

Although Tojiliwe was in charge of the Ilima coal mine which was about 15 miles from our home in Mpumbuli village in the area of Kyimbila, and the people who did all the hard work were Africans, to him they were just that, coal miners.

His relationship with the coal miners was basically no different from the relationship other whites had with Africans in general. Few whites interacted with Africans on personal basis. Africans were no more than colonial subjects under the imperial flag fluttering under the tropical sun.

The interaction was minimal for racial and cultural reasons, as well as for reasons of personal taste probably on both sides. Africans who may have wanted to associate with whites - usually for social status more than anything else as members of "civilized" society which by colonial definition meant white - were inhibited in their desire by their well-founded fear and suspicion that they would not be accepted, let alone as equals, by a people who were their masters as colonial rulers and many of whom probably considered them to be inferior; while some whites, on the other hand, did not want to mingle with blacks because they did not consider them to be their equal in any conceivable way including mental capacity.

Africans dealt mostly with Indians who owned shops where African customers bought a variety of items such as clothes, soap, cooking oil, salt and sugar. And they communicated very well. I remember many Indians in Tukuyu who spoke Kinyakyusa, our "tribal" language, with their customers. And some of them knew the language very well.

Although many Africans probably did not notice or feel the colonial presence and white domination did not have a direct impact on their lives everyday, there were those who were acutely aware of the disparities in life among the races purely along racial lines. They knew the disparities or inequities were not merely accidental but a product of deliberate decisions by the colonial rulers who instituted a system of racial hierarchy to maintain colonial rule.

What set them apart from the other Africans besides their political consciousness was education. They were mostly educated, with secondary school education or higher and sometimes even less, and they worked directly under the supervision of whites especially in towns. And they are the ones who led the struggle for independence, not only in Tanganyika but in other African countries as well.

There was another politically conscious class of Africans who constituted a critical mass during the struggle for independence. These were the workers in towns. They formed trade unions demanding better wages and conditions at work which eventually led to demands for political equality and representation at the local and national levels.

Most of them were not educated in the traditional sense. They never got the chance to go to school, although a significant number of them did and had at least primary school education enabling them to read and write as well as count. But because they worked directly under whites, they became very much aware of the difference in living conditions among the races and they were among some of the most politically conscious people in Tanganyika and in all the other colonies across the continent.

Their consciousness was best demonstrated on a number of occasions when they went on strike to force the colonial authorities to meet their demands, a strategy which helped galvanize the independence movement.

In fact, the labour union leaders became some of the most prominent leaders in the independence struggle. For example, Rashid Mfaume Kawawa, a prominent labour union leader in Tanganyika, became prime minister and later vice president of Tanganyika and later of Tanzania. And in Kenya, Tom Mboya, another highly influential labour union leader, became the most prominent national leader after President Jomo Kenyatta and his heir apparent. He also held senior cabinet posts including the ministry of economic planning and development until his assassination in July 1969 at the age of 39.

I remember there were even songs by Kenyan musicians played on the radio, the Tanganyika Broadcasting Corporation, which in those days we simply called TBC, in the late fifties about Tom Mboya when he was one of the brightest stars on the Kenyan political scene even before independence.

In the case of Tanganyika, the late fifties were a turning point in the independence struggle, as much as they were for neighbouring Kenya, and witnessed among other things the departure of one of the last two governors of this vast country, the largest among the East African British colonies.

I witnessed some of those events, although I was only 8 and 9 years old.

I remember when Sir Edward Francis Twining, one of the last two governors of Tanganyika, came to Tukuyu in 1958. It was a farewell visit.

He was the governor from 18 June 1949 (about four months before I was born) to June 1958. He was succeeded by Sir Richard Gordon Turnbull who was the last governor of Tanganyika from 15 July 1958 until independence day on 9 December 1961. Twining died in June 1967, and Turnbull in December 1998.

I remember the day Governor Twining came to Tukuyu in 1958 to say good-bye. I was about eight-and-a-half years old. It was a bright, sunny day, in the afternoon. I was then a pupil in standard three at Kyimbila Primary School about two miles from Tukuyu and our head teacher made arrangements for us to go and see the governor. So we were in school only half of the day and we walked the two miles to the town of Tukuyu to see the governor for the last time; it was also the first time most of us saw him on that day.

I even remember his attire. He was dressed in white. He also had on a white hat and white gloves. And Nyakyusa dancers performed the traditional dance called mang'oma in farewell to him.

There were also many whites on the scene. Some had accompanied him from Dar es Salaam and Mbeya and others simply came to see him. Also on the scene was the Provincial Commissioner (PC) of the Southern Highlands Province from Mbeya, the provincial capital, and the District Commissioner (DC) of Rungwe District who lived right there in Tukuyu, the district headquarters.

I remember it was a festive occasion. People were in jovial mood. Politics seemed to be the last thing on their minds, as the dancers swayed and swivelled to the rhythm and drum-beat of mang'oma, the most popular Nyakyusa traditional dance.

And the others who were there joyously clapped their hands for the governor when he climbed up the steps of the Barclays Bank building from where he waved to the crowd, smiling.

I remember the area well. The Clock Tower and the golf course were only a few yards away on the right hand-side when you faced the Barclays Bank Building.

Although I was too young to know what was going on in the country in terms of politics and the campaign for independence under the leadership of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) whose charismatic leader, Julius Nyerere, electrified his audiences by his mere presence even before he spoke whenever he campaigned in different parts of Tanganyika, I was still able to tell that there was no hostility of any kind towards the governor and other whites on the part of the Africans who were there on that day.

And that seemed to be the case even during the campaign for independence itself. There were no attacks on the British and other whites, and the people of all races seemed to get along just fine even if they did not mingle. The campaign for independence was peaceful and was waged along constitutional lines.

When reflecting on the transition from colonial rule to independence, Nyerere himself said that Tanganyika won independence by peaceful means, and there was no hostility towards whites even after the country won independence. As he stated in parliament during a debate on the citizenship bill when a few members wanted only black Africans to be citizens after Tanganyika became independent, as reported in the Tanganyika National Assembly Debates (Hansard), in October 1961 less than two months before the country won independence from Britain:

If we in Tanganyika are going to divorce citizenship from loyalty and marry it to colour, it won't stop there...until you break up the country....They are preaching discrimination as a religion to us. And they stand like Hitlers and begin to glorify race. We glorify human beings, not colour.

Nyerere was furious when he heard a few members of the National Assembly speaking against citizenship for whites, Indians, Arabs and others. He was known to be very calm, tolerant and kind but he lost his temper during the course of the debate and accused them of racism and talking rubbish and behaving like Nazis.