Africa: Who Is Safe?

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So far so good. But then—only 44 days after independence—Nyerere's well-tuned ear caught rumblings of dissent within TANU. With uhuru an accomplished fact, party discipline was crumbling. Says former Governor General Sir Richard Turnbull: "TANU was like a 100-horsepower engine which had been building up its power before independence, then had the load lifted." Nyerere feared that TANU might turn against him. So he resigned.

Back to the Bush. Turning over the prime ministry to his reliable, mild-mannered deputy, Rashidi Kawawa,

Julius jumped into his Land Rover and began beating through the bush. In flyblown Indian Ocean towns and sun-seared mud-hut villages in Chaggaland, he recruited new grass-roots leaders and urged participation in the self-help program.

By mid-1963, the government's $250,000 investment in self-help had yielded an estimated $2,500,000 in product: 10,400 miles of roads, 166 clinics, 368 schools, 267 village halls, 308 clams and 515 wells. At one tiny village, a man dug up 500 ant-eaten pound notes and brought them to Nyerere, who promised to build a bank on the very spot.

Nyerere's self-exile actually served as a long election campaign. In November 1962, with Tanganyika becoming a republic, he ran for President and took 98% of the 1,100,000 votes cast.

Loading the Rifles. Nyerere had always insisted on equality for all races in the new Tanganyika—for whites and Arabs as well as for the black majority. However, during his first two years, he had compromised to the extent of implementing an Africanization program aimed at filling government jobs with Africans. Then last January he made an announcement that ultimately reverberated up and down the length of East Africa's Great Rift. "It would be wrong of us to continue to distinguish between Tanganyikan citizens on any ground other than character and ability," he told the nation. "We cannot allow the growth of first-and second-class citizenship." Africanization, he said, was dead. For this bow to racial equality, he was immediately and savagely denounced by trade union leaders in Dar. Silent but more ominous was the reaction of the Tanganyika Rifles, the nation's 1,600-man army. Still commanded by British officers two years after uhuru, the African soldiers interpreted de-Africanization to mean that they would not gain the promotions they had been promised. Locked and loaded with resentment, the Rifles needed only a touch to unload through the muzzle. Four days later, on the tiny island of Zanzibar, 221 miles off the East African coast, a finger began moving toward the trigger.