Julius Nyerere: Enhance Our Capacity as Africa to Develop If We Work Together

Julius Nyerere: Enhance Our Capacity as Africa to Develop If We Work Together

(Extracts from a Speech by the late Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere to Parliament Members of South Africa, Cape Town, 16 October 1997).

“Madam Speaker and, I think I may say, Comrade President and Comrade Vice President, ladies and gentlemen. I have told you already how I felt when you asked me to come and talk here. And then I got the message that you were coming. Of course, I am happy you are here, but what do I say in your presence in this House? This is not my first time here. I have been here before and I have thanked you, but I must thank you again. For me to come here to this Chamber and address you is a dream which you have helped me to make true. How could anyone of us have thought that it would be possible for me or people of my type to come to this country and speak from a forum like this? So, Mr. President, and all your colleagues, I say thank you very much for making this possible.

“Now, as for sharing my thoughts with you: my thoughts, unfortunately, don’t change, so a lot of what I am going to say some of you will have heard before, but some of you have not. I am going to say two things about Africa. One, that Africa south of the Sahara is an isolated region of the world. That’s the first thing I want to say. The second thing I want to say is that Africa south of the Sahara is not what it is believed to be because Africa is now changing. So let me see if I can share those thoughts with you in a very short period.

“Africa south of the Sahara is isolated. Africa south of the Sahara, in the world today, is on its own – totally on its own. That’s the first thing I wanted to say. The second thing I wanted to say is that Africa is changing. I’ve been to Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America, and Africa is a stereotype. The Africa which now arouses some interest is the Brazzaville Africa, that Rwanda Africa, that Somalia Africa, that Liberia Africa. That is the Africa which arouses interest, and I don’t blame these people. That’s the Africa that they know.

“Africa South of the Sahara is isolated, Africa south of the Sahara is changing. That stereotype of ‘There is trouble in Africa all the time’ is nonsensical. There is trouble in Africa, there is trouble in Asia, there is trouble in Europe, there is trouble everywhere, and it would be amazing if after the suffering of the blessed continent for the last 100 years, we didn’t have what we are having. Some of these nations we have are not nations at all. They make no sense at all, any geographical sense or ethnic sense or economic sense. They don’t. The Europeans set somewhere and said, ‘you take that part, you take that part’. They drew these lines on a map and here we are, trying to create nations which are almost impossible to create. But we are changing. The continent is changing.

But Africa is changing. You can make a map of Africa and just look at the countries stretching from Eritrea to here. Just draw a line and see all those countries. You still have a Somalia and a Burundi there, but it’s a very different kind of Africa now, it has elected governments, it has confident governments. Actually, most of those countries with the exception of Uganda, have never been under military rule. Never! And since you’re coming onto the scene, this is completely different kind of Africa.

When we were struggling here, South Africa still under apartheid, and you being a destabiliser of your neighbours instead of working together with them to develop our continent, of course that was a different thing. It was a terrible thing. Here was a powerful South Africa, and this power was a curse to us. It was not a blessing for us. We wished it away, because it was not a blessing at all.

It destroyed Angola with a combination of apartheid; it was a menace to Mozambique and a menace to its neighbours, but that has changed. South Africa is democratic. South Africa is no longer trying to destroy the others. South Africa is now working with the others. And, boy please work with the others!

And don’t accept this nonsense that South Africa is big brother. My brother, you can’t be big brother. What is your per capita income? Your per capita income is about US$3,000 a year. Of course, compared with Tanzania you are a giant. But you are poor. When you begin to use that money, this is arithmetic, simple arithmetic and if you divide the wealth of this country for the population, of course everybody gets US$3, 000, but not everybody in this country is getting US$ 3,000. That would be a miracle. That is simply arithmetic.

So when you begin to use that wealth, Mr. President and I know you are trying to address the legacy of apartheid – you have no money. You are still different from Tanzania, but you have no money. You are still more powerful. So Tanzania and the others to say that South Africa is big brother, and they must not throw their weight around, what kind of weight is that? And, in any case, this would be positive weight, not the negative weight of apartheid.

So this is a different Africa. I am saying that this Africa now is changing. Neocolonialism is being fought more effectively, I think, with a new leadership in Africa. And I believe the one region which can lead this fight is our region. With the end of apartheid and South Africa having joined SADC, this area of Africa is a very solid area. It is an extremely solid area. It is strong, it has serious leaders and these leaders know one another. I know that because where some of them have come from. They have a habit of working together, Mr. President, so let them work together. Deliberately. It should be a serious decision to work together. Why? You have no other choice. You have absolutely no other choice.

South Africa, because of its infrastructure, can attract more investment from Europe, from North America, than Tanzania can. Fine, go ahead. Do it, use your capacity to get as much investment as you can. That’s good. But then don’t be isolated from the rest of Africa. What you build here because of your infrastructure and the relative strength of your economy, you are building for all of us here.

Africa is beginning to realise and we should all encourage Africa to get that realisation more and more that we have to depend upon ourselves, both at national level and at the collective level. Each of our countries will have to rely upon its own human resources and natural material resources for its development. But that is not enough. The next area to look at is our collectivity, our working together. We all enhance our capacity to develop if we work together.

Source:
Julius Nyerere, “Speech by the late Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere to parliament members of the South Africa”, Resources: Speeches and Statement, https://www.juliusnyerere.org/resources/view/speech_by_the_late_mwalimu_julius_kambarage_nyerere_to_parliament_members_o

Castro Khwela
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