Book review Despite British-style apartheid, boys educated at English style pubic schools in Africa knew they were part of chosen elite and acted as such throughout their lives
return them – an act of appeasement to the German leader. So why spend money on something you’re sooner or later going to give away? After 1918,Tanganyika became a mandated territory under the League of Nations. In African eyes, the British were no more popular than the Germans. The British turned Tanganyika into an undeclared apartheid state that was socially divided between Africans, Europeans and Asians. The Zanaki tribe into which Kambarage (Julius is the name he took after his conversion to Catholicism) was so small and unremarkable that most inhabitants of Tanganyika did not know of its existence. But Chief Nyerere Burito was popular with the colonizers. His famous son (I’ll call him Julius from now on) told the American journalist Edgett Smith, “The only thing the British had against my father was his 22 wives.” Julius was brought up to think and live a tribal life. His father paid for an elder son to go to secondary school. Julius seemed destined to play a minor role as guardian of the family’s sheep and goats. But like King David in the Bible, he impressed Catholic priests who saw in the undersized, studious rather remote young man with enormous potential at a time when the White Fathers were anxious to start localizing the Church throughout East Africa. Julius’s exposure to Christianity occurred as he was entering his teenage years, a time when the adolescent mind is prone to exploring experiences in the wider world. From primary school at Musoma, Julius went on to the elite Tabora Government School which Professor Julian Huxley described as the Eton of Africa. Malony says the school’s long-serving Director of Education, Stanley Rivers-Smith, saw the importation of the English public school spirit into Tanganyika as a contribution to the British policy of indirect rule. He stated that the schools for the sons of chiefs , using the English “Prefect System,” made possible the full realization of the British
56 ColdType | Mid-May 2015 | www.coldtype.net
Taking a break: Nyerere in relaxed mood. Behind him and looking on is his personal assistant, the Fabian Socialist, Joan Wicken). (Photo: Adarsh Nayar) ideal to delegate authority to those who by hereditary ought to possess and exercise it. Julius’s feeling of being a chosen prefect never left him. Neither did a deeply felt belief that as the son of a chief it was essential to play ball with the colonial authorities. Despite British-style apartheid (their secret was never to give racial segregation a name) boys educated at English style public schools in Africa knew they were part of chosen elite and acted as such throughout their lives. At Kenya’s independence in 1963, ten of the country’s 17 ministers, nine of the 14 permanent secretaries along with the posts of Attorney General, Chief Justice and Commissioner of Police, were educated at the Alliance High School, another “Eton” in Africa. Shortly before his father’s death (at the age of 82) Julius converted to Roman Catholicism and his name changed. He was the first person in Butiama to be baptized a Roman Catholic. From then onwards he was known as Julius Kambarage Nyerere. In November 1942 he sat the entrance examination for Uganda’s Makerere College