Godfrey Mwakikagile - Writings

Writings

Godfrey Mwakikagile came into prominence in Tanzania and elsewhere after he wrote a major book about Julius Nyerere not long after the former Tanzanian president died.14

He is considered by many people, including those who have reviewed his books about President Nyerere in different newspapers, magazines and academic journals in a number of countries, to be an authority on Nyerere and one of his most prominent biographers.15

One scholar who cited Godfrey Mwakikagile as an authoritative source on President Nyerere was Professor David Simon, a specialist in development studies at the University of London and Director of the Centre for Development Areas Research at Royal Holloway College at the university. Professor Simon published excerpts from Godfrey Mwakikagile's book on Nyerere in his compiled study, Fifty Key Thinkers on Development, published in 2005.16

During that time and thereafter, Professor David Simon was also editor of the scholarly Journal of Southern African Studies and was on the editorial staff of another academic publication, the Review of African Political Economy.

Godfrey Mwakikagile's works have been getting serious attention among many people including academics in many countries who have also reviewed some of his books in scholarly journals.

His first book, Economic Development in Africa, was published in 1999 and he has maintained a steady pace since then, writing books, as demonstrated by the number of titles he has on the market. He is one of Tanzania's most well-known authors and one of Africa's most prolific.

He has written more than 40 books (since 1999) mostly about Africa during the post-colonial period, and has been described as a political scientist although his works defy classification. He has written about history, politics, economics, as well as contemporary and international affairs from an African and Third World perspective and is known for such works as Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, and Africa and the West.17

Both have been favourably reviewed in a number of publications including the highly influential West Africa magazine (founded in 1917 and based in London) which reviewed two of his books in the same year; a rare accomplishment in such a major publication.

The books were reviewed by West Africa magazine editor Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, a Ghanaian who also once was a visiting lecturer and scholar-in-residence at the University of Botswana. They were excellent reviews.

Godfrey Mwakikagile's book, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, his magnum opus and probably his most well-known title, was reviewed by West Africa magazine in 2002 three years after Nyerere died of leukemia in October 1999 at the age of 77.18

It was also reviewed by the Daily News, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in October 2002 and is seen as a comprehensive work, in scope and depth, on Nyerere.19

Others who have reviewed the book include Professor A.B. Assensoh, a Ghanaian teaching at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. He reviewed the first edition of Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era in the African Studies Review, an academic journal of the African Studies Association, in 2003.

The same book was also reviewed by Professor Roger Southall of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), formerly of Rhodes University, South Africa, in the bi-annual interdisciplinary publication, the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (Taylor & Francis Group), 22, No. 3, in 2004. Professor Southall was also editor of the journal during that period.

The first edition of Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era was published in November 2002, and the second, an expanded edition, in January 2005. The third edition, also an expanded version, was published in November 2006. The fourth edition, also expanded, was published in December 2008. And the fifth edition was published in 2010.

The book has also been cited by a number of African leaders including South African Vice President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka in one of her speeches about African leadership and development in which she quotes the author. 20

She was the main speaker at a conference of African leaders, diplomats and scholars at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa in September 2006 when she gave her speech.

Although his books have been able to get the attention of some African leaders, it is impossible to know if they have had any influence on any of them. But the mere fact that they are cited by them shows that he is taken seriously as an author, not only in Tanzania but also in other African countries and elsewhere.

Godfrey Mwakikagile's other book, Africa and the West, which is a sweeping survey of the continent before the advent of colonial rule and during the colonial era as well as after independence, was also reviewed by West Africa magazine in its edition of 21–27 January 2002.21

The book, which was published in 2000, has been described as an appeal to Africans to respect their cultures, values and traditions and take a firm stand against alien ideas which pollute African minds and undermine Africa. It is also a philosophical text used in a number of colleges and universities in the study of African identity, philosophy and history. It is also a strong condemnation of the conquest of Africa by the imperial powers.

West Africa magazine, in its January 2002 edition, also described Godfrey Mwakikagile as an author who articulates the position of African Renaissance thinkers.

And one American journalist who interviewed him described him as an independent scholar who was also a widely read and highly regarded author.

Godfrey Mwakikagile responded by saying that he was just an ordinary African, like tens of millions of others, deeply concerned about the plight of his continent.

But there is no question that he is a serious writer whose writings are widely read even if he considers himself to be just an ordinary African like millions of his brethren across the continent and elsewhere.

He has also been invited to give lectures at different universities because of the books he has written. And his role as a public intellectual has been demonstrated in other ways. For example, he has been sought for interviews by BBC, PBS (America's public television network), and by Voice of America (VOA), among other media outlets. This is documented in the interview he had with the American journalist.

The interview, which focused on Julius Nyerere as a leader and on other subjects about Africa, is reprinted in its entirety in one of Godfrey Mwakikagile's books, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era.

Although he has been exposed to Western cultures, was educated in the Western intellectual tradition and even lived in the United States for many years, his perspectives and philosophical conceptions have undoubtedly been shaped by his African upbringing and are deeply rooted in African cultures and traditions. And he rejects the notion that Africa was a blank slate until Europeans came to write on it.

He passionately argues that the history written about Africa by Europeans when they first went to Africa and even during colonial rule as well as after independence is not African history but the history of Europeans in Africa and how they see Africa and Africans from their European perspective or perspectives.

He also contends that traditional Africa has produced philosophers and other original thinkers whose knowledge and ideas - including ideas at a high level of abstraction - can match and even surpass the best in the West and elsewhere in the world. He forcefully articulates that position in his book, Africa and The West.22

And although he sees Africa as an indivisible whole, he also argues that all nations, include those in Africa, have different national characters. He looks at the concept of national character in the African context in one of his books, Kenya: Identity of A Nation, and makes a compelling case for this idea which is sometimes highly controversial. The work is, among other subjects, a study of comparative analysis in which the author looks at the national characters of Kenya and Tanzania, thus demonstrating that nations do indeed have different national characters and have been that way throughout history.

He undoubtedly has strong convictions but does not neatly fit into any ideological category. He expresses strong Pan-Africanist views in his writings and sees Africa as a collective entity and one organic body and has strongly been influenced by staunch Pan-Africanist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Sekou Toure and Patrice Lumumba whom he also strongly admires.23

He says Africa does not have leaders of that kind anymore.

He also strongly admires Thomas Sankara as a man of the people like Nyerere and contends that among the new breed of African leaders, Sankara - who has been described as the African Che Guevara - showed great promise but was eliminated by some of his so-called compatriots working for France and other Western powers before he could realise his full potential the same way Lumumba was, eliminated by the United States and Belgium. Godfrey Mwakikagile has written about Thomas Sankara in his book Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties and in African Countries among other works.

But some of his critics contend that he overlooks or glosses over the shortcomings of these leaders precisely because they are liberation icons and played a leading role in the struggle for independence and against white minority rule in Southern Africa.24

He also seems to be "trapped" in the past, in liberation days, especially in the seventies when the struggle against white minority rule was most intense. But that may be for understandable reasons.25

He was a part of that generation when the liberation struggle was going on and some of his views have unquestionably been shaped by what happened during those days as his admiration for Robert Mugabe, for example, as a liberation icon clearly shows; although he also admits in his book, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, that the land reform programme in Zimbabwe could have been implemented in an orderly fashion and in a peaceful way and without disrupting the economy.

But his admiration for Mugabe as a true African nationalist and Pan-Africanist remains intact; a position that does not sit well with some of his critics although he does not condone despotic rule as he clearly states in his writings.

He admires Mugabe mostly as a freedom fighter and liberation hero who freed his people from colonial rule and racial oppression and exploitation, and as a strong leader who has taken a firm and an uncompromising stand against Western domination of Africa.

And by remarkable contrast, his contempt for African leaders whom he sees as whites with a black skin also remains intact. He mentions Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda as a typical example of those leaders.

He has written about Dr. Banda and other African leaders, among other subjects, in his book, Africa After Independence: Realities of Nationhood.26

Godfrey Mwakikagile also contends that only a few African leaders - Nkrumah, Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Nasser, Ben Bella and Modibo Keita - strove to achieve genuine independence for their countries and for Africa as a whole and exercised a remarkable degree of independence in their dealings with world powers. And Mugabe is the only African leader today who fits this category, in spite of his shortcomings.

According to Ben Bella, the six leaders - Nkrumah, Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Nasser, Modibo Keita and Ben Bella himself - constituted what came to be known as "The Group of Six" within the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). In an interview in Switzerland in 1995 with Jorge G. Castañeda, the author of Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, Ben Bella said the six leaders worked together secretly within the OAU on a number of issues including the Congo and African liberation, excluding other African leaders. It is a subject Godfrey Mwakikagile has also addressed in his book Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era.27

Godfrey Mwakikagile's background as a Tanzanian has played a major role in his assessment of many African leaders because of the central role his country played in the liberation struggle in the countries of Southern Africa, and not just in South Africa - the bastion of white minority rule on the continent.28

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is one of the African leaders who have had strong ties to Tanzania, Godfrey Mwakikagile's home country, since liberation days. Others with strong ties to Tanzania include Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa; Joaquim Chissano, former president of Mozambique; and Sam Nujoma, former president of Namibia.29