Oscar Kambona - Exile

Exile

A few months later, in July 1967, Oscar Kambona left Tanzania with his wife and children and went into "self-imposed" exile in London.

It was first reported that he sneaked out of the country and drove all the way to Nairobi, Kenya, a neighbouring country. But it is highly unlikely that the members of the Tanzania's intelligence service were not aware of his departure. The government simply let him go. They could have stopped him, and could even have arrested him, if they wanted to.

After he left and when his departure was reported in Tanzania's newspapers and on the radio, President Nyerere himself at a public rally in Dar es Salaam, the capital, talked about Kambona and said "Let him go." He also said Kambona left with a lot of money and wondered how he got all that money which did not match his salary.

There were rumours that one of the ways he enriched himself when he was in office was by taking some of the money which was intended to go to the liberation movements based in Tanzania.

He was during that period also chairman of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Liberation Committee overseeing liberation movements based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in addition to his ministerial position as minister of external affairs.

The allegations that he misappropriated some of the funds intended for the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, and got more money from other sources illegally or by unscrupulous means, was repeated on 12 January 1968, when President Nyerere challenged Oscar Kambona to return to Tanzania and testify before a judicial commission that he had not deposited large sums of money in his account, and explain where he got it from since it far exceeded his salary.

Kambona responded to the allegations by requesting the Tanzanian government in a press conference in London in 1968 to hold a public investigation into his personal wealth and publish the findings. The government did not do that.

It is also highly unlikely that Kambona misappropriated wealth since he spent most of his life in exile living in subsidised council housing for poor income families.

Tony Laurence, in his book The Dar Mutiny of 1964 published by Book Guild Publishing, states that, fearing for his life, Kambona went to live in exile in Britain without any financial support and took a number of low-paying jobs to support himself and his family. Yet, during all that time, Kambona conducted himself with dignity, and with a sense of humour in spite of the hardship, and was a friend of other people also living in exile. Some of them were in a better financial position than he was.

Nyerere's challenge to Kambona, asking him to account for his money, was reported in Tanzania's newspapers and by Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam (RTD) during that time. It has also been documented by Jacqueline Audrey Kalley in her voluminous work, Southern African Political History: A Chronology of Key Political Events from Independence to Mid-1997.

There was also disagreement on the way Kambona's exile was described.

Reports in Tanzania said he went into "self-imposed" exile but, to Kambona and his supporters as well as other observers, he was forced to leave Tanzania because he had fallen out with Nyerere and did not feel that he would be safe or lead a normal life in a hostile political climate.

Speculation that he may have been in imminent danger just before he left was somewhat confirmed when his house in Magomeni, Dar es Salaam, was destroyed by the security forces and the soldiers of the Tanzania People's Defence Forces (TPDF) although not demolished. The destruction is shown in a photograph on the web site of the Kambona Foundation.

The destruction of the house, after Kambona left, seemed to have been some kind of warning or simply a scare tactic and it probably achieved its purpose, especially with regard to Kambona's supporters in Tanzania. It probably meant, "this is what we have in store for you," or "this is what you are going to get," if you continue to support Kambona. And "this is what would have happened to him had he stayed."

That may be just one of the interpretations - why his house was destroyed. There may be other interpretations of the government's motives for sanctioning that.

But fear for his security and freedom was real, further confirmed when his two younger brothers, Mattiya Kambona and Otini Kambona, were arrested around the same time he fled to London. They were detained for many years until President Nyerere released them.

From his sanctuary in London, Oscar Kambona became a bitter critic and opponent of President Nyerere and his policies.

He was even invited by the Nigerian military government of Yakubu Gowon in June 1968 to go and lecture in Nigeria after Tanzania recognised Biafra (the first country to do so in April that year), thus infuriating Nigerian leaders for supporting the secession of the Eastern Region of the Nigerian Federation.

During his lecture tour of Nigeria in June 1968, Kambona denounced Nyerere as a dictator and accused the Tanzanian government of supplying weapons to Biafra.

In a lecture in Lagos on 14 June 1968, he also said weapons and ammunition sent to Tanzania for the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) freedom fighters had been diverted by Nyerere and sent to Biafra; and went on to say that Tanzania's recognition of Biafra as a sovereign nation had damaged the country's reputation in Africa and elsewhere.

Tanzania recognised Biafra for moral reasons because of the refusal and unwillingness of the local and the federal authorities to stop the massacre of Igbos and other Easterners in Northern Nigeria and other parts of the country, but especially in the North.

Nigerian leaders were also quick to remind Nyerere that it was Nigerian troops who had saved him and provided security and defence for Tanganyika after the army mutiny in Tanganyika in 1964 when Nyerere appealed to fellow Africans for troops to temporarily provide defence while the Tanganyikan government was building a new army. Nigeria, under the leadership of President Nnamdi Azikiwe and Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, immediately responded to Nyerere's request.

Kambona was also quick to remind his listeners in Nigeria, and even in Britain where lived, that it was he who calmed down the soldiers when they mutinied while President Nyerere and Vice President Kawawa went into hiding, "in a grass hut," as he put it.