Talk:Julius Nyerere

Untitled
speech during UNO

St. Julius Nyerere?
I just noticed these external links:

Process initiated to declare Tanzania's founding president a saint Is Nyerere's process to sainthood timely?

Do you think that Nyerere's Catholicism is worthy of sainthood? Please explain why or why not. Many thanks. Diamantina 12:28, 25 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Nyerere is not being considered for sainthood (at least not by the Roman Catholic Church). --Ezeu 01:04, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 2006 IAmYourDad999 (talk) 17:53, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Removed Unsourced Statement
I removed: "Unfortunately, many believe that his socialist policies were directly responsible for the Hutu uprisings against the Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi and played the major role in the ongoing sectarian genocides in that region." This had already been marked as "citation needed" for a while before I got to it, and is pretty inflammatory, so I removed it (especially since I had never heard this before, and given that Nyerere did not rule over either Rwanda or Burundi, the statement isn't immediately self-evident). If someone has a source for this, it would make for a very interesting addition to the article, though. Nicolasdz 09:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

"First Tanzanian..."
How can one claim that Nyerere was "the first Tanzanian to study at a British university", when Tanzania did not exist at this time? Perhaps he was the first Tanganyikan? Either way, can someone please provide a source, because as it stands now, the claim is highly irrational. --webkid (talk) 05:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Does this article meet the standards of wikipedia?
Articmike (talk) 01:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

This article is terribly biased and needs to be rewritten. There's not a single word in this article about the process by which the article alleges the subject was "elected" president of the new Tanzania, then seemingly never again stood for election, after which he served more than 20 years. The article as written states that the subject admitted in 1976 that he had to junk his economic plan and that the country needed a new economic system, then "willingly" announced he would step down after an election -- to be held in 1985! Nine years after admitting defeat! There may be sources this author can cite to identify this politician as a benevolent dictator, or to argue that this dictator was not a bloody dictator, but whether these assertions could be possibly true is not even raised in this article. It is clear that the man was a dictator. Did the voters of 1964 know they were electing a president-for-life? If there are sources the author can cite that might establish that this dictator acted for the good of his country, or denied his people freedom and democracy for any good reason, the author chose not to cite such sources in the article. The author merely wrote a highly biased article. Articmike (talk) 01:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I would also add that the article fails to mention the forced relocation of 2/3 of the population to the collective villages. This was a key part of his ujaama policy.

Hal 10000.0 (talk) 12:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

This article fails any test for subjectivity there is. This is little more than a propaganda puff piece. 98.247.32.199 (talk) 18:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * There is certainly a lot that could be added to his economic policies. History of Tanzania appears to have a lot of the opposite viewpoint. Perhaps you can use some information from there to fix up this ? This is not an invitation to trash Nyerere, but I agree it could use some balance. Wizzy&hellip; &#9742; 19:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

"Positions held"
I'm moving the following list to here from the article for now. f any of this is missing, it needs to be prose, and it seemed a bit randomly placed.
 * Positions held


 * 1954 A Founder Member of TANU
 * 1958-1960 Member of the Legislative Assembly in the first elections in which Africans were allowed to vote.
 * 1958 Leader of the Opposition in Parliament.
 * 1960 Chief Minister of the first Internal Self-Government Administration.
 * 1961 Prime Minister of the first Government of Independent Tanganyika
 * 1962 Elected President of Tanganyika when it became a Republic.
 * 1963-1970 Chancellor of the University of East Africa.
 * 1964-1985 President of the United Republic of Tanzania.
 * 1970-1985 Chancellor of the University of Dar-es-Salaam.
 * 1977-1990 Chairman of Chama Cha Mapinduzi which was formed by a merger between TANU and the Afro-Shiraz Party of Zanzibar. CCM was born in Zanzibar on 5 February 1977.
 * 1984-1985 Chancellor of Sokoine University of Agriculture.
 * 1985: Retired from Presidency.
 * 1999: Died of leukemia in London and was buried in Butiama (Musoma) - Tanzania.

-- Beloved Freak  10:06, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Article Rating
I think this article needs a re-rating. It is an important person for Tanzania and deserves to reach GA status. Would appreciate any advice by anyone to help attain that status. Sputink (talk) 23:45, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Detail: etymology of Ujjamaa
'the Swahili word for socialism comes from the word Jamaa — which literally means "familyhood" and the "extended family"'

I am not good enough in Kiswahili or Arabic to be certain, but I suspect that Kiswahili "jamaa" comes from Arabic jamea (جمع) meaning collection, collecting, gathering, combination. Maybe somebody familiar with the etymology of Kiswahili can check this. Mregelsberger (talk) 10:27, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Issues with the lead
I feel the lead of this article (I refuse to write "lede", don't @ me unless you are wearing a fedora with a big "press" sign stuck under the band) needs some work per WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY. I started the work but was reverted. I will try again now, but explain what is the what here. 1: "anti-colonial activist" - this seems to me to be a presentist term. I read 4 of his obituaries NYT, Guardian, Irish times, and the Washington Post, none of which referred to him as an activist once. Nor does this site (not sure how legit it is, though). JuliusNyerere.org. I'll admit that none of those obituaries were from African sources, and I know next to nothing about African and Tanzanian politics. So I could be wrong. Maybe all the WP:RS are currently referring to Nyerere as an anti-colonialist activist. We just need to see those sources. But again per WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, the word "activist" does not occur in the body except to refer to Coretta Scott King. King is referred to as an activist on her page, but Gandhi is not on his page. My preference would be to keep the "Political Activism" heading for the subsection, but not prioritize "activist" in the lead. He was a founding father, statesman, founder of TANU, African Socialist and President more than he was a mere activist. This is what I'm getting from the current sources. 2: Tanzania or Tanganyika. Tanzania is an afterthought in the lead. All of the sources I've read start with referring to him as "founding father of Tanzania" or at least mention him as president of Tanzania right off the bat. For some reason the current version of the lead prioritizes him being prime minister and then president of Tanganyika (all of which lasted for four years) over him being the first and only president of Tanzania for 21 years. Oh, also Tanzania is described as Tanganyika's "successor state". This is odd and stilted verbiage. This amounts to a sort of Tanganyika bias that I don't understand, and certainly doesn't reflect the bulk of Nyerere's life which was in service of Tanzania as a whole. 3:The page is about Nyerere not TANU, so the lead should not be so persnickety about the history of TANU. It can have its own page. To burn up pixels in Nyerere's lead paragraph to clarify the current state of TANU, while probably very important to a lot of people, is WP:UNDUE. Cheers. DolyaIskrina (talk) 01:45, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for bringing your concerns to the talk page. In its GA-rated form, the structure of the lead of the Nyerere article closely mirrors various FA-rated political biography articles, such as Nelson Mandela and Jomo Kenyatta, as well as other GA-rated articles such as Muammar Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe. Thus, there is a clear precedent for how we set these sorts of things out at Wikipedia; we focus on what roles these individuals actually played (as an activist, revolutionary, a theorist, or a politician, for example) in the opening sentence and only then move on to discuss their ideology later in the paragraph. A description along the lines of "father of the nation" is typically reserved for the final paragraph, which concerns the figure's legacy and different interpretations of them; after all, "father of the nation" or "founding father" is not an actual titled role.
 * The article mentions that Nyerere was Prime Minister before it mentions that he was President because that gives the reader the important information in a chronological fashion. Giving them his later role first might cause some confusion. As for the point about describing Tanzania as the "successor state" to Tanganyika, I can appreciate that it may not be the best term, but I'm not really sure what the best alternative might be. It's a tricky one. Midnightblueowl (talk) 08:23, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that this is a good article. I would like the lead to be as good as the rest of the article. I've spent a fair amount of time with the links you provided, as well as rereading MOS:LEAD. If you toggle between those other leads and this one, I think you can tell that there is something less concise about this lead. I mean, how do you feel about this sentence?

""A founding member of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) party—which in 1977 became the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party—he chaired it until 1990.""


 * -"Successor state." It's an arcane phrase that confuses the lay reader. Chronology alone cannot justify calling Tanzania a successor nation to Tanganyika. I know that when nations change it becomes very fraught. There are plenty of Talk page battles over whether or not someone born in the Ukraine when it was technically Russia should be called Ukrainian, etc. So I don't mean to be glib about painful history. However, the lead for Nelson Mandela, for instance, doesn't spend time talking about his imprisonment. That is incredibly important, heroic even, and it comes before his presidency not just on the calendar, but it is part of his struggle that lead to his presidency. Yet, it's not in the lead! Why? We have to pick the most salient points that will explain the subject's notability to the general reader. People don't usually read the whole article and the first sentence of the lead is what comes up in a search window. So, yes, it's important that Tanganyika came before Tanzania, and that Nyerere was instrumental in all of that. However, since Tanganyika is not on any maps today do you really want the top of everyone's search for Nyerere to be "he was prime minister and president of a nation that no longer exists"? Let's be as succinct as those other leads and say it plane. He was the first president of Tanzania, not the first president of Tanganyika's successor state.
 * -"anti-colonial activist". Can you show me any sources that refer to him as an anti-colonial activist? I understand that he spent his life fighting colonialism, so it's implied, but if no source calls him an activist per se, neither should we. That the term is used for other African leaders of his era is not how we do things on wikipedia. Those are issues for those pages, and I hope they have sourcing as well.
 * -"Founding father" Yes, I get your point that this is a sobriquet. We are allowed to use such terms on wikipedia as long as we don't put it in wikivoice. "often called" "popularly known as" do all the work we need. If the honorific is in a preponderance of WP:RS it is actually not NPOV to omit it. Nonetheless, I understand that it might be controversial and not lead-worthy. I wouldn't mind omitting it from the lead as long as the lead reflects the page of a statesman who achieved such an honorific.
 * -I am happy to work with you to improve the lead. I can make some smaller edits on the page if you like, but if you are going to keep reverting me, then we should hash it out here first. Let's start with the above quoted sentence. Do you have any suggestions for making it standard English? DolyaIskrina (talk) 00:23, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
 * "He was a founding member and chair of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) party, and its successor Chama Cha Mapinduzi, from 1954 to 1990"? That would probably be an improvement; would you agree? Midnightblueowl (talk) 09:11, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes that's better. Thanks. "Successor" is doing good, if cheeky, work this time. I'd add an "of" before "its successor" or it seems you are saying Nyerere himself is the successor.DolyaIskrina (talk) 15:10, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Good point! The "of" is needed there. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:11, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Images
Couple of observations about the images in the article. Given what is available on Commons alone, the absence of images related to Nyerere's Third Worldism and Pan-Africanism appears to be a notable absence. At present we have five photos from three visits to the Netherlands (including the somewhat unflattering image in the infobox), two photos with US Presidents, five images of buildings, every image of Nyerere meeting with people is with people from the First World. I'd suggest the images with Zhou Enlai and Hastings Banda be included. There's also a few images from the NAM meetings which might be public domain which I will post here if they are. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 04:14, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Policies are more important than pictures. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.75.119.235 (talk) 12:39, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Saint infobox
Should be added somewhere, since he is officially on the road to sainthood in the Catholic Church. natemup (talk) 10:13, 29 September 2022 (UTC)


 * That is too soon for a Servant of God; there wouldn't be anything concrete to add to such an infobox. No public veneration is permitted; the infobox has no parameters for milestones prior to beatification. Elizium23 (talk) 13:24, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Honours and awards
I see many leaders with Nyerere's stature have an Awards and Honors section, however, I did not see it nor I could not find any separate list. I think due to the size of the article, it probably makes sense to make a separate article. Wanted to make sure there was no particular reason for this omission before I made a separate article. Sputink (talk) 15:12, 25 December 2022 (UTC)