Transition Profile

Document Abstract / Summary Overview

In those five years Nyerere stumped the country organizing a nationalistic movement so strong that it cut clean across tribal barriers. He was elected to Legco in 1958 and headed the Elected Members Organisation that was the official opposition. His speeches were as fiery and nationalistic as those of any of his contemporaries in other African states and he was once convicted and fined for sedition. Yet with Kenya next door, a permanent and bloody reminder of militant tribalism during those formative years, Nyerere preached nationalism and unity as the only way, a message he preaches to this day. Julius Nyerere, now thirty-nine, has trod a lonely path. HIe is quick to smile and his gentle tone and exterior by a basic toughness Some who helped him in his early days have been discarded for a variety of reasons. In some ways, he had an easy task as Tanganyika was comparatively free of tribalism, royal families and opposition parties with which other East African leaders have had to contend. His basic strength was and still is the meticulous attention that he and his party organizers paid to the formation of party branches in the hinterland. No village was too small not to have its branch of TANU and Nyerere had a ready platform in the United Nations, which he addressed thrice, as well as the legislature in which to fight for Tanganyika's sovereign