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Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenon!
Review: An eye opener for those who think nothing positive ever emerged from Africa! A well researched piece of work! It is a manual for all of us who aspire to see the genuine and authentic people-centered leadership in Africa. Mwalimu, as correctly exhibited by Godfrey was an icon not only for Africa but for the entire world.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenon!
Review: An eye opener for those who think nothing positive ever emerged from Africa! A well researched piece of work! It is a manual for all of us who aspire to see the genuine and authentic people-centered leadership in Africa. Mwalimu, as correctly exhibited by Godfrey was an icon not only for Africa but for the entire world.
Rating:
Summary: Nyerere: world leader
Review: Dr. Julius Nyerere is gone, but he is still with us in terms of inspiration and the ideals he taught. A world leader of unparallelled commitment, especially of the Third World, he will be missed by millions round the globe.He was also an inspiring orator with a razor-sharp intellect who was given a standing ovation for his incisive analysis and oratorical skills when he addressed the British Parliament in the seventies. A staunch Pan-Africanist, and a selfless statesman par excellence, he stood tall on the same level with Dr. Kwame Nkrumah but exercised far greater influence than Nkrumah after Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966. On the intellectual plane, only Leopold Sedar Senghor, president of Senegal, came a distant second to him among African leaders. It has been said that intellectuals have a weakness for fellow intellectuals, as Kenyan Professor Ali Mazrui once wrote. Nyerere was one such intellectual. He enjoyed immense respect and profound admiration among Western intelectuals. Having attended school in Britain at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, he was even described as a Western intellectual. He was also taught in the Western intellectual tradition by the British in colonial Tanganyika. Yet, he was more than a "Western" intellectual, if one at all. He was a world intellectual who was highly admired and respected by millions of people around the world, not only for his superb intellect but his exemplary leadership. Befitting his title Mwalimu, he was also described as the greatest teacher of our time, as former Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu said, quoted by the BBC, following Nyerere's death. But that was probably an understatement, although that's not what Ojukwu meant. Mwalimu Nyerere was one of the greatest teachers of all times, embraced by people of all races and nationalities. And he taught by example. He was indeed a legend in his own time, and will remain one for generations. Godfrey Mwakikagile has written a book which puts this legend in proper perspective. It is also a book that has earned the author a place among his readers as a respected authority on Nyerere. And his work is not compromised by bias despite his strong admiration for Mwalimu Nyerere as a leader and as an intellectual. He has written a book which will be of great interest to many people including scholars, especially those interested in Tanzania's foreign policy under Nyerere. Dr. Nyerere did, indeed, deserve the title, "The Conscience of Africa," if not of the world.
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Summary: Nyerere - Africa's best president
Review: Few leaders have earned the respect President Julius Nyerere did. Even fewer have continued to inspire admiration after they left office. Dr. Henry Kissinger, an arrogant intellectual, acknowledged Nyerere's brilliance and was even outwitted by him during the Rhodesian crisis, as documented by the author (see Appendix IV). He also got a potent "dose of African nationalism," as David Ottaway wrote in "The Washington Post," when he met President Nyerere in Tanzania in 1976 to discuss the Rhodesian crisis. They differed on how to resolve it, prompting reporters to ask Nyerere if he thought Kissinger's mission to Africa was a failure. As David Ottaway who covered the event wrote in "The Washington Post": "Nyerere responded professorially by saying 'A mission of clarity is not a mission of failure.'" Kissinger, a former professor at Harvard, got a good lecture on African nationalism and the Rhodesian crisis from Nyerere, a man of immense intellect Africa will always be proud of. He was indeed an African colossus who did bestride this narrow world, as Kenyan Professor Ali Mazrui put it in his moving tribute to one of the giants of this century. Nyerere spoke for Africa, and the world listened. He also represented the entire Third World in negotiations with the industrialized nations when he served as chairman of the South Commission after he retired as president of Tanzania. And he died a leader, one of the best the world, not just Africa, has ever produced. He was, simply put, Africa's best president. And Godfrey Mwakikagile, an African intellectual himself, has done justice to him by writing this book, immensely rich in detail, probably the best ever written about Nyerere. The best way to honor Nyerere is to emulate his devotion, humility and simplicity. As "Newsweek" said when he died: "The world has lost a man of principle."
Rating:
Summary: Extensively researched
Review: One comes to this new book by Godfrey Mwakikagile, a Tanzanian author who once worked with the "Daily News" in the 70s, hoping for insights into the host of complexities that Nyerere embodies. One finishes the book with a considerably expanded knowledge of the documented life - details of family history, recollections of friends and associates widely interviewed, ample citations from Nyerere's published letters and occasional writings and numerous quotations from others' letters and memoirs that characterize the leader. Mwakikagile gives readers an extensively researched life of the Father of the Nation with a breadth of detail about his history and early years. For a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the interior narrative of Mwalimu Nyerere, one needs not look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Mwalimu, the African 'Teacher'
Review: Though JK never got to write his own biography this book surprisingly manages to capture that real person behind the mesmerising persona that mwalimu had. Reading this book you get to know why exactly mwalimu identified himself with the marginalised poor, why mwalimu never had a bank account in Geneva! Why mwalimu supported the liberation movement, why mwalimu had to kick Iddi Amin out of Uganda! It is due to mwalimu that Tanzania was regarded as a diplomatic heavy weight just thik of it---against which GDP?against which millitary might?'They even accused mwalimu of 'punching above the weight'!.Still the towering figure of mwalimu gracefully remained intact! Mwalimu was the architect of people centred development a fact which got him into a war footing against the World Bank the IMF(they owe him an apology albeit a posthumous one!. The beauty of it all is that he won the intellectual agrument! Mwalimu was a rare breed of an African leader, righteous, ethical and principled. This book is not only the story of his life but also a treatise on the science of leadership.
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