D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 1, January/February 2000, p. 27)

Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania, Chairman of the South-South Commission, and one of the founding fathers of post-colonial Africa, died on October 14, 1999, aged 77. Derek Ingram, founder and former editor of Gemini News Service remembers a great man and a simple person.

I was flying the short hop from Lagos to Accra. Beside me sat Julius Nyerere. He was telling me all about the restful time he had just spent in Nigeria as guest of the newly independent government there. No-one, he said, had fussed and he liked that.

He was now paying a visit to Kwame Nkrumah. "It will be a little different here," he said, with that so-familiar twinkle in his eyes. As we taxied to the red carpet, and the aircraft doors were opened and the steps put in place, it was exactly as he had predicted. There to greet him was the scarlet uniformed guard of honour, the flag-waving airport rent-a-crowd, the long line of VIPs - and President Nkrumah, resplendent in his full Kente regalia. The trim, slim, plainly clad Nyerere was duly swallowed in a deep presidential hug. The year was 1961. Ghana had been independent for four years and Nkrumah was at the height of his popularity. Nigeria had just become independent under its unassuming first prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafewa Balewa. And Nyerere was soon to become the first leader of an independent Tanganyika.

The incident was typical of the man throughout his life - a man with a delightful sense of humour, a winning chuckle and, above all, deep humility and simplicity. He never changed. Few leaders in Africa or anywhere in the world have remained so unaffected by power. He lived a plain, even austere, life in State House and on the farm where he had been born in Butiama, Musoma district. As president he was often seen digging away alongside his farmworkers.

In their varied styles the first nationalist leaders of independent Africa were men of stature and character, although they were often wayward and some in the end tyrannical. Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Kaunda, Senghor, Houphouet-Boigny, Kaunda, Banda, Mugabe, Obote, Khama, Nujoma and of course Mandela - each was quite different from the other, but in many ways Nyerere was the most distinctive of them all. On 9 December 1961 he inherited a vast, poverty-stricken country. Newly independent Tanganyika had no developed resources and little economic infrastructure. It had just two qualified engineers and 12 doctors. It did, however, have one great advantage that set it apart from most other African countries: a variety of small tribes - 107 in all - but no dominant one. As a consequence, it has enjoyed peace and political stability, except for a brief hiccup or two, ever since its birth. The most extraordinary hitch came early - in 1964 when the army mutinied and Nyerere had to invite back British troops to restore the situation.

Economically, as with other leaders in Africa, the odds were always loaded against Nyerere. Under him, Tanzania made few real advances in that direction, but he developed health and welfare services, raised adult literacy, and forged a national unity by promoting Swahili as the national language. He said: "The only way to defeat our present poverty is to accept the fact that it exists, to live as poor people, and to spend every cent that we have surplus to our basic needs on the things which will make us richer, healthier and more educated in the future."

One of his great contributions was to push the growth of Swahili in East and Central Africa. He believed, with good reason, that Swahili could promote African unity, just as it had done in Tanzania. Devotion to socialism never endeared Nyerere to the right-wing in the West. In Cold War days some mindlessly labelled him communist because he did not hesitate to accuse the rich countries of exploiting poor ones like Tanzania. They could never accept his message to the world, but neither could they dispute his honesty or sincerity.

Under Nyerere, Tanzania made many sacrifices to help its neighbours. He was revolted by the cruel regime of Idi Amin in Uganda and in 1979 he, the least militaristic of all African leaders, sent 45,000 Tanzanian troops into Uganda to help topple it. During the long freedom struggles in Rhodesia and South Africa, training camps were set up for the guerrilla armies in Tanzania at great cost in time and resources. Thousands of soldiers passed through them to free southern Africa. Yet, unlike many of his fellow African leaders, he was not afraid to criticise Third World governments when he felt they were wrong.

Nyerere was first prime minister and then president of Tanzania for 24 years, but in 1985, still lively and fit, he stepped down while many others in Africa clung to power. He remained hugely influential, but he had shown the way to relinquish power and give others the experience of running government. He took on the role of elder statesman, remaining mwalimu (teacher) and winning international respect as a man who stepped down instead of presiding, like many others, over a stale and deteriorating administration.

He set an example for Africa. Respect for him increased over the years, even though his earlier socialist policies and his introduction of ujamaa - a home-grown concept of small-scale self-help that involved shifting the homes of many people - met with little success and earned him much criticism. The biggest political cross he had to bear was the unstable situation in the offshore territory of Zanzibar, which the British had mishandled at decolonisation in 1963. Within weeks of its independence there was a coup. To secure peace in the region a few months later Nyerere united Tanganyika and Zanzibar as Tanzania - a union that remained his most serious internal political problem. Many fear the union might not long outlast him.

After his retirement, Nyerere worked tirelessly for Africa - trying to mediate, for example, over the problems of Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo - as well as for the wider developing world by heading up the South Commission in Geneva, a think-tank on rich-poor issues. When he first became president in the days when security was not a problem, Nyerere would drive round the streets of Dar es Salaam in a small car without escort. Like everybody else he stopped at traffic lights. Later the world changed and police escort became essential. Even then sirens and outriders were not his style. He was the president who just never liked a fuss.