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Development as rebellion: A biography of Julius Nyerere

2021; Palgrave Macmillan; Volume: 21; Issue: S1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1057/s41296-021-00468-y

1476-9336

David Thomas Suell,

African cultural and philosophical studies

In Book II of Plato's Republic, Socrates seeks out the 'justice of one man' by examining the role of justice in the city (1968, 368e).The members of the just city, he posits, would live moderate and peaceful lives, evading both poverty and war.He is soon interrupted, of course, by Glaucon's retort that, without luxuries, the people will inhabit a city fit only for pigs (369a-372d).The remaining books find Socrates seeking out justice in the 'feverish city' or, rather, trying to produce justice despite inhabiting the feverish city (372e).It is no wonder that, when Julius Nyerere died in 1999, he was translating The Republic into Swahili.As the first President of Tanzania, a Pan-Africanist leader, and a theorist of African socialism, Nyerere spent his long political career consciously occupied by the age-old struggles Socrates posed between the individual and community, rulers and ruled, and development and decadence.Moreover, he undertook these challenges in a colonial, capitalist world system defined by its disordered partitions between classes, races, sexes, religions, and ideologies.Referred to by the Swahili honorific 'Mwalimu', meaning 'teacher', Nyerere sought to cultivate a just society characterized by the interlocking principles of political independence (uhuru), unity (umoja), development (maendeleo), socialism (ujamaa), and self-reliance (kujitegemea).The work under review here, Development as Rebellion: Julius Nyerere, a Biography, leaves no question as to why Nyerere has been called independent Africa's philosopher-king.It provides an intimate look into the soul of a man and the republic he sought to build, and it offers invaluable lessons for diagnosing and combating colonial capitalist domination today.The book is a welcome and distinctive addition in the recent surge of political theoretical work focused on African anti-colonial struggles (e.g., Getachew 2019; el-Malik 2016; Shilliam 2015).