Nyerere, the Organization of African Unity and liberation

On May 24 1963, the Addis Ababa Conference of Independent African States met for the first time under the chairmanship of the host, Emperor Haille Selassie of Ethiopia. I attended as a member of the Algerian delegation led by President Ben Bella who, together with other heads of state from that first generation of nationalists such as Presidents Nkrumah, Nasser, Sekou Toure and, of course, Julius Nyerere, adopted the Charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

This was my first contact with President Nyerere, who, at this same meeting, led his colleagues to create a subsidiary organ of the OAU, the OAU Liberation Committee, which, at his invitation, set up its headquarters in Dar es Salaam. To say that President Nyerere was committed to-and forward looking in-the struggle for liberation in Africa even at that early stage is an understatement.

The following year, at the Cairo OAU Summit, the heads of state elected Diallo Telli of Guinea to be the first Secretary General of the OAU and myself as one of the 2 Assistant Secretaries-General. My own mandate covered the area of political affairs, with special responsibility for the Liberation Committee. As such, I was a regular visitor for the next ten years to Dar es Salaam, home and rear-base to refugees and liberation movements from all over Africa.

The Liberation Committee, working under the guidance of a governing board of OAU member states periodically elected by the heads of state and in close collaboration with the government of Tanzania and its designated officials and structures, provided funding, logistic support, training, publicity and so on to all liberation movements officially recognized by the OAU. The Committee also organized their presence and campaigns on the diplomatic front through conferences, visits, press campaigns and radio broadcasts.

In this way, I was in regular and direct contact with President Nyerere who gave to every issue, no matter how secondary, his complete and consistent attention. His lucidity and his strategic skills were remarkable at all levels, as was his courage, bearing in mind that his own country was newly independent (1961) and that its state institutions were also at their formative stage.

Furthermore, the international context at that time was one of intense East-West rivalry and relentless Cold War pressure. President Nyerere not only gave refuge and support to diverse liberation movements but also managed to navigate through the choppy seas of big power priorities and conflicts with consummate mastery. In this way, he and other African leaders were able to build a broad front of solidarity and support, material and diplomatic, from Africa, Asia, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Nordic countries and of course, both China and the USSR.

This long period of collaboration with the President helped me to appreciate, indeed, to deepen my own understanding of his complete and unfailing commitment to unity and solidarity for the benefit of the remaining parts of Africa still under colonial and racist domination. Unity and liberation were the two main tasks the OAU had set itself and President Nyerere served both these principles with his powerful intellectual and political skills.

For example, the Francophone states of Africa, then grouped within the French-led organization, OCAM, were not too keen initially on the formation of a continent-wide organization such as the OAU. However, the arguments presented by the Tanzanian President were undeniable and these states could not but join the rest of the continent.

Again, when the question of the seat for the headquarters for the OAU Secretariat came up for discussion, President Nkrumah proposed Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, on the grounds that Bangui was at the geographical center of the entire African continent. President Nyerere, however, persuaded his colleagues to choose Addis Ababa on the grounds that it was the capital of the continent's oldest independent state.

As President Nyerere explained many times, it was because of the OAU that Africa as a whole had a presence and a voice in a world dominated by superpowers and former empires, where it could design its own priorities and solutions. The OAU was the only continental organization in the post-colonial Third World; neither Asia nor Latin America had such an institution and this was the reason why Africa had a say in international matters, provided it used its unity as its strength.

When conflicts occurred, as they inevitably did at the OAU and in the area of liberation politics, Nyerere, as the Mwalimu that he was, used his gifts of analysis and reasoning to reach the right resolutions. For example, the assassination of Eduardo Mondlane, the founder of FRELIMO, caused a serious leadership crisis for the Mozambican struggle. The Angolan freedom fighters also had their problems as did the leaders of SWAPO. Mwalimu was tireless in his efforts in the resolution of these difficulties, making sure that the real objectives were always kept in sight.

When necessary, he was also fearless in standing his own ground in the face of people like Ian Smith of Rhodesia and his UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence). This was an illegal act and the British had the responsibility of bringing Smith to order, declared Nyerere, and if they did not, his country would end diplomatic relations with the UK. When the British did not act, this is exactly what happened in 1965.

President Nyerere worked closely with President Kaunda of Zambia, also a border state and rear-base to the ANC, MPLA and SWAPO, and these two statesmen, with their evident simplicity, their sense of humour and their sophisticated use of the English language dominated the OAU Summits over the years as their other comrades (Ben Bella, Nkrumah, Nasser) left the stage.

As the solidarity front strengthened over time, some memorable events took place:

• President Kaunda's mission to the Nordic countries on behalf of the OAU resulted in the Oslo Conference Against Apartheid in 1972 which was a major meeting of support and made a strong impact on European civic society.

• At the invitation of the OAU, I accompanied the Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, Mr. Mokhtar M'Bow of Senegal, on his visits to Zambia and Tanzania in 1972 to meet the liberation movements and to see the work and structures of support provided by the host countries. At the end of the visits we had a memorable meeting with President Nyerere. On his return to Paris, M'Bow reported to the Organization's General Conference which adopted his recommendation that the representatives of all liberation movements recognized by the OAU be invited to participate at UNESCO with observer status. This ground-breaking resolution was subsequently adopted by the entire UN system and led to the banning of racist South Africa from international activity and to its pariah status within the international community.

• In 1973, the Cairo OAU Summit adopted a major resolution proposed by President Nyerere on the question of border conflicts which had started to erupt between the newly independent states trying to live within the borders arbitrarily drawn in colonial times. (There had been serious confrontations between Niger and Dahomey, now Benin, and between Ghana and Ivory Coast). The President argued for-and succeeded in getting adopted-the historic resolution on the inviolability and permanence of borders inherited from the colonial period on the grounds that peace and security issues were more important in independent Africa than trying to re-draw borders.

• The Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in Arusha was another land-mark gathering of support for the anti-apartheid and liberation cause from Asia, China and the USSR and the entire soviet bloc. As expected, there was some early friction between the Chinese and USSR delegations, both representing countries very active in their support for the liberation struggle. Once more, Mwalimu, greatly respected by both these powers, was able to resolve the problems and the meeting went ahead, with strong participation from ASEAN.

My own mandate at the OAU came to an end in 1974, a year that brought an important success for the liberation struggle, the April revolution in Lisbon led by young officers of the Portuguese army. The downfall of the Salazar regime in Lisbon was a consequence of its doomed effort, on behalf of the NATO states, to stem the freedom tide in Southern Africa. The Portuguese soldiers saw the futility of this endeavour and returned home to liberate their own land from 40 years of fascism and begin the process of freeing their African colonies from 500 years of exploitation and severe underdevelopment.

It is fair to say that from its inception, the OAU and its Liberation Committee in Dar es Salaam were indelibly marked by Nyerere's commitment and leadership, by his realistic and inclusive strategies, his capacity to inspire and galvanise people from very different backgrounds and of course, by his serene confidence, his eloquence and his unfailing good humour.

It was a unique privilege to have worked with such a leader.

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* Mohamed Sahnoun is a former assistant secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity (OAU, 1964–1974).
* This article will be a contributing chapter to a forthcoming Pambazuka Press book entitled 'Nyerere's Legacy', edited by Chambi Chachage and Annar Cassam.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.