A more sympathetic interpretation is offered by Colin Legum, a British analyst, whose emphasis is on the remarkable success Nyerere had in overcoming Tanzania's very threatening initial problems:
SOURCE AA
According to Source AA, what had Nyerere’s leadership achieved in Tanzania?
Excerpt from ‘The Nyerere Years’ by Colin Legum, in Tanzania After Nyerere, edited by Michael Dodd, published by Pinter Publishers, London, uK, 1988, p. 11.
At independence, Tanzania had all the potential for tribal conflicts as were manifested for example in its two neighbours, Kenya and Uganda; it had people with markedly different cultures and religions, with an almost equal number of Christians and Muslims; and it had small but non-indigenous minority communities, the Asians and Europeans. If for nothing else, Nyerere deserves to be honoured for his personal example and leadership in turning 123 tribes, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims into a fledgling nation.
Legum was writing in 1988, only three years after Nyerere's retirement. With the virtue of twenty years' more reflection, Guy Arnold, a modern authority on Africa, while basically sympathetic, makes this sober assessment of how far Nyerere moved from his original ideals:
Source bb
According Source BB, what had led to the failure of Nyerere’s Ujamaa experiment in Tanzania?
Excerpt from Africa: A Modern History by Guy Arnold, published by Atlantic Books, uK, 2005, pp. 762 and 934.
In Tanzania the collapse of Nyerere's Ujamaa experiment, the [African] continent's most famous attempt at home grown socialism, signalled one more defeat for African self-reliance
When an African state relies upon aid rather than its own resources it becomes an adjunct, a form of local government, in the global, Western-controlled economic order. Nyerere had warned against this in his Arusha Declaration but his warning had been largely ignored, including in the end by Tanzania itself.
Why did Nyerere prove popular with Western liberal thinkers?
World History
