During the long period which I have had the good fortune to lead our country, I have made very many speeches to Tanzanians. Today, in my last speech as President of the United Republic, I have only one extra thing to say.

To every one of you individually, to all people organised together in villages, in cooperatives, in professions, voluntary organisations contributing to our development, to all honest workers in Government and parastatals – to everybody – I say thank you very much.

Since we began to govern ourselves, I have been the leader, first of Tanganyika, and then of the United Republic of Tanzania. Time and again you have re-elected me and thus expressed your continued confidence in my ability to do the job you needed done.

And in the last few weeks you have paid many tributes to my work as President of our country. You have forgiven, even if perhaps you have not forgotten, my many mistakes of omission and commission.

I am a human being, and we all like our work to be appreciated. So I thank you for what you have said in my praise in so many public and private meetings.

And I thank those elected leaders and officials in Government and the Party who, by their advice and research work, have helped me carry out my duties.

I also thank all those who have implemented my instructions regardless of whether or not they as individuals liked my decisions, or the personal unpopularity they incurred when carrying out the instructions. For there were occasions when others bore the blame for my decisions and even my mistakes – and did so without complaining. I thank them all very much.

But at the same time I have been both gratified and humbled by your praise over recent weeks and months. I have also been conscious that there is sense in which I was still fulfilling my role as the elected Head of State and Government in the United Republic of Tanzania. You were thanking me and praising me; but I accepted your praise and your thanks on your behalf! For you were praising and thanking me for what we have done together.

We have built a nation – together. The Angel Gabriel could not have built Tanzania alone, still less a fallible human being like myself. Even if the Angel Gabriel had been assisted by ministers and public servants made up of other Angels, he still could not have built Tanzania.

You, the people of Tanzania, acting together and individually, have built Tanzania into what it is – a proud, united and self-confident nation. I thank you very much.

And the truth is that in praising me you have been praising your own judgment! For my chance to play the role I have played in our joint work has been the result of your decisions and your actions in voting for me and loyally upholding our constitutional processes.

There have always been a few people who have exercised their democratic right and voted against my leadership; but they too have taken part in the building of our country. First, they used and thus consolidated the system we have established; and secondly, once the democratic decision of the people was made, they have respected it and been absolutely loyal to our country, to me and to our Government and its decisions.

I thank you all for entrusting me with such a responsible and prominent part in our joint nation-building work and for continuing to give me your active support as I tried to fulfil your trust.

This loyalty to our country, its Constitution and its President is a national virtue which is essential for national peace and stability. But it is not a virtue which every country – in Africa or elsewhere – can count on. And you have gone much further than passive loyalty.

When our country was invaded, you united together and worked with our Armed Forces to repel the enemy troops and to make sure that they could never repeat their actions against us.

Civilians demonstrated their support by their militia service, their hard work and their voluntary gifts; the Armed Forces and the Militia were willing to risk their lives in our national defence.

It was this clear support which gave me the strength to fulfil my strategic responsibilities as Commander in Chief and make decisions which I knew would result in death and injuries, as well as have heavy material costs.

But it is easier to respond to a simple challenge such as an invasion than to withstand the constant difficulties and disappointments, as well as triumphs, of trying to develop a poor and backward country like ours.

Yet for nearly 22 years – on the Mainland for longer – we have worked and struggled together, and you have supported my leadership while we went through the very many difficulties and troubles of our short national life.

And even now we are still contending with extremely difficult economic circumstances, with no sign that external conditions will move in our favour.

I repeat: we have faced the sacrifices and fought the difficulties together. And although I say we have done these things together, it is you, the people of Tanzania, who have borne the real burden – which is a very heavy one.

Over the last six or seven years, our country has been hit by many events over which neither Government nor people had any control. Our standard of living has consequently gone down instead of going up. But you, the people of Tanzania, have not just become uselessly and destructively angry nor suggested that we should sell our independence for very temporary relief from our economic problems.

Instead, you have supported me and your Government, and fought against the effects of the break-up of the East African Community, the drought, the drop in our export prices, and the international economic recession. And you have understood that the struggle is not over – that it will go on for a long time. Thank you very much.

It is you who have made it possible for Tanzania to survive as a really free, independent, principled and Non-Aligned country; it is you who have made ours into a nation which others look at with envy. For we have an international reputation, and I have an international reputation also. You have created both.

When a person is hard-pressed or in other economic trouble, he can either crawl on his knees and beg the rich for alms or he can stand up for justice while he endures and struggles to become more self-reliant.

The same thing is true for a nation. But the nation has to be politically strong and proud in order to make the latter choice. You, the people of Tanzania, have provided that strength by your unity, your self-respect and your pride in our independence.

Many times I have spoken at the United Nations or elsewhere as the leader of Tanzania. And not infrequently, after I have done so, a number of very responsible African and other Third World personalities have come to me and whispered: “Thank you very much, Mwalimu, for speaking for us.”

They are not talking about my oratory; they are talking about the fact that, through their loyalty, the people of Tanzania have given me the strength to say things which need to be said for the long-term development of our country and of Africa, but which conditions in some of their own countries would not allow their leaders to say even if they wished to do so.

And of course, all over the world, good people respect someone who stands up and argues reasonably for justice more than they do those who beg – provided that, while arguing, the victims of injustice also try to help themselves by their own work and sacrifices. That is why our country is respected; and because it is respected, we have friends who do help us without demanding our freedom as the price of that help.

It is you who have won that respect. My job has been to explain the circumstances and the choices facing us. So I have tried to explain the way I, together with the Party and the other members of the Government, believe that the problems can be tackled in conformity with our national principles of human equality and freedom.

You have understood, and accepted, my leadership. After that my job has been to express our national pride and determination when making decisions and when explaining our decisions to the rest of the world – with which our country is so unavoidably linked economically, politically and socially.

I have also joined other Third World national leaders in trying to explain internationally how and why the world economic arrangements affect us so badly, and to call for reform.

This Third World struggle for justice has not yet been successful. Yet there are certainly now more people who understand the injustices of the present international economic system than there used to be, and Tanzania’s reputation has been enhanced because our endurance and persistence in struggling for justice has promoted that cause.

Nor is it that our only contribution to international peace and justice. We in Tanzania have always understood that the nation states which Africa inherited from the colonialists cut across a natural geographical and cultural unity among our continent’s many people.

We therefore understood from the beginning that cooperation cannot be confined within our own national boundaries, and that total African liberation and unity is important for all Africa’s peoples – including ourselves.

Because of that understanding, we have given hospitality to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from war and persecution elsewhere in our continent.

Although this hospitality has sometimes material demands on us (towards which we have received help from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and other organisations), these are demands which we have recognised as those of brotherly solidarity.

We have implemented the Kiswahili proverb ‘mgeni kwa siku mbili, siku ya tatu mpe jembe’ (a guest for two days, on the third day give him a hoe). Some of the refugees have now become Tanzanian citizens, equal with all others, and others have settled among us and are contributing to our production and development while time and events determine their future.

But in all cases we have lived up to our African traditions, and served the cause of future peace and justice in our continent. Once again – and as I said when receiving it – it is you who really earned the Nansen Medal which I received on your behalf for our work for refugees.

Our nation is also famous internationally for its firm support for the Liberation Struggles in Africa. And you have made this possible. You have supported the Government and Party policies of helping FRELIMO of Mozambique, the MPLA of Angola, the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe, SWAPO of Namibia, and the liberation movements of South Africa.

And you have given help directly; in particular I am remembering the blood donations which were made for the freedom fighters of Mozambique, but there also have been other gifts voluntarily contributed by Tanzanian individuals and groups as an expression of solidarity with their brothers who are still fighting for freedom.

This solidarity still continues, so that in Angola recently, I was able to say that Tanzania will “continue to be committed to the Liberation of Africa, politically and economically. For this is not my policy; it is not even just the policy of Chama Cha Mapinduzi. It is a policy to which our whole people are committed”. Being able to state that truth made me very proud. I thank you very much.

I thank you because your support for those struggling against colonialism and apartheid has been inspired by your feelings of solidarity. But I also thank you for it because it is part of the necessary defence of our own national security and independence.

If the peoples of Mozambique, Angola, Lesotho, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe had not won their freedom, we would be neighbours of apartheid now. And it would be our country which was being raided and attacked by South African troops if those countries were to give up their resistance to South Africa’s present attacks on them and agree to be puppets of the apartheid regime. They are fighting for us while they fight for their own freedom, and it is only right that we should do what we can to support them.

Yet although the resistance of the border nations and our own geographical distance from South Africa have saved us from military or air attacks by South Africa, the apartheid regime – and other enemies of our proud freedom – would have used other means to attack us if you had allowed it. They would have used tribalism, or religion, or colour to destroy our unity – that unity which is our greatest strength. You have prevented that from happening. I thank you very much.

We are all members of one tribe or another; there are said to be more than 123 tribes in Tanzania, as well as groups of people with ancestry in other continents. But you have never allowed this to matter politically, or to our economic development. You have judged candidates for political office, and for employment, on the basis of their own qualifications and qualities regardless of their tribe. No one has even been allowed to divide us by playing one group against another. We have been able to fight apartheid and racism elsewhere because racial discrimination is completely absent in our own national organisation.

Once again, I get praised internationally for this absence of tribalism and racial discrimination in Tanzania, but you are responsible. All I can do is speak and make just a handful of appointments; the rest of the action is yours. I thank you very much.

This applies to religion also. Almost all Tanzanians are believers in God, but some are Muslims, some are Christians, some are followers of traditional religions, and a few are Hindus or Buddhists or adherents of other faiths.

So we have created and sustained a secular state, and secular Party, in which is everyone is free to follow their own religious beliefs and no one is discriminated against for what he believes about God and the way to worship and serve Him. Our refusal to allow ourselves to be divided on these grounds has been vital to our peace, our development, and our unity.

And the truth is that religious conflict could have been a bigger danger to us in Tanzania than tribalism. We inherited a situation where the two major religions had about the same number of adherents but where, as far as the Africans were concerned, one had had almost a monopoly of access to secondary and higher education.

When we began to Africanise posts which were previously held by colonial servants, almost all of the few Africans who had the necessary qualifications were Christians. This fact could have been used to divide us along religious lines – and there were a few individuals who did try to do that.

But the Muslims of our country absolutely refused to be hoodwinked by this attempt to divide us; in doing so they made a contribution to our later peace and development which is of inestimable value. And they gave us a chance, through our educational policies, to correct the imbalance we had inherited – which we have done.

I am now in the happy position of sometimes not knowing whether a new Member of Parliament, a Minister or a new Principal Secretary in our Government ministries is a Muslim or a Christian or neither – unless the first names happen to give it away. And even that is not a sure guide in Tanzania, for we have Christians with Muslim names – and Muslims with Christian names.

The religious tolerance and freedom in our country is your creation; what I have done is to speak up for these values on your behalf. I thank you very much.

What more can I say? We have worked together, rejoiced together, been sad together and mourned together when we have lost a colleague or a friend of our country. We have laid the foundations of socialism and self-reliance together. I thank you for your comradeship in all these struggles. I thank you for making Tanzania what it is.

But I am not going away from Tanzania! We have elected a new President for our country, who will be sworn into his office tomorrow. I shall be proud to serve our country under his leadership. 

And I shall be able to do so for two reasons. First, you have observed our constitutional processes laid down for selecting the Party candidate; and you have played your part during the Parliamentary and Presidential election campaigns by listening, and sometimes questioning, the candidates and by using your vote. In other words, you have used the system we built together. And secondly, I shall continue for two years to work for our country as Chairman of Chama Cha Mapinduzi. For both these facts, I thank you.

Finally, I am grateful to you for choosing Ndugu Ali Hassan Mwinyi to receive the honour and to bear the burden of the Presidency. I thank you all very much. Now let us help him. God bless Africa! God bless Tanzania.

·      Farewell address by founding President Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere – delivered in Dar es Salaam on November 4, 1985.