Godfrey Mwakikagile

Godfrey's mother Syabumi Mwakikagile (née Mwambapa), a housewife, was a pupil of Tanganyika's British feminist educator, and later Member of Parliament, Mary Hancock, who taught her at Kyimbila Girls' School in Rungwe District in the Southern Highlands Province in the early 1940s.

Other colleagues of Elijah Mwakikagile were Austin Shaba, his co-worker as a medical assistant and earlier his classmate at the Medical Training Centre (MTC) at Tanganyika's largest hospital in the capital Dar es Salaam later transformed into the country's first medical school who served as a Member of Parliament and cabinet member in the first independence cabinet— serving as Minister of Local Government and later as Minister of Health and Housing, and as Deputy Speaker of Parliament; Wilbard B.K. Mwanjisi, his classmate from Standard One at Tukuyu Primary School to Malangali Secondary School who became a doctor, prominent member of TANU and, before leaving government service, was president of the Tanganyika Government Servants Association, a national organisation for African government employees during colonial rule; Jeremiah Kasambala, Elijah Mwakikagile's classmate at Malangali Secondary School who became head of the Rungwe African Cooperative Union responsible for mobilising support from farmers to join the struggle for independence and who went on to become a cabinet member in the early years of independence—taking over the portfolio for Commerce and Cooperatives and later serving as Minister of Industries, Minerals and Energy; Robert Kaswende - he and Elijah Mwakikagile knew each other since the early 1940s - who became police chief for Rungwe District in Tukuyu soon after independence and who later became deputy head of the police for the whole country and thereafter head of the National Service which became a part of the Ministry of Defence renamed Ministry of Defence and National Service; and Brown Ngwilulupi, who became Secretary General of the Cooperative Union of Tanganyika (CUT), the largest farmers' union in the country, appointed by President Nyerere.

One of their teachers at Malangali Secondary School was Erasto Andrew Mbwana Mang'enya who later became a cabinet member under President Nyerere, Speaker of Parliament, and Tanzania's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Brown Ngwilulupi later co-founded Tanzania's largest opposition party, Chadema, and served as its first vice-chairman under former Finance Minister and IMF's executive director Edwin Mtei during the same period when he was a relative-in-law of Tanzania's Vice President John Malecela who also served as Prime Minister at the same time under President Ali Hassan Mwinyi.

Ngwilulupi's daughter was married to Malecela's son.

Godfrey Mwakikagile (born 4 October 1949 in Kigoma ) is a Tanzanian scholar and author specialising in African studies.

He was also a news reporter for The Standard (later renamed the Daily News) — the oldest and largest English newspaper in Tanzania and one of the three largest in East Africa.

Mwakikagile wrote Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era — a biographical book on the life of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere set in the backdrop of Africa's early post-colonial years and the liberation wars in the countries of southern Africa in which Nyerere played a major role.

Mwakikagile was born on 4 October 1949 into a middle class Tanganyikan family in the town of Kigoma, Western Province of Tanganyika – what is now mainland Tanzania.

His father Elijah Mwakikagile, who once worked at the Amani Research Institute in the late forties, was a medical assistant during the British colonial era and was one of the few in the entire country of 10 million people.

Growing up in the 1950s, Mwakikagile experienced a form of apartheid and racial segregation in Tanganyika, what is now mainland Tanzania, and wrote about it in some of his works, as he did about the political climate of Tanganyika during the colonial era, in books such as Reflections on Race Relations: A Personal Odyssey, Life in Tanganyika in The Fifties and Life under British Colonial Rule.

Mary Hancock was a friend of Nyerere and his family since 1953 and supported him during the struggle for independence.

The eldest of his siblings, Mwakikagile was named Godfrey by his aunt Isabella, one of his father's younger sisters, and was baptised at an early age.

His father played a critical role in his early life and education.

Mwakangale became one of the prominent leaders of the Tanganyika African National Union and of the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East and Central Africa (PAFMECA), later renamed the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA), formed in Mwanza, Tanganyika, in September 1958 under the leadership of Julius Nyerere to campaign for the independence of the countries of East and Central Africa and later Southern Africa.

He also became a Member of Parliament (MP) and a cabinet member in the early part of independence under Nyerere serving as Minister of Labour.

Malecela was also the first African to serve as District Commissioner (D.C.) of Rungwe District in the town of Tukuyu soon after independence in the early 1960s when Elijah Mwakikagile was a member of the Rungwe District Council where he was a councillor for many years.

Brown Ngwilulupi also worked in Tukuyu during the same period with Jeremiah Kasambala at the Rungwe African Cooperative Union.

Ngwilulupi and Elijah Mwakikagile came from the same village four miles south of the town of Tukuyu, knew each other since childhood, were classmates from Standard One at Tukuyu Primary School to Malangali Secondary School and later became relatives-in-law when they married cousins.

Their wives, who came from the same area they did, were first cousins to each other.

There were fewer than 300 medical assistants and fewer than 10 doctors in Tanganyika in the forties and fifties and only 12 doctors at independence from the United Kingdom on 9 December 1961.

Medical assistants underwent an intensive three-year training after finishing secondary school and worked as a substitute for doctors.

John Mwakangale was also the first leader Nelson Mandela met in newly independent Tanganyika in January 1962 – just one month after Tanganyika emerged from colonial rule – when Mandela secretly left South Africa on 11 January to seek assistance from other African countries in the struggle against apartheid and wrote about him in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

Tanganyika was the first independent African country Mandela visited and the first one where he sought such assistance.

He was a strict disciplinarian and taught him at home when he was attending primary school from Standard One to Standard Four and during the first two years of middle school, Standard Five and Standard Six, before he left home to go to boarding school in 1963, three miles away, when he was 13 years old.

He also taught him when he was out of school and went home during holidays in his last two years of middle school in Standard Seven and Standard Eight.

His mother, who taught Sunday school and was a volunteer adult education teacher for some time teaching adults how to read and write, also taught him at home when he was in primary school.

His father was active in the Tanganyika African National Union – TANU – which led the struggle for independence and was friends with some of the leading figures in the African independence movement.

They included John Mwakangale, his classmate from Standard One at Tukuyu Primary School to Malangali Secondary School, where Elijah was appointed head prefect, in the Southern Highlands Province.

They came from the same area, five miles apart, in Rungwe District and knew each other since childhood.

Tanganyika was chosen by African leaders to be the headquarters of all the liberation movements when they met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963 to form the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

Professor John Iliffe in his book, A Modern History of Tanganyika, described John Mwakangale as a "vehement nationalist."

He did not even want American Peace Corps in Tanzania.

In his book Reflections on Race Relations: A Personal Odyssey, Godfrey Mwakikagile wrote that John Mwakangale accused American Peace Corps of causing trouble, including attempting to overthrow the government, and bluntly stated: “These people are not here for peace, they are here for trouble.

We do not want any more Peace Corps”, according to a report, "M.P. Attacks American Peace Corps," which was the main story on the front page of the Tanganyika Standard, 12 June 1964.

Elijah Mwakikagile was also a first cousin of one of Tanzania's first commercial airline pilots, Oscar Mwamwaja, who was shot but survived when he was a co-pilot of an Air Tanzania plane, a Boeing 737, that was hijacked on 26 February 1982 and forced to fly from Tanzania to Britain.

His mother was an elder sister of Oscar's father.

It was also the first country in the region to win independence and the first one he visited, as Tanzania, when he was released from prison on 11 February 1990.

He travelled to other African countries using a document given to him by the government of Tanganyika which stated: “This is Nelson Mandela, a citizen of the Republic of South Africa.

He has permission to leave Tanganyika and return here.”