{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: How Sokoine’s death threw ANC into panic - News | The Citizen
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How Sokoine's death threw ANC into panic - News
Dar es Salaam. South African ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), could currently be facing a crisis of confidence caused by President Jacob Zuma's corruption misadventures and public funds misappropriation.
In 1984 it faced another crisis after one of its members, one Dumisani Dube, was involved in the car accident that ended the life of Edward Moringe Sokoine killed at Dakawa, near Morogoro Municipality. The ANC members were housed at camps at Mazimbu and Dakawa in Morogoro Region. And the accident that involved one of its members was the source of great distress to the ANC, the party's archive records indicate.
Sokoine was the then Prime Minister and Second Vice President, and was apparently considered to be the favoured heir-apparent to Father of the Nation Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.
Concern over the possibility of ANC losing Tanzania's support in its struggle against the apartheid regime were heightened by the timing of the accident. It had happened a few months after many southern African countries, especially Swaziland and Mozambique, had started expelling ANC members and jailing others out of pressure from the racist South African regime.
Exactly one month before Sokoine's death, Mozambique had been forced to sign the Nkomati Agreement with the Boer regime, which demanded that Mozambique stop allowing ANC or any other South African liberation movement to operate within its borders.
The ANC leadership was worried that more Southern African countries would succumb to the Boers' pressure and stop supporting their party.
The then party president, Mr Oliver Reginald Tambo, spoke about ANC's distress over Sokoine's death when he visited the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Mazimbu in May 2, 1984.
As it happened, Tambo and ANC secretary general Alfred Nzo had represented the movement in Sokoine's burial in Monduli. And they only knew of the ANC's involvement when they arrived in Arusha for the burial ceremony. Tambo was shocked, he said, that an ANC member was the cause of the accident.
"Even if he (Sokoine) had died from a heart attack, it was very sad. We knew him, we adored him immensely. We followed his work, and he was one of the greatest men this country has known," Tambo told members of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, adding: "But it became unbearable, certainly for me, when I got the details of how he lost his life, how Tanzania lost him."
Tambo continued: "The ANC was involved… although accidents occur, if we were not on the road that day, there would have been no accident. The Prime Minister would still be alive. But we happened to be on the road, and that determined the end of his life."
He said this a few weeks before the accident and right after the Nkomati Agreement, he had come to Nyerere to seek commitment of continued support.
"And he (Nyerere) gave us strength. He was so cool. He was so correct in what he said.
He was so much with us. He understood the situation so clearly. And we went back strengthened and inspired and confident, Tambo noted. He added that when the President of Mali visited Tanzania, President Nyerere made a statement in support the ANC. "Here was this pillar of strength defending the ANC, and summoning the OAU and the people of the world to rally," Tambo noted.
"Then came the tragedy in the country that was supporting us so firmly at this time, when we needed support, I think, more than at any time in the past 24 years. We had never been in this situation. President Nyerere and his people stood up to be counted on our side. Then at that moment came this worst of all tragedies," Tambo lamented.
As it turned out, Tambo's shouldn't have worried as Tanzania continued supporting ANC to the end. In fact soon after Sokoine's burial, President Nyerere sent Tambo a letter thanking him for his messages of condolence and sympathy on the tragic death of Sokoine and "for coming personally to represent the ANC at the funeral ceremonies at Monduli."
"This demonstration of solidarity and shared grief encourages us as we struggle to adjust to our great loss…" Nyerere added in the letter.
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