7 Julius Nyerere 7force behind the Organization of African Unity (OAU;
now the African Union).
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a son of the chief of
the small Zanaki ethnic group. He was educated at Tabora
Secondary School and Makerere College in Kampala,
Uganda. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he taught in
several Roman Catholic schools before going to Edinburgh
University. He graduated with an M.A. in history and eco-
nomics in 1952 and returned to Tanganyika to teach.
By the time Nyerere entered politics, the old League
of Nations mandate that Britain had exercised in
Tanganyika had been converted into a United Nations
trusteeship, with independence the ultimate goal. Seeking
to hasten the process of emancipation, Nyerere joined the
Tanganyika African Association, quickly becoming its
president in 1953. In 1954 he converted the organization
into the politically oriented Tanganyika African National
Union (TANU). Under Nyerere’s leadership the organiza-
tion espoused peaceful change, social equality, and racial
harmony and rejected tribalism and all forms of racial and
ethnic discrimination.
In 1955 and 1956, he journeyed to the United Nations
in New York City as a petitioner to the Trusteeship
Council and the Fourth Committee on trusts and non-
self-governing territories. After a debate that ended in his
being granted a hearing, he asked for a target date for the
independence of Tanganyika. The British administration
rejected the demand, but a dialogue was begun that estab-
lished Nyerere as the preeminent nationalist spokesman
for his country.
The British administration nominated him a member
of the Tanganyikan Legislative Council, but he resigned in
1957 in protest against the slowness of progress toward
independence. In elections held in 1958–59, Nyerere and