THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WORLD LEADERS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

TANU won a large number of seats on the Legislative
Council. In a subsequent election in August 1960, his orga-
nization managed to win 70 of 71 seats in Tanganyika’s new
Legislative Assembly. Progress toward independence owed
much to the understanding and mutual trust that devel-
oped during the course of negotiations between Nyerere
and the British governor, Sir Richard Turnbull. Tanganyika
finally gained responsible self-government in September
1960, and Nyerere became chief minister at this time.
Tanganyika became independent on Dec. 9, 1961, with
Nyerere as its first prime minister. The next month, how-
ever, he resigned from this position to devote his time to
writing and synthesizing his views of government and of
African unity. One of Nyerere’s more important works
was a paper called Ujamaa—The Basis for African Socialism,
which later served as the philosophical basis for the Arusha
Declaration in 1967. When Tanganyika became a republic
in 1962, he was elected president, and in 1964 he became
president of the United Republic of Tanzania, which
included Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
Nyerere was reelected president of Tanzania in 1965
and returned to serve three more successive five-year
terms before he resigned as president in 1985. From inde-
pendence on, Nyerere also headed Tanzania’s only political
party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
As outlined in his political program, the Arusha
Declaration, Nyerere was committed to the creation of an
egalitarian socialist society based on cooperative agricul-
ture in Tanzania. He collectivized village farmlands, carried
out mass literacy campaigns, and instituted free and uni-
versal education. He also emphasized Tanzania’s need to
become economically self-sufficient rather than remain
dependent on foreign aid and foreign investment. Nyerere
termed his socialist experimentation ujamaa (“familyhood”