GEORGE FUMBUKA ON PROF. KEN EDWARDS: IMMEMORIAL

George Fumbuka

George Fumbuka	07:52 (23 hours ago)
to Chambi, me, Salim, Chris, tanzanet

Chambi: I never got to know Ken personally but our careers coincided so many times I usually treat him as a former colleague.

I use the name Ken deliberately as it is part of the story as I will show later.

I also use the word coincided for want of a better word because we just met, never worked together, never clashed, never cooperated: each just new that the other was doing a good job somewhere. I guess it is to do with academic rivalry, each thinking they were superior than the other.

I joined the Institute of Finance Management (IFM) as an Assistant Lecturer n September 1976. I should have become a Tutorial Assistant but my salary scale wouldn't allow it: this adds to the fun. As a very young but qualified, Chartered, Accountant I was in the RARE SKILLS grade (made worse (?) by the fact that teaching at the IFM was also classified as RARE SKILLS). My pay was not much less than Permanent Secretary and more than many senior commissioners in the Treasury (under which the IFM worked). I joined in as an Assistant Lecturer, straight from the UK, the first black Accountant to join the academic staff (it was then full of Camadian and Pakistani expatriates).

When I joined IFM, the Principal was one Daniel Yona who was borrowed from the Tanzania Housing Bank with influence from the IFM Chairman, one Edwin Mtei, Governor of the Bank of Tanzania. That is how the financial sector used to function - a string of finance technocrats being rotated around.

This is where my contacts with Ken began: the outgoing Principal at the IFM, one Professor Ali Kighoma Malima, had just been borrowed as Dean of the Faculty of Economics (from which Ken's faculty emerged).

The IFM was then and still is the Mecca of accounting, the Rome of Accountants. Anybody who was anyone in accounding had to be at the IFM, any other place would be treated as an impostor. Prof. Malima knew this and he quite liberally borrowed parttime all lecturers on accounting and in financial management from the IFM. It is fair to say that FCM was founded with the help of the IFM.

Roundabout the same time the National Board of Accountants and Auditors (NBAA) was taking root as the semi-Regulator semi-prifessional body, so mist of the exams were set or moderated by the NBAA and NBAA had nowhere to go for resource persons other than where else? To the IFM. 

This was the situation when FCM was beginning and that is how the rivarly began, obviously the UDSM guys and Ken too did not like this thing, they didn't like it one bit, but that's how things went. I remember rubbing shoulders with Ken, and one Dr Fratern Mboya, and one Harry Kitillya. The other famous names were students and I never got to interact with them outside their exam scripts. The first and best to pass our NBAA exams CPA was one Richard Mushi roundabout 1977 - many will refer to him as their teacher.

In 1988 or thereabouts there was an Accountants' Conference in Arusha and we decided hold it at IAA, then a sort of "project" under Ken Edwards. He had about that time changed his own fundamental beliefs and dropped the "colonial" names Ken Edwards and used Joshua Mkhululi instead. His attire and fatigues also took a new form, borrowed from the Rastafarian movement: God-like fielty to Emperor Haille Sellasie, the hairly dreadlocks, rabbinic demenour, prophet's language and messianic bearing.

He was our host. I will be honest and say that many of us never reconciled with his religious transformation but kept him in high regard for what he was. We never got to call him other than Ken. I guess we are essentially a conservative lot.

The guest of honour was a humble man from Zanzibar, one Omar Ali Juma, the Vice President of the United Republic of Tanzania. Chairman of the NBAA was one Reginald Abraham Mengi and the Arusha Regional Commissioner-cum- Party Secretary was one Colonel Abdulrahman Kinana. It was an akward moment, pitting Professor Mkuhululi's rastafarianism in full flight against these influential "Viongozi wa Chama na Serkali" with their green regalia under one-Party supremacy in full flight.

I may be wrong but I feel this is where it was decided that Fratern Mbuya, not Ken, should head the infant IAA. Having been borrowed from FCM, which was now headed by Harry Kitillya, Ken found himself without a position and some quick footwork had to be done to accomodate things out of Court.

I joined IAA as Senior Lecturer on a 3-year World Bank contract in 1993 with Mboya still in charge. Ken was now living there somewhere doing part-time lecturing at ESAMI and general consulting and, though he was by then a spent force, his intellect and indefatigability were still as keen as of old.

Dr Mboya left IAA in 1996 to go to Dar and head the newly formed Capital Markets and Securities Authorities that opened the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange in 1998. I left IAA in 1997 and came back to Dar es Salaam and founded CORE Securities Limited, a stockbrokerage firm of the DSE. We got our license from Dr Mboya in 1999 and the rest is history

That's my recollection of Dr Ken Edwards aka Professor Joshua Mukhululi. I may have got some of the dates off by a year or two but the events and main characters are still fresh in my mind.

George Fumbuka, CPA (T) - PP.