KIPANDE KUTOKA MSWADA WA ALLY SYKES - ''UNDER THE SHADOW OF BRITISH COLONIALISM''

Katikati ya meza Julius Nyerere, kushoto kwake Sadiki Patwa, Kulia Mzee Makoko
na kushoto ni Makata Mwinyi Mtwana

‘’I got in touch with Makatta Mwinyi Mtwana one of very influential and rich African businessmen in Tanga who had been a friend of my father. Makatta had established his business in Tanga. He was an importer of khanga and was competing with Indians. Every weekend I used to travel to Tanga to visit him. 

At that time Tanga was the seat of the settler community. Almost all the sisal estates in Tanganyika were in Tanga Province. During weekends the settlers, almost all of them members of the Sisal Growers Association of Tanganyika, would drive to town from their estates and meet at Planters Hotel, which was exclusive to Europeans to discuss politics of the day. When nationalist politics began they met at the same hotel to plot against TANU. 

I got in touch with Mwalimu Kihere to see if we could open a branch in Tanga but unfortunately there was not much I could do there because at that time Tanga was involved in its own internal social conflicts, which prevented the formation of a political party.  One day I received a message from Makatta that on Friday at 5 p.m. the Tanga police would come to my house to search me for TANU documents. I put whatever TANU papers I had in a box and went to hide them at a place where no one would think of searching. I hid the papers at Akena’s house.  When a white police officer and three black policemen raided my house that day they found nothing.  They tore my mattresses and pillows, they combed the room but they could not find any paper to incriminate me.

How was Makatta informed of the raid against my house? 

TANU had sympathisers in many places in the colonial administration. One of them tipped him off.

I stayed at Korogwe for eight months until when I became sick with a serious kidney ailment as a result of polluted water.  I was referred to Dar es Salaam Sewa Haji Hospital for treatment. I needed an operation but there was no qualified kidney expert in Tanganyika to perform the operation. I was put on medication to relieve the pain. The operation came to be performed in Dar es Salaam 1962 after independence by one Dr. Lean from Britain.

I did not return to Korogwe after getting well as I was transferred to Moshi Labour Office. I immediately began to organise for TANU. By then TANU had sent Nyerere to the United Nations in New York to plead for Tanganyika’s independence. 

At the United Nations, Nyerere was not articulating anything new since his speech was from the very recommendations of the memorandum which the TAA Political Subcommittee had prepared and submitted to the Constitutional Development Committee of Governor Edward Twining in 1950 which were however ignored by the governor. Twining instead pursued a multiracial representation in the Legislative Council and to keep up with its stand, the government sent a multiracial delegation composed of I.C. Chopra, an Asian, Sir Charles Phillips a European, and Liwali Yustino Mponda, an African member of the Legislative Council for Newala, to oppose TANU at the United Nations. We were determined to show the government that TANU had clout.’’