Nyerere's Resignation, 1962
In 1962 Nyerere resigned his post as prime minister to devote all his time to his work as president of TANU. This act seems to have been motivated by his sense that he had become remote from the rank and file and that he had to engage in political work at the grass-roots level if he were to find an important role for TANU and to regain the support of the people. Further, he felt that the government was overly identified with him personally and that it was necessary for his colleagues to learn to carry on without him. Most important, in Pratt's view, was Nyerere's sense that he had to communicate to the people the need for hard work and the view that such work ought to he on behalf of Tanganyika rather than for self-aggrandizement. Nyerere proposed to give full time to the role that had given him the respected honorific mwalimu (teacher).
Nyerere spent much of 1962 traveling through the country listening and talking to local TANU officials and the rank and file, but he was not concerned with organizational rebuilding nor, for the time being, with increasing TANU's participation in policy-making or administration. He continued to consider the government, not the party, as the source of policy.
His chief task was teaching, which he did orally and through writing. In the pamphlets he produced at this time he argued that African society had had a moral order in which people cared for each other but that this order was giving way to aggressive acquisitiveness. That conception of a traditional African moral order underlay Nyerere's notion of socialism, which, increasingly, constituted a significant part of his message. But he was concerned at this time not with the institutions of socialism but with its values, and he drew not upon Marxist or other European ideas of socialism but on what he thought of as African roots for it.
In his view, in traditional African communities, the members took care of the community, and the community took care of its members. Individuals had neither the need nor the desire to exploit each other. These attitudes had to he retained and to the extent that they had been lost, recovered. In 1962 Nverere wrote: "True socialism is an attitude of mind. It is therefore up to the people of Tanganyika . . . to make sure that this socialist attitude of mind is not lost through the temptations to personal gain (or to abuse of positions of authority) . or through the temptation to look on the good of the whole community as of secondary importance to the interests of our own particular group."
Linked to this basic concept of the underlying character of traditional African society were Nyerere's general policy recommendations: because exploitation — living on the labor of others — was unjust and destructive of social harmony, such exploitation must end. Concretely in rural society that meant an end to individual ownership of land. This seemed to fly in the face of the earlier assumption that progressive farmers were to be encouraged and that their success, presumably in the market, was to serve as a model for others. Further, substantial differences in income must be prevented. An Asian and European economic elite was not to be succeeded by an African one.
The party's role was also dealt with, not in terms of detailed structure and function but in relation to the achievement of a just and moral society. TAW was to urge Tanganvikans to work hard, particularly in order to eradicate poverty, but it was to do so by living and learning among them, not by imposing its preconceptions on them. Further TANU leaders were to permit, even encourage internal criticism.
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