Tanzania at the Crossroads

On August 29, 1982, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, Chairman of Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), speaking in Zanzibar to the Parents’ Association of Tanzania, known as WAZAZI, made a fervent appeal for change in the rearing of the nation’s young people.

What he said was to affect radically WAZAZI’s thinking about educational planning-indeed, to affect planning for the future of the nation itself.

He asked the Party and WAZAZI to accept the challenge of educating the country about the consequences of uncontrolled population growth. Not only was the health of mothers at risk, he warned, but also the future of their children. He said that if the birth rate were not reduced in time, the resulting poverty and misery would breed social instability and political unrest. He pointed out signs of beginning deterioration - the rising incidence of separation and divorce, pregnancies among girls still in primary school, malnutrition among mothers and children, infant mortality, prostitution, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, and sexually transmitted disease.

In making his appeal at the time and place he did, he was using Party authority to re-establish and underscore the time-honored role of parents - wazazi - in educating the commonwealth. Traditionally, parents have been the primary educators in Tanzania. In the societies of the past, most social and vocational training was conducted in the home. Later, during the struggle for independence and afterwards, the Parents Association of Tanzania, then called TAPA, now known as WAZAZI, began to set up adult education groups, primary schools, and technical secondary schools.