Nyerere’s Torch and the Silence of the Missing: A Call to Rekindle Our Moral Light

By Adonis Byemelwa

October 14 is never just another day. It carries a nation’s heartbeat, the day Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the teacher and conscience of Tanzania, left us in 1999. For me, it holds an even deeper ache: it is also my late father’s birthday. He would have turned eighty-six today. Between these two fathers, Nyerere and my own, runs a quiet thread of memory, conviction, and hope that refuses to die.

Nyerere’s presence was never about power but principle. He led with humility, lived simply, and spoke truth even when it hurt. He was not perfect; he never claimed to be, but he was honest enough to question himself, his party, and his people. His kind of poverty was not failure; it was a moral stance. Today, that humility feels almost alien in a political culture that worships wealth and punishes dissent.

We now live in a time where criticism is treated as betrayal. Voices that once shaped our public debates have fallen silent, some out of fear, others by force. Journalists disappear, activists are intimidated, and truth is twisted into propaganda. Nyerere’s dream of a taifa—a nation united by shared purpose—has withered into a nchi, a state held together by institutions but drained of spirit. A nation liberates; a state merely manages.

Amid this moral fog, a few still dare to speak. One such voice is Bishop Benson Bagonza of Karagwe—a modern echo of Nyerere’s conscience. He reminds us that development without justice is a betrayal of humanity, and that poverty maintained by greed is sin. Like Nyerere, he doesn’t shout; he reasons. His courage lies not in defiance but in moral clarity.

Meanwhile, the mwenge—the national torch Nyerere once lit to symbolize unity and enlightenment, still travels across the country. But its flame feels dimmer now, reduced to ceremony and spectacle. The torch still burns, yes, but too often without purpose.

This is the paradox of our commemoration: we celebrate Nyerere’s ideals while quietly betraying them. We mistake peace for silence and unity for obedience. Nyerere’s peace was rooted in justice, his unity built on dialogue. Today, leadership feels transactional, and citizens are treated as mere voters rather than partners in nationhood.

Perhaps our decline began when we stopped believing that ethics belong in politics—when truth became negotiable, and courage became optional. Yet, as Aristotle once said, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it guarantees the others.” Without courage, justice is just a slogan, and faith becomes ritual.

So, on this Nyerere Day, as the nation rests, the real question is whether we are resting in reflection—or in forgetfulness.

But not all hope is gone. The real torch still burns in the hearts of ordinary Tanzanians, the farmer who refuses to cheat his neighbor, the teacher who nurtures minds in underfunded classrooms, the youth who still believe that decency is not weakness. Nyerere’s spirit lives not in monuments or state speeches, but in the daily acts of honesty that defy cynicism.

As we approach another election season, the irony deepens. We are compelled to join parties to be chosen, yet the vote we cast is demanded without question of party. Democracy, stripped of dignity, has become a ritual of consent rather than conviction. Corruption has normalized, and those who expose it are treated as enemies of the state. We are invited to feasts of rice and rhetoric, and afterward, we return to hunger, hunger not only of stomach, but of truth.

What would Nyerere say to us today? He would probably remind us that leadership is not domination but service; that the purpose of power is to protect the weak, not to exploit them. He would mourn the betrayal of ethics, but he would not despair. His faith in humanity was too resilient for that. He would challenge us to remember that justice delayed is still injustice, and that freedom postponed is already lost.

Our way forward must begin with restoring trust. We must reopen spaces for dialogue, not as political gestures but as moral obligations. We must demand accountability not as vengeance, but as healing. We must protect truth-tellers and rebuild institutions so that justice no longer depends on courage alone. Above all, we must nurture a culture of thought—a return to critical inquiry in our schools, our churches, and our media.

Bishop Bagonza has often said that moral decay begins when we normalize wrongs in small doses. He is right. The collapse of nations begins not with coups but with concessions. When we stop asking questions, when we stop defending the vulnerable, when we allow fear to define decency, we become accomplices in our own undoing.

Nyerere once said, “No nation has the right to exist if it cannot serve the people who live in it.” That sentence, once a warning to colonial powers, now boomerangs back at us. The test of our independence is not how long we have been free, but how honestly we live that freedom.

And so, on this 14th of October, as Tanzania commemorates Nyerere Day, we are called not to nostalgia but to awakening. To remember him is not to idealize him, but to measure ourselves against the ideals he lived for: truth, service, equality, and moral courage. He must not die again in our silence.

When he passed in London, the world mourned a philosopher-king. Today, we must mourn our own moral drift. Yet mourning must give way to movement. The challenge is no longer to imitate Nyerere, but to inherit his restlessness—the conviction that justice is never finished, that truth must always disturb comfort.

Today, October 14, carries the weight of two memories—the passing of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and the birthday of my late father. Between these two fathers, I find both comfort and challenge: a reminder that leadership, whether in a nation or a family, is measured not by power, but by conscience.

From Dar es Salaam, the Catholic Archbishop Jude Thadaeus Ruwa’ichi, OFMCap, spoke with the calm authority of one who knows that silence can be costly. He condemned the wave of abductions that has scarred Tanzania for nearly fifteen years, calling them “a wound to the nation’s soul.”

Citing Article 8 of the Constitution, he reminded the country that human dignity and rights are not favors of the state but its moral foundation. Referring to Article 14, he was blunt: “The government’s first duty is to protect life. No one, no office, no uniform, has the right to take what only God gives.”

The archbishop’s question still echoes: How can abductors move freely while law enforcers look away? His lament cut deep—fear has become familiar, and accountability remains absent. He urged the nation to reclaim its moral compass before fear becomes our default language.

Between Nyerere’s memory and my father’s silence, I sense both mourning and resolve. Nyerere’s mwenge—his torch—was never meant for spectacle but for moral illumination. It was meant to awaken us, not distract us.

Let us, then, rekindle that inner mwenge—the flame of conscience that outlasts censorship and ceremony alike. For though the official torch may dim, the true light still burns where integrity dwells.

If we are to honor the servant of truth, we must become servants of truth ourselves. Only then can we say, without irony, that Mwalimu has not died—he lives in those who dare to remember, to question, and to believe that Tanzania can still be both a nation and a promise kept.