Bibi Titi and the Treason Trials of 1970

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Source: The Story of Julius Nyerere, @JRA Bailey, Mkuki wa Nyota
Publishers, Dar-es-Salaam; Fountain Publishers, Kampala, reproduced in
the Eastafrican

November 10 - November 16, 1999

Bibi Tit and the Treason Trials of 1970

In the first five years of independence, Tanu was able to present a
united and harmonious face to the nation. There had been no
acrimonious fights or bitter outbursts from within the government.
"I've been one of the luckiest presidents in Africa. My colleagues are
very loyal to me," President Nyerere ventured to say late in 1966.

Within two years, the tide had turned: several former cabinet
ministers were in detention, one of Nyerere's closest confidants was
in exile, and Tanzania's first-ever treason trial was about to open.

In June 1967, the insecure and inarticulate Oscar Kambona, a founding
member of Tanu and one of the most senior cabinet ministers, abruptly
resigned from all his official posts. A month later, Kambona fled his
homeland and began a bitter life of exile in London.

Once safely ensconced in England, Kambona made a series of sweeping
allegations against the Tanzanian government, culminating in the
charge that Nyerere was "making himself a dictator".

In October 1969, the almost legendary Bibi Titi Mohamed and the former
Labour Minister Michael Kamaliza were arrested, along with four army
officers. The next day, the former editor of the Tanu newspaper, The
Nationalist, was arrested in Kenya; he was said to have been acting as
an emissary for Kambona.

In 1970, they were charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

***

July 1970: The trial opens.

THE SETTING was the timbered and whitewashed courthouse built on Dar-
es-Salaam's picturesque harbour front by the German colonists shortly
before the start of the First World War.

The cast was seven Tanzanians ranging in age from 27 to 46, with just
one woman. And as the plot unfolded, an audience of hundreds of
thousands of Tanzanians scrutinised their newspapers and kept their
ears glued to the radio for every detail.

What was attracting their attention was the start of what was likely
to become Tanzania's most sensational trial ever. Eight people are
charged with treason following the attempt in October 1969 to
overthrow the government of President Julius Nyerere.

One of the accused and the man claimed to be the ringleader, is Oscar
Kambona, the former Foreign Minister.

It was from his London hideaway that he allegedly drew up plans to
oust his country's leader and formerly one of his closest friends. He
is the first accused.

The others accused are:

* Grey Mataka, formerly news editor of the Tanu newspaper, The
Nationalist;

* Michael Kamaliza, a polio cripple, one time Minister for Labour
and head of NUTA, Tanzania's trade union movement;

* Bibi Titi Mohamed, a former close friend of the president and
one of the founder members of Tanu. She headed the women's wing of the
ruling party and was at one time a Junior Minister;

* William Chacha, a former colonel in the TPDF, until recently
military attaché in the Tanzanian embassy in Peking;

* Elia Chipaka, a former captain in the TPDF, and

* Alfred Milinga, a lieutenant in the TPDF.

It is Tanzania's first-ever treason trial. All face the death
sentence. It is believed that the government may institute extradition
proceedings against Oscar Kambona.

The court was told that the bid to overthrow the government was
planned for between October 10 and 15, 1969. At the time, the
President and a large group of government officials, as well as the
Chief of the Tanzania People's Defence Forces, Major General Sam
Sarakyika, were on an overseas tour.

Evidence to be presented at the High Court trial will link the
mainland plotters with conspirators in Zanzibar, who have already been
dealt with.

Tanzania's CID director, Mr Geoffrey Sawaya, told the court that
Kambona, who used seven aliases, sent large sums of money to some of
the accused to pay people who were to help with the coup.

Mr Sawaya said that almost all the accused used code-names in most of
their correspondence except for Kambona.

He alleged that the attempted coup was foiled because some of the
accused were arrested and detained before the date set for the take-
over.

Some of the accused made statements after their arrest admitting most
of the allegations. These, he said, would be produced at the trial.

There was more evidence, said Mr Sawaya, showing instructions which
had been made on how key points should be taken, and lists of
important people who were to be detained.

Moonlight trips by dhow between Dar-es-Salaam and Zanzibar, secret
meetings in posh hotels in Nairobi and London and night-clubs in Dar-
es-Salaam, and coded messages signed with secret names: these were
just a few aspects of the stranger-than-fiction story of the plot to
overthrow and kill the President. The final chapter of this incredible
story was written in the Dar-es-Salaam High Court.

One of the most damning pieces of evidence in the trial was the
"wedding guest list" found at the flat of Elia Lifa Chipaka. All 37
names on the list were those of army officers.

At the trial, Lifa claimed that it was a list of guests he was
preparing for his wedding. But, as the Chief Justice pointed out in
his summing-up of the case, the list contained comments which the
average person might consider quite irrelevant when considering
wedding guests.

Against the name of one colonel, for example, was the comment:
"Dissatisfied, but his stand is not known".

As the trial groaned on and on, evidence against the plotters built up
word by word. This included letters said to have been received from
Oscar Kambona.

Chief witness at the trial was Mr Potlako Leballo, Acting President of
the Pan African Congress of South Africa, which is based in Dar-es-
Salaam.

According to the prosecution, Leballo had been working for Tanzania's
special branch at the time of the planning of the coup and had
infiltrated the group working against the government and gained their
confidence.

The defence claimed Leballo was a liar who had dreamed the whole thing
up and they implied that Leballo was in the pay of the South African
government.

As he delivered the verdicts, Mr Philip Georges, Tanzania's Chief
Justice, ignored pleas from the defence for leniency and said that
independent African states badly needed stability. At the same time,
the Chief Justice warned that he was not happy with preventive
detention in Tanzania, saying that he hoped the trial heralded a new
era in which suspected criminals would be brought before the courts of
law rather than be held indefinitely in prison without trial.

At the end of this summation of the 127-day trial, Chief Justice
Georges passed the following sentences:

* Bibi Titi Mohamed - Life imprisonment for treason;

* Gray Mataka - Life imprisonment for treason;

* Elia Chipaka - Life imprisonment for treason;

* Michael Kamaliza - Ten years' imprisonment for misprision of
treason;

* William Chacha - Ten years' imprisonment for misprision of
treason.

Former army lieutenant Alfred Milinga was found not guilty, and after
16 months in detention, he was carried shoulder-high from the
courtroom by his joyous relatives.

In the end, Oscar Kambona was tried in absentia. A brief three years
earlier, Nyerere had said of his cabinet colleague: "Oscar is
extremely loyal - to the party, to me, to the people".

****

Two years later, in April 1972, Bibi Titi Mohamed received an
unprecedented presidential pardon.

BIBI TITI Mohamed, former strongwoman of Tanzania, stepped down from
the train at the crowded Dar-es-Salaam station and said: "Whoever
thought I would see Dar-es-Salaam again. Incredible!" She was then
thronged by exuberant relatives, friends and admirers.

She had written to the President for pardon, but she had never been
given any reason for hope. She was set free from Dodoma Prison in
central Tanzania, under a special Presidential decree. Freed along
with here were Ottini Kambona and Mattiya Kambona, younger brothers of
self-exiled Oscar.

Mwalimu's reason for releasing Bibi Titi and the former Tanu Youth
League secretary general, Eli Anagisye, as well as the two Kambonas,
is a mystery. Bib Titi had appeared to be so inextricably involved in
the treason charges.

Bibi Titi has been given an unheralded pardon. Rumours had been rife
in and around the capital that she had died while in prison. In fact,
a woman who heard the news of her release from prison in a radio
broadcast remarked: "Hear those people! They will never get tired of
telling us lies. How can they say Bibi Titi has been freed when
everybody knows she died months ago?"

Bibi Titi spent about half an hour at the railway station before she
was whisked away to her mother's home in Temeke, a southern city
suburb.

She went to stay in the old house she built for her mother in her
heyday. Her mother, now 92 years of age, is almost as vibrant as her
47-year-old daughter Bibi Titi. But on this day she literally fell
unconscious at the sight of her long-absent daughter.

****

The treason trials and the saga of Kambona's exile had an odd sequel a
decade later:

THE HIJACKING of the Air Tanzania Boeing 737 on Friday, February 27,
1982, sent shock waves around Africa and the world. Less than three
days later, the crisis ended at Stansted Airport, London, when two ten-
year-old Tanzanian children, one carrying a pistol and the other a
package labelled "explosives", led the hostages to safety. The four
hijackers surrendered and are now in Chelmsford Prison, Britain.

This is the timetable of the domestic flight that turned into a
chilling hijack drama. On Friday, February 26, at 12:35 pm, the Air
Tanzania Boeing 737 took off from Mwanza, Lake Victoria, on a flight
to Dar-es-Salaam. Seven and a half hours later, the jet carrying about
100 passengers touched down at Nairobi, Kenya, hijacked.

The hijackers radioed that there were explosives on board. Despite the
tough talk, three women, two children and an elderly man were released
unharmed. At midnight, the Boeing, call sign 5-HATC, took off on the
2,400-kilometre journey north to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The jet landed at Jeddah on Saturday at 3:00 am but took off again a
few hours later. At ten o'clock, the plane landed at Athens. A Belgian
missionary and a Somali truck driver were allowed off. Then the plane
took off again, heading west. At 2:20 pm, radio links were established
between the pilot and the United Kingdom. The pilot was directed to
Stansted Airport, Essex.

At 2:31 pm, the Boeing touched down at Stansted. The hijackers
demanded the resignation of their premier, Julius Nyerere, and talks
with his opponent, Mr Oscar Kambona, exiled in Britain since 1967. The
hijackers freed a pregnant woman and her five-year-old son. At 5:27
pm, the pilot asked for permission to move the plane closer to the
terminal building. "His friends" were nervous with the jet in the
darkness. The plane then taxied to within 150 yards of the terminal,
forcing police and fire vehicles to scatter.

At 7:32 pm, one of the hijackers screamed, "Bring 100 coffins" and
threatened to blow up the jet and everyone in it. But an hour later,
the situation was still calm. Michael, a softly spoken police
negotiator, radioed an offer of vegetables and water. Power was
provided for air-conditioning and lights on board the 737, but fuel
for takeoff was refused. From 11:30 am on Sunday morning, hostages
were released in dribs and drabs until 4:22 pm, when the hijackers and
their families, who had been on board throughout, left the jet.

****

Oscar Kambona claimed to have no prior knowledge of the hijack plot.
However, he said it was easy for him, Tanzania's most prominent exile,
to understand the hijackers' motivations. He gave this interview to
Drum, printed in its April 1982 issue:

The British Foreign Ministry asked me to help find a solution. When I
went to Stansted Airport, the hijackers asked to see me so they could
be sure it was indeed me who was speaking. When they were satisfied,
the negotiations took a different turn and soon they surrendered. I
was only interested in saving lives. I didn't regard myself as a hero.

I didn't know the hijackers - they were all between 24 and 25 years
old. So, when I left Tanzania, they must have been only ten years old.
Their act was an act of desperation. Some of their friends had
disappeared. When the hijackers heard that the security police were
looking for them, they felt they had to get out of the country and the
only way out was to hijack a plane. Now their families have been sent
back to Tanzania and they are desperately worried about them - that is
the reason for their hunger strike at Chelmsford Prison where they are
being held. They are worried that they will be detained in Tanzania -
the courts of Tanzania have no right of habeas corpus. People are
detained indefinitely at the pleasure of the government, but no
reasons for detention are given. A detained person has no form of
legal redress. Tanzania has become a police state.

I think the British should take an humanitarian angle in their case.
The crime is serious, but these youths were not pirates. They were not
after money. They were forced into this desperate act because of the
conditions at home.

Nyerere and I go back a long way - we founded Tanu. Nyerere was the
chairman and I was the secretary general. Problems between us began in
1964 during the army mutiny. Nyerere and Kawawa hid themselves in a
grass hut while I was left to face the music. I negotiated with the
army and managed to settle the uprising. When Nyerere returned, the
army wanted to mutiny again - that was when we asked for military
assistance from the British. After the mutiny, some friends told him
that he was losing his grip on the country and I think he believed
them.

When Nyerere visited China, he was very impressed with the
glorification of Mao Tse-Tung. I think the seeds of a single, all-
powerful individual, an autocrat, were sown in him on this trip. And
when he came back, he wanted a one-party state.

I sat on the commission that looked at the question of a one-party
state and produced a minority report in which I wanted to know what
mechanism we had of changing government peacefully.

Nyerere persuaded me not to present my report and said that I should
go along with the majority report which was in favour of a one-party
state and that at the end of five years, we would review the situation
and if we found any weaknesses we could put them right. I agreed, but
I refused to sign as a member of the committee.

I think that Ujamaa was badly implemented and that is why it has been
a failure. The government should have had pilot schemes which were
successful so that people could go to see them. The farmers in
Tanzania are very conservative. They want to know what they get from
their labour. If a man has a farm and earns £200 from it, and is then
asked to go into an Ujamaa village and gets £20 for the same work, he
begins to ask: "How is Ujamaa good for me?"

The system in Tanzania is such that Nyerere will continue to remain in
power. The President chooses all the candidates for elections.
Whichever way you vote, you still vote for his man. In the
Presidential elections, there are only two boxes - one for Nyerere and
the other against him. When you go into the polling booth, there is a
soldier standing there. He tells you, "If you want Nyerere, vote there
and if you are an enemy of the people, then vote in the 'no' box".

Nyerere has been in power for 21 years now. And nowadays he is always
saying that he is going to resign. Then the parliamentarians stamp
their feet and shout that he is their leader and Nyerere says: "Well,
what can I do? A captain cannot abandon his ship and let it sink."

But why is it that during all this time he hasn't been able to find
anyone who can rule the country besides himself?

I feel very sorry for the person who will take over because the
country is bankrupt. If I took over I would change the economic
policies and do away with detention for longer than ten days.
Concluded

*Reproduced from Tanzania: The Story of Julius Nyerere, @JRA Bailey,
Mkuki wa Nyota Publishers, Dar-es-Salaam; Fountain Publishers,
Kampala.
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