Amidst an outpouring of grief and joy at the reburial of the
late Laurean Cardinal Rugambwa emerged the portrait of a visionary who
championed the causes of land ownership and women empowerment.
As
thousands of worshippers witnessed the catholic prelate being laid to
rest at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Bukoba, we
got to know the real story behind Africa’s first native bishop, who died
back in 1997.
Several speakers told of a man whose private life was
known to only a select few. Of his tremendous intellect however, there
was not a shred of doubt.
Cardinal Rugambwa is said to have been
instrumental in helping the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere create a
workable nationalisation policy in the heydays of Ujamaa in the 1960s.
Communications
director for the Diocese of Bukoba, Father Procesius Mutungi, told the
faithful how the Cardinal had advised the then-president of a newly
independent Tanzania to pursue a policy that would allow asset owners to
retain a portion of their property in the wake of the Arusha
Declaration in 1967.
It is believed that Mwalimu Nyerere requested
that Cardinal Rugambwa be transferred from Bukoba to Dar es Salaam to
be part of his team of advisors on nationalisation, according to Fr
Mutungi.
The Cardinal, he said, had warned Mwalimu that stripping
wealthy citizens of all their productive assets would have reduced them
to absolute poverty and may have fomented dissent.
On Cardinal
Rugambwa’s counsel Mwalimu Nyerere saw the wisdom in giving back a
portion of what government had taken away, according to Fr Mutungi.
Several
religious institutes benefited from government’s largess, including the
Diocese of Bukoba which got back parcels of land on which several
schools now stand. One of these is the eponymous Rugambwa High School.
The
Cardinal’s advice, said Fr Mutungi, had proven valuable for
institutions and organizations that had felt short-changed by an
overreaching nationalist government.
The Catholic prelate will
also be remembered for championing women empowerment, according to the
official biographer for Cardinal Rugambwa Father Thomas Rutashubanyuma.
The
Cardinal’s passion for education pushed him to found a girl’s secondary
school and he initiated a training scheme that saw 300 rural women
taught to use sewing machines.
These projects kick-started the push towards greater empowerment in an era when women were expected to show deference to men.
Fr
Rutashubanyuma writes that the sewing centre founded by Cardinal
Rugambwa became a home craft school that morphed into a women’s health
clinic which later became what is now known as Missenyi District
Designated Hospital.
The late prelate, who was the first Tanzanian
Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Dar es Salaam, will be remembered as a
pioneer because when he started Rugambwa Girls’ High School, most
African countries had not made education for women a national priority.
Independent
studies done in Tanzania have also shown that Cardinal Rugambwa played a
key role in the introduction and propagation of Savings and Credit
Cooperatives Societies (Saccos) during his lifetime.
Research for
St. Clement’s University in the Turks and Caicos Islands of the British
West Indies by Tanzania scholar Mr Stephen Mwakajumulo shows that
Cardinal Rugambwa latched on to the Saccos idea when he visited Michigan
Credit Unions in the late 1950s.
In his 2011 doctoral thesis, Mr
Mwakajumulo says Cardinal Rugambwa shared the lessons he learned with
members of the catholic clergy and laymen, some of whom went on to run
the Savings and Credit Cooperatives Union League of Tanganyika
(SCCULT).
Another study for the University of South Africa supports Mr
Mwakajumulo’s assertion.
Doctoral candidate Mr Faustine Karrani Bee
writes “It was, however, the Late Cardinal Rugambwa of the Roman
Catholic Church who spearheaded the promotion of SACCOS.”
The
scholar argues that the Cardinal’s efforts facilitated the creation of
savings societies in the poorest and the most-deprived communities in
pre-independence Tanganyika.
Cardinal Rugambwa’s remains were
moved from Kashozi Parish Church, where he had been interred since his
passing on in 1997, to the cathedral in Bukoba in a solemn ceremony
attended by a multitude of worshippers.
Dignitaries included over 23
bishops from all over the world and a selection of government officials,
including the Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements
Development Professor Anna Tibaijuka.
Perhaps Cardinal Rugambwa’s
lasting legacy is seen in the likes of Prof Tibaijuka, who spent her
formative years at Rugambwa Girls’ secondary school, and who went on to
become the first and only African woman to achieve the rank of
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.