SPECIAL REPORT: The life and times of Edward Sokoine: man of firm action

It is 31 years today since Prime Minister Edward Moringe Sokoine died in a motor accident near Dakawa on the Dodoma-Morogoro Highway on 12 April, 1984 as he travelled from Dodoma to Dar es Salaam.

A day before his death, Sokoine addressed the National Assembly in Dodoma and raised numerous sticking issues that he wanted government officials and ministers to solve as soon as possible. He also wanted certain issues clarified.

The prime minister’s sense of urgency came through very clearly in his address, which was repeatedly punctuated with the words tutakutana Dar es Salaam (We will meet in Dar es Salaam).

Sokoine, who was the head of government business, did not live to get the information he so wanted from the ministers and senior government officials.

I covered Sokoine twice  in his second coming as prime minister—first,  when I accompanied him on his marathon tour of Dodoma, Singida and Kagera regions,  and the second time  at his funeral in Monduli Juu in Arusha Region. I will try to recollect my memories of what I knew about this government and Maasai leader three decades ago in the light of the race for the 2015 Union Presidency vis-a-vis the qualities required of those who seek the highest office in the land.

A few weeks after Sokoine’s second appointment as prime minister in February 1983, The Daily News sent me to Dodoma to cover a three-week parliamentary session.  Sokoine’s major contribution then was his announcement that, from then on imported tractors, trucks, pick-up and double cabins would attract less tax than other luxury vehicles.

Unlike luxury vehicles, he said, they were tools for building the economy.

After the end of the parliamentary session, my office directed me  to accompany the premier on his tour of Dodoma, Singida and Kagera regions.

While in Singida, one of our hosts officials approached the prime minister’s press secretary, Accadoga Chilledi (he has since passed on) and told him, “tumekwisha mtayarishia blanketi lake” which roughly translates into “we have already prepared a blanket for him”.

Chilledi, who had been my boss at Shihata headquarters in Dar es Salaam before I crossed over to the Daily News, was a practical man who called a spade a spade. He told the official that if he loved his job, he should immediately take away his “blanket”’ since the boss did not entertain such things.

After our Singida tour, we were flown to Bukoba for a three-day working tour in Kagera Region.

After a two-day tour, we drove to Kaboya to inspect what could rightly be described as the country’s Heroes Acre, where over 600 Tanzanian soldiers who died in the Tanzania-Uganda War are buried