Marjorie Mbilinyi

Adopting Issa Shivji’s paradigm, “The philosopher in Nyerere was informed by, and in constant search for, human equality and freedom, while the king in him was driven by the imperatives of building a nation-state” [Shivji 2020 Book Three: 2]. Mwalimu Nyerere advocated transformative pedagogy and liberating adult education, which he linked to nation building and people-centred participatory development, especially at grassroots level. He argued that adult learners have knowledge to share. They need to be encouraged to think, analyse critically and act on their own behalf so as to improve their situation. They thereby became active subjects, and participated equally in making key decisions on resource allocations at all levels and benefited equally. While referring to individual demands for freedom and dignity, Mwalimu emphasized the collective nature of these demands, and argued that the African people can only realize real democracy and freedom by uniting together so as to fight against neo-colonialism and corporate globalisation and to struggle for equitable, just development and economic liberation. At the same time, he was a powerful ruler who established an Executive with no checks and balances and focused on nation building and African liberation, not socialism. He denounced global elites and Northern based imperialism, but in the early years he rarely took action against the growth of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie in his own state and party. The failure to translate his ideals of equality and justice into a popular mass movement of workers, peasants, students and others contributed to the ultimate downfall of ujamaa. At the same time, he succeeded in sustaining national unity in an increasingly hostile context during the 1980s debt crisis and confrontation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands for Structural Adjustment (SAP) and neoliberalism [Shivji 2020 Book Three].

Fonte: Mbilinyi, Marjorie. "Liberating Adult Education, Animation and People Centred Democracy." Convergence 44.1: 3-16. 

“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.” “Seven!” I answered.

“Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.”

“Then, how do you know?”

“I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?”

“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it out.”

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.

“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”

From: https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/1-sided/advs.pdf. Accessed on 12/15/2025.

“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.” “Seven!” I answered.

“Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.”

“Then, how do you know?”

“I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?”

“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it out.”

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.

“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”

From: https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/1-sided/advs.pdf. Accessed on 12/15/2025.