Background
Chediel Mgonja was born in 1934 at Vudee, a tiny village four miles from the nearest main road, in Pare district, north-eastern Tanzania, where his father was a school teacher.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Chediel Yohanne Mgonja
Edit ProfileEducation
Educated locally at Iboru School, Arusha, and at the renowned Government Secondary School, Tabora. In 1955 he went to Makerere College and graduated in 1959 with a general arts BA.
Career
He served as a district officer at Tanga, before going on two courses to Cambridge, to read administration and international relations. After a spell in the Treasury, he joined the UN Mission in New York and stayed between July 1962 and August 1964. Here he made his mark on the UN Commission on Colonialism and he was promoted quickly on his return home, to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Though a fiery critic of the West, he was anti-Russian over the Czech crisis in 1968.
In 1965, after ten years of “dreaming of becoming a politician” he resigned his job and campaigned successfully in his home district of Parc. As Minister of Community Development and National Culture, he was proud to foster the African cultural revival while not rejecting international trends (he defended tight dresses for women and, at the same time, the long dresses made of African cloth). From 1966 to 1967 he was leader of the Tanzanian delegation to the UN. He became Minister ol State in June 1967 and later Minister of State for Foreign Affairs until November 1968, when he was switched to the Education portfolio.
He was Education Minister when, for the first time, in June 1971, fourth and sixth form students had exam papers tnarked in Tanzania, not Britain. He rapidly Tanzanianised his ministry and got the adult literacy programme off the ground on a really national scale for the first time. His choice as Regional Commissioner for Mtwara was considered no demotion, but a move to a vital area in accordance with decentralisation policies.
Personality
One of the brighter, younger Tanzanian ministers, deliberately chosen as a regional commissioner as part of the great Tanzanian drive for decentralisation and rural ujamaa development. Chediel Mgonja, a friendly, fast talking, modem, classless, Tanzanian socialist, was the youngest ever minister appointed in Tanzania until the appointment of Joseph Mungai.
Politically ambitious, he distinguished himself as the leader of the Tanzanian delegation to the UN and later as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, where he was hotly tipped to become Foreign Minister. Instead, he went to Education, introducing local marking of 1 anzanian examination papers (previously marked in Britain) and was then chosen to help lead Tanzania’s rural revolution.
