Background
Isaac Munanka was born in 1927 in North Mara near the Kenya border on Lake Victoria.
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Isaac Muller Bhoke Munanka
Edit ProfileEducation
Educated at the Government Secondary School, Tabora.
Career
He started work as a government clerk and showed early political interest in the Tanganyika African Association, rising to become vice-president. He joined the Tanganyika African National Union on its formation in 1954 and rapidly developed a reputation as a political firebrand in continual trouble with the colonial authorities.
He became the party’s national treasurer in 1958. In the same year he tried to persuade Julius Nyerere not to fight the 1958 elections under the unfair electoral arrangements that then existed, but Nyerere’s views prevailed and Munanka stood and won a seat for North Mara constituency in the ensuing elections.
He became Minister of State in the Second Vice-President’s Office until June 1965 and headed the government’s Central Establishment Division responsible for civil service training and organisation. In June 1965 he became Minister of State for Regional Administration with responsibility for local government. But in the elections of November 1970, when the people were allowed a free choice of their own TANU candidates, he was defeated. Nyerere, who has never forgotten his loyalty at the time of the mutiny, made him his personal assistant in the President’s Office.
Personality
A strong, clever and ambitious party stalwart, who has been with the Tanganyika African National Union since its beginnings, but did not maintain enough popularity with the electorate to secure victory in 1970.
Not liked by the colonial authorities, who banned TANU branches in his district and sentenced him to imprisonment, he showed real courage during the army mutiny in 1964 when he refused even at gunpoint to disclose where President Nyerere had taken refuge.
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Born
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Nationality
Tanzanian -
Political Party
Tanganyika African National Union