Background
Saidi Maswanya was born in 1923 at Ossungu, Tabora district.
Saidi Maswanya was born in 1923 at Ossungu, Tabora district.
Educated at Kizigo Primary and the select Government Secondary School at Tabora.
He left school in 1942 and served for ten years in the Uganda and Tanzania police forces. Becoming interested in politics, he became district secretary for the Tanganyika African National Union in Shinyanga in 1965. By 1958-9 he became TANU chairman of the Western Province and by 1960 deputy organising secretary of the party and a Central Committee member.
He moved to Dar es Salaam, became a city councillor and was made deputy mayor in 1960. He represented Kahama constituency in Parliament and his first ministerial appointment came in 1962 as Minister without Portfolio, followed by the Ministries of Health and Agriculture. In 1965 he switched his constituency to Tabora West and in September 1965 he was made Minister of Lands Settlement and Water Development.
As a senior and mature minister, he took over his most important portfolio from Job Lusinde, when he became Minister for Home Affairs in June 1967. Though he has been responsible for the deportation of a few white farmers and Asians, thought to be involved in corruption, there were remarkably few deportations from Tanzania during his term of office (no journalists have been deported at all). He may have clashed with TANU leadership by pressing for too rapid Muslimisation of the police force, but this has traditionally been a Muslim preserve.
A thickset, slow-moving, burly, longstanding and important member of the Tanganyika African National Union. As a devout Muslim he is regarded as a traditionalist, against modern trends in dress and behaviour. He has directed the Home Affairs Ministry with strength. He was also responsible for the increased Muslimisation of the police force.