When Edwin Isaac Mtei died on January 20, 2026, at the age of 93, Tanzania lost more than a former central bank governor or an opposition founder. It lost a moral benchmark—a reminder of what leadership once meant, and a mirror exposing how far today’s rulers have fallen.
Mtei’s autobiography, From a Goatherd to Governor, now reads less like a memoir and more like a warning. Born into poverty in Marangu, Kilimanjaro, and raised by a single mother, he herded goats whilst pursuing his education with uncommon discipline. That journey carried him from village schools to Makerere University and into the heart of the post-independence Tanzanian state.
As Tanzania’s first Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, Mtei helped lay the foundations of monetary sovereignty with professionalism and institutional restraint. His generation believed that independence required more than flags and slogans; it required strong institutions, competent management, and ethical leadership. Disagreement was not treason. Public office was not a personal entitlement.
Those values would later define Mtei’s most consequential act of leadership. As Minister of Finance, he fundamentally disagreed with President Julius Nyerere over economic policy and IMF negotiations. Rather than submit to policies he believed would harm the country, Mtei resigned. He chose principle over position.
Enduring legacy
In today’s Tanzania—where ministers justify corruption, excuse violence, and cling to office at any moral cost—such an act borders on the unimaginable. Yet Mtei’s most enduring legacy lies not only in the offices he held, but in the political alternative he helped create.
READ MORE: “A Visionary Public Servant”: Tanzania Remembers Edwin Mtei
With the reintroduction of multi-party politics in the early 1990s, Edwin Mtei founded Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA). He did so with a clear conviction: democracy without genuine competition is a fraud, and opposition politics must be serious, disciplined, and capable of governing. CHADEMA was conceived not as a protest movement, but as an institutional project rooted in accountability, constitutionalism, and ethical leadership.
This is where Mwalimu Julius Nyerere is often misunderstood. Nyerere was not opposed to multi-party politics. In the end, he accepted and endorsed it. What he feared was not pluralism, but frivolous politics—parties without ideas, discipline, or a national vision. He believed multi-party democracy would only work if it produced a serious alternative capable of taking power responsibly.
It was in this context that Nyerere remarked that CHADEMA was the only political party he considered serious enough to take the reins of power. This was not ideological endorsement. It was recognition of organisational seriousness, intellectual depth, and moral grounding—qualities that bore the unmistakable imprint of Mtei’s political philosophy.
Strongest political party
When Mtei died recently, he left CHADEMA as the strongest political party in Tanzania, despite relentless repression, bans, arrests, intimidation, and violence. That fact alone is an indictment of the current regime. A party built on ideas and organisation has endured. A government armed with the full machinery of the state survives increasingly through fear rather than consent.
The contrast is unavoidable.
Where Mtei believed in institutions, today’s rulers rely on raw power. Where Mtei defended professional independence, today’s government enforces blind loyalty. Where Mtei built political competition, today’s rulers criminalise it.
READ MORE: Edwin Mtei, Founder of CHADEMA and Tanzania’s First Central Bank Governor, Dies at 93
In From a Goatherd to Governor, Mtei warned that independence did not repeal the laws of economics and that ideology could never substitute competence. He also grasped a deeper truth: when leaders abandon principle, violence becomes their last instrument of rule. Tanzania’s present—marked by enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the plunder of public resources—is the consequence of that abandonment.
Edwin Mtei lived long enough to witness both the promise of independence and its betrayal. His life proves that Tanzania’s crisis is not inevitable; it is the result of choices made by leaders who traded integrity for power.
An argument for integrity
In death, Mtei leaves behind more than a book or a political party. He leaves behind a standard—one that today’s corrupt, unprincipled, and violent rulers cannot meet. His life was an argument for integrity. His politics were an argument for serious competition.
And his legacy remains a challenge to a nation struggling to remember what leadership once meant.
On November 24, 2026, Edwin Isaac Mtei was laid to rest at his farm in Tengeru, Arusha, the land he returned to after a lifetime of principled service. It is fitting that a man who refused to enrich himself through public office should find his final rest in the soil of honest labour.
READ MORE: The Mtei Legacy: A Lesson in Disagreement Without Destruction
We bury him with gratitude for a profoundly resourceful and selfless life, and with a quiet sorrow that such integrity has become rare. Mtei proved that one could rise from nothing, hold great power, disagree without hatred, oppose without violence, and still walk away clean.
As the earth closes over him, it seals a moral testament: that leadership rooted in ideas outlives leadership enforced by fear, that integrity endures beyond office, and that Tanzania once produced leaders whose example still judges our present and lights the path forward.
Undeonyonya handu heche Meeku oo Ruwa, uendelee ilulosha lubaki Wandu wa Loi, Haki na Msimamo
John Kitoka is a political analyst and the Director of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs for CHADEMA. He’s available at kitoka2000@gmail.com. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.
