Dar es Salaam.  Twenty years after the death of Prof. Seithy Chachage, one question dominated a memorial gathering at the University of Dar es Salaam: What would Chachage do if he were alive today?

The question was not merely nostalgic.

It was posed against the backdrop of renewed concerns over academic freedom, the treatment of university lecturers, and the growing anxiety among scholars about where legitimate intellectual inquiry ends and criminal liability begins.

At the Chancellor’s Chamber of the University of Dar es Salaam(UDSM) on August 14,2026 academics, members of the Chachage family and former colleagues gathered to mark two decades since the death of the renowned sociologist. But the event quickly became more than a commemoration of a scholar who died on July 9, 2006. It became an examination of the intellectual space he fought to defend and whether the ideals he championed remain secure today.

The Chachage Memorial Dialogue 2026 was organised around the theme “Intellectual Freedom and the Future of African Universities.” Its central lecture, delivered by Dr. Ng’waza Kamata, a former colleague of Chachage, asked a deliberately provocative question: “What Would Chachage Do Today? Intellectual Freedom, African Universities and the Challenges of Our Time.”

The answer, speakers suggested, may be uncomfortable. 

A scholar who refused to stay inside the university

Chachage was not simply a university professor.

He was a sociologist, Pan-Africanist, public intellectual and writer whose influence extended well beyond the boundaries of the university. During his career, he served as head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Dar es Salaam and chaired the University of Dar es Salaam Academic Staff Assembly (UDASA). He was also a prominent member and leader of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).

He was also among the scholars associated with the intellectual struggles that shaped the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility, part of a wider African movement to defend intellectual freedom and define the responsibilities of academics to society.

For Chachage, knowledge was never supposed to remain locked inside lecture theatres, libraries and academic journals.

He wrote scholarly books and articles, but he also wrote for newspapers, participated in radio and television discussions and engaged directly with ordinary citizens. His intellectual interests took him into communities and social struggles, particularly those involving working people and marginalised groups confronting systems and policies they regarded as oppressive.

That combination, rigorous scholarship and public engagement, became central to the portrait of Chachage presented at the memorial.

READ MORE: Beyond Geopolitics: Why Africa’s Intellectual Independence Matters

Prof. Elgidius Ichumbaki, the current UDASA chairperson, said Chachage believed the university had a responsibility to society beyond its institutional walls.

“Chachage believed academic freedom was not only for scholars, but for society as a whole,” Ichumbaki said, arguing that lecturers and students must have the freedom to pursue truth through critical examination of national and international affairs.

His point went to the heart of the memorial: academic freedom is not simply a privilege enjoyed by university employees. It is part of the wider social infrastructure through which societies question power, test ideas and correct mistakes.

But Ichumbaki then turned the commemoration into a question directed at the present.

Twenty years after Chachage’s death, does Tanzania’s academic environment still provide enough space for the kind of independent thinking he championed?

The university as a place for courage

The answer offered by UDASA was cautious but deeply concerned.

Ichumbaki argued that academic freedom must be protected deliberately and consistently if universities are to produce ideas capable of contributing to national development. He also called for state institutions to distinguish between legitimate academic activity and criminal conduct.

“Views expressed in classrooms and lecture halls should be assessed academically, not criminally,” he said.

The distinction matters because universities are, by their nature, places where ideas are tested. Some ideas may be unpopular, provocative or uncomfortable. The academic response, according to the speakers, should ordinarily be debate, evidence and intellectual criticism rather than intimidation.

“We are discussing and remembering Prof. Chachage as someone who stood for justice, who wanted truth to prevail and who wanted universities to be guided by facts and research without fear of what might happen to them,” Ichumbaki said. “Academic freedom is the life of a nation.”

That argument acquired greater urgency during the memorial because of recent cases involving university lecturers in Dodoma.

Speakers referred to the arrests of three lecturers from UDOM and St John’s University over lectures they had delivered to students, with one UDOM lecturer facing terrorism-related charges.

READ MORE: Fear and Frustration on Campus as University Lecturer is Charged with Terrorism

For Ichumbaki, the danger lies not only in individual arrests or prosecutions but in the wider atmosphere that such cases can create.

He warned against what he described as the “criminalisation of academic work” — treating ideas expressed within an academic context as criminal acts in ways that could intimidate lecturers and students.

The consequence, he argued, could be self-censorship.

When academics begin to worry that a lecture, argument or research finding could expose them to legal or administrative consequences, they may begin to avoid certain subjects altogether. The university can then remain physically open while becoming intellectually narrower.

And that, the speakers suggested, is precisely the kind of environment Chachage would have challenged.

“What would Chachage do?”

Dr. Ng’waza Kamata approached the question from personal experience.

He had first known Chachage as a teacher and later worked alongside him. His recollections painted a picture of a scholar who was not easily contained by conventional academic labels.

Kamata argued that, judged by some of today’s political vocabulary, Chachage himself might have been described as a “seditionist”.

“Perhaps he would have been charged with treason or terrorism,” Kamata said.

But he immediately turned the word “seditionist” on its head.

Yes, Chachage was a “seditionist”, he argued — but he provoked people to think.

He challenged students and colleagues to develop critical thinking. He questioned assumptions that allowed people to overlook injustice, exploitation, discrimination and abuse.

He was also deeply critical of political and economic power, including the policies associated with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

READ MORE: African Universities Urged to Reclaim Intellectual Leadership

This part of Chachage’s intellectual legacy is particularly relevant to the history of African universities.

When the university becomes a vocational school

Kamata recalled Chachage’s opposition to the shrinking role of universities during the rise of neoliberal policy reforms in Tanzania in the late 1980s and 1990s.

As governments across Africa faced pressure to restructure public spending, higher education came under increasing pressure to justify its costs and demonstrate immediate economic returns.

Chachage viewed that transformation with alarm.

Kamata recalled his frustration at what he regarded as the downgrading of the university’s intellectual mission.

“You are turning a university into a vocational school,” Chachage would argue. At other times, Kamata recalled, he described the university as becoming a “glorified high school.”

Two decades after his death, Kamata left the audience with another uncomfortable question:

Have Tanzanian universities already reached that point or are they still moving towards it?

The question is larger than funding. It concerns what society believes a university is for.

If a university exists only to produce workers with immediately marketable skills, then critical inquiry can easily be regarded as unnecessary, disruptive or even dangerous. But if the university is also expected to produce citizens capable of questioning policies, interrogating power and imagining alternatives, then intellectual independence becomes essential.

That was the university Chachage defended.

The chilling effect of fear

The memorial also highlighted a broader concern: the possibility that fear can reshape academic culture long before formal restrictions are imposed.

The scholars cited a recent statement by the Africa Coalition for Academic Freedom, which they said indicated that a significant proportion of academic freedom violations on the continent are linked to state interference and repression.

For Tanzania, Ichumbaki said, becoming part of such statistics would be a serious embarrassment for both the country and its academic community.

UDASA therefore called on authorities to refrain from interfering with legitimate academic freedom and to recognise the difference between intellectual disagreement and criminal behaviour.

The argument is not that universities should become spaces without rules or accountability. Rather, it is that academic institutions require room for disagreement, criticism and inquiry precisely because their purpose is to examine difficult questions.

Without that room, the fear is that the university will produce conformity instead of knowledge.

Remembering the person behind the professor

Yet the memorial did not portray Chachage only as a political or academic figure.

For his family, remembering him also meant recovering the human being behind the intellectual reputation.

His widow, Demere Kitunga,  a writer, publisher, Pan-africanist and advocate for gender equality, thanked UDASA and Chachage’s former comrades for inviting the family into a space where his intellectual life could be discussed collectively.

READ MORE: UDSM Scholars Ought to be Questioned on the Question of Western Sahara

Her recollection offered perhaps the most vivid answer to the question of who Chachage was.

She remembered a young Chachage who could examine global, national and social systems at their most fundamental levels and then find the language to explain them — whether through academic writing or artistic expression.

Was he the same Chachage who could stand on a stage with Issa Shivji, pick up a guitar and sing with a musician?

Was he the same person who could sit and talk with people drinking traditional brew in Manzese?

The same man who spent time with young people in Kinondoni?

And the same scholar who could stay awake at night, reading and writing under a lamp?

For Kitunga, the answer was probably yes.

If Chachage were alive today, she suggested, he might still be doing many of those things — perhaps in different forms, but with the same intellectual curiosity and social engagement.

The question that remains

That may ultimately be the most important lesson of the 20th-anniversary memorial.

Chachage’s legacy is not simply a collection of books, declarations, newspaper articles or memories. It is a way of understanding the university’s relationship with society.

He represented an idea of the African intellectual who does not retreat into an academic ivory tower, but moves between scholarship and public life; between theory and everyday experience; between the university and the street.

Twenty years after his death, Tanzania’s academic community is still debating many of the questions he confronted: Who should have the freedom to question power? Where should the boundaries of academic speech lie? What happens when criticism is interpreted as disloyalty? And what becomes of a university when fear begins to influence what lecturers teach and students are encouraged to question?

Perhaps that is why the question “What would Chachage do today?” resonated so strongly at the University of Dar es Salaam.

It is not really a question about predicting the behaviour of a dead man.

It is a question about the kind of university, and the kind of society, Tanzania wants to build.

And if Chachage’s life offers any answer, it is that universities cannot fulfil their social responsibility by remaining silent.

They must ask difficult questions. They must challenge assumptions. They must follow evidence. And, above all, they must preserve enough intellectual freedom for the next generation to imagine a better answer.