Africa-Press – Tanzania. ✏️ *Content*
BIBI Titi Mohammed (June 1926 – 5 November 2000) was a Tanzanian politician and activist. She was born in June 1926 in Dar es Salaam, at the time the capital of former Tanganyika. She first was considered a freedom fighter and supported the first president of Tanzania,Julius Nyerere.
Bibi Titi Mohammed was a member of theTanganyika African National Union (TANU), the party that fought for the independence of Tanzania, and held various ministerial positions.
In October 1969, she was sentenced for treason, and, after two years in prison, received a presidential pardon. As she was growing up in the Matumbi tribe, her father refused to send her to school, because he feared she would lose her Muslim faith.
After her father died, her mother decided to send her to school, because she saw the importance of an education for a young woman.
Bibi Titi’s mother’s influence helped Bibi fight for women’s rights and helped her in her fight forindependence. At age fourteen, she married an older man, whom she divorced after the birth of her first child, a daughter named Halima.
Because of Bibi Titi’s ideals, her daughter was not allowed to marry, until she completed school. Bibi Titi later remarried and divorced two more husbands. Bibi Titi Mohammad began her public career as the lead singer in angoma(a dance and music group), where she celebrated the birth of the prophet Mohammed during Maulidi.
In the 1950s, after World War II, she started to get involved with the nationalist movement in Tanzania and on July 7, 1954, TANU was created by Julius Nyerere.
She became a close friend of his, after being introduced to him in 1954 by the driver of a family cab. In 1955, Mohammed became the chairperson of the ‘Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanzania’ (UWT – United Women of Tanzania), which was the women’s branch of TANU.
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