AfricaPress-Tanzania: MINISTER for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Prof Palamagamba Kabudi has commended the decision by government of compiling a special Swahili book that enhances public diplomacy between Tanzania and China.
Titled “A Monument to China-Africa Friendship: Firsthand Account of the Building of the TAZARA” the book was compiled by the Department of Policy Planning of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China in 2015.
Speaking during the launch, Prof Kabudi said the unveiling of the book was part of the wider approach of enhancing public diplomacy between the two brotherly countries.
“This book will not only serve to make Swahili a prominent language around the globe, but will certainly help to transcend the deep account about the China-Africa friendship to the majority of Tanzanians who are more conversant with Swahili than English,” he noted.
He said it will definitely lend a hand in keeping the historical description alive as observed by the late Benjamin Mkapa, the third phase president of Tanzania in his narration found at page 188 of the book.
He quoted ‘I think our media ought to look back on history too, not just the present’.
Prof Kabudi said it was crucial to remember how the past has brought the two nations to where they are today.
“It is very important. Whenever there are anniversaries of the opening of TAZARA…, we must keep the memory alive among our people. That’s one thing we have to do,” Expounding further, he said the request to Chairman Mao Zedong to build TAZARA was made by the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the father of the nation and Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the former President of the Republic of Zambia, at the height of the cold war.
He said it was made at a time when there existed the myth that the settler regimes in Southern Africa would last forever, and as such Zambia would have no outlet to the sea.
China offered at a time when every effort was being made to stifle the project.
This is the extent, in one part, to which China was ready to support the struggles of the people of Africa for economic, social and political development.
