Author: EDWARD QORRO
AfricaPress-Tanzania: FORMER personal bodyguard to third phase government President Benjamin William Mkapa has described himself as “an adopted son to the great leader,” Arusha Regional Commissioner (RC), Hassan Iddi Kimanta, who once served as a personal aide to Mr Mkapa for 17 years, hailed him for treating members of his security detail as his own children.
“Words cannot express the pain I’m going through after losing a parent in Mzee Mkapa. I still regard him as a father even in death,” recalled Mr Kimanta in a candid interview with ‘Daily News’ from Loliondo Town yesterday.
Mr Kimanta is still nostalgic for the loss as when he was called to serve in Mr Mkapa’s security detail, a day after the latter was sworn in the country’s top most office in October 1995.
“It’s a surreal experience for me, especially entering the State House for the first time and this would become my home for the next 10 years where I freely interacted with family members and they took me as their own,” remembers the former personal aide.
The regional commissioner would from there on accompany Mr Mkapa for different presidential assignments in and outside the country.
The former personal aide recalls how close he was to the President and how he offered security to him. This would include overseas trips and other diplomatic missions that the retired Head of State got involved in.
One, among many, according to Mr Kimanta, was the meeting that Juba be separated from Khartoum after the outcome of a 2005 peace deal that ended Africa’s longest-running civil war and his involvement in brokering a power sharing deal between President Mwai Kibaki and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga of Kenya in February 2008.
“Mkapa was so caring that he would always inquire about our families. He wanted to know how they were faring when we weren’t with them,” he recounts.
Mr Kimanta admits to have learnt a lot after being close to President Mkapa for more than 10 years. One of them is his punctuality.
“Mkapa’s time-consciousness was out of this world. He knew how to keep time and stood by his itineraries much to our surprise,” he says.
Mkapa a devout Catholic
According to Mr Kimanta, Mkapa had utmost respect for other religions and beliefs. Being a devout Catholic, Mr Mkapa still gave his aides freedom to worship even when he had a tight schedule.
“You couldn’t interfere with his prayer service, yet he still urged us to go to worship every Fridays,” he says.
The Arusha regional commissioner recalls the day Mkapa was shocked to learn that his aides were worshipping inside an incomplete building.
“I remember he gave me $5,000 for the completion of the mosque.”
Even after Mkapa’s retirement in 2005, Mr Kimanta continued serving as a personal aide to him until the latter was appointed Monduli District Commissioner in 2016.
