JOHANNESBURG—It was a day like no other before or since in Kibaha in eastern Tanzania.
On Feb. 23, 2022, a convoy of Land Rovers and army Land Cruisers, containing scores of officials from the Chinese and Tanzanian governments, roared into the small town.
Farmers put down their hoes; fishermen dropped their nets.
China’s “training school for present and future African leaders” is named after one of Africa’s post-colonial heroes.
Mr. Nyerere, a committed socialist, led Tanzania from 1961, when it became independent from Britain, until his party pressured him to retire in 1985.
Revered in Africa for advocating peaceful change, social equality, and ethnic harmony, he had a darker side. Opponents often accused Mr. Nyerere of autocratic rule, and at times, he jailed pro-democracy activists without trial.
He remained active in African political affairs until his death in 1999.
The political organization Mr. Nyerere founded in 1977—the Party of the Revolution, or Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), and its predecessor, the Tanganyika African National Union—have ruled Tanzania without interruption since the country’s independence 62 years ago.
CCM presidential candidates always win elections by landslides. Currently, 94 percent of members of Parliament are CCM members.
During her time in leadership, opponents have been charged with “terrorism” and “economic sabotage.”
The Nyerere Leadership School was funded with Chinese state money. However, on its website, the institution, calling itself a “modern Party School,” says it was “jointly established” by the Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa.
These are the CCM, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), the Mozambique Liberation Front, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), which rules Namibia, and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.
These parties have governed their respective countries for decades, with their rule often reinforced using corruption, fraudulent elections, and violent suppression of opposition.
“These countries’ ruling parties identify strongly with China,“ he told The Epoch Times. ”Like the CCP, these ruling elites maintain tight control of security agencies.
“They centralize all power in the state, with little to no appetite for independent oversight. These are all countries that were formerly ruled by white colonial or apartheid regimes.
“So this school, like China’s 61 Confucius Institutes in 46 African countries, is designed to counter Western ideals of democracy and to promote Chinese culture and language in Africa.
“When it establishes these institutions, China is indirectly saying to Africans, ‘Why should you follow what the racist West says is the best way of political governance? Why should you only speak English and French, the languages of the colonizers, when you can speak Chinese, too, which is the language of the future?’”
Confucius Institutes are “more subtle” attempts by Beijing to win influence in Africa, but the CCP “ultimately” controls them, Paul Nantulya, an expert on China and Africa relations at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, told The Epoch Times.
“Confucius Institutes are established through partnerships between Chinese universities, host country universities, and the Hanban. The Hanban is an agency of the Chinese Ministry of Education and is affiliated to the CCP. Its official brief is to promote Chinese language and culture,” he said.
“Confucius Institutes are based at African universities, but they’re funded and controlled by the Hanban.”
The Confucius Institutes and the Nyerere School show that China is willing to “play the long game in building influence” in Africa, Mr. Van Staden said.
“I’m sure the school in Tanzania won’t be the last of its kind in Africa,” he added.
Professor Ibbo Mandaza, a renowned Southern African academic and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, told The Epoch Times that the school is “blatant proof” that Beijing is exporting its model of governing.
“It’s part of its effort to challenge the Western-led world order, to establish a New World Order, and a key part of this New Order in the future will be a political bloc in Africa that either turns a blind eye to authoritarianism, or is authoritarian itself,” he said.
The Nyerere School’s principal, Marcellina Chijoriga, who is also a leading CCM member, told The Epoch Times in a brief interview that the institution “has at its core the promotion of African economic and social development and to end poverty.”
“The best way to do this is to train better leaders,” she stated.
Collin Ngujapeua, an official of Namibia’s ruling SWAPO party, participated in a “training course” at the Nyerere School in 2023.
“These Chinese teachers came in; they said they were political theory experts from the CCP’s Central Party School in Beijing,“ he told The Epoch Times. ”Over a few days, they told us about how they govern, and why China as a state is so successful.
“Basically, their message was that real development in a country can only happen when the ruling party has absolute control over everything and that only extreme discipline in the party can prevent outsiders from causing things to fall apart.”
Mr. Ngujapeua said the “Chinese theoreticians” explained that “governance will only succeed if ruling parties and governments are one and the same, and speak with one voice.”
Mr. Van Staden said the CCP’s founding principle is “absolute party control of government.”
“China absolutely doesn’t want multiparty democracy in Africa. The Chinese want the stability brought about by doing business with a single party, forever. They don’t like anything that upsets the apple cart.
“The CCP wants autocracy in Africa. It wants de facto single-party rule in Africa because that makes it much easier for it to achieve its goals in Africa,” he said.
“What better way for the Chinese to get access to Africa’s vast mineral wealth than to have in place regimes that are totally on the same page as the CCP?“ Mr. Mandaza said. ”That are closely tied to the CCP?”
The school in Kibaha is open only to “up-and-coming, usually young” members of African ruling parties, according to Ms. Chijoriga.
“The fact that opposition politicians aren’t allowed into the facility says everything about what’s going on here: Grooming of future political leaders to be allies of Beijing, and enemies to the West,” Mr. Mandaza said.
Ms. Chijoriga denied that the institution is “teaching the dictators of tomorrow” and was a “mouthpiece for China propaganda.”
She insisted: “It is undeniable that China’s development model has succeeded over the past 20 years and more. Africa is not the only one learning from China, the whole world is.
“China’s economic success is because it has had the strong leadership of the CCP. We must follow that map.”
Asked why her school enrolled only members of ruling elites, and excluded members of opposition parties, Ms. Chijoriga claimed African opposition parties were “against” China, and “pro-West.”
“Why must we accept these disrupters into our school?” she asked. “They will only cause trouble.”
The seeds for the school’s construction were sown at the 2017 summit of former liberation movements of southern Africa. After the meeting, the six parties involved pledged to support one another to stay in power, with China’s assistance.
They also adopted a document titled, “War with the West.” It accuses former colonial powers and the United States of “seeking regime change” in Africa, financing opposition challengers, and even “coup plots.”
The summit concluded that the Beijing-funded “political school for ideology” was needed to guard against such “threats.”
Mr. Nantulya said the purpose of the Chinese government’s cooperation with Africa’s former liberation movements “has never been a secret.”
“Along with the CCP, these ruling parties represent a united front. This ‘united front’ is a CCP strategy that garners support around the world to advance the CCP’s and China’s interests and to isolate perceived enemies,” he said.
“So what China is doing, slowly but surely on the continent with its education facilities, is to create a crop of Africans that agree with the CCP’s way of doing things when it comes to political governance.
“This in turn will open up a lucrative front for China in the Africa of the future.”
Mr. Mandaza said in the race for access to Africa’s resources—which include minerals essential to the functionality of modern-day electronic devices, electric vehicles, and weapons systems—China is doing “anything and everything possible” to win the hearts and minds of young Africans.
“The long-term idea is that educated Africans will gaze to China rather than Europe and America for leadership, blueprints for social, economic and political development, and intellectual motivation,” he said.
Mr. Mandaza added that this approach is, in itself, a colonial model.
“Colonialism was never just about foreigners simply stealing land in order to get gold, diamonds, coal, or whatever. It was also about the systematic and systemic indoctrination of indigenous people, and especially their leaders, in order for the colonizers to achieve cultural domination and exploitation.”
Today, the CCP flag flutters in the Indian Ocean breeze alongside those of Africa’s former liberation movements at the entrance to the school in Kibaha.
“That flag is there for several purposes,” Mr. Mandaza said.
“One of those purposes is symbolic, to symbolize China’s cooperation with Africa. But Africans should remember that their former colonizers also loved planting foreign flags all over the continent, and constructing fancy buildings.”
