John Mwakangale was one of the main leaders in the struggle for independence in Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) during British colonial rule.
[1][2][3][4] When the country gained independence, Mwakangale joined the first cabinet of Julius Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania as Minister of Labour.
[6] When the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) was formed in Dar es Salaam in July 1954 under the leadership of Julius Nyerere — in order to lead the struggle for independence, Mwakangale became one of its most prominent leaders in the country and in the Southern Highlands Province.
[7][8][9] He was also one of the leaders of the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) which was founded in Mwanza, Tanganyika, in September 1958 under the leadership of Julius Nyerere.
Mwakangale represented the Southern Highlands Province in the colonial legislature where together with his colleagues he continued to campaign for independence.
in Tanganyika from 1959 to 1962, wrote the following about John Mwakangale when he was a cabinet member serving as minister of labour under Prime Minister Nyerere: "Soon after Tanganyika became independent, and near the end of my time as a District Officer in Njombe, I received a call from the British manager of the Commonwealth Development Corporation’s wattle plantation and factory a few miles from the District Office.
The workers there were on strike for higher pay, in part because they expected to earn more now that the country was no longer a British colony.
However the local union leader sent a fiery telegram to the Minister of Labour, John Mwakangale in Dar es Salaam, in which he wrote that there was a dangerous crisis with provocative action by the British colonial District Officer and the police and that there was a 'danger of the spilling of blood.'
He telegrammed back to say he was coming to Njombe the next day and he sent us a very sharp message criticizing my action and asking to meet with us as soon as he arrived.
After meeting Mwakangale, Mandela flew to Dar es Salaam the next day where he met Julius Nyerere.
Nyerere denounced the hypocrisy of a policy favoring Africans in a country that was just about to emerge from a racially prejudiced colonial state.
Visibly angry, he argued that once racial bias was introduced to Tanganyikan politics its logic would take a life of its own, leading to widespread ethnic animosity: John Mwakangale also strongly opposed the recruitment of American Peace Corps to work in Tanganyika contending that they were there to destabilise and topple the government.
Attacks American Peace Corps," which was the main story on the front page of the Tanganyika Standard (renamed Daily News in 1972), 12 June 1964.
[14] Professor Henry Bienen, in his book, Tanzania: Party Transformation and Economic Development, stated that citizenship on non-racial basis and equality for all in the new nation of Tanganyika which was soon to achieve independence "provoked anti-Commonwealth and racialistic sentiments among TANU members in the National Assembly.
One MP (John Mwakangale), who was to become both a regional commissioner and a parliamentary secretary, said: 'I think 75 per cent of the non-African population still regard an African in Tanganyika as an inferior human being.
Under this threat, the Bill was carried overwhelmingly, but dissidence was not ended within TANU over racial issues which fed on economic imbalances.