The passing of Prof Geoffrey Raphael Vehaeli Mmari has deprived Tanzania of a distinguished educationist and a public servant of uncommon integrity.
I worked under him when he was Vice Chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) from 1988 to 1991. Many will remember the institutions he led.
I remember, above all, the courage he showed when confronted with injustice-and the protection he afforded those who spoke against it.
My most vivid memory concerns the death of a female student, Revina Mukasa, in February 1990, following a period of harassment associated with the notorious clandestine organisation known as ‘Punch’.
To younger readers, Punch may sound like an innocent student publication. It was nothing of the kind. Operating anonymously, it terrorised students, especially women, by posting sexually degrading cartoons, malicious allegations and humiliating drawings on campus walls, often overnight.
Women who resisted unwanted advances or asserted their independence could find themselves publicly ridiculed. Male students who defended them risked being targeted too. Fear spread well beyond the immediate victims: friends and colleagues sometimes kept their distance lest they become the next target.
I understood this cruelty personally. During my own student years at the Faculty of Agriculture in Morogoro, a similar group, the ‘Rovers’, harassed female students, including me. Such intimidation was no harmless undergraduate prank. It attacked women’s dignity and their right to pursue education without fear.
Revina’s death shocked the university community. I prepared and circulated a protest statement demanding action against Punch and accountability for the harassment.
I then went to Prof Mmari’s office and demanded the immediate suspension of the male students suspected of involvement.
I can still see him sitting behind his desk, looking at me with sympathy. He told me that a copy of my statement had already reached him through government channels and that he now had to go to Dodoma to account for it as well.
Those words conveyed the pressures under which he worked. I was a lecturer publicly challenging an entrenched and feared practice.
He was a Vice Chancellor answerable to authorities who did not always welcome outspoken criticism. Another administrator might have rebuked me, disowned my protest or sacrificed me to protect himself. Pro Mmari did not.
He listened, understood why I was angry and did not throw me under the bus. I have never forgotten that moment. For me, it remains the clearest demonstration of his integrity: not simply personal honesty, but the willingness to stand by a colleague, especially a subordinate, when doing so could be uncomfortable.
The tragedy prompted protests and demands for accountability. Disciplinary measures followed, and Punch’s grip on campus life gradually weakened.
Its disappearance cannot be credited to one individual; women students, fellow academics and others fought to end its abuses. But it was Prof Mmari’s leadership that helped lay the foundation for dismantling that culture of intimidation. Revina’s life, and the injustice surrounding her death, must not disappear from our institutional memory.
This was also an exceptionally difficult period for UDSM. President Ali Hassan Mwinyi’s structural adjustment reforms were reshaping Tanzania’s economy. Students faced declining purchasing power and inadequate services, while questions of political accountability and academic freedom generated fierce debate. The major student protests of 1990 culminated in the university’s closure on 12 May.
Prof Mmari preferred dialogue to coercion. I believe that approach was sometimes mistaken for weakness by those who wanted the university brought firmly into political line. When he was replaced in 1991, I regarded his departure as a loss to the university and a warning about the fragility of independent institutional leadership. The government’s private motives cannot be known with certainty; the costs of discouraging dialogue, however, deserve reflection.
Under his leadership, I felt free and encouraged to research the social consequences of structural adjustment, including poverty, food security, gender inequality and social service delivery including health insurance. That work contributed to the Second UDSM Convocation Seminar of April 3-4, 1991, which I organised with his support. President Mwinyi attended and opened the discussions. We were able to bring research and government into direct, serious dialogue.
I trace part of the intellectual foundations of Tanzania’s later social-action programmes, including present-day Tanzania Social Action Fund (Tasaf), to those discussions and the policy work that followed. Ideas often take years to become institutions. A university leader’s contribution is not measured only by papers published during his tenure, but by the freedom he gives researchers to begin difficult work.
Prof Mmari’s resilience was equally remarkable. Having been founding Vice-Chancellor of Sokoine University of Agriculture before coming to UDSM, he later built the Open University of Tanzania into an important avenue of access to higher education. He continued to serve at Tumaini University Dar es Salaam College. When he invited me from my United Nations posting in Nairobi to be guest of honour at a graduation ceremony at Karimjee Grounds, I was touched by the warmth of our reunion.
Tanzania should remember him not only for the universities he helped build, but for the kind of leadership he practised: principled, patient and prepared to listen. My memory will always return to that office in 1990, when defending a young woman’s dignity was politically uncomfortable, and my Vice-Chancellor did not abandon me or condemn my activism for justice to women.
Rest in eternal peace, Prof Mmari. You taught me that integrity is proved most clearly when it carries a cost.
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