Mkapa: Little boy who liked bread, honey buried a hero

He was a quiet boy in his childhood, and a son so attached to his father.
On Thursday, July 23, he became quiet forever. Benjamin William Mkapa, the third president of Tanzania who passed away at the age of 81 and was finally laid to rest close to his father and mother in a clan’s graveyard at Lupaso village, Masasi District.
Mkapa was the fourth born in the family of four chilrden to his father, William Matuani.

As all eyes and ears turned to Lupaso village, memories of a little boy who loved books and football, yet so quiet and attached to his family lingered on the mind of Ms Rose Magnus Mkapa, the maternal aunt of Mkapa.
At 95, Ms Rose is so frail and can barely walk. I find her seated outside her single bedroom brick- walled house, where her caretaker, a family member had placed her to speak to me.

She lives about 200 metres from the homestead of the late William Matuani, the father of Mkapa, where yesterday’s burial took place.
When I settle to speak to Rose, she wipes tears but as she goes on to speak, a faint smile finally emerges.
“He has been so good to us, not just his father and mother,’’ says Rose and she recalls a story of more than 70 years ago when the late Mkapa was still a school boy.
“He was a boy you could never meet in the village wandering aimlessly. It was him and books, only few occasions when I could spot him with a ball and friends, playing. His mother was a very strict person. I guess that is why he was well behaved,” she tells The Citizen.

“Somehow, I never liked his quietness, but that was him. I later realised that he was good in school. His father wished that became a doctor, a teacher or priest. He has indeed lived his life like a priest. Whenever he came back home, especially on Christmas, he was an active member of the church, and he has lived like that wherever he went,’’ says Rose.
At home, Mkapa had real love for home-made bread.

“My husband (Rose’s husband) was good at beekeeping and honey harvesting. That is when I knew Benjamin loved a sandwich of bread and honey. Whenever he returned for holidays from school, that’s what he always came yearning for.”
Mkapa, whose body arrived in Lupaso village on Tuesday, was finally buried yesterday and according to his clan, the Wakapa, members of the family have to be buried in designated graves close to each other.
Lupaso, the late Mkapa’s home, is not a spectacularly developed area and for years, villagers in Lupaso did not have a tarmac road.
The village centre enjoys hydroelectric power and for Rose, the road to Lupaso had been a headache.
“It was indeed challenging to transport the sick to the hospital far in Masasi town on that road.”

It is until last year on April 4, when President John Magufuli directed that the 12-kilometre road heading to the village be upgraded to tarmac.
“Is it wrong to construct a road leading to Mr Mkapa’s home village,’’ he said at a public event in Masasi as he brushed off criticisms from people who said he was favouring the former President. “I am doing this so that when it comes the time when he has to be taken there for burial, those taking his body can pass on tarmac road?”

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