TANZANET-KANDORO PRIZE
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Biographical Note

SAADAN ABDUL KANDORO was born in Ujiji, by the Lake Tanganyika, December 28, 1926 and was educated at Bwiru Teachers Training College. The years that he spent in the college, between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, were important in the shaping of his poetic sensibility.

One of the most widely acclaimed Kiswahili poets, Saadan Abdul Kandoro published many collections of poems and essays before his death in Dar-Es-Salaam in 2001. At the age of eighteen he took up an appointment with the treasury department in Tabora and worked towards the establishment of native welfare and cooperative unions.

As a young man, Kandoro was a political activist and he was among the seventeen founders of Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). He held various political positions, including Councillor, Administrative Secretary and District Commissioner until his retirement from active politics in 1970 to take up farming.

In 1969 he was appointed the country's Poet Laureate by the Tanzania's Academy of Letters. Kandoro did maintain several literary relationships during his lifetime, including a fifteen-year public sparing with his uncle, the renowned East African poet, Sheikh Amri Abeid. The acquaintance resulted in one of Sheikh Abeid's masterpieces "........" written as a riposte to Saadan's supposedly presumptive poetry in 1963. Other influential literary relationships during his later years include the lates Shaaban Robert, Saleh Kibwana, Mdanzi Hanasa, J.K Nyerere, Mathias Mnyapala and Sheikh Rajab Tambwe.

In his obituary the President of Tanzania described him as a "an acknowledged master of style, ...his uncommon esthetic asceticism have indebted later writers." One reads most of Kandoro's poems with hypnotic interest reserved for reading masters.

Dr. Aziz P. Mlima
Kandoro Prize Committee, 2001

Historia ya Kandoro

BWANA SAADANI ABDU KANDORO alizaliwa Kasingirima Street, Ujiji, Mkoa wa Kigoma tarehe 8 Desemba 1926. Baada ya masomo ya shule ya Msingi Ujiji, aliendelea na masomo yake kwenye shule ya serikali ya Iringa, Mwanahela School na Teechers Training School, Bwiru.

Mwaka 1944, bwana kandoro aliingia katika Idara ya kuweka Hazina Uyui Tabora. Katika miaka iliyofuata alishughulika sana na kuanzisha vyama vya ushirika na ustawi wa jamii ya Waafrika na hatimaye alikuwa Diwani wa Kwanza katioka Advisory Council ya Mji wa Tabora. Katika Mwaka 1952, alikuwa Provincial Secretary wa Tanganyika African Association, Lake Province. Mwaka 1954, alikuwa miongioni mwa watu 17 walioanzisha chama cha TANU mjini Dar Es Salaam. Aliendelea Akawa Provincial Secreretary wa TANU Dodoma na Tabora, na baadaye akafanikiwa kuwa Administartive Secretary kwenye Makao Makuu ya Chama.

Mwaka 1962, aliteuliwa kuwa Katibu wa TANU wa Wilaya na Kamishna wa Wilaya ya Mafia, na mwaka 1964 alikuwa katibu wa TANU wa Wilaya ya Bagamoyo m apaka alipoaacha kazi mwaka 1970. Bwana Kandoro alifariki Mwaka 2001, akiwa Mkulima.

Bwana Kandoro alijifunza mashairi alipokuwa na mwanchuoni na alikuwa mwandishi wa mashairi toka hapo. Mashairi yake, yametokea katioka magazeti mengi, kama vile Mambo leo, na alipambana kwa maandishi na mabingwa wengine kama mashairi kama vile akina Marehemu Shaaban Robert, Sheikh Amri Abedi, Salehe Kibwana, Mdanzi Hanasa, Mathias Mnyapala Rajabu Tambwe, na wengineo wengi tu ambao walikuwa pia marafiki zake.

Aidha bawana Kandoro amaendikiana mashairi kadhaa na Baba wa Taifa Mwalimu J.K. Nyerere. Mwaka 1969 aliteuliwa na chama cha Usanifu wa Kiswahili na Ushairi Tanzania kuwa Mmoja wa waamuzi katika Mashindano ya Mashairi ya Azimio la Arusha.

Dr. Aziz P. Mlima
Kandoro Prize Committee, 2001