information:filtering, structural:expansion, quality:correction
Touring Tanganyika: 1955–1959

Nyerere returned to Dar es Salaam in October 1955. From then until Tanzania secured independence, he toured the country almost continuously, often in TANU's Land Rover. The British colonial Governor of Tanganyika, Edward Twining, disliked Nyerere, regarding him as a racialist who wanted to impose indigenous domination over the European and South Asian minorities. In December 1955, Twining established the "multi-racial" United Tanganyika Party (UTP) to combat TANU's African nationalist message. Nyerere nevertheless stipulated that "we are fighting against colonialism, not against the whites". He befriended members of the white minority, such as Lady Marion Chesham, a U.S.-born widow of a British farmer, who served as a liaison between TANU and Twining's government. A 1958 editorial in the TANU newsletter Sauti ya Tanu (Voice of TANU) that had been written by Nyerere called on the party's members to avoid participating in violence. It also criticised two of the country's district commissioners, accusing one of trying to undermine TANU and another of putting a chief on trial for "cooked-up reasons". In response, the government filed three counts of criminal libel. The trial took almost three months. Nyerere was found guilty, with the judge stipulating that he could either pay a £150 fine or go to prison for six months; he chose the former.

Twining announced that elections for a new legislative council would take place in early 1958. These would be organised around ten constituencies, each electing three members of the council: one indigenous African, one European, and one South Asian. This would end the concentration of political representation entirely with the European minority, but still meant that the three ethnic blocs would receive equal representation despite the fact that indigenous Africans made up over 98% of the country's population. For this reason, most of TANU's leadership believed that it should boycott the election. Nyerere disagreed. In his view, TANU should participate and seek to secure the majority of the indigenous African representatives to advance their political leverage. If they abstained, he argued, the UTP would win the elections, TANU would be forced to operate entirely outside of government, and it would delay the process of attaining independence. At a January 1958 conference in Tabora, Nyerere convinced TANU to take part. In these elections, which took place over the course of 1958 and 1959, TANU won every seat it contested. Nyerere stood as TANU's candidate in the Eastern Province seat against an independent candidate, Patrick Kunambi, securing 2600 votes to Kunambi's 800. Some of the European and Asian candidates elected were TANU sympathisers, ensuring that the council was dominated by the party.