Julius Nyerere: He Gave Up Power Voluntarily. In 1985. In Africa.

He translated Shakespeare into Swahili while running a country. Then he did something almost no leader of his generation would do: he walked away from power.

Julius Nyerere was a goat herder who didn't start school until he was twelve. He became a teacher, then led Tanganyika to independence in 1961 without a war, and went on to create Tanzania. He united more than 120 ethnic groups under one language, banned leaders from getting rich off their jobs, turned Tanzania into a base for Africa's liberation movements, and drove Idi Amin out of Uganda. But his Ujamaa experiment forced millions of people into planned villages, the economy collapsed, and critics were jailed without trial. In 1985 he stepped down on his own, and admitted he had got things wrong.