Passing the Baton

October 28: Tanzania General Election

It is decided. Tanzania will be voting for a president and National Assembly members on October 28. The threat posed by the Covid-19 global pandemic has lost the immediacy that it had in the first three months of 2020. Despite the fact that cases in the region are by most accounts running rampant (the president of neighboring Burundi died, possibly of COVID-19, two weeks after June elections in that country), Tanzania’s government has officially stood by its own President’s declaration that it was Covid19-free as of late May. Even its own citizens have little sense of how many have become sick or died. The campaigns for the General Elections kicked off in July 2020.

So much has happened in these last few weeks that it is hard to choose where to begin. Perhaps I shall start with the passing of Benjamin William Mkapa (Tanzania’s president from 1995 to 2005) on July 23—officially of a heart attack. Mkapa had just published a memoir titled My Life, My Purpose to great interest and discussion. Tanzania is in the early stages of her modern history and the “crafters” of our current democracy are only now setting about documenting their crafting publicly.

President Mkapa was an acolyte of our First President, Julius Nyerere. It is important to note this because of the “pass the baton” nature of ascension to Presidency in the dominant ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), which along with its predecessor, has ruled Tanzania since it gained independence in 1961. The late President Mkapa was a strong supporter of the current President John Magufuli, during his 2015 campaign and in the early months of his administration. Interpersonal relationships and implicit blessings carry huge weight in Tanzanian politics. 

And here we are today.

My last article for The Ballot introduced the question at the heart of this year’s general elections: is Tanzania a multi-party country or is it not? This time, I am looking at President Magufuli, who is up for re-election this year, to ask what he has done to Tanzanian democracy.

As soon as he was sworn in in 2015, President Magufuli was immediately dismissive of the idea of reforming Tanzania’s constitution to address the fact that Tanzania has only one real party with any power. He has remained consistently uninterested since. His vision for the country is developmentalist: one where the government is placed at the center, rule is forceful and investment in infrastructure is prioritized over investment in social services. The constitution has not been overhauled since it was designed in 1977 by Nyerere, who, as I wrote in my last dispatch, was eager to shore up his own power.

There is no ambiguity about the Magufuli administration’s prioritization of the executive branch over all others: arguably the judiciary is compromised and the legislature has lost much of the vigor and credibility it had slowly accrued over several decades. This past June, the legislature approved a bill granting the president immunity in cases of omission of duties.

President Magufuli has managed to enforce a regime of personal rule the likes of which Tanzania has not seen since the days of our first president. This includes tightening his grip on the ruling party, the CCM, which has enjoyed a long tradition of fierce internal competition and diversity-as well as factionalism and fracture. Magufuli’s tight grip has included “disciplinary measures” against lifelong Party members who dared to vocally disagree with him: elders of state such as former Secretary General Abdulrahman Kinana and Dar es Salaam stalwart Yussuf Makamba.  

One way in which resistance to this erosion of democracy has manifested itself is in the movement for an independent National Electoral Commission to supervise elections and prevent fraud. The NEC was established in 1993 and for years operated as an independent oversight body. The NEC has behaved in interesting manners, going after other political parties for non-compliance in fundraising and use of funds while being noticeably silent on the ruling party’s behavior. Amongst other things, harassment has been observed, commentary on peace and politics have been curtailed, the only party that has been guaranteed public gatherings and safety from violence has been CCM.

The ruling party is an old hand at power. CCM is an umbrella party in the sense that many opinions and even ideologies are housed within it. Internal arguments, such as whether Tanzania needs a strongman president or not, whether the NEC should be reformed or not, sometimes leak out of the confines of party headquarters on the historic Lumumba Street in Dar es Salaam and into semi-public conversation, a practice that seems to have historic roots in the party itself. CCM’s full name, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, translated to “Party of the Revolution.”  The “Revolutionary” in the party name is not just for show: Tanzania has been friend to many liberation movements within and without the borders of the continent of Africa, with strong, if forgotten, ties to the Civil Rights movement in the United States. The party contains a mix of pragmatists, fighters and dreamers.

President Magufuli has also taken actions that at first could be seen as democratic. This year—2020—in the lead up to the General Elections, President Magufuli opened up the voting system for parliamentary contenders in his party for a very fair and transparent process—on the surface. He requested that all civil servants and public servants who wanted to run for any kind of elected office resign from their government role. Many sought to enter politics: the civil service and other professions saw a distressing exodus of academicians and professionals in the feeding frenzy for political power. Everyone from university professors to private sector and public sector management level employees either resigned or took time off to “take forms” from the NEC to apply to run for office, as the colloquial term goes. It raised a question amongst the populace: “what exactly is so attractive about politics right now?” But in the end, Magufuli has continued to do his best to influence who, exactly, climbs the ranks of the CCM.

Speaking of the votership, we know we are considered peripheral to this particular situation. Actions taken by the government to limit dissent and public criticism have become increasingly draconian in recent weeks. Government regulations on media have restricted reporting in traditional media and social media through hostile rules that are clearly designed to give the power of voice only to government outlets. Members of the intelligentsia and activists for democracy have tried to protest the co-optation of the NEC by wearing white, which is understood to signify peace (and may be the last color not associated with a particular party) and demanding an independent Committee to give opposition a fair chance. One needs a police permit to gather, but those outside the CCM have a harder time getting one.

But this may backfire. Repressive government actions have worked in the favor of the opposition parties as our interest in how to vote strategically increases. One question is: how much more of this Magufuli-ism can we take? Who wants more, who wants less, why, and what can we do about it?

This is where the opposition steps in. For the first time in a long time it seems from the national mood that substantial segments of the population may have had enough of CCM. As I have stated before, this election is not about changing presidents, but about working the system and imagining alternative political futures. 

Now the opposition seems to have new strength: Tundu Lissu, a lawyer and a former parliamentarian returned this past month as a candidate from the opposition party Chadema, a fiscally conservative party that is currently a central pillar of the opposition. He was the target of an assassination attempt in 2017 and has been in Belgium since. He is flanked by formidable colleagues and competitors in the social democratic ACT-Wazalendo party through candidate Bernard Membe and the Zanzibar-based Civic United Front (CUF) party through candidate and economics professor Ibrahim Lipumba.

Tanzania is a multi-party democracy on paper and sometimes in practice. Together, these prime contenders and others present the front that will try to win against the ruling party. Their stories and nuances will be discussed in the next piece as the ongoing campaigns give shape to October 28 under the shadow of a global pandemic that seems to have spared us—so far as we know—before we go to the polls.

This article has been updated to reflect that Bernard Membe is now the ACT-Wazalendo candidate.