Nape in familiar territory after his exit from Cabinet

Dar es Salaam. The sacking of Nape Nnauye from the Information, Sports and Culture docket yesterday for his principled stand on media freedom has thrown him back into a familiar territory with familiar taglines; a “rebel with a cause,” and a “maverick who always speaks his mind.”

As a young, senior party cadre Mr Nnauye went through a similar situation in 2008 after he was expelled from the influential CCM’s Youth Wing (UVCCM) for publicly accusing the Wing’s leaders of corruption.

On July 15, 2008, Mr Nnauye told reporters in Dodoma that the then chairman of the Board of Trustees of UVCCM, Mr Edward Lowassa, and the then chairman of UVCCM, Dr Emmanuel Nchimbi, had entered into a fraudulent deal with an investor to develop the Wing’s plot located along the Morogoro Road in Dar es Salaam. He was immediately labelled a traitor as Dr Nchimbi accused him of revealing UVCCM’s secrets.

“In any organisation there are rebels. We will deal with them,” Dr Nchimbi, who has recently been appointed by President John Magufuli as Tanzania’s ambassador to Brazil, said.

On August 19, 2008, Mr Nnauye was disqualified from contesting the UVCCM chairmanship position and, on the same day, was expelled from the Youth Wing. UVCCM also advised the CCM national leadership to relieve him of all his leadership positions in the party.

Mr Nnauye, who was at that time both a member of CCM National Executive Committee (NEC) and a member of the UVCCM supreme council, was seeking to contest for the chairmanship of UVCCM in the election that was to take place later that year.

The CCM’s National NEC meeting chaired by its then chairman Jakaya Kikwete rescinded UVCCM’s decision to expel him on September 10, 2008, ordering that he be given an opportunity to appeal. Mr Kikwete also resisted pressure to relieve him of his NEC position. The same meeting vindicated Mr Nnauye by ordering a review of the CCM’s Morogoro Road property deal.

The political heat and the wave of attacks that the then 31-year-old young man withstood, from the likes of party stalwarts such as Rashid Kawawa (then CCM’s youth adviser), Kingunge Ngombare Mwiru, (then UVCCM commander) and Yusuf Makamba (then CCM’s secretary-general), was enough to break the career of the most experienced politician. Kawawa, Kingunge and Makamba had been colleagues of his father Moses Nnauye in CCM in the 1970s and the 1980s. Mr Nnauye was a famous CCM propagandist who, in his heydays, was feared and respected in equal measure. He died in 2001 at the age of 64.

“We have some young party members who are fond of criticising party leaders. They are wrong because the young must respect the elders. We will deal with them,” Mr Makamba had said, adding that the expulsion of Mr Nnauye from UVCCM had no appeal “on the earth on in heaven.”

Kawawa, an independence struggle hero and a longtime leader of the Tanganyika African National Union and CCM, died in 2009. It is not clear whether, during the 2008 ordeal, Mr Nnauye ever doubted his political destiny. Because the mistake he had done, and which was the cause of his troubles, was grave enough at the time and could have been considered as a political suicide. The mistake was going against the deep-pocketed Mr Lowassa, who was then the most powerful politician in CCM. Despite the fact that Mr Lowassa had just fallen from grace, after being forced to resign from the Prime Minister post, in the wake of the Richmond corruption scandal, he remained the most influential member in the party.

But as it turned out the crisis emboldened Mr Nnauye and transformed his political career. But the crisis, which made headlines almost daily, threw him into the national limelight.

When he visited the Parliament’s debating chamber on August 29, 2008 he was received with a thundering approval from MPs. They gave him a minute-long standing ovation. Soon afterwards President Kikwete appointed him a District Commissioner and, in April 2011, President Kikwete went ahead and appointed him into the new CCM’s Secretariat as Ideology and Publicity Secretary. Mr Abdulrahman Kinana was appointed secretary- general.

Mr Nnauye made reference to his 2008’s troubles yesterday as he addressed reporters outside the Protea Hotel, where had been scheduled to hold a press conference, but which was cancelled after security agents blocked him from entering the hotel.

“I was once expelled from the party, but I bounced back. Both, my loyalty to the party and my patriotism, are beyond reproach. My concern is for the future of this country,” he noted, indicating that he had not been shaken by yesterday’s turn of events. The combative young man also re-assumed the mantle of a maverick; “I always speak my mind. That is what my party taught me in one of its sacred credos ‘I will always speak the truth and I will abhor falsehood’,” Mr Nnauye said urging the youth to never fear, “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

To many analysts his sacking has come as a shock considering the role he played in ensuring CCM’s win in the 2015 General Election. His appointment to the cabinet soon after the election was, in fact, seen as a vote of confidence from President Magufuli. He touched that subject yesterday as he complained of how security agents manhandled him as they were preventing him from holding a press conference.

“Who are you to point a pistol at me? I slept in the trenches as I was reviving the party, when y’all were drinking beer,” Mr Nnauye said addressing the security agents present.

In fact, the 2011 appointment to the CCM secretariat had put him in the frontline of CCM’s politics as the weakened party fought its way towards the 2015 General Election.

Mr Nnauye and Mr Kinana took over the CCM secretariat at the time when the party had lost credibility due to rampant corruption and visited every CCM branch in Tanzania Mainland in a campaign to “take the party back to the people.”