By William Shao
During Julius Nyerere’s era, political leaders were not allowed do business. Those who did so moved heaven and earth to keep it secret because the Arusha Declaration made it clear that they would be violating the Leadership Code. With Ali Hassan Mwinyi’s Second Phase Government, doing business became acceptable.

The year 1990 marked a significant turning point for Tanzania’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). That year, for the first time since independence, the party began to contemplate multi-partyism and to dismantle policies that had been implemented to bolster the one-party rule and enhance the state’s role.

By 1992, independent parties were allowed to register. The struggle that emerged in the 1980s between the government and the party over policies affecting the informal economy shaped the timing and nature of the new policies that were adopted.

For the most part, the party acted as a restraint on the government, which was facing more immediate external and internal pressures to liberalise, according to Brian van Arkadie in his 1995 book Economic Strategy and Structural Adjustment in Tanzania.

Nowhere was this conflict more apparent than in the party’s foot dragging over revising the Leadership Code after the government had already adopted measures that contradicted its very essence.

CCM finally abandoned the Leadership Code in what came to be known as the Zanzibar Declaration of 1991, which fundamentally modified the 1967 Arusha Declaration and challenged the original objectives of the document.

The symbolic importance of these changes cannot be emphasised enough, for the Arusha Declaration was the central document in establishing the egalitarian, self-reliant and socialist orientation that Tanzania had adopted.

The Leadership Code and Party Membership Rules associated with Julius Nyerere’s famous Declaration, which drove Tanzania’s political philosophy for 24 years, were revised significantly at a meeting in February 1991 in Zanzibar of the National Executive Committee of CCM.

Under what has come to be known as the Zanzibar Declaration, party members are authorised to participate in private economic activities. They can earn more than one salary, buy shares and take up directorships in private companies and build houses to let—all of which were expressly forbidden under the Arusha Declaration.

Explaining the changes, then CCM Secretary General, Horace Kolimba, said they would encourage more individual participation in economic activities and thus reduce the pressure on government institutions and parastatals.
Professionals were expected to seize the opportunity to apply themselves fully to income-generating side jobs, the impact of which would be to create more employment opportunities.

Kolimba admitted that many leaders and members of CCM had been involved in corrupt activities and dubious accumulation of wealth contrary to the Ujamaa policy. Many members had also started poultry schemes and housing projects in order to improve their economic conditions.

The trend now, the party leaders believed, was to create conditions in which CCM members and Tanzanians in general could lead prosperous lives. This, Kolimba said, was the essence of the decisions taken in Zanzibar, and they were not contrary to the Arusha Declaration. “When regimes are behind the times, it is necessary to ‘legitimise common sense’, said Kolimba.

Many party members expressed their dissatisfaction with the changes and National Executive Committee members visited the regions to explain the changes.

When the Leadership Code was first implemented, it was aimed at preventing party leaders from becoming part of a privileged group that exploited people through hiring labour or renting property.

The code was an attempt to stem the growing gap between the well-to-do and the poorer members of society. It was also an attempt to prevent the exchange of personal favours for political loyalty that were widespread in other parts of Africa and were beginning to emerge in Tanzania.

As Candid Scope put it in the 1981 book Honest to my Country,  the conditions of the Leadership Code were not only party policy. They were written into the country’s constitution by an amendment in 1967.

Members of Parliament would have to make a declaration to the Speaker that they had agreed to comply with the Leadership Code and to submit a sworn statement detailing their finances. Those who refused to make the declaration or whose statement failed to meet the requirements of the attorney-general could face a court petition to vacate their seats.

When the Leadership Code was first implemented, it was aimed primarily at senior party and government leaders and high- and middle-ranking civil servants. But it gradually came to apply to all leaders and party members who received a salary of more than Sh1,060.70.

The hiring of casual labour or seasonal labour on small farms was permitted, but not that of permanent or full-time labour. Leaders could, however, transfer property to a trust in their children’s name. No mention was made of hiring domestic servants, which was ostensibly permitted because no profits were made from their labour. Leaders were given one year to meet the stipulations of the Arusha Declaration.

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