Election petitions rock 1980 polls
Dar es Salaam. The first high profile election petition cases were filed after the 1980 parliamentary election results were announced. This was after some of the losers in the election rushed to court to challenge the results.
Some of the cases that dominated the headlines in the press included those filed against the wins of Simon Chiwanga who had won the Dodoma Urban parliamentary district and Chediel Mgonja who won the Pare parliamentary district.
The two, political heavyweights at the time, lost the cases and their seats.
Chiwanga who ran successfully in the Dodoma Urban parliamentary district in 1970 was among the Cabinet ministers who lost in the 1975 elections. He was the minister for National Education at the time.
According to historical records more than 75 per cent of MPs failed to defend their seats in the 1975 polls. They included the minister for Lands, Housing and Urban Development Musobi Mageni Musobi a deputy minister in the East African Community Affairs, Saleh Tambwe.
Chiwanga was defeated in 1975 by Severino Andrea Supa who got 24,865 votes. Chiwanga got 20,507 votes. 749 votes were spoilt. But in the 1980 polls Chiwanga made a comeback against Supa with 34,107 votes against Supa’s 25,339 votes. 914 votes were spoilt. 75,010 voters registered to vote but only about 60,360. After failing to defend his seat Supa rushed to court on grounds that Chiwanga bribed farmers from Nkong’onta village with hand hoes. Nkong’onta village was located where the University of Dodoma is now built.
Supa won the election petition and a by-election was scheduled. Supa and Chiwanga took nomination forms by their names could not sail through.
CCM’s central committee appointed Sala Mwenge and Donald Kusenhta to run for the Dodoma Urban parliamentary district. Sala Mwenge carried the district. In the Pare parliamentary district it was a voter, William Bakari and others who went to court to challenge Mgonja’s win. The voters claimed the Mgonja’s victory was illegal. Mgonja had run an unsuccessful campaign in 1970 but won in the 1975 polls. He defended his seat in the October 26, 1980 polls with 17,156 votes against 14,464 of his opponent Francis Emmanuel Manongi. 895 votes were spoilt. 35,628 voters registered and 32,545 turned out to vote.
Mgonja had been in the Cabinet since 1965 when he served as minister for Culture and Development till 1967. In 1967 he was appointed minister of State in the President’s Office (Foreign Affairs) and the following year he was named the minister for National Education. Mgonja is the Tanzanian official who read out the statement in which Tanzania officially recognized Biafra as a separate state from Nigeria.
When he ran in the 1970 elections he was minister for National Education but lost his seat. Instead President Julius Nyerere appointed him Mtwara Regional Commissioner. This was the period when the Mozambican war of independence was gaining speed and Mtwara was in the “front line.”
In the appeal opened by William Bakari and others against Mgonja and the Attorney General in the High Court the petitioners won. The petitioners had successfully argued that Mgonja had participated in the stealing of votes. Not only did the High Court annul Mgonja’s victory but banned him from participating in any election in ten years.
Mgonja first went to Parliament in 1965 when he ran in the Pare parliamentary district, which was then in Tanga Region. Later on the district was shifted to Kilimanjaro Region.
The case against Mgonja was conducted in court for about two years, between 1981 and 1982. Mgonja won in the lower courts on the grounds that the voters had no right to challenge the victory of an MP.
But Bakari and others appeald to the High Court, which ruled that the voters had the constitutional right to challenge the victory of an MP. In the main case Bakari and others won. The Attorney General at that time was Joseph Sinde Warioba.
A year after he lost the election petition Mwl Nyerere appointed Mgonja as the Shinyanga Regional Commissioner, in 1983. Another electoral petition case, which could be described, perhaps as the most sensational due to its press coverage and the fact that it pitied a Dar es Salaam political heavyweight, Kitwana Kondo and Ms Martha Wejja. Kitwana Kondo had won the 1980 Ilala parliamentary district poll defeating his opponent ,Martha Wejja.
But Ms Wejja went to court to challenge Mr Kondo’s victory. She provided evidence that showed that Mr Kondo had used a language that urged voters to reject her bid simply because she was not born in Dar es Salaam and the fact that she was a woman.
She lost the primary case but won on appeal at the High Court in 1982. During the by election that followed she won the Ilala parliamentary district seat. The two had tussled it out on the 1975 polls but Mr Kondo defeated Ms Wejja. Mr Kondo who would later become the Dar es Salaam mayor was elected as an MP for the first time in 1965 in the Dar es Salaam South parliamentary district with the majority of over 37,000 votes.
At that time Dar es Salaam had only two parliamentary seats. Derek Bryceson, who was then minister for Health, won the Dar es Salaam North seat with about 30,000 votes.
Upon the re-introduction of multiparty politics Kitwana Kondo on contested the Kigamboni Parliamentary seat where he won in 1995. He lost the seat in 2000 to Frank Magoba (CUF). In her appeal in the High Court Wejja was assisted by the University of Dar es Salaam Legal Aid Committee.
But this brought about a legal hitch because she had not paid any court fee nor deposited security on account that she had received legal aid. The respondents in the civil appeal case No 2 of 1982 who were the Attorney General and three others raised an objection.
The petitioner was given time to deposit security. But the Chief Justice made amendments that exempted those filing cases through legal aid from depositing security.
