CCM’s Birthday: A party cut adrift

CCM celebrates its forty fifth birthday this February with national celebrations held in Mara Region where its first national chairperson in Mwalimu Julius Nyerere hailed from. Party leaders and its members throughout the country have been holding various events in preparations for the big day. The irony in all this is that a return to public rallies for opposition parties is yet to be given a green light.

In its previous forms it led one country to political independence and led another to a revolution. There has never been an interruption to its rule.

When it was formed back in 1977 after merging two political parties, Ujamaa na Kujitegemea themes dominated the speech of its first chairperson. There were ongoing liberation efforts too throughout the continent as many countries were still under the yoke of colonial rule. The fight against neo-colonialism was mentioned too as were the efforts to usher in economic prosperity to those who were politically liberated. The country was a one-party state back then, where barring a very ‘stubborn’ minority, almost everyone else belonged to the party. Unlike Zaire’s MPR, there were no claims of compulsory party membership for all including one’s ancestors and those yet to be born.

CCM had a healthy system of recruiting everyone from earliest stages in one’s life. As a result, those who joined the party in the one-party state era, for better or for worse, came to understand their party and how it worked.

The most intense factional battles of those days were ideological.

CCM still towers over the political landscape of the country. It is the only one with a vast network which in some rural areas remains deeper than the state itself where the first contact with any authority ordinary people have is one with the party not the state institutions.

However, the party celebrating this year is in many ways so different to the one before it.

Political parties like to throw numbers around about the strength of their members which are difficult to ascertain. That aside, CCM membership still dwarfs its competitors in terms of numbers but this has come with a price. There is commitment issues on these members. There were countless occasions where members or supporters had to be bused in or brought at a public rally by other means from other nearby areas because the numbers around were not just enough; there was little or no enthusiasm about party matters.

To this end, opposition parties have more colourful and committed members than CCM. It does not seem like CCM have a clue as to how to get that connection back or even how they lost the plot in the first place. It has come to be a party of such a disparate group of members.

Sometimes, it is a wonder, just what holds it all together all these years. State power? Perhaps. It is the easiest one to explain. Ideology? Certainly, there are some members who hold that dear to them.

Could be it be a sense of belonging? Definitely, there are those who see CCM as the only party they can relate to. Nostalgia? These are clearly old and in the minority.

Over the years, the struggles have not only been about keeping those within connected to their party. Has the party done right by farmers? How has it fared with workers? Those who were born after a return of the multiparty, who are in the majority in terms of the country’s population have proven to be the most difficult group to attract their attention or retain when they are in.

CCM was the party that embodied the dreams and visions of other, previous generations but the same cannot be said of the young and the restless. They grew up in the era of economic liberalization policies which left many of them with lost visions and unattainable, broken dreams.

They have lived through the times of terrible excesses as they struggle with their own, bleak realities. The party that has a grand, august past, somehow ended up being one which is preoccupied with the next round of elections, to the point the intra-party elections leave behind terrible political scars which never heal.

For CCM to have any chance at surpassing the record set by Africa’s longest ruling party which stayed in power for more than a century, it must find the magic wand with the answers to what troubles those who are uncertain of their future. Failure to reconnect with young people coupled with mind boggling self-inflicted political wounds, then CCM won’t even see when the curtain falls.