Tanzania’s multi-party experiment gone horribly wrong

A month from now about, Tanzania will mark thirty years since the restoration of multi-party politics in the country. It is more than enough to draw a definitive conclusion on what is or is not working.

In my reckoning, the new dispensation has been found wanting in virtually every aspect.

Instructively, a former lecturer of political science at the University of Dar es Salaam, Max Mmuya, noted from way back in 1998, that “after almost five years of actively spearheading the process of political reform in Tanzania, the new political parties have now been ridden with such internal cleavages and inter-party conflicts that have reduced them to mere formal organisations.”

Your guess is as good as mine as to what Mmuya would have to say today.

One matter before all else that I find sorely disappointing is how the opposition parties all these years have failed to forge any meaningful unity. And with the political environment obtaining under Magufuli, it was an absolute imperative.

As a fully-paid up member of an opposition party called UDP, it is sickening seeing just how myopic party political advantage trumps all else.

In my small efforts to forge a united front, I spared no effort to even engage the then-leader of the opposition, Freeman Mbowe. It painfully dawned on me soon after that my goodwill mission was a non-starter. In trying to learn the underlying reasons for disunity, nothing discernible comes out other than self-seeking motives.

One upside about Magufuli is that he unabashedly exposed the opposition ranks for who they were deep down. Funnily enough, the then-Kawe MP, Halima Mdee, ridiculed the men from different political parties who had been in the forefront of defecting to CCM. The tables later turned with Mdee leading the so-called Covid-19 women MPs from her party in an unholy alliance with CCM.

I should add that on this naked political opportunism exhibited by some senior Chadema members, at its root is a vacuum of leadership. And we know that nature abhors a vacuum as Mwalimu Nyerere made reference to in a book published in 1994. It was in fact an emeritus professor of history at Queen Mary, University of London, Donald Sassoon, who stated in an essay in the late 1990s: “no party can survive without regular self-questioning.”

The self-questioning in mind here demanded that Chadema just like any other party with important political stakes, organizes retreats following every quinquennial general election.

I do recall very well in fact how just after the 2010 polls, the late businessman Ali Mufuruki, gave a powerful presentation to Chadema leaders in Moshi that was a landmark moment in the country.

Ordinarily, such occasions allow for some contentious issues to be ironed out. It wasn’t for nothing that the former Chadema MP for Moshi Urban, Jafari Micheal, not long ago criticised his own party for its faulty approaches from the top that result in viewing some fellow members as traitors.

Everything we are told rises and falls on leadership.

As things stand now, for instance, there is only one duly elected Chadema MP, who was warned in a most flimsy manner by the party bigwigs upon her election not to take up the role. She defied them. What happens now to her?

Out of all this, CCM doesn’t emerge any better. It is a history of failed possibilities. To illustrate this, in one of Ambassador Juma Mwapachu’s seminal books, he explains: “Competitive politics in developing countries where the economic ideological divide should be negligible because it is the development of the poor people that is paramount, provides the medium for consensual as opposed to the western world-type adversarial politics. This means, therefore, that the electoral system should be such that consensual politics stands as the ethos and thrust of competitive politics. In this context, a historic and purposeful challenge as well as mission lies before CCM, a political party that has been governing Tanzania, you could literally say, since independence, to make this new politics possible.”

On this small matter of consensual politics, former President Benjamin Mkapa, said something revelatory in his memoirs: “What is lacking is political interaction which is constructive to a nation’s development; there is a real shortage of serious engagement with issues. But this shortfall in political debate is not peculiar to Tanzania. Perhaps we embraced Western democracy too much. Rather than making political parties a mechanism for tolerance and inclusion, which I believe would be more in keeping with the historical and traditional way of African leadership, we have followed the Western way of intolerance and exclusion. The concept of winner takes all has no African roots - our way is to be communal and and inclusive.”

Very well Big Ben. The only trouble is that you spearheaded the politics of “ushindi wa kimbunga” or tsunami victory for CCM with its attendant costs.

President Samia, who exhibits some tendencies to be in the consensual mould, is now left to try and break the mould through an absolutely superfluous initiative like the task force on (multi-party democracy?)

After thirty years what a damning verdict on our multi-party experiment.

Disclaimer: The opinions, statements and views expressed in  this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of  The Citizen