tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/chama-cha-mapinduzi-22705/articlesChama Cha Mapinduzi – The Conversation2023-04-03T13:57:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024482023-04-03T13:57:39Z2023-04-03T13:57:39ZTanzania-South Africa: deep ties evoke Africa’s sacrifices for freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517946/original/file-20230328-16-hrrcio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, left, hosts his Tanzanian counterpart during a state visit in March 2023.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan recently paid a <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/opening-remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-during-official-talks-state-visit-tanzanian-president-samia-suluhu-hassan%2C-union-buildings%2C-tshwane">state visit to South Africa</a> aimed at strengthening bilateral political and trade relations. As the South African presidency <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/president-host-her-excellency-president-hassan-tanzania-state-visit">noted</a>, ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle. </p>
<p>This history is an important reminder of the anti-colonial and pan-African bonds underpinning international solidarity with southern African liberation struggles. It’s also a reminder of the sacrifices many African countries made to realise continental freedom.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Tanganyika">Tanganyika</a>, as Tanzania was known before independence in 1961, was the first safe post for South Africans fleeing in the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> on 21 March 1960, when apartheid police shot dead 69 peaceful protesters. The apartheid regime <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/origins-formation-sharpeville-and-banning-1959-1960">banned liberation movements</a> shortly thereafter. </p>
<p>Among those who left South Africa to rally international support for the liberation struggle were then African National Congress deputy president <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Reginald Tambo</a>, Communist Party and Indian Congress leader <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/people.php?kid=163-574-661">Yusuf Mohammed Dadoo</a>, and the Pan Africanist Congress’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-nana-mahomo">Nana Mahomo</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-hlaole-molotsi">Peter Molotsi</a>.</p>
<p>Not many people will know that on 26 June 1959 <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-128;jsessionid=5715EBDE3CC6DEEF837F2753FC3A4D39">Julius Nyerere</a>, the future president of Tanzania, was among the speakers at a meeting in London where the first boycott of South African goods in Britain was launched. Out of this campaign, the <a href="https://www.aamarchives.org/">British Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> was born a year later. It spearheaded the international solidarity movement in western countries over the next three decades.</p>
<h2>Liberation struggle bonds</h2>
<p>Tanzania’s support for South Africa’s liberation struggle needs to be understood as part of its broader opposition to colonialism, and commitment to the achievement of independence in the entire African continent. In 1958, Nyerere <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/panafrican-freedom-movement-of-east-and-central-africa-pafmeca/A08CAFDC63C736384E47D52AA94191E2">helped establish</a> the Pan African Freedom Movement of Eastern and Central Africa to coordinate activities in this regard. This was extended to the Pan African Freedom Movement of Eastern and Central and Southern Africa at a conference in Addis Ababa in 1962. Nelson Mandela <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1962-nelson-mandela-address-conference-pan-african-freedom-movement-east-and-central-africa/">addressed the conference</a> with the aim of arranging support for the armed struggle in South Africa. These efforts eventually led to the creation of the <a href="https://www.africanunion-un.org/history">Organisation for African Unity (OAU) in 1963</a>.</p>
<p>In February 1961, James Hadebe for the ANC and Gaur Radebe for the PAC opened an office in Dar es Salaam representing the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/sacp/1962/pac.html">South African United Front</a>. It was the first external structure set up by the two liberation movements. Their unity was short-lived. But, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital, grew into a centre of anti-colonial activity after independence from Britain in December 1961. </p>
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<img alt="A man with a serious look on his face rests his chin on his left shoulder. His watch shows." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The late Julius Nyerere was a staunch supporter of the movement for Africa’s independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William F. Campbell/Getty Images)</span></span>
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<p>At independence, Tanzania faced a shortage of nurses as British nurses left in droves rather than work for an African government. On President Nyerere’s request, Tambo arranged the underground recruitment of 20 South African nurses (“the 20 Nightingales”) to <a href="https://www.jamboafrica.online/clarence-kwinana-the-untold-story-of-the-20-nightingales-a-contribution-never-to-be-forgotten/">work in Tanzanian hospitals</a>. The remains of one of them, Kholeka Tunyiswa, who died on 5 March 2023 in Dar es Salaam, were repatriated to South Africa for reburial in <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/news/remains-sa-nurse-tunyiswa-repatriated/">her home city of Gqeberha</a>, Eastern Cape.</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, Tanzania was the southernmost independent African country from which armed operations could be carried out into unliberated territories in southern Africa. Its capital was chosen as the operational base of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41394216">OAU’s Liberation Committee</a>. The committee provided financial and material assistance to liberation movements. Its archives remain in Tanzania. </p>
<p>In 1963, the ANC officially established its Tanzania mission, with headquarters in Dar es Salaam. A military camp for guerrillas of its armed wing, <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1098?rskey=uSBACj&result=1">uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK)</a>
, who had returned from training in other African and socialist countries, was opened in Kongwa. The Tanzanian government donated the land. </p>
<p>Also stationed there were the armies of other southern African liberation movements – <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/collections/the_mafela_trust_collection_7.htm">ZAPU</a>, <a href="https://www.aluka.org/struggles/partner/XSTFRELIMO">Frelimo</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41502445">SWAPO</a> and the <a href="https://www.tchiweka.org/">MPLA</a>.</p>
<p>In 1964, the PAC also moved its external headquarters to Dar es Salaam after it was pushed out of Lesotho. It <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0018-229X2015000200002">established military camps</a> near Mbeya and later in Mgagao, and a settlement in Ruvu. Both the PAC and the ANC held important conferences in Tanzania, in Moshi in 1967 and in Morogoro in 1969, respectively. These led to internal reorganisation and new <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/anc/1969/strategy-tactics.htm">strategic positions</a>.</p>
<h2>Hitches in the relationship</h2>
<p>In spite of Tanzania’s support for the liberation movements, their relationship was not without its contradictions or moments of ambivalence. </p>
<p>In 1965, for example, the ANC had to move its headquarters from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, a small upcountry town far from international connections. The Tanzanian government had decided that only four members of each liberation movement would be allowed to maintain an office in the capital. This reflected Tanzania’s anxiety over the growing numbers of revolutionaries and trained guerrillas it hosted. </p>
<p>In 1969 Tanzania, Zambia and 12 other African countries issued the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45312264">Lusaka manifesto</a>, which was also adopted by the OAU. It expressed preference for a peaceful solution to the conflict in South Africa over armed struggle. There were also rumours of ANC involvement in an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/13/archives/tanzanian-treason-trial-entering-third-week.html">attempted coup against Nyerere</a>. In this climate, the ANC had to evacuate its entire army to the Soviet Union. Its soldiers were allowed back in the country a couple of years later.</p>
<h2>Lived spaces of solidarity</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, ANC headquarters moved to Lusaka, in Zambia, and uMkhonto we Sizwe operations <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1098?rskey=uSBACj&result=1">moved</a> to newly independent Angola and Mozambique. But Tanzania remained a significant place of settlement for South African exiles. </p>
<p>In the late 1970s and 1980s, additional land donations from the Tanzanian government enabled the ANC to open a school and a vocational centre near Morogoro. The Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Mazimbu and the Dakawa Development Centre were set up <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/education-in-exile">to address the outflow of young people</a> from South Africa following the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">June 1976 Soweto uprising</a>. Its other aim was to counter the effects of <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?kid=163-581-2">Bantu education</a>, a segregated and inferior education system for black South Africans. </p>
<p>These became unique spaces of lived solidarity between the ANC and its international supporters. They accommodated up to 5,000 South Africans. Some of them died before they could see a liberated South Africa. Their graves are in Mazimbu. Besides educational facilities, the camps included an hospital, a productive farm, workshops and factories. They were all developed with donor funding.</p>
<p>Tanzanians, too, contributed to these projects through their labour. Many Tanzanian women became entangled in South Africa’s liberation struggle through intimate relationships, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2014.886476">marriage and children</a>. Thanks to these everyday social interactions, Tanzania became “home” for many South African exiles. The ANC handed over the facilities at Somafco and Dakawa <a href="https://www.conas.sua.ac.tz/historical-sites">to the Tanzanian government</a> on the eve of the first democratic elections in 1994. But these personal and affective connections live on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arianna Lissoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle.Arianna Lissoni, Researcher at History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1984362023-01-26T11:33:35Z2023-01-26T11:33:35ZTanzania: opposition rallies are finally unbanned – but this doesn’t mean democratic reform is coming<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506142/original/file-20230124-12-e1tmt0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of Tanzania's main opposition party Chadema wave during a rally in Mwanza. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Jamson/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Tanzania, the political rally is back. Chadema, Tanzania’s leading opposition party, <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/chadema-paint-mwanza-blue-red-and-white-on-first-rally-since-ban-lifted-4093998">held mass rallies</a> outside the official election campaign for the first time in six and a half years on 21 January 2023. </p>
<p>It could do so because three weeks earlier, President Samia Suluhu Hassan <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/tanzania-president-lifts-ban-on-opposition-political-rallies-4074510">lifted the ban</a> on public rallies. Assassination-attempt survivor and opposition politician <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54484609">Tundu Lissu</a> returned to Tanzania on 25 January to take part in them.</p>
<p>The ban on rallies was introduced in June 2016 by the late President John Magufuli. It became a central plank of an <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/tanzania-the-authoritarian-landslide/">authoritarian turn</a> initiated by the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), but ultimately propelled by Magufuli. The ban, however, appeared to affect only the opposition – CCM continued to convene rallies with impunity throughout. </p>
<p>Magufuli’s death on 17 March 2021 raised the dual possibilities that the CCM regime might loosen its iron grip, and that in such a context, the opposition might rebuild. The end of the ban on rallies has implications for both these possibilities.</p>
<p>I have spent 10 years researching <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ady061">Chadema’s grassroots organising</a> and what it calls <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2022.2150759">the struggle for democracy</a>. I am writing a book on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219847952">rallies in Tanzania</a>.</p>
<p>In my view, the unbanning of rallies will tremendously alter the space in which the opposition has to operate. However, this doesn’t set Tanzania on any path of democratic reform. The timing and wider context still leaves the opposition with a big task ahead. </p>
<p>The very real possibility remains that Hassan has unbanned rallies to <em>signal</em> that she plans future democratic reforms – without actually enacting any.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-hassan-has-put-out-positive-signals-deeper-change-is-yet-to-come-180704">Tanzania's Hassan has put out positive signals: deeper change is yet to come</a>
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<h2>A culture of rallies</h2>
<p>It’s easy to underestimate the importance of the rally in Tanzania. In much of the global north, political rallies are things seen on TV and attended by ultra-partisans. But not in Tanzania.</p>
<p>In 2015, I oversaw the collection of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219847952">nationally representative survey in Tanzania</a>. It showed that in the last month of the country’s election campaign, 69% of all people attended rallies. This figure dwarfs its equivalents in the global north. In the 2016 US campaign, just <a href="https://electionstudies.org/data-center/">7% of people</a> attended public meetings.</p>
<p>Not only did a large proportion of Tanzanians attend rallies. They also attended them frequently. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219847952">same survey data</a> showed that the average person attended seven such rallies in the last month of the campaign, or just under one every four days. </p>
<p>In Tanzania, the rally is, or in political campaigning becomes, a medium of mass communication, just as it does across <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219847952">much of the global south</a>. Indefinitely banning rallies does to public communication in Tanzania what indefinitely banning television, or the internet, would do in the global north. </p>
<p>Tanzania’s <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/magufuli-criticised-as-tanzania-bans-rallies--1351138">ban on rallies</a> was doubly painful for the opposition. First, it was a ban, in effect, only on opposition rallies. </p>
<p>Second, the opposition needs rallies in a way that the ruling party does not. In the shadow of state coercion, media outlets offer the opposition scarce and hostile coverage. The rally offers the opposition a way to reach the <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/publication/summary-results-afrobarometer-round-8-survey-tanzania-2021/">73% of Tanzanians</a> who say they don’t (directly) get news via social media. </p>
<h2>Rallies and grassroots organising</h2>
<p>The ban on rallies was lifted for the election campaign in 2020, but the opposition needs rallies between elections too – this is when they organise.</p>
<p>Chadema leaders and activists <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13540688211041034">told me</a> that between 2007 and 2015, they founded party branches across much of Tanzania. Their work paid off. The <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/118/473/692/5250960">survey data I collected</a> showed that in the 2015 campaign, Chadema’s ground campaign was so strong that it made at least as many house-to-house visits as the ruling party, perhaps more.</p>
<p>They achieved this party-building feat in large part through rallies. Teams of party leaders toured the country convening rallies. They imparted their messages and recruited attendees. Follow-up teams organised these new recruits into branches.</p>
<p>In parallel, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688211041034">lone organisers</a> ran their own solo party-building initiatives. These local leaders, among them the 2020 presidential candidate <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54484609">Tundu Lissu</a>, held public meetings in villages. Incrementally, they recruited local activists who became the leaders of new branches. </p>
<p>Today, though, it’s hard to know how well these structures have endured. Opposition activists were subjected to everyday oppression. It peaked during <a href="https://democracyinafrica.org/remembering-not-to-forget-tanzanias-2020-general-elections/">the violence of the 2020 election</a>, and was designed to <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/tanzania-the-authoritarian-landslide/">demoralise and demobilise them</a>.</p>
<p>This means that opposition parties have their work cut out. They have to re-join public debates after years of censorship, and reorganise and remotivate their supporters all at once.</p>
<p>This makes the timing of the end of the ban important. </p>
<p>Chadema’s grassroots organising for the 2015 election began just months after the 2010 election. Revoking the ban now, just over two and a half years before the October 2025 election, leaves opposition parties with a greater task than they have faced before – and less time in which to do it.</p>
<h2>President Hassan: reforming or gaslighting?</h2>
<p>Unbanning the rally is perhaps the most concrete opening of political space that <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-hassan-has-put-out-positive-signals-deeper-change-is-yet-to-come-180704">Hassan has introduced</a> since she was sworn in as president.</p>
<p>Some will be tempted to read the unbanning of the rally as a sign of things to come. But that would be unduly optimistic.</p>
<p>It <em>may</em> be that Hassan plans to enact a wider programme of democratic reforms. Or it may be that she lifted the ban precisely so that it <em>looks</em> like that’s her plan.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-hassan-faces-her-first-political-test-constitutional-reform-165088">Tanzania's Hassan faces her first political test: constitutional reform</a>
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<p>Ultimately, either reading could turn out to be right. Interpreting the intentions of the often inscrutable Hassan is a matter of guesswork. But there are reasons to be sceptical. </p>
<p>First, the rally ban was part of an authoritarian architecture. The ban is gone, but the architecture remains. This leaves the regime with means aplenty to preserve its dominance. </p>
<p>Second, with the exception of the Magufuli years, the regime has long maintained the appearance of being the sort that would oversee democratic reforms – while implementing few of them.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/oped/of-political-rallies-and-a-new-constitution-4087284">significance</a> of the rally’s return may not be in what the regime will grant. Instead, it may be in what the opposition can demand. Chadema used its first rally to call again for a new constitution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198436/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Paget does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After years of censorship, opposition parties have to – all at once – rejoin public debates, reorganise and remotivate demoralised supporters.Dan Paget, Lecturer in Politics, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1794972022-03-21T15:17:28Z2022-03-21T15:17:28ZTanzania’s Hassan has made changes: but the ruling party retains a tight grip<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453334/original/file-20220321-17-ed7mz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>She may have been Tanzania’s <a href="https://newafricanmagazine.com/26160/">‘accidental president’</a>, but Samia Suluhu Hassan has used her first year in office to cement her power. </p>
<p>The way in which she took over the position put her on the back foot.</p>
<p>She found herself stepping up to the plate after the sudden death of John Pombe Magufuli, Tanzania’s fifth president who served from 2015 until 2021. A year earlier, Magufuli had led the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), to power again in a bitterly contested general election. The poll was <a href="https://democracyinafrica.org/remembering-not-to-forget-tanzanias-2020-general-elections/">marred by violence and massive rigging</a>.</p>
<p>Magufuli was nevertheless sworn in as president, and Hassan as vice president. She automatically assumed the presidency after he died on 17 March 2021.</p>
<p>The two immediate challenges she faced were that, firstly, she was a beneficiary of an election that was <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/tanzania-2020-elections-were-neither-free-nor-fair-says-redet-3637456">not considered free or fair</a>. </p>
<p>Secondly, most members of parliament felt their election victories were a result of Magufuli’s political approach. Ninety-nine percent of Tanzania’s parliament is held by <a href="https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/collord_tanzania_2020_election_2021.pdf">the ruling party</a>. </p>
<p>This parliamentary loyalty has, arguably, been a <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2021/04/19/stop-comparing-me-with-magufuli-suluhu-rants-at-tanzania-s-mps//">recurring source of challenges</a> in Hassan’s first year of administration. </p>
<p>As a result, she has made several changes to showcase her presidential power, and her ability to run the country and manage its politics as she prepares to run for a second term in 2025. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzania-is-getting-a-political-remake-as-president-hassan-eyes-the-2025-polls-177761">Tanzania is getting a political remake as President Hassan eyes the 2025 polls</a>
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<p>I analyse four areas where Hassan’s impact has been felt in the first year of her presidency. These are: the about-turn on COVID-19 protocols, her expansion of the civic space, a focus on the informal sector and her efforts to build her own team.</p>
<h2>Turning the ship</h2>
<p><strong>COVID-19:</strong> One of the most radical changes seen during Hassan’s presidency is in Tanzania’s stance on the pandemic. The former administration had denied the existence of COVID-19. Hassan has acknowledged the science and prevention protocols to manage the disease, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/tanzania-leader-launches-covid-19-vaccination-drive-orders-more-jabs-2021-07-28/">encouraged citizens</a> to get vaccinated. </p>
<p>Wearing a mask is now the norm in government meetings and, as per international requirements, Tanzania is providing <a href="https://covid19.who.int/region/afro/country/tz">COVID-19 data</a> on a regular basis. </p>
<p><strong>Expanded civic space:</strong> Hassan has reversed some of the restrictions imposed under Magufuli. For example, she <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/176654/tanzania-president-samia-has-lifted-a-ban-on-four-newspapers-but-is-she-doing-enough/">lifted</a> the ban against some newspapers and made it easier for bloggers to operate <a href="https://thechanzo.com/2022/03/14/leseni-za-mudhui-mtandaoni-zafutwa-ada-kwa-maudhui-ya-habari-yapunguzwa-kwa-50/">without</a> licences. </p>
<p>She has also <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/83569/tanzania-president-hassans-first-address-signals-more-openness-but-little-concrete-change/">changed the tone</a> of government rhetoric. For example, to create a conducive business environment, she has warned tax authorities not to <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/-foreign-missions-rekindle-hopes-under-samia-3348714">frustrate or threaten</a> businesses, but rather facilitate their operations. </p>
<p>Her administration has also taken <a href="https://sautikubwa.org/the-first-of-magufulis-demagogic-district-commissioners-faces-serious-court-charges/">legal action</a> against a former district commissioner – Lengai Ole Sabaya. He openly tortured the opposition in the name of defending Magufuli’s administration. In this way, she distanced herself from the previous regime’s approach of using <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/30/why-is-once-peaceful-tanzania-detaining-journalists-arresting-schoolgirls-and-killing-opposition-leaders/">local authority leaders</a> to silence citizens critical of the government. </p>
<p>The other front on which she’s taken a different approach is in relation to public service and the opposition. In <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-politics-idUSKBN1D70E7">contrast</a> to the previous administration, she has treated those in public service with sensitivity and respect. </p>
<p>She has also engaged opposition leaders. Hassan <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/applause-in-tanzania-after-president-meets-exiled-opposition-leader-in-belgium/6446281.html">has met with</a> Tundu Lissu, an opposition figure who has been in Belgium in political <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/lissu-leaves-tanzania-for-belgium-3017874">exile</a> following threats to his life after the 2020 elections. </p>
<p>She also <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/mbowe-meeting-president-samia-was-a-milestone-3741918">met</a> opposition leader Freeman Mbowe at Tanzania’s State House immediately after he was released from jail. Mbowe <a href="https://democracyinafrica.org/remembering-not-to-forget-tanzanias-2020-general-elections/">was arrested</a> in July 2021 while organising a conference on constitutional reforms. He was in jail for more than 200 days. </p>
<p>However, the authoritarian streak in the ruling party remains. This is evident from the fact that some restrictions remain, including on <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/new-regulations-now-to-guide-political-rallies-3745576">public rallies</a>.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen if Hassan can bring about radical democratic change in Tanzania if it threatens the dominance of the ruling party. Magufuli’s approach weakened the party’s ability to legitimately win elections. It made the party <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/tanzania/zanz0402-07.htm">dependent</a> on the police force and state machinery to silence dissent. </p>
<p>As the party’s chair, Hassan is trying to <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/oped/ccm-directive-on-police-conduct-commendable-3749814">reverse</a> this. </p>
<p><strong>The informal sector:</strong> Hassan has set about trying to address the challenges faced by the country’s informal sector. This includes active participation in <a href="https://tanzania.un.org/en/142725-un-women-supports-development-tanzanias-national-action-plan-economic-justice-and-rights">Generation Equality</a> to ensure women’s participation in the economy. She has also insisted on fair tax reforms that would help <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202104130462.html">formalise</a> the informal sector. </p>
<p>But her efforts to address informal sector challenges have been hindered by both infrastructure and policy issues. Some of the hurdles include increasingly regular <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/tanesco-director-general-explains-frequent-power-cuts-3609290">power cuts</a>. </p>
<p>Hassan has also taken steps that have been criticised for harming the informal sector. These include <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/mobile-money-levies-prompt-uproar-3475432">high levies</a> on mobile money transactions, which curtail small business growth. </p>
<p>In addition, her government has used force to <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/oped/-government-s-approach-to-the-machinga-problem-is-bound-to-fail-3568020">remove street hawkers</a> without providing them with alternatives. </p>
<p><strong>Consolidating her team:</strong> To manage the politics of her party, Hassan has been building her own team. </p>
<p>She has had two cabinet reshuffles. Requiring the new team to swear into her administration was a subtle way of transferring ministerial loyalty from the former regime to hers.</p>
<p>Hassan has also dealt with dissenting voices from within the ruling party in parliament. She forced the speaker – Job Ndugai – to <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/party-politics-still-the-only-game-in-town-in-tanzania">resign</a>, showing that she can discipline the party’s heavyweights. To further manage criticism from within the party, she <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/samia-appoints-polepole-ambassador-to-malawi-3748048">appointed</a> outspoken member of parliament Humphrey Polepole an ambassador to Malawi.</p>
<p>She has also <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/zuhura-yunus-appointed-as-director-of-presidential-communications-3701376">hired</a> a former journalist to lead the State House communication directorate. She is building an inner circle of professionals rather than of hardcore party loyalists. </p>
<h2>What now?</h2>
<p>Tanzanians have definitely seen change happen under Hassan. But what remains the same is the ruling party’s unwillingness to create a fair political playing field. </p>
<p>To realise real change, Hassan has to address legal structures, including draconian laws that facilitate discrimination. These include the <a href="https://www.article19.org/resources/tanzania-cybercrime-act-2015/">Cybercrime Act</a>, <a href="https://www.article19.org/resources/legal-analysis-tanzania-media-services-bill/">Media Services Act</a> and the <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/human_rights/reports/tanzania--a-legal-analysis-of-tanzania-s-anti-money-laundering-l/">Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act</a>. </p>
<p>But doing so might be difficult given the current parliament’s loyalty to the past administration and its approach. </p>
<p>The real test of Hassan’s genuineness in wanting change will be in her allowing constitutional reforms. There is need for an overhaul of the existing constitution given its inability to provide checks and balances. It also gives enormous imperial powers to the president. </p>
<p>Delivering a new constitution that ensures accountability will give Hassan a legacy that endures beyond her presidential tenure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aikande Clement Kwayu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Samia Hassan may have been an ‘accidental president’ but Tanzania’s leader has set out to showcase her own political strategy.Aikande Clement Kwayu, Independent researcher & Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-MadisonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1590522021-04-20T14:34:40Z2021-04-20T14:34:40ZThe roots of repression and the prospects for democracy in Tanzania<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395196/original/file-20210415-16-l4iai1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM - Party of the Revolution) drive with the party's flag on their heads on a motorcycle.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DANIEL HAYDUK/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nobody was surprised that President John Magufuli won a second term in Tanzania’s 2020 general elections. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi has been <a href="https://presidential-power.net/?p=8655">in power</a> since independence in 1961, and has never come close to losing power nationally.</p>
<p>What was surprising was the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54748332">huge size of the victory</a>, the oppressive strategies used to bring it about, and the continued <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/23/tanzania-repression-mars-national-elections">closing of political space</a> even after the votes were tallied.</p>
<p>Many blamed this authoritarian turn on Magufuli himself. But in our new journal article “<a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/tanzania-the-roots-of-repression/">Tanzania: The Roots of Repression</a>” we argue that this is a mistake.</p>
<p>Magufuli’s tenure did not take the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, off a democratising path. It was never on one. It is also unlikely that a different leader would have given Tanzania a free and fair election.</p>
<p>Put simply, Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s rule has always had coercive elements. </p>
<p>This assertion has two important implications for understanding Tanzanian politics. First, it leads to a more accurate framing of Magufuli’s life and legacy following his untimely <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56437852">death</a> in March 2021. Second, it suggests that there may be significant limitations to the political reform that will be realised by his successor, President <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56444575">Samia Suluhu Hassan</a>.</p>
<h2>How to control an election</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/23/tanzania-repression-mars-national-elections">2020 general elections</a> were not free, fair or credible.</p>
<p>Following a decade of putative democratisation, the election campaign laid bare the crude authoritarian logic of the ruling party. As the Africa Center for Strategic Studies <a href="https://africacenter.org/spotlight/once-a-beacon-of-hope-tanzanians-now-resist-growing-authoritarianism/">notes</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>violence has become deeply embedded in Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s current calculus of control.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A particularly chilling instance of political violence was the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/9/8/tanzanias-tundu-lissu-recovering-after-gun-attack">September 2017</a> attempt on the life of Tundu Lissu, the leader of Chadema, the main opposition party.</p>
<p>The intimidation of the opposition and its supporters continued throughout the election, backed by censorship and efforts to <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2020/08/tanzania-elections-opposition-report-widespread-nomination-interference/">disqualify</a> hundreds of opposition legislative and local government candidates –- in some cases with the clear aim of giving Chama Cha Mapinduzi a better chance of winning the seat. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/country/tanzania/freedom-world/2020">new law</a> gave the state power to oversee, and even suspend, civil society groups. This further limited freedoms of association and information.</p>
<p>These strategies continued even after Chama Cha Mapinduzi had officially won 84% of the presidential vote and 97% of legislative seats, when a number of senior opposition party members were <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-11-02/tanzanian-opposition-leaders-arrested-following-election">arrested</a>.</p>
<h2>The disturbing side of Nyerere’s legacy</h2>
<p>It is easy to see why many people associated the country’s “authoritarian turn” with Magufuli’s rise to power. Had not Tanzania been on a democratising arc? If so, surely it was Magufuli’s idiosyncratic leadership that wrenched it off track.</p>
<p>But the authoritarian strategies used to produce the lopsided 2020 results are familiar Chama Cha Mapinduzi tactics. Repression, censorship, indoctrination, and the misuse of state resources for partisan ends have always been the methods that CCM presidents deploy to retain control.</p>
<p>Tanzania’s first president, Julius Nyerere, was an anticolonial activist and intellectual. He is often <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/oct/15/guardianobituaries">rightly revered</a> for securing his country’s independence and keeping it politically united.</p>
<p>But this reverence has obscured the fact that he consistently used repression to maintain control.</p>
<h2>One-party rule</h2>
<p>In 1965, Nyerere introduced <a href="https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1623&context=mjil">a single-party system</a> which outlawed political opposition and made it easier to manage the ruling party. The lack of an opposition left dissatisfied ruling-party factions with no alternative political vehicle to defect to. It was thus easier to keep them in line.</p>
<p>But this was not all. Anyone held to be a threat to state security could be detained at presidential discretion. By 1977, Amnesty International estimated that there were up to <a href="https://t.co/nChfDf4Mnu?amp=1">2,000</a> such detainees in Tanzania.</p>
<p>Mass incarceration was buttressed by the abuse of state power for partisan <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192512117692322">ends</a>. Party cadres were involved in dishing out patronage, buying votes, and intimidating political foes.</p>
<p>The barrage of authoritarian laws that Nyerere used were the basis for the “lawfare” that Magufuli waged.</p>
<h2>Securing hearts and minds</h2>
<p>Nyerere gained credit by voluntarily leaving office in 1985, one of the first African leaders to do so. Yet he left a legacy of censorship and ideological indoctrination that helped to cover up some of the abuses of his regime and continues to underpin state repression today.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Capture7_Tanzania.pdf">Newspaper Act of 1976</a> and associated laws allowed the president to ban publications – domestic and imported alike. It was the precursor to the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/tanzania-new-law-on-media-services/#:%7E:text=The%20Act%20establishes%20the%20post,functioning%20of%20the%20media%20industry">Media Services Act</a> (2016), which was used to crack down on the press under Magufuli.</p>
<p>Beyond this, Chama Cha Mapinduzi pushed an official state ideology, particularly through education. Constant pressure to teach obedience and loyalty to the ruling party meant that over time teachers “<a href="https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10018447/">internalised</a>” authoritarian values.</p>
<h2>Multipartyism and democratic backsliding</h2>
<p>Chama Cha Mapinduzi does not repress and censor in constant measure, however. Instead, it knows how to let up and bear down.</p>
<p>Thus democratic backsliding under Magufuli also reflected the growing strength of the opposition.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, Chama Cha Mapinduzi won elections on the mainland <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/tan1995election2.htm">with ease</a>, so civil society groups and opposition parties were allowed to operate with relative freedom. This changed around <a href="http://archive.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/2337_10.htm">2010</a>, when Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s vote-share drop started to alarm the regime. </p>
<p>It was after Chadema began to make significant inroads that Chama Cha Mapinduzi started to move against civil society. Significantly for our argument, some of this repression occurred <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/664175/pdf">before</a> Magufuli became president.</p>
<h2>Prospects for democratisation</h2>
<p>We were just finishing our article when news broke that Magufuli had passed away. His successor, former vice-president Samia Suluhu Hassan, sparked hopes of a process of democratic reform when it appeared that she had lifted “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-press-idUSKBN2BT1JQ">a ban on all media</a>”, and committed her government to transparency and accountability.</p>
<p>These efforts should of course be welcomed and supported, but our analysis suggests that – just as with the early days of the Magufuli presidency – it is important not to celebrate the emergence of a reformist leader too soon.</p>
<p>Real change would mean revising and removing repressive legislation and structures so that they cannot be employed in future. Repressive media <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/25/tanzanias-first-female-president-has-arrived-with-some-serious-red-flags/">laws</a> remain on the books. And while the president noted that “we should not ban the media by force”, she added “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-press-idUSKBN2BT1JQ">we should ensure they follow the rules</a>”. Just hours after her celebrated statement on media liberalisation, the government rolled it back, “<a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/tanzania-government-trims-back-presidents-order-reopen-media-outlets">clarifying</a>” that it was only online television that was being unbanned.</p>
<p>New leaders can claim the reformer’s mantle, but giving them too much credence before serious structural reforms have taken place sells democracy short and increases the risk of authoritarian relapse when political opposition begins to rise.</p>
<p>Real and sustained democratic progress in Tanzania will require not just a new leader, but the emergence of supportive pro-reform factions in the ruling party to support their ideas. President Samia Suluhu Hassan may be able to engineer this over time, but Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s history tells us that doing so will be a long and difficult struggle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There may be significant limitations to the political reform that can be realised by new president Samia Suluhu Hassan.Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy, University of BirminghamAlitalali Amani, PhD Candidate, Yale UniversityHilary Matfess, PhD Candidate, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1579732021-03-27T10:13:02Z2021-03-27T10:13:02ZTanzania’s new president faces a tough ‘to do’ list<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391896/original/file-20210326-21-qszajf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Samia Suluhu Hassan attends the funeral of her predecessor president John Magufuli on March 26, 2021 in Chato, Tanzania. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>A major political transition is under way in Tanzania after the laying to rest of former president John Pombe Magufuli. The East African nation’s new leader Samia Suluhu Hassan is the country’s sixth president and currently the only woman running a country on the continent. We asked Rob Ahearne, who has been doing research in Tanzania for more than a decade, to set out the political context and Hassan’s immediate challenges.</em></p>
<h2>What political environment has the new president stepped into?</h2>
<p>Magufuli’s anti-corruption agenda, emphasis on hard work, fractious relations with multinational mining giants and significant investments in major public works, won praise from some quarters. But it went hand in hand with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-autocratic-rule-in-tanzania-from-nyerere-to-life-under-magufuli-73881">severe narrowing of political space</a> (both in public and online) and an increasing authoritarianism. Deep <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanian-election-leaves-a-highly-polarised-society-with-an-uncertain-future-149191">political divisions</a> have been exacerbated by a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2021/03/20/africa-in-the-news-africas-economic-outlook-tanzanian-president-magufulis-passing-and-cars-election/">heavily disputed</a>, possibly fraudulent, election late last year. Magufuli won with a <a href="https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/editoriaux-de-lifri/tanzanias-2020-general-elections-between-repression-and">scarcely believable vote share</a> of 84%.</p>
<p>It is this political turmoil and sharp division that Samia Sululu Hassan, affectionally known as Mama Samia, inherits as leader for the next four-and-a-half years. </p>
<p>As Vice President for more than five years she has always been a loyal supporter of the government agenda, though in 2016 she didn’t deny <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/19/tanzanias-hassan-quiet-achiever-who-wants-to-get-things-done">rumoured tensions</a> in their relationship. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, she often acted as Magufuli’s main overseas representative during her tenure as Vice President. Thus she was cast in a more consensus-driven and diplomatic role that may be replicated as President. Despite arguments that she was principally selected because of the need for a woman to serve as vice president after Magufuli defeated <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-samia-hassan-has-the-chance-to-heal-a-polarised-nation-157523">two women</a> to the presidential nomination, she managed to carve out a significant role and level of responsibility.</p>
<p>Two of the leading opposition figures, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/73392/tanzania-suluhu-may-be-the-lady-president-who-delivers-a-new-constitution-tundu-lissu/">Tundu Lissu</a> (currently exiled in Belgium owing to safety fears) and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/17/africa/john-magufuli-tanzania-death-intl/index.html">Zitto Kabwe</a> have expressed hope that the government will change course under Hassan’s leadership. Noted as a calmer and less outspoken than her predecessor, some hope that her government <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56444575">will dampen</a> the populist rhetoric, opposition crackdowns and increasing authoritarianism. This may prove difficult in the short term, as she will need to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/19/tanzania-swears-in-samia-suluhu-hassan-as-first-female-president">build a political base</a> within the ruling party before any major policy shifts.</p>
<h2>What are the key social and economic challenges she faces?</h2>
<p>Tanzania’s <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/35204/Tanzania-Economic-Update-Raising-the-Bar-Achieving-Tanzania-s-Development-Vision.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">economic growth</a> over the past two decades has averaged around an impressive 7%. But this fell more dramatically from 5.8% in 2019 to 2% in 2020. There have been job losses in the formal sector, while hundreds of thousands of people are likely to have been pushed below the national poverty line.</p>
<p>Magufuli’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been accurately described as <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00362-7/fulltext">‘distressing’ and ‘baffling’</a>. </p>
<p>One decision was not to impose severe lockdown measures to manage the spread of COVID-19. He <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56441421">lauded</a> his economy-first approach by saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have had a number of viral diseases, including Aids and measles. Our economy must come first. Countries [elsewhere] in Africa will be coming here to buy food in the years to come… they will be suffering because of shutting down their economies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many now acknowledge that COVID-19 has spread far and wide <a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/covid-19-cases-increase-tanzania-despite-government-denial">within Tanzania</a>. The real <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/35204/Tanzania-Economic-Update-Raising-the-Bar-Achieving-Tanzania-s-Development-Vision.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">economic impact</a> of the pandemic will likely be felt more deeply in 2021 and 2022 as firms take precautionary measures against the spread of the virus. There are also likely to be steep declines in production, consumption and exports. </p>
<h2>What calls for the new president’s immediate attention?</h2>
<p>A big issue is what she will do about the country’s stance towards COVID-19.</p>
<p>Magufuli <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/62785/tanzania-doctors-urge-magufulis-government-to-take-covid-seriously/">declared Tanzania ‘virus free’</a> in May of 2020 and failed to take it seriously after initially doing so. He then claimed that COVID-19 had returned with Tanzanians travelling abroad in search of vaccines.</p>
<p>It took until February this year for government officials to finally encourage <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/27/tanzania-covid-uturn-good-move-but-good-enough">mask wearing</a>. And there has been <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/11/africa/tanzania-covid-cases-surge-intl/index.html">no attempt yet made to procure vaccines</a>, despite widespread examples of severe respiratory illness.</p>
<p>The denialism of Magufuli and his regime has clearly had a material impact on public health and preparedness for any rollout of vaccinations.</p>
<p>Hassan’s first priority must, therefore, be to procure vaccines and then to address the uphill task of persuading a potentially sceptical public that they are not <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56441421">‘guinea pigs’</a>, as Magufuli asserted.</p>
<h2>What sets Tanzania apart from its neighbours?</h2>
<p>Tanzania is often seen as a <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Rwanda-among-least-peaceful-countries-Tanzania-high/2558-1891216-view-printVersion-14piq48/index.html">beacon of peace and stability</a> in East Africa. It is not exposed to the same political tensions and civil unrest that have beset many neighbouring countries, for example the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. Building a sense of national unity was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-nyerere-factbox/factbox-facts-on-tanzanias-father-of-nation-nyerere-idUSL0245500920070302">central to the project undertaken soon after independence</a> by ‘father of the nation’ Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who famously <a href="https://www.juliusnyerere.org/resources/quotes">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In Tanzania, it was more than one hundred tribal units which lost their freedom; it was one nation that regained it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The attempt to build a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/162030?casa_token=uQZJYRqt6XMAAAAA%3AduwdyhJrm6qORVJ-E4jX0hhqEHvHPR4Q0gF1qUbFwpXftproRXdG1SITpo-KgRlY4UxSdjCKv0NCYwDhJxHIjnQY7Aqu5H8MvXAsi7VQyI3Je3kp44NT&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">unified nation</a> is reflected in the creation of non-ethnic political institutions and civil service. It is seen in the marginalisation of chiefly power, and spreading Kiswahili as a unifying non-colonial national language. </p>
<p>It’s true the project may not have been perfect. The <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201201120789.html">1964 revolution in Zanzibar</a>, which gave rise to the republic unifying mainland Tanzania with the islands, was a bloody affair. Also the relationship between the semi-autonomous archipelago and the mainland is <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/extras/9780821418512_intro.pdf">often-fraught</a> while <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/extras/9780821418512_intro.pdf">ethnic tensions</a> simmer from time to time. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the narrative of a stable united Tanzania retains a certain logic.</p>
<p>Multi-partyism was <a href="https://gsdrc.org/document-library/multiparty-democracy-in-tanzania/">implemented</a> in 1995, but the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, retained its dominance for at least a decade. The status quo didn’t change until the 2015 elections. John Magufuli – the little-known minister of works at the time – received the lowest vote share (58%) of any Chama Cha Mapinduzi presidential candidate even with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/29/tanzania-announces-election-winner-amid-claims-of-vote-rigging">veracity of the ballot</a> questioned. </p>
<p>This is a story replicated in the 2020 election and shows the extent of division within the country. Time will tell, but Mama Samia may prove to be the right sort of politician to usher in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-samia-hassan-has-the-chance-to-heal-a-polarised-nation-157523">new era of bipartisan politics</a> that is less populist, less authoritarian and more collegial in approach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Ahearne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hassan may prove the right sort of politician to usher in a new era of bipartisan politics, less populist and authoritarian and more collegial.Rob Ahearne, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1576022021-03-23T14:53:35Z2021-03-23T14:53:35ZIn Magufuli’s shadow: the stark choices facing Tanzania’s new president<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390901/original/file-20210322-21-so6k79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan during her swearing-in.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The sudden <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56437852">death</a> of Tanzania’s President John Pombe Magufuli has thrown the East African nation into a period of political uncertainty. </p>
<p>Vice-president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, has been sworn in as his successor, making her Tanzania’s first woman president.</p>
<p>The transition is all the more challenging given the major rupture - both political and economic - caused by Magufuli’s presidency. Magufuli, who won a second term in October 2020, dramatically centralised power and pursued an interventionist economic policy agenda. He courted controversy on a number of fronts, most recently, by <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-covid-19-response-puts-magufulis-leadership-style-in-sharp-relief-139417">claiming</a> that Tanzania - contrary to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL4N2KN2Y7">mounting evidence</a> - was Covid-free.</p>
<p>Hassan has called for unity and <a href="https://twitter.com/zittokabwe/status/1373196342667919364">counselled</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>now is not the time to look at what has passed but rather to look at what is to come.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the 61-year-old leader’s forward-looking stance, questions remain about how Magufuli’s legacy will shape her time in office.</p>
<h2>The authoritarian turn</h2>
<p>Magufuli oversaw the marginalisation of opposition parties and a decline in civil liberties. His first term was defined by <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/tanzania-shrinking-space-and-opposition-protest/">heightened</a> intimidation and violence against opposition leaders, including disappearances and physical attacks.</p>
<p>Thanks to five years of repression, the October 2020 general elections saw the opposition all but <a href="https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/etudes-de-lifri/tanzanias-2020-election-return-one-party-state">wiped out of</a> elected office. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi now controls all local government councils. It also holds 97% of directly elected legislative seats, up from 73% in 2015.</p>
<p>In addition, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/press-freedom/press-freedom-groups-accuse-tanzania-squeezing-media-ahead-elections">media freedom</a> and civil liberties were also restricted. A law <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-worldbank-idUSKCN1MD17P">passed</a> in 2018 imposed jail terms for questioning the accuracy of official statistics.</p>
<p>But Magufuli’s authoritarian tendencies were not unprecedented in Tanzania. For instance, the rule of his predecessor <a href="https://www.who.int/topics/millennium_development_goals/accountability_commission/kikwete/en/">Jakaya Kikwete</a> was also <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/anti-poaching-operation-spread-terror-tanzania/">marred</a> by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-strike-doctors-idUSBRE8610F620120702">human rights abuses</a> as well <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4698.full">civil society</a> and <a href="http://cbldf.org/2015/02/tanzania-bans-newspaper-over-disrespectful-cartoon/">media</a> repression. Kikwete also <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-34656934">cancelled</a> Zanzibar’s 2015 election due to a likely opposition victory.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether Hassan will adopt a more liberal approach, loosening restrictions on opposition parties, the media and civil society. Even if she does, the damage will take time to repair. Opposition parties, for instance, may well struggle to regain their strength. Among other setbacks, they have lost almost all local elected representatives - a core element of their organisational infrastructure <a href="https://www.danpaget.com/recent-publication">built up painstakingly</a> over decades.</p>
<h2>Centralising power in the party</h2>
<p>Another key pillar to Magufuli’s legacy is the centralisation of power within the Chama Cha Mapinduzi. </p>
<p>In the early years under founding president Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s ruling party was dominated by the president and a hierarchy of appointed state and party officials. But, following economic liberalisation in the 1980s and Nyerere’s retirement from politics, the party became steeped in factional rivalries. These were spurred by new political alliances and an emerging private sector business elite.</p>
<p>This factionalism reached its height under Kikwete amid accusations of widespread <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/114/456/382/24510?login=true">corruption</a>. Magufuli’s nomination as party presidential candidate only occurred because the rivalry among these factions left him as the <a href="https://presidential-power.net/?p=3607">unexpected compromise candidate</a>.</p>
<p>Once in office, though, Magufuli quickly signalled he would be nobody’s puppet. He used his position as ruling party chairman to <a href="https://presidential-power.net/?p=8655">create a “new” Chama Cha Mapinduzi</a>. This involved breaking with party heavyweights, including Kikwete, <a href="https://presidential-power.net/?p=9953">suppressing factional</a> organising, and consolidating his own support base. </p>
<p>Magufuli’s new base was a cohort of freshly appointed <a href="https://presidential-power.net/?p=8241">party officials</a> as well as civil servants and cabinet ministers. His loyalists likened these <a href="http://www.rai.co.tz/dk-bashiru-ally-anamuenzi-mwalimu-nyerere-kwa-vitendo/">changes</a> to a revival of Nyerere’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi. But, in our view, the comparison is <a href="https://medium.com/@adoshaibu/rais-magufuli-ni-karume-bila-babu-b6748a181b0b">misleading</a>. </p>
<p>Like Magufuli before her, Hassan will be taking office – and party leadership – without her own political base. She will also have to contend with revived factional manoeuvring as sidelined groups try to regain an upper hand.</p>
<p>Hassan could align with a loyal Magufuli faction, which includes influential figures within the party. But, early indications suggest she intends to follow the advice of “party elders”, notably Kikwete. The former president <a href="https://twitter.com/Hakingowi/status/1373321743406878724?s=20">reportedly</a> attended the party’s most recent central committee meeting on Hassan’s invitation.</p>
<p>Aligning herself with Kikwete will likely lead to the reemergence of the internal factional rivalries that characterised the former president’s tenure. </p>
<h2>Implications for economic policy</h2>
<p>If president Hassan does continue to take a political steer from Kikwete, one likely outcome is that there will be a change in economic policy. In particular, a return to growth that’s led by a more <a href="https://www.whyafrica.co.za/tanzania-poised-for-a-u-turn/">business-friendly</a> approach to the private sector.</p>
<p>Calls are already being made <a href="https://twitter.com/kigogo2014/status/1373394443680759811?s=20">for such a course of action.</a>.</p>
<p>The danger for Hassan, however, is that under Kikwete this model was associated with high levels of <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/39947205">corruption</a> and unproductive <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08ad8e5274a27b20007d3/20130724-public-goods-rents-and-business-in-tanzania.pdf">rent-seeking</a>.</p>
<p>A careful reassessment of the Magufuli era is needed to guide future policymaking.</p>
<p>Magufuli used his control over the ruling party to pursue an ambitious policy agenda. This was also <a href="https://presidential-power.net/?p=7222">linked</a> to his political project of centralising power. </p>
<p>Although this trend actually began under Kikwete, Magufuli <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2019/05/drawing-the-wrong-lessons-from-the-magufuli-experience-in-tanzania">accelelrated</a> a move towards more state-led investment. Under his leadership, both state-owned and, increasingly, <a href="https://www.mwananchi.co.tz/habari/1597578-4656014-cvox2az/index.html">military-owned</a> enterprises were offered strategic <a href="https://www.mwananchi.co.tz/habari/Kitaifa/Rais--Jeshi-lipewe-zabuni/1597296-5063192-iaagvs/index.html">contracts</a>.</p>
<p>This ambitious programme initially won him <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/whatwouldmagufulido-tanzanian-president-becomes-a-twitter-star/a-18903350">praise</a>. But over time, his authoritarian <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46180098">decision-making</a>, mismanagement, and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/open-data-from-authoritarian-regimes-new-opportunities-new-challenges/ABE1166B45E371C92E415333868E52E4?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_term=&utm_content=FirstView&utm_campaign=PPS_Jun20">lack of transparency</a> prompted a more critical response.</p>
<p>Many state enterprises remained cash-starved, relied on government financial support, and registered <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/news/Why-public-entities-continue-losing-billions--CAG/1840340-5517710-view-asAMP-nm5ux9/index.html?__twitter_impression=true">losses</a>. </p>
<p>When the government’s controller and auditor general <a href="https://presidential-power.net/?p=9503">called</a> for more scrutiny of public finances, his budget was slashed. And he was ultimately forced to retire and replaced by a <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/government-given-fourteen-days-to-respond-on-zitto-s-case-against-cag-removal-2702334">Magufuli loyalist</a>.</p>
<p>Alongside state investment, the president also sought to discipline private sector actors. Some <a href="https://ace.soas.ac.uk/publication/novel-approach-to-analysing-diversified-business-groups-in-tanzania/">observers</a> <a href="https://ace.soas.ac.uk/working-paper-1/">suggest</a> that this led to more productive investment, notably by domestic investors. But others <a href="https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/collord_tanzania_2020_election_2021.pdf">point</a> to renewed crony capitalist ties.</p>
<p>Magufuli’s most high profile corporate battle was against Canadian-owned Barrick Gold and its former subsidiary, Acacia Mining. From the two, he demanded <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-bets-are-off-as-magufulis-resource-nationalism-moves-up-a-gear-in-tanzania-81632?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitterbutton">USD$190</a> billion in tax arrears and a renegotiation of operating terms. </p>
<p>Many saw this resource-nationalist approach as an inspiration and a model for African countries seeking to take greater control of their mineral wealth. But in the end - partly due to <a href="http://www.udadisi.org/2020/09/watanzania-kizimbani-jinsi-kampuni-za.html?q=sabatho+nyamsenda">externally imposed</a> legal and economic constraints - Magufuli walked back on some of his demands. Instead he opted for cooperation rather than confrontation. </p>
<p>He negotiated a <a href="https://www.barrick.com/English/news/news-details/2020/Barrick-Back-in-Business-in-Tanzania/default.aspx">joint venture</a> in which Barrick took a majority stake of 84% and Tanzania the remaining 16%. Key elements of the nationalistic mining legislation passed in 2017 were also reversed.</p>
<p>On the plus side <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/barrick-deal-smuggling-crackdown-revive-tanzania-gold-industry">gold overtook tourism</a> as Tanzania’s biggest foreign-exchange earner. In addition, some small-scale miners saw their livelihoods improve. Results were more mixed elsewhere, especially for Tanzanite miners in the country’s north.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Magufuli leaves behind a mixed economic legacy. It combines misdirected <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/barrick-deal-smuggling-crackdown-revive-tanzania-gold-industry">authoritarian decision-making</a> with positive efforts to pursue an active industrial policy. Reining in unproductive domestic investors and renegotiating adverse contracts with foreign investors were part of this agenda. </p>
<p>There is a risk, given this complex mix, that Tanzania’s policymakers may learn the <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2019/05/drawing-the-wrong-lessons-from-the-magufuli-experience-in-tanzania">wrong lessons</a> from his presidency, leading back to the flawed model existing before. </p>
<p>Significantly, neither Magufuli nor his predecessors managed to achieve more <a href="http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/803171614697018449/pdf/Tanzania-Economic-Update-Raising-the-Bar-Achieving-Tanzania-s-Development-Vision.pdf">inclusive growth</a>. For this reason poverty levels have <a href="http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/803171614697018449/pdf/Tanzania-Economic-Update-Raising-the-Bar-Achieving-Tanzania-s-Development-Vision.pdf#page=14">remained stubbornly high</a>.</p>
<h2>The pandemic and beyond</h2>
<p>One immediate concern is what steps Hassan will take on the pandemic, and whether she will change <a href="https://www.whyafrica.co.za/tanzania-poised-for-a-u-turn/">direction</a>. </p>
<p>Whatever she does, the health emergency and associated economic crisis will likely define her presidency. It could indeed define the <a href="https://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/13300/More_debt_to_tread_water">economic</a> trajectory of the African region in years to come.</p>
<p>Both Kikwete and Magufuli ruled through an economic boom period. Commodity prices were <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X17301090?casa_token=6fHK1C2_v4QAAAAA:QtW-0lX3xxYz3ycvM0KWdqG7inMVt4XBvwdtn1g2Qd_6ME_x6SuhWGFEmOc6YCavLZ0TPBriUg">high</a> and access to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/25589487-78ba-4892-9fcf-cfe8556861b7">international finance</a> was fairly easy. This gave them latitude to choose between various development approaches.</p>
<p>If Tanzania reverts to the status quo of the Kikwete years, the risk is a reemergence of rent-seeking but without the same highly favourable economic growth conditions. Indeed, as <a href="https://www.africa-confidential.com/article-preview/id/13228/Governments_face_a_multi-speed_rebound">external conditions</a> worsen, Hassan may find her options far more limited.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michaela Collord has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thabit Jacob receives funding from Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DANIDA) </span></em></p>Hassan, like Magufuli before her, has taken office without her own political base and will also have to contend with revived factional manoeuvring.Michaela Collord, Junior Research Fellow in Politics, University of OxfordThabit Jacob, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Society and Globalisation, Roskilde UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1464902020-09-22T14:50:08Z2020-09-22T14:50:08ZA contested legacy: Julius Nyerere and the 2020 Tanzanian election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358840/original/file-20200918-22-zar446.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Julius Nyerere's ideas and legacy remain objects of debate in contemporary politics, especially in an election year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzanians will head to the polls on 28 October in which the incumbent, John Magufuli, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c0repynkl22t/john-magufuli">faces</a> a determined opposition. Elected to a first term in 2015, Magufuli’s time in office has lived up to his nickname <em>tinga tinga</em>, Kiswahili for “the bulldozer”. He has been applauded by some for advancing a series of <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/news/President-Magufuli-out-to-leave-mega-projects-legacy/1840340-4838814-dbnbu0z/index.html">major developmental projects</a>. Others have denounced him for his arguably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/29/tanzania-president-magufuli-condemned-for-authoritarian-stance">more autocratic, repressive rule</a> </p>
<p>Magufuli leads <a href="https://www.ccmtz.org/history-chama-cha-mapinduzi-party-tanzania/">Chama Cha Mapinduzi</a>, one of the longest serving ruling parties in Africa. It is also the party of Tanzania’s socialist founding father, <a href="https://www.juliusnyerere.org/about">Julius Nyerere</a>, who looms large over the country’s politics more than 20 years after his death.</p>
<p>As the French anthropologist Marie-Aude Fouéré has <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/african-studies-review/article/julius-nyerere-ujamaa-and-political-morality-in-contemporary-tanzania/E3E68E60A9DE29197F82B230E8EA3CEB">noted</a>, Nyerere remains </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a political metaphor for debating and acting upon the present. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Magufuli has repeatedly <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2020.1779223">played up</a> the similarities between himself and Nyerere. His supporters cite his attacks on corruption among the ruling political class and his enthusiasm for completing infrastructural projects as evidence that he is the <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/news/1840340-5303282-9raarh/index.html">“Nyerere of our time”</a>.</p>
<p>Others are less reverent. They include Tundu Lissu, the presidential candidate for the main opposition party, Chadema. His family was forcibly relocated under Nyerere’s <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-7679.1975.tb00439.x">villagisation scheme</a> of the 1970s. He brands Nyerere an autocrat who built an <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/the-standard-insider/article/2001386054/magufuli-vs-lissu-what-it-takes-to-stop-a-political-bulldozer">“imperial presidency”</a>. </p>
<p>There is ample evidence of the ruling party’s tightening grip on power under Magufuli. In the lead up to the 2020 election, opposition rallies have been <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/magufuli-criticised-as-tanzania-bans-rallies--1351138">blocked</a>. The press has been <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-tanzanias-media-law-muzzles-free-speech/a-54532521">muzzled</a>, and prominent opposition politicians have been violently <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/tanzania-opposition-cries-foul-over-attacks-on-leaders-as-election-looms/a-53764518">attacked</a>. </p>
<p>In August, the Magufuli-controlled National Electoral Commission’s registration of candidates was marked by <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2020/08/26/tanzania-elections-opposition-report-widespread-nomination-interference/">irregularities</a>. Many opposition politicians were disqualified from contesting in October. </p>
<p>Lissu himself only <a href="https://theconversation.com/at-the-edge-of-democracy-what-the-upcoming-general-election-holds-in-store-for-tanzania-144601">returned from exile in July</a> after surviving an assassination attempt in 2017. For him, Magufuli’s brand of authoritarianism has its <a href="https://www.voazimbabwe.com/a/former-tanzania-mp-magufuli-and-nyerere-era/5118744.html">roots</a> in the Nyerere era.</p>
<p>As these contrasting depictions of Nyerere attest, his ideas and legacy remain objects of debate in contemporary politics, especially in an election year.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2020.1799158?forwardService=showFullText&tokenAccess=T6GPRITEAJQZSX8FQJIP&tokenDomain=eprints&target=10.1080%2F03057070.2020.1799158&doi=10.1080%2F03057070.2020.1799158&doi=10.1080%2F03057070.2020.1799158&doi=10.1080%2F03057070.2020.1799158&journalCode=cjss20">research</a>, I explore the political history of the Nyerere era. I examine his socialist project through the prism of Tanzania’s first and most prestigious national university, the <a href="https://www.udsm.ac.tz/">University of Dar es Salaam</a>.</p>
<p>Charting the rise and fall of leftist student activism at the university throughout the 1970s and 1980s allows us to better understand the aspirations of Nyerere’s socialist project and its ultimate limits and legacy.</p>
<h2>The Arusha Declaration</h2>
<p>African universities were <a href="https://theconversation.com/africas-student-movements-history-sheds-light-on-modern-activism-111003">key</a> to processes of decolonising and developing post-colonial states at independence. The young nations relied on them to produce new professional classes and state bureaucrats. Given their national importance, African presidents were commonly appointed as chancellors. </p>
<p>As both president and chancellor of the university, Nyerere’s idea was that it should produce “servants” committed to building the Tanzanian nation. As he put it, its <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4187669?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">role</a> was not to </p>
<blockquote>
<p>build sky-scrapers here at the university so that a few very fortunate individuals can develop their own minds and live in comfort. We tax the people to build these places only so that young men and women may become efficient servants to them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was partly for this reason that he was deeply <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4187669?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">disappointed</a> by the student protests of late 1966. In October of that year, students marched on the streets of Dar es Salaam against mandatory induction into the government-run National Service scheme. They were expected to spend their first two years after graduation working in nation-building programmes on 40% of their normal stipend. </p>
<p>Worried that the university was producing a generation of self-centred elitists, Nyerere decided to take dramatic measures. All the protesters were expelled from the university. To demonstrate the value of personal sacrifice for the Tanzanian nation, he cut his own salary by 20%.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of these protests, in February 1967, Nyerere released the <a href="http://library.fes.de/fulltext/bibliothek/2-tanzania-s0019634.pdf">Arusha Declaration</a>. This explicitly committed his government to socialist policies, including nationalisation and rural collectivisation. </p>
<p>Soon after, he vowed to transform the university into a socialist institution. The ruling party created a youth wing branch on campus. A general course on the political economy of development was made mandatory for all students.</p>
<p>These reforms and the Arusha Declaration inspired the emergence of a small, but vocal group of leftist students on campus. These notably included the Yoweri Museveni-led University Students’ African Revolutionary Front. It started a student journal, organised public lectures and teach-ins, and raised money for African liberation movements.</p>
<p>But, over time, the government became increasingly concerned by the prominence and independence of these leftist student groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, student politics came to be marked by an unmistakable irony: in the years following the supposed socialist transformation, leftist student activism at the university actually declined.</p>
<p>This is largely because the government exercised increasing control over university activities. Ruling party loyalists were appointed to high-ranking positions in the university administration. Following public displays of student dissent in 1970 and 1978, independent student bodies were dissolved. </p>
<p>Slowly, but surely, the university was brought more squarely under the control of the ruling party.</p>
<h2>Political order over independence</h2>
<p>This approach to public dissent was the rule rather the exception in Nyerere’s Tanzania. Trade unions, rural development collectives and party youth organisations were banned or brought under party control if they displayed too much independence. Faced with increasing <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2011/12/21/tanzania-at-50-does-nyerere-deserve-the-blame-and-praise-for-the-countrys-economic-failure-and-political-success/">economic challenges</a>, Nyerere regularly felt the need to prioritise political order and obedience over desires for mass-driven socialist transformation.</p>
<p>But to label Nyerere as merely an authoritarian, as Lissu suggests, is to gloss over the complexity of his years in power. As chancellor, he distinguished himself from the vast majority of his African counterparts. All too often, he sought to win students over through argument, rather than coercion.</p>
<p>His legitimacy among the student community did not rest on patronage or intimidation. Rather, many were committed to his socialist ideology, which he called <em>ujamaa</em>. It emphasised equality, self-reliance, national unity, and African liberation.</p>
<p>They respected the fact that Nyerere consistently communicated these ideas to them directly. His frequent visits and candid exchanges with students on campus helped maintain his popularity among them.</p>
<p>This legitimacy is reflected in the fact that on the rare occasions when students took to the streets to protest post-1966, it was never against Nyerere’s socialist project. Rather, it was to rail over its perceived betrayal by the political elite.</p>
<p>Examining Nyerere’s legacy through this prism, therefore, complicates characterisations of his domestic legacy as singularly autocratic. It is true that his regime did stifle leftist student activism. But many students believed in and were inspired by his socialist ideals and his sense of political morality.</p>
<p>Nyerere’s legacy still looms large over the country’s politics, and not just within Chama Cha Mapinduzi. The upstart opposition party, Alliance for Change and Transparency has <a href="https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/economic-justice-and-african-socialism-interview-zitto-kabwe">declared</a> its desire to revive and update the Arusha Declaration if elected to power in October. They explicitly <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/zitto-kabwe-chadema-act-julius-nyerere">commit</a> themselves to </p>
<blockquote>
<p>building a socialist society with equality as its basic principle. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The resonance of this message with young Tanzanians suggests Nyerere’s legacy is far more complex than either Magufuli or Lissu recognise.</p>
<p>For all his shortcomings, Nyerere’s ideas continue to inspire Tanzanians fighting for a more equal and democratic future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Melchiorre received funding from International Development Research Council (IDRC) for this project.</span></em></p>For all of the shortcomings of Nyerere’s regime, his ideas continue to inspire Tanzanians fighting for a more equal and democratic future, over 20 years after his death.Luke Melchiorre, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Universidad de los Andes Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1221432019-09-01T09:21:58Z2019-09-01T09:21:58ZWhy Tanzania’s attacks on free speech break with Nyerere’s legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289435/original/file-20190826-8868-1y4ynnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The statue of founding president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in Tanzania's political capital Dodoma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WikiCommons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I visited Tanzania recently for the first time in five years, and the first time since John Magufuli was elected President. I have been visiting the country regularly since 1976 – spending a year as a student in 1979 and three years as a diplomat in 1993-6. I have followed its fortunes through the decades with close interest, meeting all its Presidents (except the incumbent) at one time or another.</p>
<p>While I was there on this occasion, the journalist Erick Kabendera was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/arrest-of-tanzanian-journalist-sparks-fears-over-press-safety">picked up by police and kept incommunicado for several days</a> until he was suddenly re-appeared in court and improbably charged with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/05/tanzanian-journalist-in-court-accused-of-money-laundering">economic crimes and tax evasion</a>. </p>
<p>This is not a lone incident: since 2015 it has become more frequent for independent journalists to face <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2018/03/15/i-had-to-flee-my-home-tanzania-for-doing-journalism-i-was-lucky/">harassment and even the threat of death</a>. Only a few weeks later another journalist, <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/news/africa/Tanzania-journalist-arrested-over--fake-news--released/1066-5248084-tvkd8pz/index.html">Joseph Gandye</a>, was arrested apparently for a story criticising police brutality. He was subsequently released. The government has also obstructed news or even the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-worldbank/tanzania-law-punishing-critics-of-statistics-deeply-concerning-world-bank-idUSKCN1MD17P">publication of standard national statistics</a> that it dislikes. </p>
<p>It is worth asking where this comes from. Since independence in 1961, Tanzania has been a beacon of the liberation struggle in Africa and of peaceful political stability. The country’s moral and political compass was set very firmly by its first president of 24 years, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. His successors have appealed to and pledged to uphold his legacy.</p>
<p>So what is that legacy? Nyerere was unusual among African leaders in leaving a substantial body of writings that set out his political thinking and which enable us to see its evolution. It is important to register that his thinking changed over time, adapted in the light of experience. </p>
<p>But some elements remained a bedrock: a powerful moral tone, an intolerance of corruption, a central role for the state, but with a real accountability to the people. Above all was the value of unity - at the national level, in the union with Zanzibar, and across Africa as a whole.</p>
<p>Kabendera has long been a critic of Tanzania’s government, helping expose <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/28/tanzania-cabinet-reshuffle-energy-scandal-jakaya-kikwete">an energy scandal</a> in 2015 in which $18 million was misappropriated. The scandal cost the then Minister of Energy his job. There was suspicion that a more recent article in The Economist probably caused the government’s ire. It was entitled “John Magufuli is bulldozing Tanzania’s freedom”.</p>
<p>Mwalimu would probably be angry as well but also sad to see his successors prefer a closed society to an open one and to look to the past rather than to the future. After all, Nyerere often argued that Tanzanians should not be afraid to challenge authority. He also spoke out strongly for <a href="https://www.juliusnyerere.org/resources/view/freedom_and_development">freedom of speech</a>. </p>
<h2>Nyerere’s legacy</h2>
<p>Nyerere started as an unabashed African Socialist. Capitalism and colonialism had gone hand-in-hand, and had <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/486390?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">destroyed</a> many of the traditional communal values of African society. These needed to be restored and built upon.</p>
<p>He justified the one party state as necessary for building national unity and avoiding fissiparous political divisions. He also advocated <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/abstract/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-172">“ujamaa”</a>, or villagisation, as a path to economic and social modernisation. But over time he came to see the drawbacks of both policies and began to adapt his own approach. </p>
<p>Nyerere was sometimes intolerant of criticism. But he tended to respond with argument rather than force. Although the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi had robust internal competition and accountability, any single party that remains in power continually tends to become politically complacent and financially corrupt. </p>
<p>The target tends to become climbing to the top of the party tree and reaping the benefits along the way, not serving the people. And villagisation and state production proved socially disruptive and financially disastrous. Economically, Nyerere’s prescription <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/160361?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">just did not work</a>.</p>
<p>In response, Nyerere did two things: he put in place succession arrangements that allowed him to step back from running the government, though retaining oversight as chairman of the party, and he allowed his successors <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft138nb0tj&chunk.id=d0e2247&toc.id=&brand=ucpress">to liberalise both politics and the economy</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, multi-party politics was re-introduced, a number of loss-making parastatals that were draining the government’s resources were privatised, and the country began to encourage outside investors. Nyerere’s personal interventions became increasingly rare, limited largely to upholding the sanctity and importance of the political union with Zanzibar, and working for peace in neighbouring Burundi.</p>
<p>His genuine legacy, therefore, is to value unity but recognise diversity, not to overstay your welcome in power, and to be guided by principles but adapt your policies in the light of experience.</p>
<h2>Negation of legacy?</h2>
<p>Are the events of recent years the fulfilment or the negation of that legacy? Like his predecessors, President Magufuli puts great emphasis on respecting Nyerere’s legacy. </p>
<p>Selected at least in part for his well-known personal probity, he entered office breathing fire and fury against <a href="https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24853/1/ACE-WorkingPaper001-TZ-AntiCorruption-171102_final%20revised.pdf">corruption</a> in the state machine, and his <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/12725/is-magufulis-economic-nationalism-working/">dramatic interventions</a> appeared to shake state utilities, including water and power, out of their torpor and corrupt practices to deliver to the public what they were supposed to. Basic infrastructure, including roads and energy, has been developed and delivered. All this was overdue.</p>
<p>But in other respects, the administration seems stuck in the early Nyerere-ite mode of suspicion – even hostility – to <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/12725/is-magufulis-economic-nationalism-working/">international capitalism and all its works</a>, and to open markets even within its region, preaching a narrow view of self-reliance similar to that which led the country into near bankruptcy in the early 1980s. </p>
<p>And in political terms, the president seems to adopt an intolerance of criticism and opposition that Nyerere in his later years had abandoned. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi itself seems increasingly frightened of fair competition, <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2015/10/02/tanzania-cannot-be-allowed-to-be-the-new-front-for-state-led-islamophobia/">fearful</a> that given a free choice and transparent information the people just might choose someone else. </p>
<p>Sadly, such transparency and freedom is the only thing that keeps democracies honest. To <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Magufuli-criticised-as-Tanzania-bans-rallies--/2558-3245376-124jyo5z/index.html">constrain the opposition</a> and <a href="https://cpj.org/2019/03/tanzania-citizen-7-day-publication-ban.php">harass the free press</a> will in the end destroy democracy and even the Chama Cha Mapinduzi itself.</p>
<p>We have seen elsewhere that some political leaders decide they should be the sole arbiter of political decisions, and stay on in charge long after their sell-by date, presiding over ever-more corrupt and incompetent governments and leading their countries to wrack and ruin. But in almost all cases, it does not end well. The same can apply to parties as to leaders.</p>
<p>Tanzania has benefited greatly from a regular political succession in its leadership. But it would be a betrayal, not a fulfilment, of Nyerere’s legacy to fail to allow the Tanzanian people a free and informed choice about the party and the policies they want.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are solely my own.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Westcott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While sometimes intolerant of criticism, Nyerere tended to respond with argument rather than force.Nicholas Westcott, Research Associate, Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD), SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/969592018-05-28T13:29:31Z2018-05-28T13:29:31ZTanzania’s latest clampdown takes decades of repression to new lows<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220432/original/file-20180525-51091-1wh92vx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Policemen posted to prevent a campaign rally in Zanzibar in 2005. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Stephen Morrison</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United Republic of Tanzania has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-hostilities-between-tanganyika-and-zanzibar-still-challenge-tanzanian-unity-76713">just turned 54</a>. Union Day commemorates the union of the Tanganyika mainland and the islands of Zanzibar, following a <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201201120789.html">bloody revolution on the islands in 1964</a>. </p>
<p>But the mood is not one of celebration, unity or tolerance of difference. Instead, the government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-autocratic-rule-in-tanzania-from-nyerere-to-life-under-magufuli-73881">creeping authoritarianism</a> is meeting growing dissatisfaction. </p>
<p>As recently as February, leaders from across Tanzania’s civil society issued a statement expressing concerns of assaults on <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2018/03/02/tanzania-everyone-is-scared/">democracy, political opposition and even the rule of law</a>. This was quickly followed by similar statements from Tanzanian religious organisations as well as the European Union Charge ‘Affaires. </p>
<p>The lead up to the national holiday was dominated by plans for anti-government demonstrations across the country, called for by a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-protests/tanzania-police-threaten-to-beat-protesters-like-stray-dogs-to-halt-demos-idUSKBN1HW2BU">self-exiled political activist, Mange Kimambi</a>. The protests were planned against the backdrop of what many critics see as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/magufuli-has-been-president-for-two-years-how-hes-changing-tanzania-86777">narrowing of political space</a> by the government of President John Magufuli. </p>
<p>Magufuli has been in power since 2015. He promised major changes if elected, including a concerted effort to tackle <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-34669468">corruption and unemployment</a>. </p>
<p>The anti-corruption agenda has seen some notable achievements, not least the removal of <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201608220162.html">16 000 ghost workers from the government payroll in 2016</a>. His successes on the jobs front haven’t been that noteworthy, though he has taken on the big multinationals by bringing in new mining legislation aimed at keeping more <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzania-at-56-echoes-of-the-best-and-worst-of-nyerere-under-magufuli-88812">mining profits in Tanzania</a> for use in a fund for national development.</p>
<p>It is clear that Magufuli is following a nationalist agenda. This also means that any opposition is seen as <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/07/africa/magufuli-crackdown/index.html">'against the nation’</a>. Past protesters have even been branded as influenced by <a href="https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/225343/ndimbwa_master2014.pdf?sequence=4">foreigners </a>. </p>
<p>In the end very few protesters turned out on Union Day. This can be put down to a very heavy-handed police response to previous protests as well as the <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/-/1840392/1920690/-/efte9qz/-/index.html">abuse of people who had been arrested</a>. </p>
<p>Memories of past repression remain strong. For example, I am currently writing up research that focuses on the memory of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22652809">brutal suppression</a> in the town of Mtwara, after protests and riots in 2013. As one participant in my research told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The way the army and the police treated us then, and since, makes us scared to even go into town. My family and friends would not protest again, not matter how bad things get.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Authoritarianism is not new in Tanzania. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) - or the Revolutionary Party - and its forerunner have been in power since independence and have tended to maintain a high level of political control. And yet the latest clampdown on dissent is a troubling sign when it comes to citizen rights in Tanzania. </p>
<p>The ability to protest is a widely recognised and respected aspect of democratic citizenship. But not only is protesting in public risky for Tanzanians, they are even constrained online by legislation. This is also placing limitations on what journalists feel they can report, even leading some to <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2018/03/15/i-had-to-flee-my-home-tanzania-for-doing-journalism-i-was-lucky/">flee the country</a>.</p>
<h2>Getting citizens in line</h2>
<p>Magufuli’s government has banned opposition political gatherings for the duration of this parliament, <a href="http://www.tanzaniatoday.co.tz/news/tanzania-of-twaweza-surveys-jpm-actions-and-opposition-sentiments">running until 2020</a>. Critics who challenge this ban have been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05zftlp">arrested</a>. </p>
<p>The politician Zitto Kabwe, for example, has been arrested numerous times in the past year for anti-government comments in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-31/tanzanian-opposition-lawmaker-arrested-for-inflammatory-speech">public speeches</a> and at banned <a href="https://newspapers.africanplanet.org/news/zitto-still-under-police-custody-in-morogoro-1264839.aspx">political rallies</a>.</p>
<p>The government has also passed legislation putting <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/watch-tanzania-law-for-online-content-threatens-free-speech-20180416">limits on the freedom of speech online</a> and making arrest easier. </p>
<p>This was the catalyst for the <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201804260408.html">planned protests</a>.</p>
<p>The law means that anyone who posts a blog or is active on social media, or runs an online platform, will have to pay for a licence to keep their sites running. These <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/tanzania-braces-anti-government-rallies/4365022.html">licences cost around US$900</a> and can be revoked if the content of the site is deemed to threaten public order and national security. Users potentially face 12 months in prison, or a fine of up to US$2300. This, in a country in which <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=TZ">GDP per capita is US$877.50</a>.</p>
<p>When plans for the protest were posted on social media, the president, interior minister Mwigulu Nchemba and Dodoma Regional Police Commissioner Gilles Mutoto responded aggressively. Dodoma is the seat of parliament, in central Tanzania. </p>
<p>Mutoto warned that people who protested would end up with <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Tanzania-police-cripple-anti-Magufuli-protesters/2558-4351898-xvkvrg/index.html">“a broken leg and go home as a cripple”</a>. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoC9O-JWqN8">proclaimed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those calling for protests through social media, those thinking about protesting tomorrow, will be in a lot of trouble… They will get a toothless dog’s beating, I’m warning anyone planning to come to Dodoma, to loot or to protest, Tanzania has no place for that… we have no space for protest in Dodoma.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Police maintained a <a href="http://www.magazetini.com/news/tanzania-police-beef-up-security-ahead-of-april-26-demos">heavy presence</a> and a few people were arrested, including <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-protests/tanzanian-anti-government-protests-flop-as-magufuli-calls-for-peace-idUSKBN1HX25V">some prominent members</a> of the main opposition Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo party (CHADEMA) – Kiswahili for The Party of Democracy and Development. </p>
<p>Union Day then passed without much incident.</p>
<p>In Tanzania today, political space has shrunk to the point where protests are suppressed before they emerge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Ahearne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Tanzania today, political space has shrunk to the point where protests are suppressed before they emergeRob Ahearne, Senior Lecturer in International Development, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/867772017-11-02T17:15:54Z2017-11-02T17:15:54ZMagufuli has been president for two years: how he’s changing Tanzania<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193053/original/file-20171102-26430-u5j80t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzania's President John Magufuli after inspecting a guard of honour in Kenya. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Mukoya</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There were scarcely any hints of the tumultuous years that would follow the <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Magufuli-sworn-in-as-Tanzania-s-5th-president/1840340-2944004-v0fybdz/index.html">swearing-in</a> of Dr John Pombe Magufuli on 5th November 2015 as Tanzania’s fifth president. After all, his <a href="http://ccm.or.tz/">Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM)</a> had been in power for decades, and <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000181065/ruling-party-s-john-magufuli-declared-tanzania-s-president-elect">his victory</a> seemed to herald continuity with the past.</p>
<p>In fact, Magufuli’s opponent attracted more attention during the campaign than Magufuli himself. When Edward Lowassa <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Edward-Lowassa-ditches-CCM-for-opposition-party-Chadema/2558-2812298-jaserk/index.html">defected from CCM</a> to the opposition and ran for president against his old party, it looked fleetingly as though this elite split might spell the <a href="http://mgafrica.com/article/2015-08-04-tanzania-election-race-takesa-leaf-from-kenya-senegal-and-nigeria-unexpectedly-hots-up">end of CCM’s dominance</a>.</p>
<p>But Magufuli has not brought continuity, but dramatic change. He began to impress just days after his inauguration. He made a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/dec/08/tanzania-new-president-john-magufuli-targets-corruption-surprise-visits-sackings">snap unannounced visit</a> to the Ministry of Finance on his first day as president. Then he <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34909111">pulled funds</a> intended for Independence Day celebrations and redirected them to anti-cholera operations. He began a <a href="http://www.tanzaniatoday.co.tz/news/magufuli-sacks-tra-chairman-dissolves-board">shake-up</a> of the Tanzania Port Authority, and extended it to the <a href="http://www.ippmedia.com/en/news/magufuli-sacks-tra-board-directors-major-shake">Tanzania Revenue Authority</a> as he launched a tax collection drive. An audit of the public payroll led to a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-corruption/tanzania-says-over-10000-ghost-workers-purged-from-government-payroll-idUSKCN0Y70RW">purge of “ghost workers”</a>. Quickly, it became apparent that he was genuinely waging war on corruption in the Tanzanian state.</p>
<p>The primary victims of these anti-corruption operations have been mid- and low-ranking civil servants. However, Magufuli has taken on high elites in CCM selectively too. In May, he fired Minister of Energy and Minerals Sospeter Muhongo. This June, businessman James Rugemalira and Harbinder Singh Sethi <a href="https://www.alleastafrica.com/2017/06/20/tanzania-escrow-monster-resurfaces/">found themselves in court</a>, facing government prosecutors in court. Both were linked to a major corruption case, <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/national/-Tegeta-escrow-will-go-down-in-history-as-a-major-scandal-/1840392-2575094-oumj96z/index.html">the Escrow Scandal</a> in 2014. </p>
<p>This thrift and intolerance for corruption won Magufuli attention and admiration worldwide. In the social media sphere, commentators celebrated his zeal playfully with the hashtag, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/01/tanzania-cost-cutting-president-john-magufuli-twitter">“#WhatWouldMagufuliDo”</a>.</p>
<p>But since early 2016, it has become apparent that Magufuli is not just waging war on corruption – he is also declaring war on democracy. </p>
<h2>War on democracy</h2>
<p>Magufuli has overseen numerous <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/25/tanzania-loves-its-new-anti-corruption-president-why-is-he-shutting-down-media-outlets/?utm_term=.c254ee2afe98">closures and suspensions of media outlets</a>. His officials have <a href="https://presidential-power.com/?p=5955">encouraged and tried to exacerbate</a> a split in the Civic United Front, by backing one side. His government has undermined <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/-/1840340/3063408/-/k9ecog/-/index.html">judicial</a> and <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/oped/Media-Services-Bill-undermines-Magufuli-s-fight-on-graft/1840568-3441642-format-xhtml-58fwfv/index.html">parliamentary</a> independence, implemented a <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Chadema-deliberates-the-way-forward-/-/1840340/3242140/-/4isof8/-/index.html">partial ban on public rallies</a>, harassed MPs, <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-social-media-policing-increases-the-risks-of-government-abuse-67478">closure of online political space</a>, and prosecuted critics under <a href="https://ipi.media/new-media-bill-threatens-press-freedom-in-tanzania/">new defamation and sedition laws</a>.</p>
<p>Together, these constitute major infringements on the freedom of expression and the opposition’s ability to communicate with voters.</p>
<p>In March this year <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Chadema-deliberates-the-way-forward-/-/1840340/3242140/-/4isof8/-/index.html">he announced</a> at a press conference that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Media owners, let me tell you: ‘Be careful. Watch it. If you think you have that kind of freedom — not to that extent’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In part, this repressive streak is a return to form. CCM has a long history of authoritarianism. It has ruled Tanzanian uninterrupted since 1977, and its predecessor parties ruled Tanganyika since 1961. </p>
<p>But there is a more immediate reason that Magufuli is tightening the noose on the opposition. The opposition has never been so strong. In 2005, CCM’s Jakaya Kikwete won the presidential election with an unassailable <a href="http://africanelections.tripod.com/tz.html">lead of 68%</a> over the runner-up. By 2015, CCM’s margin of victory had been shortened to 18%. For the first time in Tanzania’s history, the opposition is a force to be reckoned with.</p>
<p>The most plausible explanation for Magufuli’s authoritarian turn is that he is trying to minimise the possibility of an opposition victory in the future. Equally, every time he advances the anti-corruption agenda, he makes more enemies who might defect to the opposition. By narrowing space for opposition, he reduces the risk of them doing so.</p>
<p>But Magufuli is not only relying on repressive means to stay in power. He is also pursuing a programme that revives his popularity.</p>
<h2>The Magufuli way</h2>
<p>The third and most recent theme in Magufuli’s presidency has been a <a href="http://theconversation.com/all-bets-are-off-as-magufulis-resource-nationalism-moves-up-a-gear-in-tanzania-81632">confrontation with multinational mining companies</a>.</p>
<p>The controversy was kick-started this is the alleged discovery that Acacia Mining has been under-reporting of mineral exports earlier this year. Magufuli has argued that multinational mining companies have been <a href="http://www.ippmedia.com/en/news/revealed-report-expose-massive-looting-mineral-wealth">stealing Tanzania’s resources</a> for years.</p>
<p>Based on these claims, the government charged Acacia Mining with fines and back-dated taxes amounting to <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-bets-are-off-as-magufulis-resource-nationalism-moves-up-a-gear-in-tanzania-81632">USD190 billion</a>. Magufuli even threatened to nationalise the mines. His strategy of brinkmanship worked. On October 19th, Acacia’s parent company Barrick Gold <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Tanzania-to-own-16pc-stake-in-Acacia-gold-mines/2560-4146918-i48kim/index.html">announced that it had reached an agreement</a> with the Tanzanian government. It promised to find ways to further process copper-gold ores in Tanzania, instead of exporting them for smelting, and it made a number of pecuniary concessions.</p>
<p>There is a strategic thread that ties together Magufuli’s actions. </p>
<p>Tanzania’s <a href="http://www.mof.go.tz/mofdocs/msemaji/Five%202016_17_2020_21.pdf">fifth Five Year Plan</a> restores industrialisation to the heart of government policy in a way unseen since the 1970s. Domestic processing and tax revenue is central to that plan. So is government discipline, thrift and tax collection. The closure of political space keeps CCM in power to implement it, and suffocates internal opposition to his reforms. </p>
<p>But the definitive feature of Magufuli’s first two years has been a talent for pursuing his programme of reform while pursuing domestic popularity at the same time. His taste for the dramatic has caught public attention and his willingness to disturb the status quo has convinced many that his intentions are more sincere than those of his predecessors. Perhaps more than any other president since Tanzania’s founding father, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/112/447/238/79493">Julius Nyerere</a>, Magufuli is seen as a man of integrity.</p>
<p>While Magufuli has skilfully coupled popular politics with fundamental reform, he has also precipitated a series of unintended changes which may be slipping beyond his control.</p>
<p>His <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-economy/exclusive-foreign-firms-hit-by-tax-demands-rethink-tanzanian-expansion-idUKKBN13O0HO">demands from companies</a> have unquestionable merit, but they are also making businesses <a href="http://www.mining.com/russian-state-corporation-suspends-1-2-billion-uranium-project-tanzania/">think twice</a> about operating in Tanzania. For example, a number of oil companies are due to begin negotiations about <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/tanzania-gas/interview-tanzania-hopes-for-lng-plant-agreement-with-oil-majors-by-2018-idUKL5N1FE2MP">developing off-shore gas fields</a>. After the debacle with mining companies they know that they will not get an easy deal, but they may also doubt the word of a government that has in effect torn up contracts, and repeatedly placed the president at the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-dangote/tanzania-nigerias-dangote-reach-natural-gas-supply-deal-idUSKBN13Z0KC">centre of contract negotiation</a>.</p>
<p>Equally, by putting such pressure on the opposition, Magufuli may make it stronger. Attempts to divide the second opposition party, the Civic United Front, may <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Zanzibar-CUF-in-talks-with-Chadema-/2558-4083984-k9d2yl/index.html">drive them closer to Chadema</a>. They may also unintentionally make martyrs of the opposition. An attempted assassination attempt transformed opposition politician Tundu Lissu into a national hero. </p>
<p>It is not known who is behind the drive-by shooting that hospitalised Lissu, in which at least 28 shots were fired, but Lissu was among the most <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/oped/comment/Tundu-Lissu-assassination-attempt/434750-4089196-141ibk5/index.html">vocal opponents of the government</a>. <a href="http://www.dailynews.co.tz/index.php/home-news/48380-tundu-lissu-held-over-undisclosed-charges">He was being tried in court for sedition</a> just days before he was shot. No matter who was behind the attack, it is fast becoming the public image for the extremes of political change in Tanzania under Magufuli.</p>
<p>Many underestimated Magufuli at his inauguration two years ago, but few do now. While Magufuli’s election represents the continuation of CCM rule, he has brought about profound change. Only time will tell whether the intended or the unintended consequences of his actions will be those that define his legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Paget is a member of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom</span></em></p>Tanzania’s President John Magufuli has brought dramatic change and his intolerance for corruption won him worldwide admiration. But his repressive means to stay in power are being questioned.Dan Paget, DPhil Politics (African electoral politics), University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/760262017-04-19T15:16:15Z2017-04-19T15:16:15ZSouth Africa’s ANC can stay a liberation movement and govern well<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165115/original/image-20170412-25898-1979v02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s governing party, is <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/cloneofsouth-africa-anc-awaits-key-municipal-ele-160804084046975.html">weakening</a>. It has recently committed some <a href="https://theconversation.com/firing-of-south-africas-finance-minister-puts-the-public-purse-in-zumas-hands-75525">terrible mistakes</a> in government. </p>
<p>High on the list of errors is its decision to close ranks in defence of President Jacob Zuma during the <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/09/15/Joel-Netshitenzhe-Nkandla-state-capture-evoke-indignation">Nkandla debacle</a> where public money was used on upgrades to his private homestead. Then there’s the deployment of incompetent “cadres” to critical positions in government as well as Zuma’s ill-timed <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2017-01-24-aubrey-matshiqi-zuma-move-will-show-who-insiders-are/">cabinet reshuffle</a>. </p>
<p>Critics argue that these problems stem from the ANC’s insistence on being a <a href="https://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/pdf/raymond-suttner/ANC-attainment-power.pdf">liberation movement</a> which they say is incompatible with a constitutional democracy. </p>
<p>This has raised the question about the party’s very nature: Is it not time for the ANC to stop seeing itself as a liberation movement but rather a modern, professional political party?</p>
<p>But that argument is hard to sustain. There’s nothing particular about political parties that makes them compatible with constitutional democracy.</p>
<h2>Liberation movement vs political party</h2>
<p>Those opposed to the ANC’s holding place as a liberation movement argue that a movement – liberation or social – is the old way of doing politics. This, they claim, was suitable during the struggles against colonialism and apartheid. But that struggle is now over and the post-apartheid era presents a new set of challenges.</p>
<p>The idea of a liberation movement keeps archaic and obsolete traditions alive. These include the leadership collective, consensus choice of leadership, revolution, comradeship, cadre deployment and patriarchal leadership patterns.</p>
<p>The role and character of liberation movements in power is informed by the democracy theory (coming out of <a href="https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/POLSC2312.1.4.pdf">liberalism ideology</a>) and the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/party_dominance.pdf">theory of party dominance</a>. These theories suggest that for democracy to be effective, there should be vibrant political party competition because it strengthens deliberative aspects of a liberal democracy. It also engenders internal dynamism and change of groups of elites in power. </p>
<p>The party dominance theory leads to the view that the ANC dominates South Africa’s politics because of its liberation movement legacy. This dominance is seen as inimical to democratic competition. </p>
<p>But when liberation movements become political parties they enhance their efficiency and effectiveness. They also deepen their internal democracy and their ability to connect with the wider public.</p>
<p>Internal democracy within the ANC is seen as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-countrys-constitutional-court-can-consolidate-and-deepen-democracy-54184">particularly important</a> given its political dominance. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165810/original/image-20170419-6375-ra1l0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165810/original/image-20170419-6375-ra1l0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165810/original/image-20170419-6375-ra1l0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165810/original/image-20170419-6375-ra1l0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165810/original/image-20170419-6375-ra1l0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165810/original/image-20170419-6375-ra1l0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165810/original/image-20170419-6375-ra1l0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ANC military veterans guard the party’s headquarters ahead of a march by the opposition DA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Political parties shed the tendency towards <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/basoc/ch-5.htm">democratic centralism</a>, and its opaque internal political systems which insist on toeing the party line and brooks no dissent. </p>
<p>Political parties are assumed to operate like professional associations. They value accountability and transparency embracing modern systems of management and leadership. This enables them to become dynamic platforms for advancing refined political ends. </p>
<p>The conduct of Zuma and his cohort of leaders has been blamed on the ANC’s choice to remain steeped in the traditions of a <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/iservice/the-marginalisation-of-parliament">liberation movement</a>. The form determines the content: it produces tendencies that cause all manner of problems. </p>
<p>The ANC has made some catastrophic mistakes. It sometimes displayed arrogance in power and has allowed corrupt leaders to go <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-is-at-an-inflection-point-will-it-resist-or-succumb-to-state-capture-66523">unpunished</a>. </p>
<p>There has also been a vacillation of policy stances on the economy, land and other crucial policy areas. Largely sound policies have been poorly implemented. </p>
<p>And there have been cases where the party and the state’s affairs have been <a href="http://www.enca.com/south-africa/anc-urges-government-to-review-madonselas-party-state-separation-findings">conflated</a>.</p>
<p>Some have argued that these problems stem from the ANC remaining essentially a liberation movement. To move with the times, they argue, it needs to assume a new, modern professional political party posture. </p>
<h2>Lessons from elsewhere</h2>
<p>The challenge in the ANC is, however, not unique to South Africa.
Liberal democrats in Japan, Christian democrats in Italy, the <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21711925-new-law-has-allowed-government-freeze-its-assets-leaving-it-unable-pay-staff-taiwans">Kuomintang</a> in Taiwan and nationalist democrats in Kenya all experienced similar challenges. </p>
<p>Although they were not liberation movements, they share a number of features with the ANC. This includes arrogance of power, personalisation of power, elitism and the preponderance of sectional interests over the common good. So, it seems these are tendencies that need to be overcome.</p>
<p>It’s hard to sustain the argument that liberation movements are not right for democratic consolidation merely because they are movements or that political parties are by nature good for competitive politics. Political parties can dominate, distort, corrupt, abuse, and complicate democratic systems just as liberation movements deepen democracy by strengthening its social basis. </p>
<h2>What the ANC needs to do</h2>
<p>The ANC doesn’t need to transition into a political party, whatever that means in practice. But, it needs to develop a leadership that’s competent to use the state to change the economy fundamentally in order to serve the majority and bring about qualitatively positive changes to the people, especially the poor.</p>
<p>The party needs to put a stop to the self-inflicted damage to its image through endless scandals, public displays of arrogance, factionalism and internal conflict. </p>
<p>The ANC also needs to end its practice of deploying poor quality cadres to critical state structures, and start heeding the counsel of its friends and foes that it must place the country’s interests before sectional interests of whatever faction of its leadership is in power. </p>
<p>It can look to the <a href="http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Editorial/What-we-can-learn-from-Tanzania-s-Chama-Cha-Mapinduzi/689360-2787692-1173726z/index.html">Chama Cha Mapinduzi</a> movement that’s been in power in Tanzania since the 1960s for example.</p>
<p>The party has ensured an open contest for leadership positions. The elected leaders are then expected to root out corruption, crime, tribalism and so forth.</p>
<p>There’s a constant change of national leadership and a level of dynamism that enables the movement to adapt to changing society. It has produced leaders like <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/former-tanzanian-president-julius-nyerere-dies">Julius Nyerere</a> and <a href="http://zikoko.com/list/8-reasons-tanzanias-john-magufuli-africas-beloved-president/">John Magafuli </a>who commands respect across party lines. </p>
<p>If liberation movements were formed to achieve total decolonisation and freedom, then for as a long the process is incomplete, they will have a good reason to exist. Like orthodox political parties, they constantly have to adapt to change.</p>
<p>Ultimately, democracy is meaningless if it doesn’t improve the material circumstances for the people. To do this, political formations must be occupied by conscientious, competent, compassionate and interested political elite.</p>
<p>This is what the ANC has shown it lacks as it attempts to “deal” with every scandal and crisis it causes. The problem isn’t its commitment to being a liberation movement, but rather that it wants to be a callous one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siphamandla Zondi works for Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, which sometimes receives funding from research funding foundations like the Mellon Foundation and NRF. </span></em></p>Democracy in South Africa is meaningless if it doesn’t improve the lives of the people. To do this, the governing ANC must be led by conscientious, competent and interested leaders.Siphamandla Zondi, Professor and head of department of Political Sciences and acting head of the Institute for Strategic and Political Affairs, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/575002016-04-21T20:41:11Z2016-04-21T20:41:11ZTanzania at 55: some progress has been made but there’s a long way to go<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118731/original/image-20160414-2649-zckd87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzania's President John Pombe Magufuli is still experiencing the "election honeymoon" and is highly rated by citizens.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Emmanuel Herman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli has <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201604050735.html">cancelled</a> this year’s Union Day celebrations, celebrated every April 26. Instead he has recommended road construction with the funds that were set aside for the <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/africa/Tanzanians-wont-celebrate-Union-Day/-/1066/3147292/-/9jpa0fz/-/index.html">celebrations</a>. </p>
<p>This follows a similar move last year when he ordered that the December independence day celebrations be dedicated to <a href="http://www.africansarise.com/tanzania/magufuli-orders-tanzanians-to-join-monthly-clean-up-campaigns/">clean-up campaigns</a>. </p>
<p>The cancellation of two national holidays as cost-cutting measures is Magufuli’s rushed attempt to finally deliver on <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nyerere/biography.htm">President Julius Nyerere’s</a> vision of self-reliance, accountability and good governance for his country. Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding father upon its independence in 1961, governed until he <a href="http://www.juliusnyerere.org/index.php/nyerere/about/">retired</a> in 1985.</p>
<p>But to achieve any of these goals, the new president must find consensus for constitutional reforms. This is especially important because the country’s elections have become increasingly <a href="http://www.saiia.org.za/opinion-analysis/will-competitive-elections-lead-to-change-in-tanzania">competitive</a>. Contested elections in the future could become increasingly polarised. As it is, Magufuli’s rival for the presidency, Edward Lowassa, has refused to recognise last year’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/29/tanzania-announces-election-winner-amid-claims-of-vote-rigging">election results</a>. </p>
<p>The reforms should entail a total overhaul of Tanzania’s old constitution. Successive governments since President Nyerere have promised to do this but all have <a href="http://www.africaresearchinstitute.org/publications/constitutional-reform-tanzania-2/">fallen short of their promises</a>. The latest attempt – a referendum on a new constitution planned for last year – also <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/tanzania-delays-constitution-referendum/2705034.html">failed</a>. The proposed new constitution was in any event rejected by opposition parties and civil society on the grounds that it was <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/tanzania-delays-constitution-referendum/2705034.html">not inclusive enough</a>.</p>
<p>Constitutional reforms would solve the controversy over the mainland’s relationship with the semi-autonomous <a href="http://csis.org/publication/political-crisis-zanzibar">Zanzibar archipelago</a>. They would also promote the drive for good governance and accountability that Magufuli is championing. </p>
<p>He is likely to succeed with these reforms if he undertakes them now while he is still <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dwayne-wong-omowale/what-would-magufuli-do-ho_b_8950422.html">popular among Tanzanians</a>. </p>
<h2>Nyerere’s legacy of social cohesion</h2>
<p>Nyerere’s main gift to Tanzanians was his ability to nurture a strong form of social cohesion among his countrymen. This seems to have endured. He managed to achieve this through African socialism known as <a href="http://tdsnfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/MILITANTS-MOTHERS-AND-THE-NATIONAL-FAMILY-UJAMAA-GENDER-AND-RURAL-DEVELOPMENT-IN-POSTCOLONIAL-TANZANIA.pdf">Ujamaa</a>. </p>
<p>Ujamaa was both a party ideology and <a href="http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:278969/FULLTEXT01.pdf">government policy</a>. Through his pragmatic approach to national unity, Nyerere was able to create a strong sense of social cohesion among Tanzanians, while uniting Zanzibar and Tanganyika.</p>
<p>This social cohesiveness prevailed before and after the recent elections, even though they were the most competitive <a href="https://www.ndi.org/tanzania">since independence</a>. Despite the fact that they were heavily polarised and threatened to split the independence party Chama Cha Mapinduzi, Tanzanian leaders made persistent calls for <a href="http://www.nai.uu.se/news/articles/2015/10/29/163013/index.xml">calm</a>. As a result, the country returned to normality after the polls.</p>
<p>This is in sharp contrast with several other countries in the region, specifically in the <a href="http://www.eac.int/">East African Community</a>. The rest of the community’s members – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda – have all experienced <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/EACANNIE.PDF">ethnic violence</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless trends in Tanzania’s election suggested an emerging ethnic cleavage in the country’s voting patterns. Parties were forced to mobilise support from their leaders’ regional strongholds.</p>
<p>This is largely due to political opposition parties gaining increasing clout over the advantages of <a href="http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/conferences/2009-edia/papers/457-OGorman.pdf">incumbency</a> enjoyed by Chama Cha Mapinduzi since independence.</p>
<p>Chama Cha Mapinduzi has been the dominant unifying party among top Tanzanian political elites for a long time. But the party nearly split after presidential candidate <a href="http://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/11292/Zanzibar_faces_poll_re-run">Edward Lowassa</a> decided to join opposition party Chadema when he failed to clinch the <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/It-s-Magufuli-vs-Lowassa/-/2558/2816328/-/7hu5kt/-/index.html">presidential ticket</a>.</p>
<p>The palpable tensions during the campaign resulted in the two leading presidential contenders – Lowassa and Magufuli – whipping up support among their <a href="http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000180882/ruling-ccm-headed-for-victory-in-tanzania-polls">regional bases</a>. Chama Cha Mapinduzi had the advantage of strong grassroots support across the geographically <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22781.pdf">vast country</a>. As a result Magufuli won, clinching more than 58% of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34669468">votes</a>. It was the lowest margin in Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s winning streak <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/After-win--it-s-uphill-task-for-Magufuli/-/2558/2936814/-/s0t4biz/-/index.html">since independence</a>.</p>
<h2>Zanzibar presents greatest threat</h2>
<p>The other issue that greatly threatens Tanzania’s social unity is political instability in Zanzibar. The island experienced political tension during the electioneering period. </p>
<p>An archipelago off the Indian Ocean, Zanzibar formed a union with Tanzania in 1964, and has never hidden its desire to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2012/09/39186.html">secede</a>. </p>
<p>Tensions have been a constant feature on the island since 1995’s multi-party elections. Post-election violence in <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/46f146f10.pdf">2000</a> triggered the worst political crisis in Zanzibar’s history.</p>
<p>Tensions last year resulted in the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34656934">elections</a> being nullified. This was not a surprise. The situation was saved by both sides agreeing with the Zanzibar Election Commission’s pledge to conduct a rerun of the elections.</p>
<p>Despite Chama Cha Mapinduzi candidate Ali Mohamed Shein winning the presidency in Zanzibar with 91% of <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/CCM-Shein-wins-Zanzibar-presidency-in-election-rerun/-/2558/3126934/-/bbutyb/-/index.html">votes cast</a>, the tension is likely to persist. The best option would be to form a government of national unity. The long-term goal should be to agree on constitutional reforms to reduce a sense of marginalisation by sections of Zanzibaris.</p>
<h2>Economic growth and development pressure</h2>
<p>Nyerere is widely credited with unifying Tanzania. But his economic policies, aimed at self-reliance, undermined Tanzania’s economic growth and <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/political%20science/volume8n1/ajps008001004.pdf">development</a>.
Nyerere’s policies failed despite Tanzania’s vast deposits of <a href="http://en.unesco.org/radioict/sites/radioict/files/interview_professor_mohammed_sheya_tanzania_transcript.pdf">natural resources</a>. The nationalisation of businesses and industries drove away foreign direct investment. Kenya, which traditionally has run an open economy, was the main beneficiary.</p>
<p>Now, as Tanzania celebrates its 52nd <a href="https://anydayguide.com/calendar/1936">Union Day</a>, there is a rush to undo past failures. Good governance and accountability are high on Magufuli’s agenda. His style of leadership has included impromptu visits to public offices to see how government officials work.</p>
<p>This has <a href="http://citizentv.co.ke/news/mwangi-is-magufulis-broom-strong-enough-to-sweep-eac-113118/">endeared him to Tanzanians</a> and his popularity has soared. Increasingly Tanzanians are coming around to trusting <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dwayne-wong-omowale/what-would-magufuli-do-ho_b_8950422.html">his leadership</a>.</p>
<p>But the country needs to establish new state institutions and strengthen existing ones. These are preconditions to the country’s much-needed constitutional reforms.</p>
<h2>Good neighbourliness</h2>
<p>Magufuli would also help Tanzania overcome its economic challenges by forging stronger regional relations. Since independence Tanzania has had varied levels of engagement with countries in the East African Community. The previous Jakaya Kikwete regime had a lukewarm approach towards the <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201604120242.html">regional economic block</a>. The current regime seems to be on a mission to mend fences and position Tanzania as a key actor in regional affairs. This was evident in his recent charm offensive <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201604120242.html">towards Uganda and Rwanda’s leaders</a>. Nevertheless, Tanzania still needs to formulate a grounded foreign policy framework for regional relations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sekou Toure Otondi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Good governance and accountability are high on the agenda of Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli.Sekou Toure Otondi, PhD Candidate, Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of NairobiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/508102015-11-18T04:31:20Z2015-11-18T04:31:20ZTanzania has a lot to lose if it doesn’t improve relations with its neighbours<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102151/original/image-20151117-21590-xzjy2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzania's John Magufuli greets ruling party members after being declared winner of the presidential elections.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Sadi Said</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the dust settles after Tanzania’s hotly contested elections – at least on the mainland, if not Zanzibar – the new leadership of East Africa’s largest and most populous state has stark choices to make at home and in the region.</p>
<p>In Tanzania’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34630095">closest</a> presidential race ever, the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi‘s <a href="http://ccmtz.org/">(CCM)</a> presidential candidate, <a href="http://www.tanzaniatoday.co.tz/news/and-this-is-dr-john-pombe-magufuli-cv">John Pombe Magufuli</a>, won more than 58% of national votes cast. His closest rival, Edward Lowassa, garnered 40% of national votes under the opposition UKAWA coalition.</p>
<p>Magufuli’s win has not led to a transfer of power. His party is bound to govern for the next five years. But a change of guard within CCM’s top leadership should provide an opportunity to reassess Tanzania’s role within the <a href="http://www.eac.int/">East Africa Community</a> (EAC) – in particular, how regional integration can be deepened and widened. </p>
<h2>Possible routes to follow</h2>
<p>The three likely scenarios open to Magufuli’s government as it re-evaluates its engagements in the community are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>to maintain the lukewarm approach, at times bordering on isolationism, as perfected by his predecessor <a href="http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/jakaya-kikwete-5822.php">Jakaya Kikwete</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>to formulate a new policy for Tanzania’s involvement with other EAC member states; and</p></li>
<li><p>at the worst, to pull the country out of the EAC.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>These policy choices should be understood within the context of the previous regime’s indecisive approach to matters East African. During <a href="http://qz.com/459503/charts-showing-president-jakaya-kikwetes-economic-legacy-in-tanzania/">Kikwete’s</a> tenure, Tanzania consistently had troubled relations with other members of the regional bloc. </p>
<p>These can be attributed partly to personality difference between Kikwete and his peers in the region. But equally significant is the fact that Tanzania has been cautious in its approach to deepening regional integration.</p>
<p>The reasons for this are complex and rooted in post-colonial history. Immediately after its independence, Tanzania adopted <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/rodney-walter/works/ujamaaandscientificsocialism.htm">socialist policies</a>, aligning itself with China. Kenya on the other hand took a more capitalist <a href="http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Kenya-grows-economy-nine-times-since-independence/-/539546/2108314/-/4owg52/-/index.html">approach</a>.</p>
<p>The undercurrents of these ideological cleavages still linger.</p>
<p>In Uganda’s case, its unstable history characterised by <a href="http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/uganda/history">military coups</a> and counter coups has continued to undermine its ability to forge a transparent democratic culture, particularly multiparty democracy. </p>
<h2>Tanzanians are lukewarm about integration</h2>
<p>The Tanzanian ruling elite’s lukewarm stance to a political federation has trickled down to ordinary Tanzanians. They have the <a href="http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Policy%20paper/ab_policypaperno16.pdf">lowest support</a> for a political federation. This can mainly be attributed to a strong sense of nationalism, land ownership, and negative stereotyping of their regional peers.</p>
<p>Tanzanians’ strong sense of nationalism can be traced back to the country’s past. As a socialist state it was suspicious of more open economies, even in its neighbourhood. As it began to liberalise its economy, Tanzanians have continued to view their neighbours as more aggressive, and in competition for their jobs and land.</p>
<p>Tanzania’s indecisiveness about regional integration has continued to cast a shadow over the future prospects of the EAC. As a result it has been left out of significant regional decisions. This was evident when Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and later Burundi joined forces to fast track key regional infrastructural projects without Tanzania’s involvement. </p>
<p>The determination of this “coalition of the willing” was further illustrated when they committed to political integration by <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Three-countries-renew-push-for-EAC-political-federation-by-2016-/-/2558/2653442/-/c8bog9/-/index.html">2016</a>, with or without Tanzania. This was made clear at the northern corridor heads of states <a href="http://www.mineac.gov.rw/fileadmin/templates/Documents/Northern_Corridor/Ministerial_Reports/MINISTERIAL_REPORT_-_9TH_Northern_Corridor_Integration_Projects_Meeting_-_Kigali.pdf">summit</a> in Kigali earlier this year.</p>
<h2>A great deal is at stake</h2>
<p>Should Magufuli continue Kikwete’s lonewolf approach, Tanzania will face further sidelining. It is also likely to suffer the most economically and even politically.</p>
<p>The future of a number of its expansive infrastructure projects, such as the <a href="http://china.aiddata.org/projects/30332">Bagamoyo port</a> and <a href="http://www.cowi.com/menu/project/RailwaysRoadsandAirports/Railways/Pages/Upgrading-af-Tanga-Arusha-and-Isaka-Mwanza-Railway-Lines.aspx">Tanga railway</a>, illustrate this well.</p>
<p>Tanzania’s aim is to be a service hub for the region’s landlocked states. Bagamoyo is expected to be the biggest port in East Africa, rivalling <a href="http://www.ttcanc.org/page.php?id=27">Kenya’s Mombasa</a>. It is expected to serve mainly Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, which have been relying on Mombasa.</p>
<p>The Tanga railway line will mainly serve inland Tanzania, but is eventually expected to <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Tanzania+plans+a+railway+line+to+reach+South+Sudan/-/2560/1330196/-/152eaqsz/-/index.html">connect</a> to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan.</p>
<p>But the viability of the projects and their ability to serve the region depends very much on Tanzania working with its neighbours. As things stand it may be left out on the periphery because of its hesitant approach to integration and the willingness of other member states to forge a working coalition.</p>
<p>In addition, the projects are likely to contribute less to Tanzania’s economic growth and development should it reduce its engagement with EAC. This is because it would no longer enjoy the financial and economic privileges of belonging to a regional common market. This includes access to the free movement of goods and services. </p>
<p>Tanzania also belongs to the Southern African Development Community <a href="http://www.sadc.int/">(SADC)</a>. SADC is made up of mostly southern African states. It was formed in 1980 to advance political liberation and transformed to a regional economic block in 1992.</p>
<p>Tanzania officially <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/908008.stm">quit</a> the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa <a href="http://www.comesa.int/">(COMESA)</a> in September 2000. It feared opening it’s market to COMESA countries, and abolishing internal tariffs, would negatively impact its economic growth and development.</p>
<p>But Tanzania is not likely to gain much from either of them as they are dominated by South Africa. Put simply, the country’s geopolitical position within EAC provides it with a perfect opportunity to benefit much more from the regional body compared with the others.</p>
<p>It’s therefore important that Magufuli makes serious commitments to strengthening relations with other EAC member states, and to actively participate in regional integration efforts.</p>
<p>The personalities of EAC leaders notwithstanding, it is important that Magufuli commits himself to work with the EAC. This will help strengthen and deepen integration efforts for the benefit of the region’s more than <a href="http://www.eac.int/statistics/">145.5 million</a> people.</p>
<p>The EAC prides itself on being the most ambitious regional integration process in Africa. It should strive to succeed against all odds. This will provide a benchmark for other regional economic blocs to unite as outlined by the 1991 <a href="http://www.au.int/en/sites/default/files/TREATY_ESTABLISHING_THE_AFRICAN_ECONOMIC_COMMUNITY.pdf">Abuja treaty</a> and the African Union’s <a href="http://www.nepad.org/system/files/Agenda%202063%20%20English.pdf">Agenda 2063</a> on continental integration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50810/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sekou Toure Otondi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tanzania’s new president, John Pombe Magufuli, needs to change the country’s lukewarm attitude to the EAC and regional integration, which has cast a shadow over the future prospects of the region.Sekou Toure Otondi, PhD Candidate, Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of NairobiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.