Pan-African Postcard
One year on in Tanzania: A false start
Issa G Shivji
2007-01-04, Issue 284
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/39045
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President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete came to power on a populist vote. Wamachinga, the semi-employed and unemployed youth of Dar es Salaam symbolized his populist support. He promised them one million jobs.
Kikwete’s first task was to convert his populist support into a popular support. Populism is fragile; it is ambivalent and can go in either direction, progressive or reactionary. In a country like Tanzania with over 12,000 villages, in which live some 80 per cent of the population, mostly smallholder peasants, converting populism to popularity means establishing a close rapport with village communities.
Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere did have such rapport but it was top-down, paternalistic. Mwalimu did not see peasants as an agency for change; peasants could not bring about change, rather he saw change being brought to them. Edward Moringe Sokoine had a developmental conception of the village. Sokoine saw the village as a harbinger of self-reliant, national development and the peasant (a rich peasant?) as an agency of change. Whatever the differences, there was one fundamental thing common to them. Both men were persons of unimpeachable personal integrity, which endeared them to the masses and strengthened them against pressures from local reactionary and foreign imperialist forces.
A fourth phase president who would make a difference would have had to combine the popular rapport of a Kambarage with the sober developmental vision of a Moringe. We therefore needed a JMK. In his first year, I envisioned President Kikwete in khaki perched on a landrover conversing with villagers, visiting even those villages where they still think Nyerere is the president. It was not to be. Instead, we found the President jet-trotting to foreign lands, including the most hated bullies of this world, chasing ‘development’. If investors needed to be charmed, that could well have been done by his charming Prime Minister. But JK needed to be in the country to transform himself into a JMK.
While the populist support was not converted into a popular support, worse, within one year the President lost even his populist support, thanks to his short-sighted lieutenants who mercilessly chased away Wamachinga thus piling up the numbers of unemployed. Now the President will have to create not one million, but perhaps 1.4 million jobs to accommodate the former Wamachingas!
The Cabinet
The ‘who’s who’ in the cabinet would give a signal of the President’s direction. In the people’s perception, the previous vigogo had indulged in an orgy of self-enrichment, ujasiriamali. They could not name names in public for fear of being persecuted by the State but in their palavers - majiweni and mabarazani - they could tell you who owned what and how he/she got it. The tip of the iceberg was an utterly inexplicable sale of government houses.
True, Mwalimu’s leadership code was killed and buried in Zanzibar by Mzee Ruksa. What we did not know then was that it was a signal to forsake even elementary political ethics. In the second half of the third phase government the neo-wabenzi, against whom the leadership code was promulgated in the first place, went berserk, holding directorships in companies, sometimes in the very sector under your ministry; awarding tenders to sons, and cousins and girlfriends; accumulating real estate; having a finger in every business pie, fair or foul, and much more. People were not only disappointed with this type of ujasiriamali, they were simply disgusted - and despaired.
People expected a messiah in JK who would deliver them from the orgy of self-enrichment. They expected him to signal a different direction by, at least, choosing into his cabinet people of unquestionable personal integrity. As a symbolic gesture he would have perhaps declared that those who took government houses had disqualified themselves from the potential pool of ministers. That alone would have sent a signal that he meant business, that he was truly a man of the people. And Kikwete could have done it; he was riding on a wave of 80 per cent vote. For reasons best known to him and his advisers, the president rubbed salt into the wound by announcing that he too had “bought” a government house!
CCM appointments
The 2005 nomination process of the presidential candidate within the CCM was one of the worst in the party’s history. Politics of ethnicity and race were freely deployed; the amount of money used could have only come from slush funds provided by tycoons; factional fights and intrigues abounded. Many felt in their bones that the party could crack. That did not happen. But the party came out of elections more fractionalized than it had entered it. Any farsighted leader of a political party in that situation had two major tasks.
First, to cement the party with a vision and a programme transcending factions and primordial prejudices. Second, to re-establish the integrity of the party and its leadership. Two party posts would be germane to this double-task, the post of the secretary general and that of the treasurer.
The party cried out for a sober organizer as the secretary general, not a cheer-leader used to haranguing people as if they were some empty tins fit only for making noises. It called for a treasurer who would be absolutely above board and known for his/her personal integrity, who would not compromise in matters of money. Again, the chairman did not measure up to the expectations in his party appointments.
Social and economic development
One year is not long enough to assess the developmental performance of a regime. But it is long enough to gauge its developmental direction. In this case, the fourth phase government seems to have decided, either consciously or by default, to stay the course. The course was set by the Mkapa regime: mindless privatisation and marketisation of the economy, including privatisation of strategic sectors, for example, finance and insurance; commodification of public goods and services, for example, land, water, energy, health and education and ruthless and unregulated exploitation of resources by multinationals – minerals, timber and forests and other bio-resources.
The experience of mining companies and the fiasco of privatized management in the water and electricity should have made the fourth phase government to revisit the course rather than stay it. The current power crisis, whose origins could be traced to the scandalous IPTL deal and equally scandalous imposition of Net Group management by force (remember that FFU accompanied the South African management when taking over TANESCO offices against resisting workers!), has been made worse by the outrageously scandalous Richmond saga. The credibility of the regime has hit rock-bottom, and the president’s studious silence only helps to feed the rumour mills of Dar es Salaam.
After some twenty years of the neo-liberal direction of the economy, one would have thought that the new government would have made a sober assessment in the light of its own experience and the experience of other countries, particularly Latin America where neo-liberalism has been discredited to the boot. Instead, we have accepted to be part of the perverted logic of IFIs (International Finance Institutions) which attributes lack of success to insufficient reforms – so reform is the only industry that shows exponential growth rates! When shall we be done with reforms?
Space does not allow going into details. But the least that is expected is that we seriously revisit our development paradigm. Are Mkukuta and Mkurabita serious developmental programmes? Which country has reduced poverty by cash transfers without developing the economy? And where is an example of success of De Soto’s Mkurabita?
Foreign policy
If there is one area where both the third and fourth phase governments have shown utter lack of appreciation of the world situation, it is in the country’s foreign alignments. True, there is only one superpower but that does not mean one has to go into its armpit. This superpower is a vicious military power with a clear military design on Africa. It is therefore very difficult to understand Tanzania accepting to send a brigade to Lebanon and co-sponsoring the US-authored UN resolution for intervention in Somalia. The design of the US on the Eastern seaboard is clear – to string it with military bases from Djibouti through Somalia and Dar es Salaam to Durban. Tanzania is one country which has a relatively stable polity and the lingering Nyerereist legitimacy in Africa. Its landmass connects the Indian Ocean to the heart of rich Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo. For these and many other reasons, US eyes Tanzania. It is surprising therefore that instead of keeping safe distance, our leadership goes out of its way to court this dangerous military octopus.
It is school-boyish to think that non-alignment does not make sense in the unipolar world. It makes more sense today than ever before. Remember Bush has drawn the line – you are either with us or with the “terrorists”, which means anyone who is against US foreign policy. Under these circumstances, non-alignment means ‘we are neither with you nor with the terrorists!’
By the same token, it is again surprising that Tanzania is increasingly courting and embracing another vicious military power totally aligned with the US – Israel. Hopefully, our leadership will realise its folly before it is too late.
The union question
This has been the continuing subject of discussions and frustrations in the media. The tail continues to wag the dog. The mpasuko in the union cannot be resolved without resolving the mpasuko in Zanzibar. And for resolving the mapasuko, the CCM has to rise above political opportunism. The problem is that the CCM leadership fails to discipline the Zanzibar CCM because mainland CCM factions opportunistically seek out the most reactionary elements in Zanzibar, lest the ‘opposition’ get into power. This is a groundless fear. There is no force in Zanzibar which would want to break the union but if the situation continues as it is, where Zanzibar fails to build a national consensus, then indeed the union could breakup. The JK government has failed to move on this score. One needs to be firm; flabbiness of position wouldn’t do. Sharing of power in Zanzibar is not going to rock the Tanzanian boat at all, nor, in fact CCM’s hegemony. Those who are opposed to national unity on the Islands are purely doing so out of personal interest and personal interests cannot be allowed to wreck a country.
Summing up
In sum, then, the immediate task facing the fourth phase government is to take a serious stock, not only of its one year in power, but also the direction in which the country has been moving for the last twenty years. For any government to lose its massive support within a year is very serious indeed and it requires serious attention, not escapism and scapegoating.
• This article first appeared in The Citizen, a Tanzanian daily, on 21st December, 2006. Issa Shivji is a retired law professor.
• Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
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