Eyeing presidential seat? Learn from Mrema’s path

Dar es Salaam. The passing of Augustine Lyatonga Mrema was the end of an era in more ways than one. It was telling that he died on August 21, 2022 at the age of 77 barely a month after Tanzania marked 30 years of multiparty democracy.

Mrema was the man who captured people’s imagination, during the campaigns for the first multiparty presidential elections in 1995, in a manner that sent shockwaves to the ruling party, CCM. Many through CCM’s goose had been cooked in the 1995 presidential elections. But it was not to be.

Running as the opposition presidential candidate in the general Election, Mrema efficiently and artfully channelled people’s frustrations, concerns and rechannelled their hopes for change and a better future for Tanzania.

His campaign rallies were massive as he entered the election campaigns with a popularity that had hit the roof. His name recognition was something that the CCM presidential candidate, Benjamin Mkapa, envied.

To say that CCM panicked in 1995 is an understatement. According to former President Ali Hassan Mwinyi even senior colleagues within the highest echelons of the party thought CCM’s goose had been cooked.

Mrema’s presidential ambitions

Mrema nursed presidential ambitions long before he joined the Opposition in early 1995. When he was appointed the minister for Home Affairs by the then President Mwinyi in 1990, Mrema seemed all too clear not only about his future ambitions, but also about how he would pursue his ambitions, within the framework of the ruling party, CCM.

He wasted no time. Soon after becoming minister Mrema started cracking down hard on lawlessness, robbery, corruption, embezzlement of public funds and sleaziness in government service delivery.

He held public rallies in which he gave the people an opportunity to air their grievances and concerns on various issues.

Within a span of months Mrema emerged as a champion of the poor’s rights, threatening to arrest unscrupulous businessmen who overpriced consumers and employers who denied wages to their workers.

He did all that in such zeal and with such dramatic effect, at the full glare of the media that it made him a household name throughout the country.

His popularity soared, so did people’s expectations of him to deliver that President Mwinyi had to appoint him Deputy Prime Minister in January 1993, a title that was not in the Constitution, to give him a wide berth to deal with the rot in other ministries that were not part of his Portfolio.

He appeared unannounced in hospitals, police stations, courts of law and in similar public institutions that were notorious in poor service delivery to the people. The mere mention of the name of Mrema sent a crooked trader or a corrupt civil servant into panic. At the time when Tanzania’s economy was at one of its lowest ebb with government delivery so shoddy Mrema was like a rescuer who crash-landed in the middle of disaster.

In his autobiography Mzee Rukhsa: Safari ya Maisha Yangu (The Journey of My Life), former President Mwinyi had this to say about Mrema.

“In 1991, Mrema was in the news every day with one kind of drama after another in such a manner that he overshadowed even me. … At first I was pleased with the fact that he was helping restore people’s confidence in their government. But, it was only later that I discovered that he was harbouring strong presidential ambitions,” President Mwinyi writes in his book.

Also read on: Mrema: The ups and downs of a political maverick

Media exposure

Mrema was ahead of his peers in understanding the power of the media in making a person’s political career.

He used the media with maximum effect. He made sure that whatever he did was so dramatic that it made front page headlines in newspapers and received prominent mentions in news bulletins in radios.

He travelled the country extensively which made him popular in every corner of the country.

The massive rallies in which he publicly shamed government officials who failed to deliver were de facto campaigns.

When it was clear that he was overdoing due to ulterior motives and when he started overstepping his authority President Mwinyi stripped him of the Deputy Prime Minister status and assigned him another, less powerful ministry, as the minister of Labour in 1994.

He soon resigned his ministerial positions and after it became clear to him that he had no chance in the CCM presidential nomination contest he decamped to the opposition.

Here, again, his popularity helped him greatly. Building on that he seized on the opportunity of being in the Opposition to castigate the government viciously.

Months before the presidential campaign started Mrema’s rallies were so huge that it was easy to think of him as a president-in-waiting just, soon to be ‘crowned.’

In his book, President Mwinyi had this to say; “The decamping of Mrema and his standing as the opposition presidential candidate troubled us in CCM a great deal. As a security officer Mrema was an expert in propaganda and he used his skills terribly well. On March 25, 1995 [five months before the start of the election campaigns] the NCCR-Mageuzi party [that had welcomed Mrema as its flag bearer] held a big rally at the Mnazi Mmoja grounds in Dar es Salaam to introduce Mrema to their members. Many people, including CCM members who returned their membership cards, attended the rally.

The grounds were filled to the seams. The rally made some of my colleagues within CCM to despair [about our chances in the elections].”

Ultimately Mrema lost the election. He received 1,808,616 votes equivalent to 21.8 per cent against the CCM candidate’s 4,026,422 votes (61.8%).

“The votes that Mrema got in the elections that was the first after the reintroduction of multiparty politics, and given the fact that he had only decamped to the Opposition six months before the polls, showed that if we had not worked extra hard to counter him we would have lost the elections,” President Mwinyi writes in his autobiography.

He adds: “Another factor that made him lose the elections was the fact that he was a good tactician but not a strategic thinker. … Had he decamped to the Opposition so close to the elections, he would have pulled a surprise, giving us too little time to counter him in the polls.”

Despite everything Mrema was the trailblazer in how politicians can use the media effectively to realize their ambitions. Former President John Magufuli was a good student of Mrema.

In his responsibilities as the minister for Works for almost 20 years he used the media effectively. For example he would appear without prior notice in road construction sites in the middle of night with television camera crews to surprise ‘sleeping’ contractors who had promised to work day and night.

And it paid off. When, in 1995, CCM was frantically looking for a candidate to save the sinking boat it was to him that they turned to in 2015.