CCM frivolity behind the rise of the fallen leader

March 17th 2021 is a date that will be etched in many memories following the death of President John Magufuli. It was the first time ever for Tanzania to lose a sitting head of state and as much as this is a testing experience for any country to go through, ours was sorely accompanied by a comedy of errors on the part of officialdom. Reliving that period is like a throwback to the years when countries had only a single source of communication that could whimsically be manipulated.
Truth be told, all the happenings could veritably compose material for a blockbuster movie.  I’ll hasten to add that a most unfortunate aspect to come out of Magufuli’s passing is that as a country we have evidently paid precious attention to the constitutional magnitude of this historical event.
The continued cries for a constitutional overhaul should taken this into utmost consideration before anything else. In this world of man, nothing can stop the worst happening again and we may find ourselves with a leader who was simply nominated as VP. It is really a sine qua non.
Looking at Magufuli’s reign itself. It is a matter of great concern how from the early days some otherwise respectable voices found themselves recklessly comparing Magufuli’s leadership qualities with the late father of the nation, Julius Nyerere. Someone even used the Kiswahili adage of “nyota njema huonekana asubuhi” meaning like a promising star appears in the morning.  My understanding of this adage best finds expression in a book written in 2010 about the late veteran politician, Sir George Kahama. It narrates: “While at Tabora Boys School, George saw Mwalimu J. Nyerere, then teaching at St. Mary’s School. Nyerere often participated in debates at his former school. George remembers him as a brilliant debater who fascinated the boys.”
I’m hard pressed to hear of any abilities of Magufuli from his youth days. That goes some way to explain why even when he did put his name forward to be a CCM presidential candidate, he was near-dumb on his plans other than the annoyingly fashionable waiting for the party manifesto. It was Nyerere who explicitly told CCM aspirants in 1995 that they must articulate to the public a substantive agenda. Most elementary stuff!
So telling of the deterioration that was to come that veteran journalist, Jenerali Ulimwengu, wrote a column in his then-African newspaper in 2005 sarcastically tilted ‘Say something please’.
I’ll say that an additional issue where Nyerere and Magufuli are polar opposites is on the role of women. Nyerere right from his time at Makerere University championed the rights of women. It is well-documented. He never used demeaning language as Magufuli did so frequently, even against Mama Samia on live television. It’s vitally important to note as well that I did in fact write last year of how his regime had laid bare our institutional frailties. I equally quoted from a book by former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, titled Fascism: A Warning. Essentially it was and remains my contention that Magufuli’s rule bore all the hallmarks of fascism. To illustrate this, his warnings to university students to forgot about politics and just concentrate on their studies was on the surface altruistically sounding but was a mere classic way of wanting the student community to toe his line.
And this was coming from a man who would say often times that he was not a politician. Clearly the intention was for our political processes to be shorn of any competition.
It is not for nothing in fact that those who have an ear to the ground can attest to his trail of bullying his constituency opponents into submission during polls. Intimidation was his stock-in-trade. Very interestingly, only last Monday did The Citizen newspaper carry an article by the Sunday Nation of Kenya columnist, Sunny Bindra, in which he detailed the perils of “latter-day fascists”.
Bindra explains that “fascism is characterised by extreme autocratic rule, usually by a dictator who becomes increasingly powerful, riding on a populism that places race and nation above the individual. Fascist regimes usually suppress democracy and freedoms, and are characterised by severe economic and social regimentation.“Fascism nearly always begins by planting a seed of hatred in a community: we are oppressed and disenfranchised; we are denied what is rightfully ours; we are at the mercy of these “others”. It rides on the economic hardships faced by a large group, and seeks to persuade them that their woes are caused by “outsiders” - those of other faiths, or immigrants, or wily foreigners...” There is much to unpick there that can be alluded to Magufuli. One crucial thing though that I do recall is the vice-chairman of Chadema, Tundu Lissu, remarking that if indeed Tanzania was at war, it meant the head of state taking a motion to parliament to seek its approval for emergency measures. This entailed many things but nothing of the sort ever happened in the House other than the deplorable patronage powers on display to win over opposition MPs. And this now leads to my hypothesis on how the frivolity of CCM was behind the rise of Magufuli. I’ll begin by assessing CCM when Nyerere was departing in 1985 and a leading candidate from Zanzibar, who was also Nyerere’s preferred successor, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim, faced a barrage of malicious accusations that amounted to character assassination. Astoundingly the would-be successor to Nyerere, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, revealed in his memoirs that the charges were without any evidence whatsoever.
Now I ask myself if it was all malice at play, how did Nyerere as chairman fail to crack the whip against the perpetrators, however how high-ranking they were. No self-respecting party can entertain malice. By leaving the matter unchecked it is not surprising then that the matter reared its ugly head again in 2005 when Salim contested and Kikwete sailed through. At any rate, it portrays in negative light Mwinyi as he turned a blind eye to the ill intentions that he had seen at first-hand in 1985.
It is why there is a cliche in Tanzania “muungwana ni vitendo”.
A look now to when Mwinyi himself was finishing his presidency. It so happened that a group of MPs led by former lawmaker, Njelu Kasaka, attempted without any success to propose a formula for arriving at a presidential candidate that was in tune with the new political multi-party dispensation. Their campaign ended up being pioneered by Nyerere. You ask yourself how was it possible that such a weighty agenda could never see the light of day in the party organs unless there was an absolute vacuum of leadership.
And following Nyerere’s intervention, the most beautiful criteria for electing a candidate was set out. Tragically the same Nyerere in his stealth determination to see his choice called Benjamin Mkapa in State House, commandeered the party meetings such that any meaningful observances of the criteria was discarded. This augured badly for the future when considering candidates.
And going ahead now to 2005 when Mkapa was on his way out. We were reliably informed about a damning CCM ethics report under the then-secretary-general and now vice-chairman, Philip Mangula, that would have likely disqualified from the race Jakaya Kikwete. It was mysteriously swept under the carpet.