Is Zitto keeping his rivals closer?

Dodoma. In politics they say there’s neither a permanent enemy nor a permanent friend, but rather permanent interests.

True to the phenomenon, Tanzanians saw in the second meeting of Parliament, which ended on Friday, the Opposition’s ‘archrivals’ Zitto Kabwe, the MP for Kigoma Urban and party leader of ACT-Wazalendo, working shoulder to shoulder with Chadema parliamentarians and for that matter other Ukawa MPs against the government.

That was not a picture expected by many, judging by the nasty fallout between the two, which saw Mr Kabwe prematurely end his membership of the 10th parliament in March 2015 instead of September after being expelled from Chadema.

At the height of the fallout, blows were openly exchanged between Mr Kabwe’s supporters and his rivals in the party.

There has been bad blodd between Mr Kabwe and the Chadema top brass since 2009, when for the first time he announced he would compete with the party’s National Chairman Freeman Mbowe for the top seat.

However, when the government announced that the national broadcaster TBC would no longer carry all-time live coverage of parliamentary debates, Mr Kabwe initiated an Opposition protest over the move which saw them forcefully dragged from the debate chamber.

Mr Zitto later appeared alongside Mr Mbowe in front of the media cameras to condemn the act.

Before the press-conference went on, the two leaders had a tete-a-tete moment, and all of a sudden Mr Mbowe realised reporters were astonished to see them together and were already taking pictures, some with mobile phones. He shouted in Kiswahili “achene umbea nyie…chezea siasa wewe,” literally meaning “stop gossiping, leave politics alone.”

Yes, that was politics at its best. It was Mr Mbowe’s sympathisers in Chadema who charged Mr Kabwe for being a selfish politician, who put his ambitions in front of the party’s interests, and that he was sawing the seeds of destruction among party members.

The same charges were presented to the party’s Central Committee (CC) in November 2013. As it was apparent that the CC would expel him from the party, he lodged a case at the High Court to bar the party’s supreme organ from deliberating on his membership status.

The case roared for over a year, and it was on its proceedings that the supporters of Mr Kabwe and those of his rivals took a matter in their hands and fought.

In March of last year the court judged the case in favour of Chadema. Minutes after the judgment, the party’s chief legal officer Tundu Lissu, announced the expulsion of Mr Kabwe for violation of the party’s constitution that bars a member from filing a case against it.

But, just over a week ago, the duo, Mr Lissu and Mr Kabwe jointly shook the government to the core in Parliament.

The two moved a motion that led to a constitutional wrangle after accusing the government of tabling a framework of the second five-year development plan, and not the plan itself, something, they argued, was a breach of not only the Constitution, but also the august House’s regulations.

The duo also held a joint press conference and blamed Attorney General George Masaju allegedly for giving the government an ill advice over the matter and the Finance and Planning minister, Dr Philip Mpango, for failing to come up with a full development plan.

The House Chairperson Andrew Chenge resolved the matter, noting that there were serious flaws in the government’s motion on the development plan, but insisted that the Constitution was not breached. The government later tabled a draft plan which the MPs debated.

To set the record straight, there is still no any formal alliance between Mr Kabwe and Chadema.

“I am not in formal alliance with them (Ukawa). Our cooperation as of now is purely issue-based,” the MP told told this reporter before participating in a caucus with his opposition colleagues regarding the TBC case.

The Opposition camp already named its Shadow Cabinet and Mr Kabwe is left out. When reporters asked the Opposition Chief Whip on why Mr Kabwe was left out, he simply answered: “essentially he is not one of us.”

When Mr Kabwe was going through his hard days in Chadema, he used to say that he was taking in inspiration from among others, Mr Deng Xiaoping and Dr Mahathir Mohammed, who went through turbulent party politics, but later emerged as reformists and were credited for laying a foundation for the today’s prosperous China and Malaysia, respectively.

Well, he’s still far away from achieving what his role models have achieved, but Mr Kabwe returned to Parliament with a different political party (the only MP from ACT-Wazalendo) and proved that he was a demagogue of Opposition politics within Parliament.

While his rivals in Chadema could not work with him when necessary, lawmakers from the ruling CCM appreciated him as one of the Opposition MPs they were ‘scared of’.

“Most of you (Opposition MPs) are making hopeless statements with no iota of truth, some trade insults…but there are those who are really doing their work and come up with burning issues that sometimes really shake us.

“The likes of Zitto (Kabwe) and (James) Mbatia (the national chair of NCCR-Mageuzi and Vunjo MP),” said Mr William Lukuvi (the minister for Lands, Housing, and Human Settlements Development) when winding up the 2016/17 Budget framework debate.

Background

Born in 1976, Zitto Kabwe joined Chadema at a tender age of 16. He studied economics at the University of Dar es Salaam and obtained a Masters in Law and Business from Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, Germany in 2010.

He has also studied International Trade at the InWent-Trade Africa Programme in Bonn, Germany - his research areas are on extractive industries (Mining, Oil, and Gas) particularly fiscal regimes and governance issues in natural resources exploitation. He first vied for and won Kigoma North parliamentary seat in 2005 and was re-elected in 2010. His fame grew from when he headed the defunct Public Organisations Accounts Committee (Poac).

His commendable job enabled him to easily land the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairmanship when the two committees were merged.

At PAC, Mr Kabwe oversaw the tabling of the damning Tegeta Escrow Account report in Parliament in 2014.