Mrema and the lessons from the excitement of 1995 elections

Dar es Salaam. Augustine Mrema is today a veteran politician who once excited Tanzanians and according to him, he nearly became president, but lost in a closely contested election.

He recalls the wave that his opposition NCCR-Mageuzi party candidature created throughout the country in the 1995 General Election in which he came second to Benjamin Mkapa of CCM, and who went to become president for 10 years.

Mr Mrema is currently in some sort of back peddling from his hey days as a maverick politician, first in CCM where he cut his teeth and rose to a position of deputy prime minister, the only man to ever have occupied such a role, to an opposition figure who has failed to shed off his dalliance with the ruling party.

Despite his brand of politics being a shell-shadow of his past glory, Mr Mrema credits the role he played as the first main opposition presidential candidate following the repeal of the law to allow back multi-parties to the awakening of the masses to a possibility beyond what they had experienced for more than two decades of single party rule.

He recounts that were it not for a “scheme to rob his victory” he would have been the successor of Ally Hassan Mwinyi at the Magogoni address in Dare es Salaam, the house of presidency. As the current chairman of Tanzania Labour Party (TLP), Mrema reminisces that the opposition has come a long way despite their electoral frustrations and other challenges.

In that election in 1995, the other opposition candidates were the Civic United Front (CUF)’s Prof Ibrahim Lipumba) and UDP’s John Cheyo. Mr Mrema seemed to be the only threat to CCM but in the end Mkapa was declared victor, getting 61.82 per cent of the votes cast and Mrema got 27.77 percent.

In terms of the votes, Mr Mkapa garnered 4,026,422 while Mrema collected 1,808,616 of the 6,846,681 total registered voters.

“It was a very competitive election,” Mr Mrema said in an interview held at his Salasala home in Dar es Salaam.

He says during the campaign they told the voters to vote for them because they were also Tanzanians and the big thing was that “I was trusted by the government and had been appointed minister for Home Affairs and deputy Prime Minister.”

“The thing that I will never forget is the game played on us. I can call it a dirty game against me,” says Mr Mrema, who later crossed over to TLP in 1999 after internal squabbling within NCCR-Mageuzi.

“And the game itself involved the ballot boxes that arrived thousands of kilometres away in Kagera and reached Kigoma, but they did not reach Ilala and Temeke in Dar es Salaam, and to this day I do not believe what happened,” says Mr Mrema.

He says due to those reasons, the voting in Dar es Salaam constituencies was postponed, a situation that is claimed to have contributed to his defeat as results were declared in other constituencies, which may have convinced voters to vote for CCM due to its lead in the preliminary results.

“I did not want to engage in a dispute, I did not want to see chaos as I wanted the country to remain peaceful and I agreed to the outcome although I was left wondering for years what actually happened,” says Mr Mrema.

As the October 1995 General Election was in progress, voting in all the constituencies of Dar es Salaam Region was cancelled before by-elections were held on November 19 of that year.

However, Mr Mrema says he does not regret losing the 1995 presidency.

He argues that Tanzanians were ready for multi-party elections and have wanted change for many years.

“You know the people were well organized, you know when you have someone like the respectable Mwalimu Nyerere, when he says he does not want to see a change of leadership, with his experience and knowledge what do you think will happen?

“Some of the people I joined looked like hooligans who were not supposed to be given the mandate of leading the country and this is how they were seen by Nyerere.”

Although at that time the public was motivated, says Mr Mrema, the youth wanted changes, “you could just see it but the changes must be made, so the polls were held and what happened is that I did not win and peace reigned.”

After his defeat in the polls, Mr Mrema says, “I was not left to stay in peace, when I tried to run for the Temeke seat in 1996, that is, to show the patience of the Government, I once complained and I would like to see those things are not left out because they are very bad.”

“I was planted with a case and I want to talk about them as good and honest Tanzanians did not expect them, we would just continue as we came out of the polls with arguments but we did not use tricks or force,” says Mr Mrema.

“When Mwalimu Nyerere saw that we were being oppressed, he defended us, when we were bombed he (Nyerere) said if the people decided to carry their man, let them do so, but the next (third phase) administration was not tolerant as we were arrested and charged in court,” Mrema said.

“They brought a witness, who was asked did you hear Mrema say this? The witness said I did not hear him. The magistrate asked did you hear Mr Mrema implicating the President in the sharing of Sh500 million? The witness said he did not hear me.

“The aim was to get Mr Mrema out of politics, this should not continue as victimization and torturing one another is not good,” says Mr Mrema.

After his loss in the polls, Mrema vied for the Temeke seat. But later a crisis within NCCR-Mageuzi overwhelmed him and he defected from the party to joining the Tanzania Labour Party (TLP), which was led by Mr Leo Lwekamwa and Mrema was declared its chairman.

Mr Lwekamwa later complained about what he called the party was ‘robbed’ by Mr Mrema. In the 2000 polls Mrema ran for the presidency on the party ticket, but the results showed he was defeated by Prof Professor Lipumba of CUF, who was second and Mrema third.

And this fall was the beginning of the disappearance of Mr Mrema’s popularity in the Tanzanian political arena as the results of the next 2005 polls showed where he emerged fourth - this time he was defeated by Freeman Mbowe, Chadema’s candidate.

In his political career in the two opposition parties (NCCR-Mageuzi and TLP) Mr Mrema clashed with many of his fellow leaders who at different times ran away from him.

These include Thomas Ngawaiya (who rejoined CCM), Harold Jafu, Mustafa Wandwi, Masumbuko Lamwai, Benedicto Mutungirehi, Stephen Wassira, Hamadi Tao, and others.

In the 2010 general election, Mr Mrema decided to campaign for the CCM candidate, Jakaya Kikwete, despite the fact that his TLP party had its presidential aspirant, Muttamwega Bhatt Mgaywa.

Mr Mrema did the same in the 2015 polls when he decided to campaign for the CCM candidate, Dr John Pombe Magufuli.