CCM and the continued identity crisis
On different occasions, past and present CCM leaders touted the strength of their party in terms of membership numbers. These have varied from time to time or occasion to occasion but in recent years the numbers given have all pointed to a party with members north of ten million individuals. In a country of approximately sixty million people, that is an astonishing accomplishment at a time political parties are unpopular or people are generally disinterested in politics because other life matters are pressing for their attention.
The figures of membership are difficult-perhaps impossible-to verify. These are given to show a party prospering but there is no explanation of how many out the numbers given are active members, who are members in name only, who are members but have long stopped doing anything to further CCM’s cause, or those who have left the party but never gave up their membership cards. All this is understandable, after all politics is a game of numbers; the more the better.
In good times, these numbers are celebrated, but when the going gets tough something else emerges out of the woodworks.
Under normal circumstances, CCM should be on a high with little to worry about. It has a commanding majority in parliament, across district councils around the country and is in charge of local governments. Its opponents are in such disarray, weakened and tied down by other concerns of their own. It should all be smiles. However, the strange world of politics dictates otherwise.
With no one to defeat on the outside, members turn inward where they see all sorts of differences among them, all sorts of potential traitors, saboteurs, and those who are not “pure”. This “purity” is viewed through different things but all point to one’s longevity within the party. This in itself should be deeply troubling to CCM’s leadership and its members but it is not.
For a historical party like CCM, the point of focus should be whether its members understand their party’s ideology (if there is any), and its history to be better placed to defend it against its opponents. Instead the focus is elsewhere.
In 2015, then an aspiring contender for the presidency within CCM, Edward Lowassa declared that no one could expel him from CCM as he had been a member from the time when the party was founded. The same language, with minor variations has been heard before and since as the ongoing rumblings from some CCM members currently attest to that. One member who described himself as “an ordinary member” at a press conference he had called to chastise another member, he pointed to this idea of longevity within the party.
This has also been raised when new members, especially those from the opposition and with name recognition are awarded certain government jobs or other political appointments at the expense of other members who never left the party to flirt with the opposition. This has continued to fuel resentments from CCM’s rank and file.
There are members who “return home” after ill-fated stay in the opposition. A former CCM chairperson, despite receiving them during a high profile event, used an analogy familiar to pastoralist societies of cattle which had lost their tails. That even though they are welcomed back home they are no longer “pure”.
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere once equated the party he founded to a type of fishing net common with societies along the shores of Lake Victoria that it was now home to all sorts of political characters. It was a party that was swelling its ranks regardless of how that was achieved. Its leaders celebrate and boast of defections of opposition members to their own party at public rallies or other public events.
This strength in numbers is an illusion and will someday prove to be one of CCM’s biggest weaknesses. A collection of individuals with little to nothing in common about their political beliefs are nothing short of strangers. In this regard, opposition party members have more in common than their CCM counterparts.
At times like these, CCM appears like a party that is confused about its own identity. Should it be a party of “workers and farmers”? Should it be a party based on a certain political ideology? Should it be a party of “purists” with no room for others? Should it be a party for whoever comes in?
They cannot have it all ways and simultaneously speaking with many tongues. Political identities rarely allow hybridity, they are not cultural identities. Either all those who have been allowed in should be accepted or they should be rejected before they set foot inside.
Either way, the outcome is precarious.
