Salim Ahmed Salim’s complex political legacy

Saturday, September 30, saw the launch of the Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim digital archive.

In the days prior, there had been a fair amount of publicity about it in the government press.

It was also announced that the guest of honour would be President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

It really boggles the mind: what is this fad with turning such moments into state occasions?

Once you involve the head of state, the whole event ends up revolving around that person and also entails copious people around who have precious little connection to what is going on.

What matters ultimately is the quality, not the number of attendees.

As for who would have been an ideal guest of honour, the planners could have settled on an illustrious outsider, given that there is hardly any public personality of repute in Tanzania today.

Someone like Mo Ibrahim, whom Salim had worked closely with, could have shed some light on things we don’t know about.

And speaking of things we don’t know about, I must make it plain that I had for several years waited in anticipation of a great SAS light bulb moment.

In my formative years, I had heard of this Zanzibari gentleman who had attained monumental things in international relations and that the presidency of Tanzania was a prize for him that was somewhat preordained.

And following his subsequent ascendancy to the top, the sky would be the limit for Tanzania.

The ultimate prize, though, eluded him, and I’ll go on to say that for someone of his international standing not to have attained the nation’s highest honour when faced with far lesser opponents in 2005 was a poser.

I had thought Salim’s memoirs, as he once indicated he was compiling, would have contained something salutary about how his bid came a cropper.

I'm afraid it was a case study on how not to win an election.

Despite the character assassination against him and, in his own words, in a seminal book on Mwalimu Nyerere co-authored by Professor Mwandosya and Ambassador Mwapachu, ‘being still seen as more as a Tanganyikan than a Zanzibari', he was surely not the man to be handed a defeat that bordered on ignominy.

Conversely, the ‘Mainland identity’ should have served him even better with his party electorate.

One answer he did give me in 2015 when asked briefly to reflect on his 2005 presidential run was that he should have been more aggressive with those casting aspersions on him.

More than that, as a leader in terms of knowledge of a vast array of countries of significance to Tanzania, from Cuba to India, he was simply unmatched.

Salim was uniquely placed to advance Tanzania’s development needs.

In the same Nyerere book, SAS says: "I was in India for three years. During that time, I was able to enrol in University College studies and travel all around India by plane and car. I became an authority on the Indian political, economic and social condition."

I struggle to remember, though, when Salim ever spoke to ordinary Tanzanians, say university students, on any of our development issues.

As much as his digital archives have speeches in plenitude, when did he take the trouble to address critical Tanzanian audiences that matter most in the end?

Tanzanians have been progressively starved of inspirational political leaders, such that Salim could have easily filled the void.

As someone who had also headed a body such as the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), he was at a vantage point of having seen first-hand the workings of multi-party democracy on the continent right from the 1990s ‘winds of change’.

His role was to help properly steer our ship whenever it veered off course.

An example was the political crisis in 1995 in Zanzibar. SAS could have come up with a proposal bearing the stamp of original thinking.

Wasn’t it Nyerere who proposed at least a government of national unity?

SAS was also the first chair of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which had been purposefully set up to ameliorate the deplorable leadership standards in Africa.

He had a golden opportunity to bring a fresh perspective on leadership to the national table in the twilight of his life.

As it is, no Tanzanian president has won or come any close to winning the Mo Ibrahim Award, which is very telling of our state of politics.

Inextricably tied to this are elections, which we know are a vital component of any democracy.

Salim, in an interview for a Tanzanian publication by the name Who's Who Tanzania, 2019/2020, third edition, noted the following when asked about the power of incumbency: "Elections anywhere, including the most advanced countries, are a problem.

I think we will make a mistake by thinking that our elections are perfect. They are not perfect.

There must be a genuine effort to improve the process because elections are supposed to resolve problems. Ethnic, religious, economic, or whatever problems must be overcome by the political process.

Personally, I think CCM is a well-organised party with strong organisational machinery, which has made it possible for the party to continue to be in power.

But I must say that the current trend where we have elected members deserting their parties to join another party is not healthy for democratic dispensation.

This overall response in my thinking was skirting around a very important matter and frankly leaving an interrogative mind in a state of befuddlement. 

It leads me critically to ask what sort of leader we would be taking about had Salim become our head of state.

Without a shadow of a doubt, he was better than most of his predecessors, but truth be told, he was still in the mould of the CCM we have become familiar with.

I think he secretly harboured the hope that, despite all the deep-seated leadership problems in the party, it would deliver him the presidency on a silver platter.

The writing was on the wall when Mkapa chose a nonentity over him for vice president by the name of Mohamed Shein, following the death of Omar Ali Juma in 2001.

SAS had by then finished his tour of duty with the OAU.

He should have known better then that he couldn’t depend on the party chairman for any presidential bid but instead had to fight his own battles.

In the final analysis, the image of SAS is very much intertwined with that of Nyerere.

Even at a family level, his son, Ahmed, was so free with Nyerere. That closeness for a leader can come with a lot of good and bad in equal measure.

If there is something we fondly remember about Nyerere, it is how he untiringly condemned CCM’s unethical practices.

Alas, Salim is not on record attacking incisive corruption as a case in point.

During Mkapa's reign, we had gotten to a stage of something called 'takrima' or hospitality for voters.

Mkapa’s AG, Andrew Chenge, was even reported as asking if the voters were supposed to go eat at police stations.

The expectation would be that the favoured son of Nyerere would send a warning to CCM that he couldn’t remain with a clear conscience in such a rotten organisation.

There is also no escaping the fact that when John Magufuli was nominated by CCM, SAS was a member of the Central Committee.

He was also once a member of the Judge Warioba-led Constitutional Review Commission.

Was he in his heart content to see Magufuli, someone who had displayed supreme ways as minister representing CCM?

What message would this also send to our struggling continent?

Against such a background, I leave you the reader with a thought: had Salim reached the pinnacle of global diplomacy by becoming the secretary-general of the United Nations, as he came close to twice, would he have remained the same man kowtowing to the commanding heights of CCM?

Chances are yes. What a complex political legacy he leaves behind. Unless, of course the understanding of legacy has changed.