Why dual citizenship ‘non-issue’

Dar es Salaam. Most of the Tanzanians living and working abroad were eagerly waiting to see the final Draft Constitution providing for dual citizenship following their long time request. Unfortunately the document has ignored it. But why did the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) not recommend dual citizenship?

Did the CRC not meet people, who proposed dual citizenship? Definitely they did. That is why they retained single citizenship. The shortest chapter of the Draft Constitution is Chapter Five, which is about citizenship in the United Republic of Tanzania. In this chapter, the CRC has cleverly sidelined the issue of dual citizenship for reasons which many of us, including Diaspora, do not know.

Article 59 of the final Draft Constitution provides that Tanzanians, who have denounced their citizenship after acquiring other countries’ must not be treated as purely foreigners who have no root or descend to Tanzania.

The issue of dual citizenship has been a hot debate in recent years and on many occasions when President Jakaya Kikwete visited other countries, the Diaspora in those countries always wanted to know when Tanzania would allow dual citizenship.

Often our President told them to be patient in particular at this time when the process of constitution making is taking place, hoping it would be included. But t is not there.

Ironically, according to the local media, after the CRC failed to recommend dual citizenship in its final Draft Constitution, minister for Foreign Affairs and International cooperation Bernard Membe would do to ensure dual citizenship gets its way in a new Constitution.

The Law Reform Commission (LRC) and dual citizenship

Contrary to the CRC, which did not include dual citizenship in the final Draft Constitution, the LRC recommended dual citizenship since 2006. In its report that was presented to the minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs on May 12, 2006, the LRC said: “the Commission strongly believes that it is high time for Tanzania to adopt dual citizenship taking into account that under the current trend of globalisation, Tanzania is not an island and as such, it cannot develop on its own without interaction with people of other countries globally, by allowing her citizens to attain dual citizenship without forcing them to renounce their Tanzanian citizenship. In this way, Tanzania will have made significant progress in its development endeavours”.

By the way, is there any relationship between globalisation and citizenship? To my understanding globalisation operates everywhere without concern to anybody’s citizenship.

The LRC claims that it made this positive recommendation after it carried out a project which climaxed with that conclusion. Now, we have two commissions which are opposed to each other. A study, which was carried out by the LRC and which justified it to recommend dual citizenship was limited to an insignificant number of respondents as revealed in its report.

The report says that the LRC interviewed a small number of public servants from the Immigration Department, ICTR officials in Arusha, lawyers and NGOs both from Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar. The report does not say how many interviewees, but it simply records their reasons in favour or against dual citizenship.

The LRC’s analysis of the report is based on 97 respondents who responded to the questionnaire distributed to eight regions in Tanzania Mainland, two in Zanzibar and abroad where only four persons responded. The LRC also conducted a workshop to get views of invited 55 people, but only 44 attended. The LRC was not serious on this matter.

It is from the questionnaire, which attracted only 97 respondents that the LRC concluded that dual citizenship was inevitable for Tanzania. Was the study realistic to be conducted by legal institution like the LRC on sensitive matter like dual citizenship? No way, it wasn’t. Apart from the LRC’s unjustifiable study, LRC members, including the chairman, were only seven, and all of them must had personal interest in dual citizenship because of the international status they command. Since we have a referendum law, the matter of dual citizenship should be reserved so that all Tanzanians will decide whether this is an appropriate time to allow dual citizenship or not.

The LRC’s report not only does it recommend the introduction of dual citizenship, but also goes as far as preparing a Bill to that effect. The Tanzania Citizenship (Amendments) Bill 2005, which was supposed to amend the current legislation on citizenship and thus introduce among other things, dual citizenship. However, the Bill to make law for dual citizenship was delayed until all Tanzanians are legally identified and issued with national identification cards, an exercise which has just started and it is not known when it will be completed.

Logically speaking, the LRC report does not convince a reasonable person to believe that there are good reasons for dual citizenship. The reasons given in the report are merely economic. Interestingly, all those that LRC says that were in favour of dual citizenship supported it with a caution. For instance, the Diaspora commented: “….when dual citizenship is adopted, it should be made clear that anybody who possesses dual citizenship will be prohibited to stand for presidential or parliamentary elections or to hold positions within the government such as in the judiciary, the armed forces, the police force, the security and intelligence departments or to have access to top security or any other higher ranking position in the government which would be reserved for those with single citizenship”. Why this condition?

This exclusion for dual citizenship means a lot. Why citizens who hold dual citizenship be denied holding of positions like those of single citizenship? The reason is obvious - lack of national integrity. It is all about national security and development. These are people of two minds - they are just opportunists and cannot be trusted to be loyal to any territory. No person can serve two masters - definitely. He will love one and hate the other. While the final Draft Constitution has not included dual citizenship, the ball is now in the hands of members of Constituent Assembly to play it the way they want.

The author is a lawyer/journalist. He can be reached at [email protected], 0756 440 175.