How Tanzania comes to terms with its recent ugly past

The just-concluded CCM Congress was typically big on rhetoric such that any discerning political watcher would be left with a fair share of frustrations. I must add that it is extremely mind-boggling to see a political party over the years develop a most retrogressive culture of ‘electing’ its top leadership with a near-hundred percent of the votes cast. Why allow for this charade of democracy? Whom are they fooling? It brings back memories of infamous leaders like Saddam Hussein who would scoop all the votes. Even during the Tanzanian one-party era, the head of state would have his share of no votes.

Amid though all the Congress goings-on, a particular thought crossed my mind. And that was how if things had gone to original plan, the Congress would have been used as the platform to set this country on the road to total darkness.

By this, President Magufuli’s surreptitious agenda of a third-term of office and beyond would have been brought formally to the table. We were staring at a life presidency. Anyone who doubts this should just consider the CCM composition of our National Assembly and local councils.

It is such an outrage how cities like Dar es Salaam are without ANY opposition representatives. Yes, not a single one!

And it was the then-CCM vice-chairman, Philip Mangula, who was reported declaring in February 2020 in Sengerema, Mwanza region that CCM will win all electoral seats and thereby wipe out the opposition parties.

And following the coming to fruition of this, there were no cases at all of electoral malpractices opened in the courts. The silent crisis indeed we face is that of the legitimacy of our representative democracy.

And life just goes on as if this is not an enormous shame for a country that once prided itself as a champion for oppressed people anywhere in the world.

In this regard, if there is one man who I sincerely wish were still alive today is Benjamin Mkapa. For he was the one who appointed Magufuli as a minister and proudly spoke of him as one of his ‘paratroopers’.

Though Mkapa passed on before the last general election, he had seen for himself all manner of carrots being dangled at opposition leaders, who would all of a sudden defect to CCM and all be reading from the same script.

Ultimately they would be given direct tickets by the party. Political corruption that we are told is the mother of all corruption was in full gear! It is a story that one day needs to be properly told.

There were a whole raft of questions I’d have wished to pose to Mkapa as our erudite ex-head of state.

That aside, the brazen abuse of power by Magufuli opens our eyes to so many nefarious acts that were happening in the country such as the opposition inability to hold public rallies yet the ruling party was at liberty to do so. Today we are struggling on how just to allow them to go ahead again. What a pitiful country we had turned into! All institutions of state were in a state of paralysis as the country was turned into a personal fiefdom.

It is against this tragic backdrop that I believe we need to be told the truth of what was occurring.

An aphorism by the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, reads “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

It always a point of interest to me how you find in Europe elderly people who are based at certain locations and speak tirelessly about the Holocaust to students in particular, even when it looks like such unspeakable crimes are unthinkable today.

It is my considered opinion that Tanzania needs to see the establishment as soon as possible of a Commission of Enquiry or a tribunal to look into all human rights violations of the Magufuli regime.

I’m not a lawyer to know how this can come about and my attempt to seek a legal opinion from a few of them yielded very little. It is saddening that in Tanzania some lawyers needlessly appear to avoid sensitive areas. Broadly speaking, one most unfortunate aspect of Tanzania is the weak sense of national history. For instance, during the one-party system, there was the formation of the Presidential Permanent Commission of Enquiry.

Even before the reintroduction of multi-party politics, this Commission seemed to have died a natural death.

The relevant section of the Tanzanian Constitution on the Commission read as follows: “There shall be a Permanent Commission of Enquiry which shall have jurisdiction to enquire into the conduct of any person to whom this section applies in the exercise of his office or authority, or in abuse thereof”.

One can only imagine here the case of the notorious former Hai DC, Ole Sabaya, who terrorised residents of his district. Even though he has found himself answering some questions, there is a lot more that needed to be revealed on just how he was able to get away with such impunity.

We also witnessed the highly questionable withdrawal of a passport belonging to a civil society leader, Aidan Eyakuze, only for informing us that Magufuli’s popularity ratings had plummeted over time.

Thankfully he has had it returned but we deserve to know who in immigration was behind his tribulations. All those in the shadows must be fully exposed.

These are only a tip of the iceberg of all the human rights violations of the Magufuli regime.

If we can get to the bottom of our dark chapter, Tanzania shall be on a sure-fire route to being a respectable country. Getting another Magufuli will be next to impossible.

I’ll conclude by saying there is absolutely no need for the type of reconciliation advocated by the Chadema leader Freeman Mbowe. Speaking days ago in Washington DC., Mbowe cited Russia/Ukraine and their peace efforts despite the ongoing conflict.

I found this example totally misplaced. Tanzanians have never faced such historical differences of a tribal or religious nature that have left us with deep-seated scars.

Our struggle is with the most basic enforcement of accountability from leaders as we have just seen with the plane disaster in Bukoba.