Indeed, the legacy of Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, has been reincarnated in Chadema, a political party that has just concluded its elections. Tundu Lissu’s political heights have soared as he becomes a beacon for change, challenging the long-standing dominance of CCM in Tanzanian politics.
Nyerere will always be remembered for his unparalleled wisdom and powerful insights. Two of his legacy videos have gained traction on most social media platforms, intoning the need for all political parties to respect the electorate’s will and fulfill their aspirations. This article looks ahead to the forthcoming elections and examines how Nyerere’s legacy will influence the contest between CCM and Chadema, determining who will triumph in the October general elections.
Nyerere words were as follows: during the CCM elections of 1995, this what he had bequeathed Tanzania
“…..watanzania wanataka mabadiliko, wasipoyaona na wasipoyapata ndani ya CCM watayatafuta nje ya CCM……”
Somewhere else, Nyerere, while still in the Dar-es-Salaam State House before a corps of reporters counselled this:
“…….huu ni ushauri kwa vyama vote vya siasa…..sikilizeni maoni ya wananchi. Chama ambacho hakitasikiliza maoni ya wananchi wakati wa uchaguzi kitatafuta mtu wa kukipangusa machozi na hakitamwona…”
What Nyerere said was that political parties must listen to the electorate, and the electorate seeks meaningful reforms, and if they cannot get them from CCM, they will seek them outside CCM.
CCM has always rendered lip service despite bragging: “…CCM ni chama sikivu….”
But are they? Voters have demanded a new social contract for a long time, but CCM has procrastinated. They have either unleashed a false start to constitutional reforms to scuttle it under the guise it is not a national consensus or CCM priorities are infrastructural distractions!
CCM says she understands the importance of the new constitutional order, but her priorities are cosmetic reforms.
So, she forms a presidential commission loaded with anti-reformers and expects a different outcome!
Shockingly, those who have messed up our public sector and have never suffered from it are the ones who are the trusted hands to advise the CCM regime on how to reform specific sectors!
The Criminal Justice Commission will be remembered for not recommending better prison accommodation facilities and for not suggesting an end to the death penalty.
They said it was a matter of further debate. The right to live is non-negotiable, period, and under any circumstances!
The exclusion of prisoners and those freed to be part of the commission was a glaring omission.
Unless ex-prisoners are part of the process, those judges and lawyers will not know what pain the wearer of a shoe has gone through.
The media commission had the right chairperson, but the supporting cast was ill-suited to tackle the challenges before her.
Not even one member of the commission was a past or current incarcerated one to offer practical reflections on what he went through and how to stop it.
Seasoned bureaucrats who have never suffered lacked the gravitas to offer insightful contributions necessary to reform the media sector.
Besides, neither the recommendations of “Haki jinai” nor media reforms have been legislated into law despite their many shortcomings.
What we need is a constitutional button reset, not cosmetic distractions.
Tanzanians demand free health care and education. CCM has refused to listen, unleashing BIMA YA AFYA and tertiary education loans.
This is not by any stretch of the imagination: “CCM ni chama sikivu.” Regrettably, we are now a nation of a handful of billionaires and tens of millions of paupers.
We are now a nation of university students, both male and female, who have to prostitute themselves to make ends meet while senior politicians and bureaucrats are picking average salaries of over Tshs 20 million per month before collecting non-performance allowances!
University graduates are saddled with debts they will never pay and are now threatened with jail terms as if they have done anything wrong.
Failing to clear debts is not a criminal offence, but now it is. There could be other reasons, like poverty, to explain why education loans were unpayable.
Those who fail to pay up may face up to a year behind bars for colossal economic mismanagement of CCM. The blameless are being lynched to cover the tracks of very destructive public policy initiatives.
Those policies are now posing serious national security threats by alienating the majority of Tanzanians from having their fair share of the national cake.
Massive poverty does not augur well for national cohesion, unity and sustainable peace. When national leaders urge peace while placing their bellies first, they don’t know the damage they are inflicting on peaceful coexistence.
We have a CCM-dominated parliament that will be remembered for raising their own salaries and terminal benefits of senior bureaucrats while leaving the rest cold.
The best they can say: “….msiwasahau wale wa kipato cha chini …nao pia muwakumbuke…”
They utter this after they have approved their perks.
The CCM-dominated parliament never saw the wisdom of introducing a “tapering wage system….” to ensure those in the public wage structure reflect and preserve the dignity of junior public servants.
These days, only those at the top see their emoluments accommodate the cost of living, but those at the basement see their salaries getting smaller and smaller in real purchase value.
The public sector has shown fidelity to those at the top while egging on those at the bottom to be graft beggars and petty thieves to make ends meet. Farming has been neglected, with CCM sticking to the ”old is gold” while demands for reforms keep being placed in the shredder.
Peasants want their production, harvest, and processing capacity to be enabled and upgraded. CCM says her priorities are to ingratiate top managers with top-notch SUVs costing over a trillion shillings!
CCM unapologetically defends her penchant for entitlements and elitism by arguing that leaders need those money-guzzling fancy SUVs to supervise rural projects!
The problem is, what happened to the vehicles they already have and are still brand new? Will they not buy them cheaply in a distorted auction?
And, do the peasants need their supervision, seeing they have “Bwana na bibi shamba” always paying them a courtesy visit full of useful technical tips?
Peasants need, is the mechanisation of the agricultural sector to improve their productivity, processing, storage capacity and access to markets, while SUVs are an eyesore to them.
Taxation reforms have been a daily cry.
The bone of contention is that the poor cannot cough anything because they are in a dire state of a hand to mouth.
Those earning less than Tshs 200 million a year should not pay any taxes because whatever they get is for self-sustenance, but the CCM regime has plugged her ears.
Milking a dry cow to support the reckless life of those at the top has been CCM’s unchallenged attitude and behaviour.
Human rights abuses have continued under the guises of “I don’t know what is happening”.
The perpetrators of crimes against humanity tout ignorance as a defence, but if they cannot guarantee us safety, why should they not go home for good?
CCM never wrote in her election manifesto a statement of intent to form a statutory “truth and reconciliation” commission like that of South Africa under Bishop Desmond Tutu, yet still sought vacuous reconciliation! Can reconciliation not be founded on statutes?
Reconciliation begins with an admission of wrongdoing, seeking forgiveness and accepting the consequences attached to it in the form of restitution.
CCM says reconciliation begins and ends with letting bygones be bygones. CCM shuns public accountability but still expects to ameliorate the justice system! What a contradiction!
Does CCM really understand the true meaning of reconciliation, or is it just playing with our collective intelligence?
It is a scurrilous affront to our collective intelligence for CCM to advocate reconciliation without establishing a legal mechanism where the victims and their torturers will be summoned under one roof.
The aim should be to sort out the grievances with the government acting as a guarantor of compensation to those whose human rights were violated.
All political abductions, torture and killings ought to be acknowledged in public as a vital step in national healing.
Under no circumstances should anybody lose their life to prolong CCM overstay in power.
Without acknowledging these human rights abuses, national healing and its accompanying deterrence will not materialize on its own.
Many voters are looking to vote for Tundu Lissu to be our next president because they have lost faith in CCM.
This forthcoming election will be a referendum on CCM’s legitimacy to continue to stay in power while undermining our collective lot.
This election will interrogate voters on whether they still trust CCM to deliver her promises.
Whether the voters’ collective living standards have improved under CCM reign now when compared to 2020.
Whether CCM can be trusted to provide leadership in political, economic and social reforms or more of the same clears the benchmark.
Tundu Lissu, whose children were born and live in the USA, understands the pain and humiliation imposed by CCM’s recent legalization of denunciation of dual citizenship.
On day one, as president at Dodoma State House, he will instruct his newly appointed AG to repeal that law called something like “special status” to Tanzanians in the diaspora by reaffirming their inalienable citizenship rights well protected in the constitution.
That law was and still is unconstitutional, notwithstanding what our compromised judiciary says about it.
The election of Tundu Lissu was the most transparent election ever seen in recent memory, and it shows that the electorate is willing to seek meaningful reforms outside CCM.
An average voter knows this country is endowed with untold riches of natural and human resources.
What Tanzania has lacked since independence is good leadership, and CCM epitomizes poor leadership and economic mismanagement of the highest order.
Nyerere identified four foundations of development: people, land, good policies of socialism & self-reliance, and good leadership.
He went on to say that we have the first three, but we lack good leadership. Indeed, voters will have the task of sacking CCM for a failure to provide good leadership for the last 63 years.
We are now ripe enough to know whether the mango is rotten or not, and we will have the opportunity to express our collective stand on the direction our governance should take come October this year.
Read more about Tanzania’s Chadema Party Faces Its Defining Moment: Conservatism or Reform?
