The largest opposition political party in Tanzania will soon face the most difficult choice to make, which is whether to cling to the past or discard it in the hope that the future will be much better. It’s a Tug-of-War between Freeman Mbowe and Tundu Lissu.
Parables from the Holy Bible have been invoked to relate what Chadema is going through.
Depending on which side each Chadema member stands for, they have reasons why the past or the future represents them.
Like it or not, Freeman Aikael Mbowe epitomises the past, while his political rival, Tundu Lissu, encapsulates the future. It narrates why both balloon at their strengths while downsizing their weaknesses.
Mbowe would like the Chadema general meeting not to forget where he took the party from, while Mr Lissu would like the same voters not to be distracted by the past but to embrace the future with audacity.
Which side is right? This article will attempt to answer this question and many more.
Freeman Mbowe has become synonymous with Chadema for almost 20 years. He is now the sole survivor of the first Chadema’s politburo.
His contribution to multiparty democracy is immense but ridden with controversies.
That shouldn’t be a surprise, knowing no human is perfect, and to demand otherwise amounts to unfairness and partiality.
Nobody is perfect, so whoever held that position for two decades or so must have made mistakes.
And. Messr Mbowe is no exception. What are his achievements?
Under his watch, Chadema has become the largest political party in Tanzania. In the 1995 and 2000 elections, it was the Augustine Mrema hour of reckoning.
Almost single-handedly, Mrema turned an unknown political party, NCCR-MAGEUZI, into a national sensation.
Mrema didn’t have administrative skills but compensated that frailty with political mobilisation acumen for a cause. In the first two multiparty elections, Mrema led the pack, and others followed him.
But his political fortunes began to dwindle when he took a fight with seven or so MPs that NCCR-MAGEUZI had.
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It was a frivolous fight that Mrema should have walked away or tried to resolve privately, but he took matters in public.
Some of his complaints were legitimate; MPs shouldn’t make decisions without consulting the party’s national leadership.
In some ways, MPs conducted themselves as if they were independent from their political vehicle – NCCR-MAGEUZI.
In the 2000 elections, NCCR-MAGEUZI’s political fortunes dimmed, and from that time, it has failed to recapture its lost glory.
In contrast, Chadema has replaced NCCR-MAGEUZI to become the largest opposition party with a credible chance to unseat CCM from power.
It is a huge achievement, particularly for those who knew how weak opposition parties were in 1992 during the reintroduction of multiparty democracy.
I still remember in 1995, one CCM cadre who did not know how to deal with the opposition and ended up using gender misogynistic slur of naming and shaming NCCR-MAGEUZI and calling it ”NCCR MAGAUNI.”
Magauni is plurality for dress. In many ways, it was the degradation of women.
Attitudes towards multiparty democracy were negative because we were groomed in a single-party democracy where the president and his deputy competed against themselves, and parliamentary seat seekers’ fate was already determined by insignia that defined their candidacy.
If CCM brass liked you, they gave you “jembe”, associating with the majority peasants, and if they didn’t like your candidacy “nyumba” or a house was your campaign emblem.
Voters were programmed to side with the “Jembe” candidate and shun a “Nyumba” candidate.
However, some exceptions have not been well documented. In Iringa Town constituency, one Daudi Mwakawago who was feted with “jembe” lost in 1980!
Voter apathy levelled towards incumbents might have explained why he lost. It is in this political predicament that political parties in the opposition ranks have to overcome.
Of all mainland opposition political parties, Chadema takes the gold medal unopposed.
Chadema’s weakness has always been a failure to live by its rhetoric. It advocates for a better Tanzania that they do not practice themselves.
Under Mbowe’s watch, we have seen undemocratic practices; seven Chadema ward councillors in Arusha Municipal were booted out of the party.
They did not obey instructions from an MP for the Arusha constituency called Godbless Lema, who doubled as chairperson of the Northern region and a member of the Central Committee.
The voters were not consulted! The central committee removed the councillors, confirming beyond a reasonable doubt – that “PEOPLE’S POWER” was just an empty slogan! It is the lack of weak checks and balances that has restrained Chadema from bringing new ideas and creativity.
Without fresh thinking, Chadema has been limited to widening its appeal.
While massive economic disparity has helped Chadema to establish a national following, it has not assisted in winning elections as it should. Whether Tanzania still runs clean elections is another matter, but a better organizational forte could have helped it have more clout in the national arena.
Chadema, during Mbowe’s leadership, forged an elitist hierarchical structure of power that mimicked CCM in almost every aspect.
There is very little you can call originality in Chadema’s modus operandi.
In the 2010 elections, former president Jakaya Kikwete was spot on in taunting Chadema as a “copy and paste” of CCM, urging voters to reject “wannabees” and get for themselves the real thing in CCM.
He was right! Even when you mull over Chadema’s clamour for a new constitutional order, their focus is on pointing out weaknesses of the current constitution, but they have never crafted their own mother-law.
They say we need a new constitution but don’t tell us which shop we should go to and buy it from!
And, Chadema has never answered us honestly why we need a brand new constitution instead of a remake of what we already have, appreciating there are no alterations in our territorial integrity to justify what they are hankering for.
At one time, one don professor, Issa Shivji, at the University of Dar es Salaam, had urged the Tanzania opposition to learn from their Kenyan counterparts.
The Kenyan opposition took time to write their own constitution and went on to promote it. Mbowe never listened to this advice.
No wonder no progress has been made in rewriting our constitution, which cries for major reforms.
Mbowe’s dilemma is, what more can he do now than he has done in the last twenty years? He did himself no good when he claimed that he couldn’t depart from leadership because of what he termed as “power wrangling”.
Well, public leadership is what it says it is: nothing is personal. Mbowe is wrong to lean on his leadership challenge as a reason to cling to power.
It looks like he is running to stop Tundu Lissu from winning, and he needs five more years to prepare his successor, who may or may not be Lissu.
Mbowe’s speech also revealed double standards. On one hand, he urged rivals and members to respect each other, but when asked about his alleged murky record, he went ballistic.
He accused his political foes of being “……wajinga…wana roho ya kimasikini, …hawana hoja…na wana mambo ya kitoto.” These were a remarkable upturn from a statesman he would love to project himself to be.
One does not turn to ad hominems unless he is angry, frustrated and overwhelmed.
Tundu Lissu, too, has issues. He is running like an outsider while he isn’t. He refuses to own up to the rot that he has helped stew.
He blames Mbowe for everything while he was an immediate sidekick.
We all know Chadema is an ATM for some well-placed leaders, but as the Kiswahili adage reminds us: “…samaki mmoja akioza wote wameoza.”
Lissu cannot distance himself from Chadema’s past with a clean conscience. He is part and parcel of what happened there.
He must be accredited for its success and its failures, too. The problem for all political parties in Tanzania is building and sustaining the status quo.
Nobody in Chadema believes an outsider can outsmart either Mbowe or Lissu.
They have become the face of Chadema, and since bad blood has ensued between them, it is difficult to visualize whether either of the two can unify the party to be ready for general elections.
Melting factionalism demands both to pave the way for others to unify the party. Chadema’s problem is a constitutional one!
Regarding Chadema vs Halima Mdee and others, the High Court in Dar es Salaam had made a fundamental finding: too much power is concentrated in the Chadema Central Committee.
The Court, in its considered wisdom, had recommended Chadema to observe principles of natural justice. Chadema did not take a leaf from that counsel.
Sadly, Chadema loves to punch holes in the Union constitution while they have a very bad constitution, and nobody knows how to fix it.
Concerning the learned lawyer Tundu Lissu, he has not addressed the violations of principles of natural justice in the Chadema constitution. Lissu is obsessed with how Mbowe has amassed wealth but has not seen the nexus that is in the Chadema constitution.
How to fix the Chadema constitution to alleviate future conflicts of interest
For Chadema’s long-term interest, paradoxically, both Mbowe and Lissu should disqualify themselves from gunning down the chairperson because this election is the curtain-raiser for the presidential nomination process.
Chadema Central Committee, the way it is structured to groom and sustain elitism, manifests as “the cult of personality.”
What we are witnessing are symptoms of a much larger constitutional earthquake.
Too much power in the Chadema central committee has corrupted the summit. What we see is entitlement turfs steadily built by constitutional provisions.
For example, members of the central committee are not restrained from public office, yet they are the ones who sieve all those who seek public office, including themselves!
Councillors, MPs and Presidential candidates may theoretically be central committee members.
Where is the rule of law and good governance when conflict of interest is permitted and blessed in the constitution?
Without an impartial umpire, self-interests will dwarf national ones.
To ensure peace and stability, the Chadema constitution should severely restrict public offices from party positions.
One cannot hold a party docket and at the same time seek or occupy a government position.
Whoever that person is will pull the strings to benefit himself, and this is what is turning Chadema into a real fight of overfed hyenas for a piece of a dry bone.
Had the constitution restricted those seeking public offices from holding party positions when they applied for them?
This will create an even playground that does not tip the scales for those who hold party positions.
Where the term limits will enhance good governance and the rule of law while piping the cult of personalities, but without separation of offices between government from the party ones, similar tug of wars we are seeing today will keep rearing their ugly hydra.
If you ask yourself why Chadema had to be embroiled in special women’s seat row, it was because of the accumulation of power to very few individuals.
Had the Chadema constitution barred those holding party positions from running for government, such a problem would not have surfaced. Chadema cries out for constitutional reforms to remove the party from vested personal interests, but those running fail that litmus test.
They all view Chadema as a launchpad for their political careers and untold riches. Neither is motivated by larger causes of aiding this country to have better leadership.
Both Mbowe and Lissu are too polarizing to unify the disparate factions now dominating the political party.
The first step to unify Chadema has to begin by acknowledging that this leadership tussle will not resolve underlying currents without fixing what is wrong with the elitist constitution.
It is a distraction to blame outsiders for the insider’s Italian job.
Too much power corrupts absolutely, and not only Mbowe or Lissu but whoever becomes the Chairperson without limiting the power of those running the party from angling for government jobs and conflicts of interest will keep revisiting Chadema.
Most Chadema loyalists refuse to address this constitutional malaise, the real reason they offer CCM too behaves in the same way!
That is where they miss their plane. In boxing, a challenger has to knock out the reigning boxing champion.
Boxing judges seldom declare a challenger winning on points. A challenger must knock out the champion to win the crown.
There are no shortcuts. Chadema must behave much better than CCM in her backyard or accept playing second fiddle to CCM.
The former Chadema Vice-chairperson, Professor Abdallah Safari, could be asked to be the compromise chairperson and cleanse this election from being a precursor of 2025 presidential nominations.
Mbowe and Lissu have said they would love to edge CCM out of its perch position, but are they willing to make the ultimate sacrifice?
The nation is watching!
