In Arusha urban constituency Parliamentary Elections come 2025, the battle lines have been quietly drawn and redrawn that looks like establishment candidates will be facing off anti-establishment ones.
The political demographics of 2020 have changed dramatically, and this discourse will peruse what is at stake in 2025.
Currently, we are witnessing political moves which suggest the incumbent MP who also doubled as former Arusha regional Commissioner, Mrisho Mashaka Gambo, has his in-tray full.
The current Regional Commissioner, Christian Makonda could be secretly plotting to unseat him. I say so following a public spat between them that signalled all w-s not well in CCM Arusha Urban constituency.
It was supposed to be a normal fact-finding mission of a newly appointed infrastructure minister, Abdallah Hamis Ulega, in the Arusha region that a political altercation between the Arusha R.C Makonda and the MP unfolded and turned ugly.
The MP, Gambo, had raised non performance of a road that had already been awarded monthslong, and yet the contractor had not turned up, among many of his grouses.
Before the minister said anything, Makonda took the podium to himself, and scolded the MP Gambo for seeking cheap popularity.
According to Makonda, Gambo has been a truant, missing crucial regional and Municipal meetings where his personal grievances could have been thrashed out.
The fuming Gambo did not immediately respond but having being aggrieved by Makonda’s negative assessment of his performance monthslong before the election he decided much later to summon a press conference.
He gave his side of story. Gambo in his soft spoken mannerism did not directly respond to truancy allegations but opted to tie them with his parliamentary performance.
He said, it was the Speaker of the House who was in a better position to evaluate his attendance. Former MP, Zitto Kabwe, on his X page was quick to disparage Gambo for mixing up parliamentary duties with those of constituency ones.
Comrade Kabwe reiterated that during his prime time in the Augusta House MPs took serious constituency affairs more than the current generation of MPs.
In all this caboodle of CCM whitewashing their dirty linen in public foreshadows a political earthquake that lies underneath.
Here are two CCM politicians who could be eyeing the same political stakes of representing Arusha residents in the parliament.
Both are not bona fide Arusha residents but acquired that mantle through political appointments.
In fact, Gambo is more of Arusha resident than Makonda can possibly claim. Altogether, we could be dealing with carpetbaggers: a class of politicians angling to represent the electorate in areas where they are not deemed as permanent dwellers.
Paradoxically, Makonda is forcing Gambo to lick his own vomit.
The way Makonda is treating Gambo is the way Gambo used to ridicule the then Arusha Urban MP, Godbless Lema, during Gambo’s heyday as the Arusha R.C! Weirdly, what comes around has a way of going around.
Arusha is not new to carpetbagging. Senior civil servants have been successfully gunning down the Arusha urban constituency partially because of its cosmopolitan appeals that defy ethnic pride to overrule carpetbaggers from hijacking their jobs and represent them.
It is all within the confines of law: just too legit to quit. Urban constituencies like Moshi or Bukoba or Mbeya is almost impossible to imagine the electorate rooting for someone who is not one of their own.
In such demographics, carpetbagging is an insult to their collective intellect, ethnic respect and identity. Arusha could be thawing all that: a gratitude to Tanzania being a successful melting pot of cultures, traditions, ethnicities, and religions.
Throwing a tinderbox in a fireball, we have the current minister for finance who has come out in the open through his X page to make a case for Makonda.
In a nutshell, Dr. Mwigulu Nchemba has profusely praised the leadership of Makonda, and attributed his restoration of the Arusha region’s lost glory to the daunting resume as Dar-es-Salaam R.C and acquisitions of a flurry of CCM and government posts.
In a particular way, as CCM organising and publicity secretary, Nchemba’s views were chided by some of his X followers indicating there was no consensus on his carte blanche issuance Makonda with a generous clean certificate of performance.
Behind the scenes, I am beginning to see CCM top politicians are beginning to line themselves behind a Makonda onslaught to gun down the Arusha constituency.
It will not be a walk in the park largely because Arusha like Mbeya and Mwanza are Chadema strongholds. It is true,
Makonda has attempted to bring that feel ‘good effect’ with dollops of love here and there. He has organized temporary health centres for free but did not address the niggling issues of affordable healthcare. He has convinced land-rover owners to meet in Arusha and have a great time while networking.
There is no problem with advertising Arusha as the ultimate tourist destination but the hitch was he was promoting an Anglo Germany business franchise.
Land-rover is not our technology so at best he was expanding a market and high paying jobs for Europeans not Africans.
He should have been promoting agrarian products hailing from Arusha whether it was onions from Mang’ora or marketing Arusha wheat or veggies or Irish potatoes or even tomatoes.
He should have been sorting out water scarcity and pricing in Arusha. He never did that! His efforts to lower water bills depended upon Tanesco to lower their electricity bills.
He never saw the wisdom of challenging the efficacy of water pumps heavily relying on Tanesco electricity at a time renewable energy water pumps are passim.
Begging Tanesco to lower electricity bills is not what I consider a smart leadership, period! Tanesco too needs those commercial utility rates to keep afloat, and pressuring them to subsidize them may hurt their long term survivability.
Killing Tanesco albeit slowly will not solve the Arusha maze of water scarcity and pricing. In fact, it has the potential to worsen them.
The problems of Arusha Urban are imposed by constraints in productivity costs and water scarcity. Irrigation is needed to revamp a dying agricultural livelihood and Makonda’s attempts to urge people:
“…..tule bata…” is in bad taste when an average family is struggling to put one meal a day on the table. He looks more and more “out of touch” with the harsh reality of an average voter in Arusha. Makonda’s candidacy will never be the voter’s choice but can be imposed upon them just as his immediate political threat Gambo was in 2020.
Gambo who was Arusha R.C before he became an MP was known for arrogance and elevating himself above measure.
He used to remind Arusha residents who was in charge by ensuring his motorcade was flamboyant, long, heavily guarded and blitzing with police sirens contributing to noise pollution in the city. When his motorcade was passing many lamented aloud or murmured: “…..Gambo, Mkuu wa Mkoa, huyo anapita….”
Former president Magufuli ramped up Gambo’s candidacy in the throats of Arusha constituents whom they never liked or wanted.
Gambo after bagging the MP docket has made sincere efforts to recalibrate himself as a “man of the people.”
Gambo of today is genuinely humble, and looks like he has seen the “Damascus light.”
The difficulties he is enduring from his superiors in CCM are due to the identity politics he is championing. The more a CCM politician gets closer to the electorate the more he is distancing himself from the kingmakers.
Gambo’s political troubles surfaced when he rooted for a fair “kikotoo” for civil service pensioners. At times, he was not sitting well with Arusha Urban authorities whom he has frequently accused of squandering public resources.
He is facing the same political headwinds now directed at the Kisesa MP, Luhaga Mpina, who is now a thorn in the CCM flesh.
Like Gambo, Mpina will struggle to retain his CCM parliamentary nomination ticket given the animosity is facing for standing up for a smaller guy against the mighty’s narcissism.
During the 2020 elections, Gambo edged out the then Chadema MP Godbless Lema who claimed he was massively rigged out. Weeks after the elections Lema fled to Canada until he heard Magufuli was no more.
He came back. But whatever he had experienced in Canada seemed to have negatively affected him.
No sooner he touched down in Tanzania, he admonished Bodaboda labelling them as “wind chasers”.
Gambo, sensing his real political threat has alienated himself from his political base, supported the bodaboda demos to protest against Lema’s snobbish rhetoric.
Little did Gambo knew, his political nightmares are not outside but are very much in his CCM backyard. Like Kiswahili saying goes: “…..kikuumacho ki nguoni mwako……”
Lema will not be in the ballot box as he made it abundantly clear himself. He has said had he wished to win again the party nomination to gun down the Arusha Urban parliamentary seat a wedge would have gushed.
He has also dumped his homeboy Mbowe for Tundu Lissu.
As I see it Chadema will present another anti-establishment candidate similar to Godbless Lema. Lema may now be in polar position to replace John Mnyika as Chadema General Secretary.
That post Mnyika had successfully negotiated to enjoy the same perks as those of an MP given at that time he forsook parliamentary docket for serving as Chadema Secretary General. Mnyika will be in the ballot box for in his constituency of Kibamba. It is a discussion for another day.
Makonda is stubbornly anti-reformer, and he burnished that label during the public hearing of constitutional debates chaired by Mzee Joseph Sinde Warioba.
It was reported that at Ubungo Plaza he had a belligerent stand off with Mzee Warioba.
When a reporter queried Mzee Warioba whether Makonda had assaulted him, he said: “…..hatukufika huko….”
What we know force had to be applied to separate the two of them from each other. Makonda claimed “…Warioba na wenzie wanataka kutuharibia nchi….”
He never enunciated in what ways. We are still in the dark about why Makonda was so pissed off with that constitutional process. I seriously doubt Makonda ever took time to read the proposed constitutional draft. He is not a reading type, that is all.
In a matter of months, the then president Jakaya Kikwete appointed Makonda to be a district commissioner indicating Kikwete was very pleased with Makonda’s anti reforms aura.
Since then, Makonda kept scaling the political heights despite his questionable academic and professional credentials.
Since then even the sky no longer impose mental blocks to comrade Makonda dreaming bigger and bigger. But is he really a presidential material? I seriously doubt!
Makonda has been nursing presidential dreams of his own and perceives he needs to combine an MP and a cabinet ministerial role, before 2030 to stand tall with his potential rivals within the CCM tent.
In 2020, he had tried to gun down CCM parliamentary nomination in Kigamboni but was outrightly floored by the then incumbent MP, Dr. Faustine Ndugulile (now deceased).
Even when he took his CCM nomination forms, CCM top brass had cautioned him he was pursuing a vastly political career that was not for him. Looks like they knew his leadership teethers more than Makonda has been able to acknowledge.
The impromptu fiat of being an incumbent in CCM to qualify as a presidential candidate is all hot air if the economy keeps sputtering.
In 2030, Tanzania may seek an outsider to reverse the rot in the government and place us in the economic global map where we truly belongs.
Before marching to the general election, Arusha Urban constituents will have a tough decision to make: do they have their own to run and win the elections or they have to keep accepting carpetbaggers to guide and manage their development vision and implementation?
It is their choice to make, certainly not their leaders to make for them.
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