The CCM tug-of-war between Kisesa Member of Parliament Luhaga Mpina and Minister for Agriculture Hussein Bashe is now boiling out. In the past, the CCM code of conduct bound its leaders not to wash their dirty linen in the open.
The reasons were obvious: to keep the facade of peace and tranquillity intact. But these days, times have changed, and nobody is seen as an impartial arbitrator to calm the nerves and bring these two matadors to the haggling table to resolve their differences behind the scenes.
What is becoming clear is that the undertow eruptions indicate no consensus about the country’s direction. Mpina is a voice of reason, which is not popular within CCM’s power corridors but resonates well with the general public.
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This article revisits their altercation and suggests there may be no solution until the next election sorts them out. CCM of the past was glued to discipline and reverence for hierarchical authorities. Not anymore.
As I have said, CCM is going through an ambiguous metamorphosis that nobody seems to understand. In its earlier stage, it was a mass party where everybody could set their foot in, but later, prominent expulsions and catchy anti-poor rhetoric transformed that aura of invincibility into a sleazy watermelon to a fault.
The days are gone when CCM could stand for the smaller person. No wonder the general public is beginning to look elsewhere for comfort in adversity. This leery solace has turned their heads to the highly disorganised and morally corrupt: the opposition.
Mpina and his ilk have seen the danger of CCM abandoning the poor and embracing the rich, massively losing its support in rural and urban areas.
Mpina is sounding the alarm; sadly, he is being persecuted! Have we seen haughtiness and greed clouding CCM’s judgement?
Time will reveal this in due time. Mpina is an ardent student of Nyerere who once cautioned in 1995 CCM convention in Dodoma: “….watanzania wanataka mabadiliko na wasipoyapata ndani ya CCM, na wasipoyaona ndani ya CCM, watayatafuta nje ya CCM.”
Mpina has been raising many issues about official graft, embezzlement of public funds, and throttled accountability. The CCM of yesteryear would have embraced him, albeit with a tinge of bitterness.
During the President Ali Hassan Mwinyi era, Augustine Mrema was acknowledged as a graft dragon slayer. Even back to the Nyerere reign, Edward Moringe Sokoine, as the premier, was unanimously accredited as a “no-nonsense leader”: hoarding goods was arraigned.
Money launderers were not apprehended in courts but voluntarily surrendered their ill-gotten wealth to the police.
My concern, even today, is what the police did with the money handed over to them by the so-called “economic saboteurs.” The police never gave a public statement of collection, and even receipts were seldom given to the saboteurs.
Rumour circulated that the police of those days pinched some of the bootlegs, but it is almost impossible to support those claims.
Where the collection went remains a mystery, as does the retirement money for ex-employees of the defunct EAC after the UK paid us!
But what is important is not those finer details but what CCM successfully portrayed: CCM cared and would fight to the last blood for the weakest members. These days, the rulers urge the poor to fight for them, of all people!
That aura of embracing the majority poor is a goner, these days the language is “mpishe mwekezaji na fidia itakufuata baadaye.”
In “Those Were the Days,” CCM would have adopted a different development paradigm and declared all Tanzanians to be “wawekezaji.”
That categorization would have generated a seismic wave because it would have killed the proposition we are not and aliens are.
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The second advantage is citizenship empowerment. Instead of advocating for “Mpishe Mwekezaji,” all Tanzanians will directly benefit from whatever investments fall into our little plots. In other words, we shall become partners in the undertaking through ourselves instead through the government.
The government superficially looks like ours but is not. Just as former president Jakaya Kikwete correctly intoned in the 2010 presidential elections, “Urais ni Swala la Kifamilia”, meaning the presidency as an institution has owners, not for all of us!
At the time, Kikwete deflected criticisms about why only his family campaigned for him. I am unsure whether it was a parody or an honest disposition, but his answer reflects today’s harsh reality.
We have not only national leaders swirling out honey and milk, but their spouses, too, are now placing their straws, gratitude for statutory clever innovations. Once the money is deposited in treasury, the beneficiaries are not all of us but our representatives.
Today, a video shows the mansion allegedly 560m/- built for one DED in Dar es Salaam!
We are not all going to live there, but one of us, whom we never even elect, is going to eat on our behalf. So, government priorities are not ours—they are theirs. As one saying goes, ” Once you have deposited your right to govern in your representatives, expect they will also consume the national cake on your behalf.”
CCM of “those were the days” would have ensured the national cake was evenly distributed. They would have ensured that local and central governments got their share and those physically involved grabbed their share.
The weakness of a one-time compensation fails to grasp that it will never be adequate. So, we have to stop lying to ourselves. Displaced people may be given new areas to live in but will not be comprehensively compensated for where they were taken.
Cases of being dumped in ecological disaster-prone areas or removed from fertile lands and thrown into barren ones are common. Some of the evicted find themselves in areas affected by landslides or pushed far from social amenities such as health centres, roads, banks, markets, and schools.
How can compensation based on improvements on land addresses what is stored on it and underneath? The most comprehensive assessment must include soils, water availability and subsurface wealth.
To do otherwise is to condemn your own people into miseries of poverty. Sadly, this is what we are now witnessing. We have reached a point where even this minuscule compensation is withheld as alien investors are pampered.
We are being persuaded to subsidize the aliens so that the scripture may be fulfilled: “The indigent will be robbed even little they have which will be handed to the rich and powerful.”
Such a hostile attitude does not augur well for a government that is a vanguard of the interests of the poor. The more the government promotes and defends foreign investors at the behest of its people, the more it is perceived as an occupation force.
This is why political thuggery is gaining momentum, just like the Boer regime in South Africa. But the Boers came to their senses, repented, relented and were forgiven.
My question is, what will it take before CCM comes to its senses? You cannot subdue people through violence and intimidation but by the power of reasoning, which is missing in CCM. Doing the right thing is all that is needed.
Within CCM, political thuggery is quietly being resisted because we mightily fear God. Both in the senior and junior ranks, there is a general consensus that the future of CCM is not in lawlessness because it has never left anybody unscathed.
Consequences of lawlessness could hit a relative, friend or even anybody else you never met, but very few of us want to be an accessory to murder under any circumstances.
Mpina represents that majority view within CCM despite not marshalling explicit support. He is also waging a fight against the marginalization of the voters in his constituency, and he is facing the scissors.
On the contrary, the Minister for Agriculture threatens to deprive the constituency of government goodies because their MP is gaslighting those services.
Mpina, too, has responded that the minister has no such powers to deny the voters government-allocated resources. The acerbic exchanges have informed us that all is not well within CCM’s top ranks.
As one of the opposition MPs once said in the Parliament, no sooner CCM nullifies the opposition threats will turn against each other because their deep-seated differences are now papered over by the existential threat posed by the opposition.
That prophesy rings true as acrimonious verbal fights take centre stage before translating into political thuggery and lawlessness inside CCM.
“Violence in any form is infectious and indiscriminate”. We need to remind each other often lest we forget the wisdom in those words. In meantime, insidious plotters in CCM are working overdrive to massively rigged out Mpina in 2025 CCM primaries.
The anti-Mpina coalition of the willing has an election motto: “Tumechoshwa na malumbano ya Mpina tunataka maendeleo…”
Those who have been extrapolating Mpina will be kicked out of CCM seem out of the loop. But rigging out Mpina will confirm our worst fears: CCM KWELI INA WENYEWE!
Such a gross misconduct will alienate even more of those who still delude themselves like me: there is still hope in CCM despite many false steps which includes intolerance of dissent.
