Author: John Ndembwike

Publisher: New Africa Press

Published:

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13:

This work is about Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania's first female president. She was also Tanzania's first female vice president. And she was the only female president in Africa when she went into office. She is also the third female president in Africa with executive powers. One of the biggest challenges Tanzania faces under the leadership of President Samia Suluhu Hassan is the quest for true democracy. The country is at the crossroads. It either pursues democracy in the full practical – not theoretical – sense or it abandons the goal and maintains the status quo, reversing whatever gains that have been made in the past in pursuit of this noble goal. The work looks at the central and critical role Mama Samia, as she is known in Tanzania and sometimes beyond, is destined to play in the quest for this new dispensation. There are strident and persistent demands by the opposition parties for a complete overhaul of the system. They demand a new constitution. There is an imperative need to establish an independent electoral commission, level the playing field to enable the opposition to compete fairly and effectively against the ruling party which has been in power since the country won independence more than 60 years ago. Even after multiparty elections were introduced in 1995 after 30 years of one-party rule since 1965, Tanzania has not achieved full democracy. It remains a de facto one-party state. For the first time in the country's history in the post-colonial era, Tanzania has a leader, Mama Samia, who has promised to undertake fundamental changes and work with the opposition to transform the country into a truly democratic society. She has promised to level the playing field and has stated that she will make sure opposition parties are able to compete fairly and effectively against the ruling party even if that will cost her the presidency in the next election in 2025. No other Tanzanian president has made that commitment before, since the introduction of multiparty politics in 1992, or has even implied – let alone admitted – that there is no level playing field in the political arena. They all have claimed there is a level playing field to enable opposition parties to win elections against the ruling party and when they lose they lose fairly. If President Samia does what she has promised to do, she is going to be the most transformative figure in the history of Tanzania besides the founding father of the nation Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere who led the struggle for the independence of Tanganyika and led the country to be the first in East Africa to attain sovereign status. She will be remembered as the leader who gave Tanzania a new constitution, reduced the power of the presidency at the expense of her own ruling party as demanded by the opposition, established an independent electoral commission, levelled the playing field to enable opposition parties to compete fairly and effectively against the ruling party without any interference by the government to block them from doing so, and transformed the country into a full democracy. I have described her as “The Gentle Lady” but also as someone with steely determination to get things done. She also likes to get things done on consensus basis, an approach that has won her support in the opposition camp, a rare achievement among leaders of the ruling party who prefer to win or get things done on their own terms and often excluding the opposition. In spite of her softness, she is destined – as a steely character – to shake the country to its foundation for a complete overhaul of the system and radically transform the political landscape into one that accommodates all, if she does what she has said she is going to do, and if she works together with the opposition to achieve those goals, all of which are non-partisan, transcending narrow political interests in the best interest of the nation. She will be remembered as “the mother of democracy” in Tanzania. But she will also need the support of political heavyweights and others in her own party to implement her decisions and fulfill her agenda and transform the country into a “new nation” with a solid democratic foundation. It has been a long journey, starting almost thirty years ago in 1995 when the country had multiparty elections and entered a new era of multiparty politics – not democracy – in an attempt to achieve freedom and equality in the political arena by guaranteeing the right of every individual to express his/her views without fear of being muzzled, and by levelling the playing field to enable opposition parties to compete fairly and effectively against the ruling party which has been in power since independence. The goal has been elusive mainly because of government intervention to thwart the process in order to enable the ruling party to perpetuate itself in power: the ruling party and the government are one and the same thing in Tanzania and have always been. The refusal and unwillingness of national leaders to level the playing field in order to achieve genuine democracy has, unfortunately, somewhat been sanctioned and legitimised by the opposition parties themselves because of their refusal to unite and form a cohesive bloc as one strong party, with nationwide appeal, to effectively challenge the ruling party which has enormous advantages of mobilising support among the people. It has had the opportunity and the experience to build and consolidate its base across the nation all the way down to the grassroots level for decades since the end of colonial rule. In order to provide a counterweight against such a behemoth, there is an imperative need for opposition parties to unite and form one large party that can match the ruling party in mobilising support nationwide. That is the next challenge for the opposition in its quest for true democracy. Otherwise be prepared to maintain the status quo and accept its legitimacy validated by the ruling party's dominance of the political landscape – in fact across the sociopolitical and economic spectrum – because it is a dominance derived from electoral mandate as CCM continues to win elections without credible challenge to its supremacy at the polls.