Dar es Salaam-based political and social commentator
A new electoral cycle is upon us, and with it all the usual apprehensions that come with what should be a mundane exercise in civility: An election ought to be that activity through which a polity decides whom among their numbers will be burdened with the responsibility of undertaking on behalf of many others weighty duties that nobody is prepared to shoulder; it demands self-abnegation.
Well, that is the idyll, anyway, that being chosen to do work on behalf of the many, places chores on you that you must carry out, most often asking you to sacrifice your valuable time and freedom.
In our particular circumstances in Africa, we have stood this concept on its head, meaning being chosen as a leader gives one the licence to not only “eat” more than others, but also to do pretty much what one wishes without ever worrying about playing by anyone’s rulebook but their own.
I bet that if we did our politics under the guidance of the old-fashioned rules I am talking about here, many candidates we see today would simply evaporate.
So, let us say that times have changed, and we have to play whatever game we play under the rules we have fashioned over time, for better or for worse, even if we know it is generally for worse.
In Tanzania’s cycles, the powers that be have decided since the 1990s that there will be two major electoral programmes every five years where the voters will choose their representatives: In one year, there is a nationwide election for the local government at village, township and street levels, and then the next year there is the ward ( which has been detached from local elections) and then parliamentary and presidential elections.
My position has long been that there is no reason whatsoever to spread these two elections in two years, because these elections could have been held on the same day, and they could even have included many more rubrics, with specific local issues on the ballot, the way it is done in more considerate electoral systems.
But such is the profligacy of poor countries that we are always looking for ways to burn the money we do not even have. And then we go begging from the countries which organise their own elections wisely, so that we can enjoy burning other people’s money.
Be that as it may, now we have entered that phase of the intensification of cheating, lying and dissembling, in which per capita truthfulness reaches decidedly new lows: The politicians go around asking to be given the chance to “serve” their constituents, and in order to persuade their people to let them serve them, they bribe them with food and drink, and the people see nothing wrong with that!
In that cauldron of no-brainers, we observe the voters turning out to elect their reps, but at the end of the day realise that the people they voted for were not posted as their representatives, which has the effect of reducing the numbers of the citizens who turn out to vote, from one cycle to another.
All these will be at the back of the collective memory of the voters, and the political structures which will be marshalling their troops in the electoral combats can have irreparable damage soon.
They will, no doubt, be instructed by the experiences garnered over the years, from the 1995 election — when the first multiparty vote in the new era was held— to the last one five years ago where the word “fiasco“is the only one I find fitting here.
The two-year old exercise (2019-2020) showed us how evil top-citizen agency could produce enduring ills.
President John Pombe Magufuli (let it be said again, lest we forget), as the first citizen, left his imprint on the opposition, which was all but wiped out, but also decided how his own ruling party (CCM) fared in the elections, as he managed to affect not only how the opposition fared (losing almost everything) but how his own party, CCM performed, as only members who were personally vetted by Magufuli were allowed to contest. (The frightening thing is that those who were negatively affected by this Magufuli diktat dare not say anything to date!)
Bad faith, cowardice, timeserving and flunkeyism have taken hold of the political system in a way I never thought possible, even though hypocrites have been with us since we were born. It gets to be overboard, and disgusting too, even for regular demands of political hygiene and probity.
The flunkey has taken over the main discourse in Tanzanian politics, where President Samia Suluhu Hassan, hell-bent to secure an election victory that looks doubtful — she has opposers within CCM and the opposition too— might be forced into desperate measures, which could damage her legacy, no matter the electoral results. I counsel less push and more restraint.
The early days of the dress-rehearsal local government elections have opened with hiccups, with officials failing to turn up in their offices to perform critical enabling services affecting voters.
We may be seeing the first signs of bad faith, and though I am a born optimist, I fear rumbling thunder, in light of the disappearances I talked about these past weeks.
