In a sweltering makeshift restaurant in downtown Dar es Salaam, a fading picture of Julius Nyerere, grey-haired like a stern but loving grandfather, looks down at diners. Next to it is a framed picture of President Jakaya Kikwete who Tanzanians will be seeking to replace when they go to the polls on Sunday.
The two leading candidates, John Pombe Magufuli of the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), and Edward Lowassa of the opposition Ukawa alliance have both repeatedly invoked Nyerere’s name during their campaigns but shifting demographics and political realities mean Tanzania’s Founding Father has, in this election more than any other, become a symbol of the country’s past promise, but not its future prospects.
Formed in 1977 through the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union (Tanu), the ruling party in the Mainland and the Afro-Shirazi Party that ruled in Zanzibar, CCM has been in power since Independence and is one of the oldest and most entrenched political parties on the continent.
Yet, like its counterpart, the African National Congress in South Africa, CCM has shown signs of weakness and fatigue that could be costly in Sunday’s election, including the defection of former prime minister Lowassa to the opposition after internal disagreements over Kikwete’s succession.
Such internal disputes are not new. In 1995, in the country’s first multiparty General Election, CCM was rocked by the defection of minister Augustine Mrema and Nyerere had to expend precious personal political capital to stop the renegade official from taking power.
“Tanzania stinks of corruption,” the famously austere Nyerere said at the time. “The State House is a holy place. I was not elected by the people of Tanzania to turn it into a den of racketeers. This year’s elections will be ruled by money. Previously, candidates were asked where and how they got their property. Wealth was not a qualification. This year wealth will be the primary qualification!”
Twenty years later, and after a series of mega public procurement scandals over the past decade, corruption has slithered down the list of priorities for many Tanzanians.
The choice is between a candidate fronted by a ruling party with a long list of corruption scandals under its watch, and an opposition candidate who was forced to resign as Prime Minister over his role in one of the bigger ones, the Richmond scandal.
CCM’s saving grace
January Makamba, an MP and spokesman for the CCM campaign recently said the opposition had “ceded the anti-corruption agenda” by picking Lowassa as its candidate. This could yet return to haunt Ukawa but an Afrobarometer survey in 2014 found that corruption was only the ninth most important problem Tanzanians wanted the government to address, behind health, education, water supply, agriculture among others.
This change in attitudes reflects wider changes in Tanzanian society since the days of Nyerere that could affect the outcome of the election. Long gone are the days of Ujaama socialism; Dar es Salaam and other major Tanzanian towns now spot large shopping malls — those temples of individual consumerism — and major international brands.
Younger Africans today are part of a growing, aspirational class of “millennials” born around the turn of, or who came of age at the turn of the millennium and they will have a large say in elections across the continent, including in Tanzania.
Some 57 per cent of the country’s 22.7 million registered voters are aged between 18 and 35, while one in four is aged 35 to 49. In fact, with a median age of 17.5, almost half of all Tanzania’s population of almost 50 million were born after Nyerere’s death in October 1999.
The East African
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