by Enos Bukuku

Will Tanzania get a new constitution? Referendum postponed
In January I wrote about the opposition challenge to the proposed constitution. By “opposition” I was referring to the informal alliance of opposition party members who call themselves Umoja wa Katiba ya Wananchi (usually translated as the Coalition of Defenders of the People’s Constitution), better known by the acronym “UKAWA”. It looks likely that UKAWA will play a pivotal role in the upcoming elec­tions, using its dissatisfaction with the constitution making process as a springboard to challenging the government on much broader issues.

The referendum on whether to adopt the draft constitution had been scheduled to take place on 30 April 2015. Cynics suggested that the reason for the referendum to be pushed through quickly was so that the government could take the credit for a new constitution before the general elections and to avoid the embarrassment of its opponents convincing the public to vote against it.

In the event, the National Election Committee (NEC) eventually bowed to the inevitable and announced that the biometric voter registration process would not be complete in time and that the referendum would be postponed. This was confirmed by the government, with a future date “to be announced later”. It now looks a strong possibility that the referendum will not take place before the General Election.

Pressure had been mounting on the government for several months, with calls not only from UKAWA and the NEC, but also from religious leaders. This is not the first time that religious organisations have entered the debate, which recently prompted President Kikwete to criticise some of those leaders who called for voters to vote against the adoption of the proposed constitution. It must be worrying for CCM to see the opposition parties join together against it, apparently with the support of influential religious figures, in an attempt to undermine both the constitution and the ruling party.

One undeniable truth is that this process has created a considerable atmosphere of mistrust of the government. This mistrust has manifested itself as serious doubts about this government-endorsed document, which was supposed to herald a new era for Tanzania. For Tanzania to receive a new constitution, that trust must be restored very quickly.

On 8 November, Tanzanian President Kikwete underwent a successful operation to remove a cancerous prostate. The operation was conducted at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA. The President remained in the US for three weeks for recuperation before returning to Tanzania.

President Kikwete thanked all Tanzanians for praying for him and commended the media for conveying the right message away from distortion. “In September, last year, I went for a medical check-up and doctors diagnosed me with prostate cancer. They told me that since it was still at a manageable level, an operation could remove it completely and stop it from spreading to other parts of the body. Before going for the operation, I wanted to ‘put the house in order’”, he added, explaining that he had been waiting for the Constituent Assembly to complete preparation of the proposed new Constitution.
“Although I looked normal and continued with my duties, the illness remained a source of ‘inward misery.’ It took eight months to inform my wife but she is great and encouraged me to undergo treatment. I am glad am cancer free. Doctors said that after such an operation a patient could survive for 30 years depending on one’s age,” he said.

President Kikwete explained that since the 1990s when he served as the minister for energy and minerals, he cultivated the culture of undergoing regular medical check-up. He appealed to ‘wananchi’ to emulate that way of life.

by Enos Bukuku

Opposition challenge to proposed new constitution
The Constitutional Assembly (CA) was disbanded in October 2014 after delivering the final draft of the proposed Constitution to the President, who has invited the public to endorse the document in a referendum to be held in April 2015.

Despite the heated disputes which have taken place among the political factions within the CA, the government announced that the required two-thirds majority for approval of the draft by the CA had been met. However, many members of the opposition have disputed this. A CA member from Zanzibar, Haji Ambar Khamis, claimed that even though his name was listed as approving the draft, he had not done so, and he reportedly collapsed whilst explaining himself. Four opposition parties (Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA), the Civic United Front, the National League for Democracy and the National Convention for Construction and Reform) have decided to join forces against the government and mount a joint challenge to the draft constitution on the grounds that the government failed to follow the legal procedures during the vote in parliament.

There is still some debate as to whether the new constitution can be considered a success even if it survives this possible legal challenge and is adopted after the referendum.

Those in one camp will say that this draft improves upon the current constitution by addressing the needs of all Tanzanians by including the nation’s children, women, the disabled and other minority groups. Changes to the constitution have been warmly welcomed by Tanzania’s Gender Coalition Group who have stated that approximately 90% of their proposals for reform to women’s rights have been adopted by the CA. One of the proposals which has received praise is for women to have equal land ownership rights which “gives every woman the right to obtain, own, use, develop and manage land under the same rules which are applicable to men”; the ability to confer citizenship to their children; better employment rights; and more advantageous representation in parliament.

The draft also seeks to redress the issue of exploitation of children by clarifying the definition of child as being a person under 18 years of age, which is relevant in combating child marriages. It also guarantees a right to primary education to every Tanzanian child. Minority ethnic groups, such as the Hadzabe and Akiye, are given further protection by the draft.

However, the proposed constitution has removed notable sections from the previous draft, including new checks and balances on presidential power, and has watered down sections proposed by Warioba’s Constitutional Review Commission (CRC). In particular, the proposal to establish a three-government structure – Zanzibar, Mainland, Union – is replaced with a two government structure that closely resembles the current system.

Whilst there was an attempt to include a provision for dual nationality in the final draft, unfortunately for many of the Tanzanian diaspora overseas, this was eventually omitted. Instead, by way of a compromise, a “special status” will be given to former Tanzanian citizens.
Those of the “this-new-constitution-won’t-change-a-thing” camp argue that the whole lengthy process has been a monumental waste of time, money and ultimately, dominated by the government. CCM has been accused of bullying and “hi-jacking” the process.

The drafting of a new constitution was supposed to be a civilised exercise in cross-party consultation, and all parties were supposed to set aside their differences for the greater good and for the benefit of generations of Tanzanians to come. This ideal was once again challenged on 2 November 2014, when a youth group of CCM supporters disrupted a meeting convened by the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation to hear the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) members, and in particular CRC chairman, retired Judge Warioba. An eagerly anticipated speech by a well-respected politician, quickly turned into an ugly scene more suited to a Hollywood action film. It was reported that “fists and chairs were flung into the air, camera equipment destroyed and journalists beaten up”.

It now remains for the public to voice its opinion as to whether the Constitution should be adopted. For the new constitution to pass, majorities are needed in both parts of the union. CCM should have no trouble winning a majority on the mainland, but whether they can deliver the same on Zanzibar is more questionable.

by David Brewin

Becoming more friendly
There are signs that Tanzania is changing its rather distant relationship with other members of the East African Union. During recent months it has allowed its citizens to move money across its borders. However, on environmental and natural resources management, Tanzania is holding back. It appears to have been doing its ‘homework’ more thoroughly than the other partner states. Before the signing of binding agreements on the use of Lake Victorian waters and other scarce water and pasture resources, Tanzania argued that a protocol on such issues, already ratified by Kenya and Uganda, contradicted the provisions on trading in minerals. Tanzania stressed that access to and the use of land and premises should be governed by national policies and laws and that the protocol included provisions on marketing and trading in minerals which should have been restricted to protection of the environment.

Tanzania also noted that tourism should be removed from the protocols as it would be better covered under another accord now being negoti­ated. The EAC Secretariat was instructed to study the issues raised by Tanzania.

Burundi-Tanzania border
The border between Tanzania and Burundi was originally demarcated in 1924 during the colonial period. But, over the years, some natural border references such as rivers have changed their courses or dried out. Sometimes officials have demarcated part of the border by just marking trees. Although the African Union has declared that states wanting to make changes should do so by 2017, the presidents of the two countries are reported to have met to reaffirm the border between their countries.

Pressure on human rights in Tanzania
The European Union has begun to step up its pressure on Tanzania to change its laws on human rights. The Head of the EU Delegation, Ambassador Filibert Sebregondi, has advised the Tanzanian govern­ment to increase the minimum age of marriage for girls from 15 to 18 years, eliminate polygamy and abolish the death penalty and corporal punishment in schools.

by Ben Taylor

On 8 August 1914, the Royal Navy bombarded the German wireless relay station in Dar es Salaam. War had broken out in Europe just days earlier, and already it had come to East Africa.

In the shadow of the horrors of western Europe, space in the popular memory for the East African theatre of the First World War is limited. Such room as there is tends to be dominated by Boys’ Own tales of derring-do, successes against the odds and heroic failures.

The madcap British scheme to gain naval supremacy on Lake Tanganyika is Exhibit A. Two 40 foot motorboats, HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou, were shipped out to South Africa and transported 3,000 miles by land (including being dragged for 146 miles through the jungle of the Belgian Congo) to reach the lake. It should never have succeeded, and yet it did, capturing one German vessel and sinking another before forc­ing the Germans to scuttle their 220-foot flagship Graf von Götzen (now the MV Liemba).

This inspired C.S. Forrester’s novel, The African Queen, a film of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, and, more recently, Giles Foden’s book Mimi and Toutou Go Forth. Partly as a result, though the military significance of the Battle of Lake Tanganyika was negligible, the story became arguably the most well-known episode of the Great War in East Africa.

Or perhaps that accolade should go to the sinking of the German battle-cruiser SMS Konigsberg. Just before outbreak of war, the ship had given the British navy the slip from Dar es Salaam harbour. She frustrated the British in the Indian Ocean for well over a year, sinking ships including City of Winchester and HMS Pegasus, before eventually being cornered and sunk in the Rufiji Delta.

The Germans began the war with a well-trained force of some 5,000 men under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. They launched an early attack over the border into British East Africa (now Kenya) to disrupt the Mombasa-Nairobi railway, capturing an area around Taveta and Tsavo. This was the only British territory anywhere worldwide to be occupied during the entire First World War. During one skirmish, a German sniper is said to have hidden inside a hollow baobab tree; locals still claim the tree to be “the most shot at tree during World War I.”

In November 1914, a British/ Indian Expeditionary Force launched a disastrous attack on the port of Tanga, the terminus of the strategically important Usambara railway to Moshi. There was an agreement that guaranteed the neutrality of Tanga, so the British gave the Germans 24-hours’ notice that the agreement was cancelled. Lettow-Vorbeck thus had time to bring reinforcements down the line from Moshi. When allied troops were landed, they struggled against a swarm of bees. The Germans faced similar problems, but they prevailed in what inevitably became known as the “Battle of the Bees”.

Guerrilla tactics and impossible logistics
These episodes have a place in the history of the Great War in East Africa. But they do not tell the full story – far from it – for this was a brutal war.

Schutztruppe in German East Africa – German Federal Archive Bild 134-C0265

In contrast to the immobile trench warfare in western Europe, the war in East Africa was one of mobility and guerrilla tactics: brief battles and long marches. The allied troops launched an offensive in early 1916, after which Lettow-Vorbeck conducted a guerrilla war for two and a half years around the south of German East Africa (Tanzania), the northern part of Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) and finally in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia).

Lettow-Vorbeck by 1916 had around 20,000 troops – mostly Africans with German officers – while the allied combatants numbered around 150,000, under the command of South African General Jan Smuts. Smuts’ troops were drawn from Britain, the British colonies in East, West and Central Africa, South Africa, India and the Belgian Congo. By the end of the war, the allied force was almost entirely African.

Troops and carriers would often walk twenty miles a day, every day for a month, exposed to tropical weather of intense heat and drenching rain. Two King’s African Rifles battalions marched 1,600 miles in seven months, in the process fording 29 large rivers and fighting 32 engagements. Much of this was done with virtually no rations, subsisting on what could be found locally. Disease killed more British troops than combat. On returning from the field, soldiers were described as “resembling the victims of famine.”

In the words of one South African quartermaster, the war “involved having to fight nature in a mood that very few have experienced and will scarcely believe.” Another stated that “there is no form of warfare that requires so much inherent pluck in the individual as bush fighting.” And an officer who had fought on the Western Front wrote: “what wouldn’t one give for the food alone in France, for the clothing and equipment, and for the climate, wet or fine”.

A Malawian veteran described the experience: “Think of lying on the ground where the hot sun is beating directly on your back; think of yourself buried in a hole with only your head and hands outside, holding a gun. Imagine yourself facing this situation for seven days, no food, no water, yet you don’t feel hungry; only death smelling all over the place. Listen to the sound from exploding bombs and machine guns, smoke all over and the vegetation burnt and of course deforested. Look at your relatives getting killed, crying and finally dead. These things we did, experienced and saw.” (Page, cited by Samson).

Supply chains for food, medicines and munitions were impossible to maintain. Historian Edward Paice describes the logistical challenge: “As the availability of livestock for transport proved incapable by mid­1916 of matching the depredations of disease, the onus fell on the only alternative – human porterage. The mathematics are sobering. … 16,500 carriers were required to transport a single ton of supplies – enough to feed 1,000 askaris and their camp-followers for one day – for the simple reason that 14,000 of them were needed to carry food for the column while 2,500 carried the food for the troops. … The troops required more than a million carriers to keep them in the field.”

The German troops largely abandoned efforts to maintain a supply chain, and instead appropriated crops and livestock without payment. They recruited some 300,000 carriers, again largely without payment.

The effect of all this on the civilian population was devastating. Agriculture became more and more difficult, leading, by 1917-18 to famine in much of East Africa.

Map of the Great War in East Africa based on that by Mehmet Berker, wikipedia

And for what?
M’Inoti wa Tirikamu, a carrier from Meru, “wondered why white men hate each other so much. They looked so much like brothers. We asked ourselves: Do they fight for land, or for the power to rule, or is it because they are all white, or why?”

Odandayo Mukhenye Agweli, an askari of the King’s African Rifles had similar thoughts: “To this day, I still do not know why we fought the Germans and how the war began. Though we admired the European ways of fighting, we were still left wondering why so many people had to die. In our tribal wars, the number of the dead was never very big.”

There is no answer to these questions that can possibly justify the war. Lettow-Vorbeck saw the role of his army as a drain on allied resources – drawing men and weaponry away from more important battles in Europe. Though he evaded capture until the war had ended, at which point he surrendered in Northern Rhodesia, he never really drew significant manpower away from Europe. The allies fought the war mostly with African soldiers.

Historian Edward Paice sees the war in East Africa as “the final phase of the Scramble for Africa”, which “epitomised the vainglorious imperial ambitions which helped to trigger – and certainly prolonged – World War I”. The British gained a League of Nations Mandate over Tanganyika and the Belgians gained one for Rwanda and Burundi. But the war laid bare the human vulnerability of the white man as never before, and sowed seeds of a demand for independence. The First Pan-African Congress was held in Paris in 1919, to coincide with the Versailles Peace Conference. It called for Africa to be granted home rule, and for Africans to take part in governing their countries as fast as their development permits.

The real cost
In contrast to the (relative) glamour of a small British navy expeditionary force on Lake Tanganyika, the real story of the war in East Africa is far more brutal. The vast majority of war deaths were among carrier units – an estimated 95,000 on the allied side, probably well over 50,000 among the German carriers. Around one in eight of the adult male population of British East Africa – today’s Kenya – lost their lives either as askaris or carriers. And an estimated 300,000 civilians in German East Africa died as a direct result of the war and the 1917-18 famine. The official death toll among British combatant and support units was over 105,000 men. This equalled the number of American war deaths, and was almost double the numbers of Australian, Canadian or Indian troops who lost their lives during the war.

Disgracefully, however, the official death toll does not include carriers. According to Paice: “There were many British combatants in East Africa who paid tribute to the carriers on whom they were utterly dependent for survival … But when the mortality rate became common knowledge in Whitehall it was deemed a “bloody tale” best ignored, or even suppressed, as Britain sought colonial prizes in Africa at the Paris Peace Conference. As one colonial official put it, in particularly arresting terms: the conduct of the campaign “only stopped short of a scandal because the people who suffered the most were the carriers – and after all, who cares about native carriers?””

And yet, somehow, the worst was still to come. In September 1918, as the war was coming to an end, Spanish Flu reached sub-Saharan Africa. In British East Africa, probably as many as 200,000 died, nearly 10% of the total population of the country. In German East Africa, the death toll from Spanish Flu may have been as high as 20% of the population. “There came a darkness” is a much-repeated phrase in oral histories of the time. This was a war with an immense human cost: on the troops and on the carriers, and most of all, on the civilians.

Sources
Great War in Africa Association http://gweaa.com/

Edward Paice – How the Great War razed East Africa, Africa Research Institute http://www.africaresearchinstitute.org/publications/counterpoints/how-the-great-war-razed-east-africa/

Edward Paice – The Great War and the size of the butcher’s bill, The Africa Report
http://www.theafricareport.com/Columns/the-great-war-and-the-size-of-the-butchers-bill.html

Anne Samson – When two bulls fight
http://thesamsonsedhistorian.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/when-two-bulls-fight.pdf

Anne Samson – The numbers game: how many men fought in Africa?
http://thesamsonsedhistorian.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/the-numbers-game-how-many-men-fought-in-africa/

Wolfgang H Thome – Battlefield East Africa, 98 years and counting http://wolfganghthome.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/battlefield-east-africa/

World War I in Africa: What happened in Africa should not stay in Africa http://wwiafrica.tumblr.com/
Wikipedia – East African Campaign (World War I) https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/East_African_Campaign_(World_War_I)
Wikipedia – Battle for Lake Tanganyika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_ for_Lake_Tanganyika
Wikipedia – Battle of Tanga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tanga
Wikipedia – Schutztruppe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutztruppe

by David Brewin

Yet another political party
As if Tanzania did not have enough political parties – there are twenty – there is now another one! This party, now going through the processes of official registration, bears the name; ‘The Alliance for Change and Transparency’ (ACT). It is believed that it has been set up by former members of the leading opposition party Chadema, which is the only party to have a chance of defeating the ruling CCM party in the 2015 elections. CCM has been in power for more than 50 years. ACT’s interim chairman said that the party would be guided by five principles – patriotism, equality, accountability, transparency and true democracy.

‘Traitors’ in Chadema
The main opposition party Chadema, which did well in the 2010 elections, is now being torn apart by internal dissension. According to The Citizen, a group of its members have written to the Registrar of Political Parties on alleged illegal amendments to the party’s constitution, and to the Controller and Auditor General requesting an audit of the party’s accounts. Others have apparently accused the party of removing illegally a section on term limits for presidential candidates in Chadema’s constitution which could have made the party’s two main leaders ineligible for leadership posts’.

Some observers think that these events are simply ‘business as usual’ in Tanzanian politics ahead of elections. Many of these members have defected before – mainly from CCM to Chadema or other smaller parties.

Potentially more damaging is the revolt of perhaps Chadema’s most ambitious and charismatic former Deputy Secretary General, Zitto Kabwe, MP for Kigoma. Kabwe has been virtually expelled, together with other party members in the Kigoma and Tabora regions. He played an important role (see TA 108) in establishing the party’s growth, especially among the younger generation.

CCM in trouble too
In the case of CCM, too many people want to put themselves forward as candidates for the presidency. But the party has severely frowned on this premature campaigning and is threatening severe penalties for those engaged in it.

All this is disheartening for those wanting Tanzania to develop into a democracy on the British model where governments change from time to time to reflect the changing views of the electorate. But most Tanzanians regard security and peace as their highest priorities. People continue to vote for CCM in large numbers because, unlike the situation in all its neighbours, Tanzania and CCM have given the country peace and a relatively good state of law and order.

Calm before the storm
The present political scene, and especially the highly contentious debate on the constitution, could lead to stormy times in the next few months. With most politicians installed in Dodoma for the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, the ruling party and the opposition parties have begun to worry seriously about the forthcoming 2015 elections. For the first time, three main opposition parties have come together in a ‘Coalition of the Peoples Constitution’ (UKAWA). Unless the CCM drops its determination to continue with two governments, Chadema has threatened to boycott further meetings of the Constituent Assembly (see separate article).

Chadema goes much further in threatening not to take part in the 2015 elections under the current constitution because they claim (perhaps with some justification) that the present law favours the CCM. Chadema is concerned to ensure that the nearly six million new young voters will be correctly registered before the 2015 elections. It fears that the country could go to the polls before a new and fairer constitution comes into effect. It wants to see the setting up of a new; independent (of government) Electoral Commission which will not receive orders from any government authority and will have only members not belonging to any political party. It also points out that, although over 20 million people registered to vote in the last election in 2010, only 8.6 million actually voted.

Municipal elections are due in October this year but the present National Electoral Commission says that it cannot afford to update the register twice between the two elections and is seeking funds to buy a biometric system with which to update the permanent voter register for both the constitutional referendum and the 2015 general election (but not for the local elections this year).

Salim retires from the ring
Respected Tanzanian ‘elder statesman’ Salim Ahmed Salim, who is highly qualified for the presidency and reached the last stage of the presidential primary contest in 2005, has indicated that he no longer plans to stand for the presidency in 2015. He is believed to have been disillusioned by ‘political machinations’ at that time. He said that a good track record in leadership had not been enough to guarantee him victory. He is now 72 and says that younger blood should get the chance.

What next for President Kikwete?
President Kikwete has received much praise following his recent recognition by the African Leadership Magazine as Africa’s ‘Most impactful Leader of the year 2013’. In a rare interview with the press, the President told The East African that when he returned to private life he would look after his cattle and expand his pineapple farm.

The costs of democracy
The Tanzanian government has released the amount of subsidy it paid, during a recent four-year period, to the political parties. The figures correspond to the strength of the party representation in the National Assembly and the Zanzibar House of Representatives.
The amounts received were as follows:
CCM – $31.8 million
CHADEMA – $5.75 million
Civic United Front – $3.93 million
NCCR Mageuzi – $423,125
Tanzania Labour Party – $135,025
United Democratic Party – $20,625
APT Maendeleo – $ 6,875
Democratic Party – $2,062

The quality of financial control exercised by the parties left much to be desired and the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee revealed that none of the political parties had kept proper financial records. Some parties did not even have bank accounts! Presumably, in these cases, the money went in to private accounts. The then chairman of the committee, Zitto Kabwe, was quoted in the East African as saying that political financing was the largest single driver of large-scale corruption. “It has taken four years for this audit to be implemented but it has been done and we have shown that fighting corruption must start with political institutions. A foundation has been built for cleaner politics.”

The immigration problem
As in Britain, immigration is becoming a major political issue in Tanzania. Legislation is being considered for possible action on foreign workers. President Kikwete has said that the number of foreign workers has reached an “alarmingly high figure” and that a bill will be introduced in Parliament in October to limit the number of work permits issued to foreigners, even if they come from other parts of East Africa. The other members of the East African Community seem likely to oppose this.