EDUCATION

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by Naomi Rouse

Introduction of country’s history as a subject in schools significant
The Ministry of Education is to introduce history as a compulsory subject from pre-school up to secondary school. The Tanzanian Institute for Education has been preparing text books for distribution for the new curriculum.

A 21-year old science student interviewed for the article, said that most of what he knows from history at secondary school is about how colonial warriors came to Africa.

Dr Charles Kitima, a researcher and former vice chancellor of St Augustine University said that teaching history should also build patriotism and an appreciation of Tanzania’s cultural and social heritage. (The Citizen)

Police report shows fires broke out in 31 schools in 2020
Fires broke out in 20 privately-owned and religious schools and 11 government schools in 2020. In general fires were on the rise compared with accidents and killings, according to police reports. Fires were caused by “electrical faults, negligence and conflicts”.

Remembering Magufuli’s effect on the education sector
Education stakeholders have commemorated President Magufuli’s significant influence on the education sector, including the introduction of free education for which many families were grateful.

52-year old Mwinjuma Ali said that his two children dropped out of school in 2015, due to lack of school fees and other contributions, but were able to return in 2016 and study without difficult thanks to the new policy. “I believe God brought John Magufuli for my family because I could not afford to pay for the education of my four children,” explained Ali. “When I heard him promise of free education in his campaigns in 2015, I knew he was a liberator.”

The Minister of State in the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG) Suleiman Jafo, said that implementing incomplete education plans would be a way to remember Magufuli’s outstanding leadership. “He has left us with a big task to build 1,000 schools in all the country’s 716 wards. I approved the budget for this in the recent parliamentary committee and so we are going to start construction soon,” said Jafo.

In his first term as President, Dr Magufuli implemented his pledge of waiving school fees and other contributions for both primary and secondary education. His government released TSh18 billion every month for all schools. Implementation of this policy led to increased primary and secondary school enrolment. In February 2020, Magufuli said the government had already spent a cumulative total of TSh 1.01 trillion in implementing the fee-free education policy. He said with the implementation of the policy, the enrolment of standard one pupils increased from an average of one million in 2015 to 1.6 million in 2020.

The number of secondary schools increased to 5,330 by 2020 from 4,708 recorded in 2015 making an increase of 622 schools, a move that experts believe has precipitated access to education for Tanzania’s children.

This also led to an increase in the number of form one – form four students to 2,185,037 in 2020 from 1,648,359 as recorded in 2015.

The late Magufuli said that the government took efforts to build 905 new primary schools, with the number of learning facilities increasing from 16,899 in 2015 to 17,804 in 2020, and an additional 5 million desks, from 2015 to 2020.

However, despite the policy, some costs remained as many schools continued to collect fees from children and their families. This angered the late President, who in 2018 ordered the practice to stop immediately.

“It makes no sense for the government to waive school fees and yet teachers introduce contributions that poor parents can’t afford to pay for their children. I don’t want to hear that a pupil or student is dismissed over failure to contribute…,” he added.

Students were grateful that school closures due to COVID-19 were relatively brief so that they were not forced to re-take a year.

Tanzania government to employ 6000 teachers immediately
In April, President Samia Suluhu Hassan instructed the relevant ministries to fill the vacancies left by more than 6,000 teachers. She said she realised that there were around 6,000 or more teachers who had resigned or retired and others had died along with various other causes but their vacancies are yet to be filled, which is affecting learning in schools.

Speaking at the swearing in of the newly appointed Permanent Secretaries and heads of public institutions at the State House in Dar es Salaam, President Hassan also directed that the management of girls’ secondary schools be further strengthened.

The president also said the government was hoping to build 26 girls’ schools by 2025 and urged stakeholders to take action so that the plans are implemented.

AGRICULTURE

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by Ben Taylor

Kenya-Tanzania dispute over maize imports
In early March, the Government of Kenya announced a ban with immediate effect on the importation of maize from Tanzania and Uganda. The ban was lifted the following week, though not before causing considerable strain on diplomatic relations, and with exports subject to strict conditions.

On March 5th, the acting Director-General of Kenya’s Agriculture and Food Authority, Kello Harsama, directed that the imports should stop after a survey found that maize from the two countries is not fit for human consumption.

“The authority has been conducting surveillance on the safety of food imports into Kenya. The results from maize imported from Uganda and Tanzania have revealed high levels of mycotoxins that are consistently beyond safety limits,” she said in a letter to Kenya’s tax authorities.

Long queues of trucks were seen over the following days at the Namanga border post after the Kenya Revenue authority denied the trucks entry into Kenya.

Tanzania’s deputy minister of Agriculture, Hussein Bashe, said the Government of Tanzania is taking the ban of maize imports seriously. “We are closely monitoring the ban and I can assure business people and the general public that the government will continue to protect its interests,” he said.

Aflatoxins, the form of mycotoxin reportedly found in this case, are naturally occurring toxins produced by certain fungi and can be found on a variety of different crops and foodstuffs including cereals, nuts, spices, dried fruits and coffee beans, often spread during storage and under warm and humid conditions. Aflatoxins are capable of causing disease including cancer.

Mr Bashe who was accompanied by the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) director general, Yussuf Ngenya, said no official communication has been made to the country.

He said even in the event of one or two incidents the Kenyan government should not draw conclusions to the entire maize industry without involving a wide range of institutions that should communicate during challenges. He added that since Tanzania and Kenya are EAC members their differences should be resolved through procedures governing the regional body instead of tarnishing the image of Tanzania’s produce.

Kenyan millers also faulted the government over the blanket ban, arguing the move will have a serious implication on the price of flour. The processors argued that the government should have only intercepted the maize that has high-levels of aflatoxin and allowed those that meet the set standards to be imported.

By March 11th, the Kenyan government relaxed the ban, but instead introduced tough new restrictions on maize imports. All stakeholders dealing in maize imports into Kenya would be required to be registered, consignments must be accompanied with a certificate of conformity on toxin levels and that traders have to issue details of their warehouses. The certificate of conformity should indicate that the aflatoxin levels comply with the maximum required levels of 10 parts per billion.

“While we strive to give Kenya safe food by addressing the challenge in production system, we equally expect our trading partners to trade safe maize as per the East African Community (EAC) standards,” said Mr Angolo, Kenya’s Chief Administrative Secretary of Agriculture.

Locust alarm in Longido
Farmers and residents of Longido District, Arusha, were thrown into panic in February when their farms were invaded by locusts. The pests, which attacked crops with devastating effects , were first seen in Namanga on the Kenya-Tanzania border and later crossed over into Tanzania.

Longido District Commissioner Frank Mwaisumbe said the locusts spread to many parts of the district. He said he had already contacted regional officials and the agriculture ministry who had promised to send experts as soon as possible.

Longido resident Jeremiah Sanka said they were afraid of their crops being eaten by locusts. “We have sent people to the fields because by this time the maize has started to germinate so if eaten it will be such a huge loss” he said.

President Samia announces priority areas in agriculture
During her first State of the Nation address to parliament on April 22nd, 2021, President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced several priorities for her government in the areas of agriculture, fisheries and livestock.

She said the sector accounts for only 27% of GDP and 25% of foreign currency earnings despite the fact that 65 percent of Tanzanians are farmers.

“This is because of low productivity,” she said. “For instance, while some can produce eight tonnes [of maize] per hectare, Tanzania’s farmers produce only 1.9 tonnes per hectare. In the same vein, a Tanzanian cotton farmer produces 250 kilograms per acre instead of 1,000 to 1,250 per acre.”

She added that the same applies also to livestock, whereby the sector contributes only 7.4% of GDP, despite the fact that Tanzania has the second largest livestock population in Africa.” She said cows in Tanzania produce an average of three litres of milk per day instead of between 20 to 30 litres if modern livestock keeping methods are put in place, and that Tanzanian cattle produce only 150 kilograms of meat instead of between 500 and 600 kilograms in some countries.

To address this, the President pledged that the government will foster investment in improved varieties and livestock keeping technologies through funding research and extension services. “We will give them seeds, capital and allow them to keep producing on commercial basis. That will prevent us from importing seeds because such seeds will be available locally,” she said.

She also promised that irrigation will be given special impetus, pledging to increase the size of land for irrigation from 561,383 hectares to 1,200,000 hectares by 2025. She said this will enable the country to reduce its dependency on rain-fed agriculture, noting that farmers will be required to farm on a commercial basis and contribute towards costs of irrigation infrastructures.

ENERGY & MINERALS

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by Ben Taylor

Note: we are seeking a new contributor to take over this section of Tanzanian Affairs. If you are interested, please contact the editor.

Tanzania-Uganda oil pipeline agreements signed
Uganda, Tanzania and the oil companies Total SE and China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) signed three key agreements on April 11, 2021 in Uganda that pave the way for construction to start on the planned east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP). Both President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania were present to witness the signing of the agreements.

The 1,443km pipeline will transport crude oil from oil fields near Lake Albert in western Uganda to Chongoleani terminal in Tanga on the Tanzanian coast. From Lake Albert, the pipeline will head southwards, crossing into Tanzania near Bukoba and passing to the west of Lake Victoria before heading west to Tanga via Kahama, Singida and Kondoa. On completion, it is expected to be the world’s longest electrically heated pipeline. Uganda’s crude oil is highly viscous, so it must be heated to be kept liquid enough to flow.

Patrick Pouyanne, chief executive of the French oil giant Total, described this as a “momentous occasion in history … Expect the first oil tanker to dock at Tanga port in early 2025.”

The project is expected to cost at least USD $3.8bn, 80% of which will be spent in Tanzania. The full amount will be pooled through the EACOP holding company co-owned by the oil companies – Total E&P and China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), and the governments of Uganda and Tanzania through their respective national oil companies, UNOC and TPDC. The transit tariff per barrel of crude oil going through the pipeline is to be capped at $12.77, after tax concessions were offered by the Tanzanian government.

President Museveni explained that he chose the date for signing the agreements as April 11th for sentimental reasons: to coincide with the toppling of former President Idi Amin by Ugandan rebel groups with the help of Tanzanian troops 42 years earlier on the same date. “So today is a triple victory for Uganda and Tanzania; militarily, politically, add economically,” he said. The event had been planned for March 22nd, but had been delayed out of respect for the late President Magufuli.
Environmental groups have expressed concern with the plans. A letter signed by 38 civil society organisations across both east African countries said the parties had failed to address environmental concerns over the pipeline and had steamrollered over court and parliamentary processes.

Diana Nabiruma, of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), told the (UK) Guardian newspaper: “It is concerning that major agreements are being signed and the companies are being given the go-ahead to award contracts and start developing the Lake Albert oil project. The projects pose major environmental risks. Resources, some shared with countries such as the DRC, Tanzania and Kenya, including Lake Albert as well as Lake Victoria and rivers, are at risk of oil pollution,” she said.

The #StopEACOP alliance campaign condemned the decision to build the pipeline, which it says will displace 12,000 families and would be a huge environmental risk at a time of climate emergency, when the world needs to move away from fossil fuels.

Vanessa Nakate, founder of the Rise Up climate movement in Uganda, said: “There is no reason for Total to engage in oil exploration and the construction of the east Africa crude oil pipeline because this means fuelling the destruction of the planet and worsening the already existing climate disasters in the most affected areas. There is no future in the fossil fuel industry and we cannot drink oil. We demand Total to rise up for the people and the planet,” she said.

David Pred, of Inclusive Development International, which supports communities to defend their rights against harmful corporate projects, said: “The oil companies are trying to dress up the investment decision signing ceremony, but fortunately this climate-destroying project is far from a done deal. Total and CNOOC still need to secure insurance and raise $2.5bn in debt financing for the EACOP to move forward and they are going to struggle mightily to find enough banks and insurance providers willing to associate themselves with such a project,” he claimed.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan commits to speed up LNG project
Among the many topics covered by the new President, she stressed the need to speed up the long-planned (and much-delayed) Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) processing plant on the southern Tanzania coast. The project cost is estimated at USD $30bn.

In two major speeches – on April 6 at a ceremony to swear-in new Permanent Secretaries and other officials, and April 22 in her maiden speech to parliament as President – she directed the Ministry of Energy to speed up the project by bringing in investors who are ready to start its implementation.

The LNG project has been stalled for some time now following the government’s decision to review Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs). Host Government Agreement (HGA) negotiations have been on and off, after they initially stopped in 2017 due to technicalities and resumed in 2018 only to stall again.

“We have been singing the LNG song for a very long time, I remember when I was sworn in as the Vice President I tried to work on it, but discovered it was beyond me and stopped,” she said. She stressed that it was time to understand who is in and who is out in the implementation of the project so that it can move forward. “We should do what we did when we decided to start construction of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) and we all saw how they came back seeking to be put on board,” she said.

There are a number of complicating factors to deal with in kick-starting the project. In addition to maximising the benefits to local communities and national revenue, negotiations will be affected by global gas price projections and the security situation in northern Mozambique.

Barrick Gold CEO praises President Magufuli
The president and chief executive of Barrick Gold Corporation, Mark Bristow, said the company mourned with the people of Tanzania at the loss of President John Magufuli.

Bristow described the late president as “a visionary statesman” who saw the value of a thriving mining sector to his country’s economy. He praised the late President for partnering with Barrick in a joint venture, Twiga Minerals Corporation, to manage the company’s mines in Tanzania and to share the economic benefits they generated equally. Bristow said Twiga would stand as a monument to President Magufuli’s foresight and should serve as a model for future partnerships between governments and mining companies in Africa.

The joint venture came after several years of a strained relationship between the government of Tanzania and Acacia, a company majority owned by Barrick and operating gold mines in Tanzania. President Magufuli accused Acacia of “stealing” by failing to pay proper taxes and exporting more gold than declared, and slapped the company with a USD $190bn tax bill. Protracted negotiations led to a compromise with Barrick offering a goodwill gesture to Tanzania of $300m, and establishment of Twiga Minerals as a joint venture.

Anti-smuggling measures at Mererani Tanzanite Mines declared ineffective
President Samia Suluhu Hassan noted new tactics of smuggling Tanzanite at the Mererani mines in Simanjiro District, Manyara region, and demanded security reinforcement to curb the malpractice. Previously, President Magufuli had overseen the construction of a perimeter wall surrounding the mines in an effort to reduce loses.

In her speech at the State House in Dar es Salaam on April 6, she said smugglers have now resorted to digging underground channels through which they have been sneaking Tanzanite past the 24.5km perimeter wall. As a result, she said, the stones are escaping just as before. “We have TPDF (Tanzania People’s Defence Forces) soldiers protecting the mineral site yet Tanzanite finds its way out of the fortified place,” said the President. She expressed her dismay over the trend, calling on the Ministry of Minerals to further reinforce security despite a successful installation of 24-hour surveillance CCTV cameras on the perimeter wall.

TRANSPORT

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by Ben Taylor

Air Tanzania losses
The National Audit Office report presented to parliament in April 2021 reported that Air Tanzania Ltd (ATCL) recorded a loss of TSh 60bn for the financial year 2019-2020. The Controller and Auditor General (CAG), Charles Kichere noted also that the airline had been making losses annually for the past five years, adding up to a total loss over this time of over TSh 150bn. This is despite having received additional equipment in terms of aircrafts that were bought by the government to aid the company’s performance.

The period under review was one of the most difficult one in the aviation industry due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic which forced most countries to go into lockdowns, and many airlines – includ­ing Air Tanzania – to suspend flights. Passenger numbers fell dra­matically worldwide. As an example of these challenges, in March, Air Tanzania suspended what should have been the airline’s maiden flight to Guangzhou, China. The airline cited Covid-19 control measures put in place by Chinese local authorities.

Since 2015, the government has purchased new eight aircraft consisting of two Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners, two Airbus A220-300 models and four Bombardiers Q400. These aircraft are leased by the government to ATCL. Partly as a result of the pandemic, these aircraft have been under­utilised, while the government continues to charge ATCL the full lease rate. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa announced that the government had completed payment for three further new aircraft, which were due to arrive in the financial year 2021-2022.

Analysts cautioned that profit-and-loss figures are not the only measure of an airline’s performance. Even without the Coronavirus pandemic, a new (or re-launched) airline should not expect to make a profit for sev­eral years, if at all, they noted. Aviation expert, Juma Fimbo, pointed out that the contribution made by national airlines to the national economy is more significant in terms of improved transport links fuelling other economic activities than the airline’s own profitability.

Ubungo flyover launched, named for Chief Secretary Kijazi
The newly constructed Ubungo road interchange was launched on February 24 by President Magufuli, who announced that it was to be called the ‘Kijazi Interchange’. This was in memory and recognition of John Kijazi, the former Chief Secretary (the country’s most senior civil servant), who died in February.

The interchange has three levels, at the intersections of Morogoro Road, Sam Nujoma Road and Nelson Mandela road, close to the Ubungo bus terminal for up-country bus connections. The middle section of the interchange, on Morogoro road, is 260m metres long and 8.9 meters high, while the top level is 700m long and 16.3m high. All three levels of the roads have six lanes.

TANZANIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

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by Donovan McGrath

1998 U.S. Embassy Bombing Victims Are Assured Equal Compensation in Deal With Sudan
(New York Times online – USA) Extract: Victims of the 1998 bombings of two United States Embassies in East Africa will soon receive up to $485 million in compensation as part of a wide-ranging settlement to remove Sudan from a list of state sponsors of terrorism and, in turn, foster peace in Israel. But the deal, which is part of the $2.3 trillion spending package that Congress is poised to approve … leaves Sudan liable for potentially billions of dollars in additional payments to the families of those who were killed in Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The agreement largely puts to rest months of furious negotiations between the Trump administration and Congress over how to help Sudan’s fragile transitional government and debt-ridden economy by settling many of the lawsuits that accused the country of harboring Al Qaeda, mostly during the 1990s. It also ensures that American victims of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania – whether they were United State citizens at the time of the attacks or naturalized later – will receive equitable compensation by adding up to $150 million in payouts in addition to the $335 million that Sudan has committed… (21 December 2020)

Mine that produced Queen’s diamond investigates claims of abuses by guards
(Guardian online – UK) Petra Diamonds already faces court action on similar grounds, as its contractors are accused of continued assaults on illegal miners. Extract continues: A Tanzanian mine that produced a flawless pink dia­mond for one of the Queen’s favourite brooches is investigating claims that security personnel have shot and assaulted illegal miners. New allegations come months after a lawsuit alleging “serious” human rights abuses was filed against Petra Diamonds, the mine’s British owner, in the high court in London. In September 2020, the British legal firm Leigh Day filed claims of human rights violations, including deaths, on behalf of 35 Tanzanians who allege that they, or their relatives, had been beaten or shot at by security guards at the Williamson diamond mine. Petra, whose subsidiary Williamson Diamonds Ltd (WDL) owns 75% of the mine (the Tanzanian state owns the other 25%), said it took the allegations “extremely seriously” … The firm said it had recorded 79 “incursions” at the 30 sq km (12 sq mile) Williamson site over the three-month period, 19 of which required “reasonable force” to remove illegal miners from the premises or for security to defend themselves. Petra said it did not find evidence of unjustified use of force by security personnel or injuries as described in Raid’s [Rights and Accountability in Development] allegations [that illegal miners had been detained, tortured and beaten by Williamson security guards, resulting in at least seven deaths]. In one alleged incident . . . one artisanal miner told Raid he was chased by a security guard from the mine’s private contractor, Zenith Security, who shot him at close range, breaking his jaw. . . Petra has suspended the mine’s chief of security and head of general services pending the investigation’s outcome, and has also put out a tender for a new security contractor to replace Zenith. The company said it has also provided security and human rights training to staff, implemented a grievance mechanism, and is looking into providing an artisanal tail­ings project, whereby local people can dig for diamonds in a controlled and formalised manner… (5 March 2021)

Tanzanian police confirm 45 people died in a stadium crush
(Guardian online – UK) Extract: A crush at a Tanzanian stadium has killed 45 people as mourners paid their last respects to the late President John Magufuli, police have said – many times more than the five fatalities initially announced after the disaster on 21 March. Police in the port city of Dar es Salaam, where the tragedy occurred, attributed some of the deaths to people being starved of oxygen at the event due to overcrowding. “It is true that 45 people died because of stampedes and failing to get enough air,” Lazaro Mambosasa Dar es Salaam’s zonal police commander, told Reuters on Tuesday. Another 37 mourners were injured, he said, adding that they had all been treated in hospital and discharged. Tanzania media reported that the crush happened when large numbers of mourners sought to force their way into the stadium through unofficial entrance points… (30 March 2021) Thanks to John Rollinson for notifying me about this article – Editor

Early humans living in Tanzania two million years ago had already developed the skills and tools to survive climate change, study finds
(Mail online – UK) Extract: … Archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute studied changes to the environment and habitats of early hominins at the Oldupai Gorge heritage site in Tanzania. Also known as the ‘Cradle of Humankind’, new field work at the site revealed our ancestors remained stable despite environment changes over 200,000 years. These early humans stayed in a habitat continuously throughout – despite having to cope with global warming, wildfires, droughts and volcanic eruptions. It shows migrations ‘out of Africa’ were possible even during the early human periods – as our ancestors possessed the ability to expand into new ecosystems… Excavations at Tanzania’s Odlupai Gorge, previously known as the Olduvai Gorge, uncovered the presence of hominins – our most primitive ancestors – that lived between two and one point eight million years ago. The oldest form of stone tools, known as Oldowan, were also unearthed, along with a wide variety of mammal fossils including wild cattle, pigs, hippos, panthers, lions, hyena, primates, reptiles and birds – all had been butchered for food. . . Remains of one of the first hominins were found just 350 metres away from this site in deposits dating back 1.82 million years. Known as Homo habilis, the four foot tall species had a short body, long arms like an ape’s – and a big brain. Its name translates as ‘handy man’ after his tool skills. Despite having to cope with persistent weather catastro­phes, the area remained occupied by early humans – proving they could adapt to climate change… (7 January 2021)

Australian women’s rights activist faces charges in Tanzania
(Guardian online – UK) Extract: An Australian ex-Muslim women’s rights activist faces “politically motivated” charges in Tanzania, including for a tweet allegedly critical of the country’s president, according to her supporters. The Australian government is providing consular assistance to Zara Kay, 28, the founder of Faithless Hijabi, a group set up two years ago to support women who are ostracized or face violence if they leave or question Islam. Kay tweeted … she was “going into the police sta­tion because someone reported me in for blasphemy” and a few days later told her supporters she was out on bail but “still quite traumatized from everything”… According to the statement, the charges relate to three issues, including “a social media post deemed to be critical of the president of Tanzania” over the handling of Covid-19 in the east African country. The International Coalition of Ex-Muslims said Kay was also accused of not returning her Tanzanian passport after gaining Australian citizenship, but added that “she never returned her Tanzanian passport as she misplaced and never used it after gaining Australian citizenship”. The coalition said the final issue was of a mobile sim card registered in a family member’s name rather than her own name, under legislation that the group said “has been used to persecute other high-profile cases”. . . “The International Coalition of Ex-Muslims reiterates its call on the Tanzanian government to immediately drop all the charges against Zara Kay and allow her to leave the country … Kay, who was raised a Shia Muslim in Tanzania, told the Australian newspaper in 2019 that she had been forced to wear the hijab from the age of eight but took it off when she moved to Australia to study in her late teens… (3 January 2021)

UK bans flights from Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo in latest bid to stop South African ‘more vaccine resistant’ Covid strain spreading here
(Mail online – UK) Extract: … The decision comes after UK’s chief sci­entific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned … that coronavirus variants were a ‘real issue of concern’. Scientists believe the vaccines currently being rolled out may be less effective against the South African vari­ant, known as 501Y.V2… [Transport Secretary Grant Shapps] tweeted: ‘To help to stop the spread of the Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa, we are banning all arrivals from Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo … All passengers from these countries except British and Irish Nationals and third country nationals with residents rights will be denied entry…’ (21 January 2021)

Mystery of the eerie humanoid paintings discovered in Tanzania which are hundreds of years old yet DON’T match up with the tradi­tions of its Sandawe people

Rock paintings at the Amak’hee 4 site in Swaga Swaga game reserve, Dodoma. The researchers suggest the three figures have stylised buffalo heads. Photo Cambridge University Press / Maciej Grzelczyk.

(Mail online – UK) Extract: Ancient paintings of humanoid figures, bizarre creatures and familiar animals have been discovered under a rock overhang that was once used as a shelter ‘several hundred of years ago.’ A team from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland spotted the four paintings while excavating the Amak’hee 4 rock shelter site in Tanzania that was once home to the ancient Sandawe indigenous group, which have been around for 87,000 years. Although many of paintings show are unknown figures, some depict domesticated cattle, buffalo and giraffes, which suggests that artists lived during the hunter-gather era. Researchers note that most are in good condition, mainly due to a rock overhang that protects them from flowing water and sunlight, but because there currently is not a way to date rock art, the team can only guess when it was painted. The Sandawe are an indigenous group from South Africa and population is still living today. Early work shows that the group may also have the oldest human DNA lineage and the Sandawe today are considered to be decedents of an original Bushmen-like group, the Gogo… (11 February 2021)

Tanzania’s new president surely can’t be worse than the old one
(The Economist online – UK) Will Samia Suluhu Hassan reverse one of the most self-defeating coronavirus policies in the world? Extract continues: … For the moment liberal Tanzanians are surprisingly upbeat, in part because they do not take Ms Samia, the country’s first female leader, at her word. She is a product of the ruling party, known by its initials CCM, which has held power in different guises since independence from Britain in 1961. But she is no insider. She comes from the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, not the Tanganyika mainland, which is the hub of power. Ms Samia was Magufuli’s vice-president, but it is rumoured that she was foisted on him by CCM bigwigs. Foremost among these was Jakaya Kikwete, Tanzania’s president from 2005 to 2015, who is said to have admired her competent efficiency. Mr Magufuli valued it less and she was excluded from his inner circle. That is now seen as a reason for hope—as are the flashes of principle she has shown. In 2017, for example, she defied a presidential directive by visiting Tundu Lissu, a prominent opposition MP, as he recovered from being shot 16 times. Still, few are expecting a radical departure from her predecessor’s policies. Not yet, anyway. Lacking a base within the party, Ms Samia will be concentrating on surviving the early stages of her presidency (inherited in accordance with the constitution), when she will be weakest. Mr Magufuli’s faction still holds dominant posi­tions in the cabinet and the party. She is not totally helpless, however. She many not have a base of her own, but she does have potential allies. With the support of Mr Kikwete’s previously sidelined faction, she was able to resist pressure to appoint Bashiru Ally, a Magufuli acolyte, as her deputy. Instead she tapped Philip Mpango, the finance minister, pleasing international donors. Still, she will have to avoid becoming too reliant on Mr Kikwete… (3 April 2021) Thanks to John Rollinson for this item – Editor

Endangered black rhino heads to Africa from Yorkshire
(BBC News online – UK) A rare black rhino is being sent from a North Yorkshire wildlife park to Africa as part of a conservation scheme. Extract continues: Eight year old female Chanua will eventually be released into a herd of wild rhinos in Tanzania. The black rhino is classed as critically endangered, with fewer than 6,000 in the wild due to poaching and habitat loss… Chanua was born at Chester Zoo in 2012 before being moved to North Yorkshire three years later. She will spend a few weeks in Kent with other female rhinos before being flown to Tanzania. When she arrives in Africa she will have to be weaned off her captive diet and adjust to eating local vegetation before being released. Gordon Gibb owner of Flamingo Land said it was the second black rhino from the park to be returned to Africa. Three years ago another female was sent to Rwanda… (10 March 2021)

Why it’s so hard to prosecute wildlife crimes: Lessons from Tanzania
(Mail & Guardian online – South Africa) Extract: Developments in two major ivory trafficking cases in Tanzania are not what conservationists might have hoped for. The conviction of Boniface Mathew Malyango, known as “Shetani Hana Huruma” (“the Devil has no mercy” in Kiswahili), was hailed by conservation organisations as a victory in 2017, with one of East Africa’s most notorious illegal ivory traders. However, his conviction was quietly overturned in mid-2020 – a devel­opment that was largely unreported in the press. Likewise, Mateso “Chupi” Kasian was extradited from Mozambique to Tanzania in 2017 to face prosecution in what was, at the time, seen as a major victory for regional co-operation against wildlife trafficking. However, his pros­ecution only led to a fine of $215 – a small sum compared to the enor­mity of the trafficking operation he supposedly controlled. Both cases highlight the significant challenges that major wildlife trafficking inves­tigations often face, including corruption, delays in prosecution and poor evidence handling… Shetani became globally renowned as a result of the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced documentary The Ivory Game. He was reputed to have killed or ordered the killing of up to 10,000 elephants, and to have controlled poaching gangs in Tanzania, Burundi, Mozambique, Zambia and southern Kenya… However, in a judgement on 18 June 2020, the Court of Appeal of Tanzania in Dodoma quietly quashed the convictions of Shetani and his brother, Lucas Mathayo Malyango… In late November 2020, a judgement was made in an appeal case in the high court of Tanzania at Mtwara, a small port city near the Mozambique border. The appeal was filed by Tanzania’s director of public prosecutions against Mateso Kasian (also known as “Chupi”, which means “underwear” in Kiswahili), with the aim of increasing the penalty of his 2019 conviction on ivory trafficking charges. Mateso had been sentenced to pay a fine of $215 and to forfeit two houses in Dar es Salaam and Liwale. This, the prosecutors argued, was insufficient, since the guidelines for sentencing this offence under Tanzania’s wildlife crimes legislation recommended a fine of no less than twice the value of the “trophy” or wildlife products involved: in this case, $335,000. The judge disagreed … (21 March 2021)

REVIEWS

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by Martin Walsh

MHOLA – THE UTOPIA OF PEACE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION OF THE SUNGUSUNGU MOVEMENT IN TANZANIA. Per Brandström. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 59, Uppsala University, Uppsala, 2021. 264 pp. (print and e-book). ISBN: 978-91-513-1114-2. Free download (and print purchase) via http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-429533

The Nyamwezi, and their closely related northern neighbours the Sukuma, occupy a large area of rural Tanzania lying to the south of Lake Victoria. Although only approximate population figures are available, they clearly con­stitute the largest cultural and linguistic group in the country, and the present study suggests that together they may number over 10 million.

The group has attracted a great deal of interest from anthropologists (including myself) and others which has been largely focussed on a remarkable vigilante movement which emerged in the area in the early 1980s. Since then, the village vigilante groups in question – known locally as Sungusungu and as Basalama (‘the people of peace’) – have had a complex history stretching over several decades.

The present study by Dr Per Brandström of Uppsala University attempts to pro­vide a detailed review of the history of Sungusungu and an account of some of the key values in Nyamwezi/Sukuma culture which have lain at the heart of the movement. It is difficult to imagine anyone more fitted to this task. In addition to his fieldwork and his formal academic training as an anthropologist, he has had the further advantage of having lived in the area as the child of Swedish missionaries, and he has deservedly acquired a well-established network of trusting and trustworthy villagers with whom he has been able to engage in full and frank discussion of the main features of the movement.

As his title suggests, Dr Brandström persuasively portrays the fundamental con­cern of the groups as the maintenance and restoration of mhola, ‘peace’ (within the community and ultimately within oneself and with the world). After a series of disturbances to social order around the beginning of the 1980s, a small group of elders came together on the borders of Kahama and Shinyanga Districts to try to develop a strategy to cope with the threats to local well-being posed by cattle rustlers and bandits and also witches. These last were mainly local older women. The outlines of the story of how the movement subsequently grew and spread like wildfire throughout the area and beyond is by now well known.

As Dr Brandström makes clear, Sungusungu has been a complex and changing phenomenon in the decades since those first beginnings, and as such many different approaches may be and have been legitimately adopted towards understanding it. Also, anthropology itself has multiple agendas, which do not always sit easily with each other, perhaps the most obvious being ethnographic documentation, generalisation and comparative study. Yet, each of these tasks constitutes a fundamental element of the discipline.

With the partial exception of Sufian Bukurura’s PhD dissertation, which is treated in some detail in the text, nobody has previously put together such a rich body of fieldwork material on Sungusungu as is presented here. Dr Brandström’s analysis brings out particularly well the need to recognise the multifaceted character of the material including the significance of communal feasting and sacrificial ritual, in the search for ‘peace’. One is tempted to refer to Max Gluckman’s work on ‘multiplex’ roles and relationships within commu­nities in this context, but this at once risks over-specifying and concretising the different political, economic and religious strands combined in these relations, and an approach through Talcott Parsons’ broad contrast between ‘specificity and diffuseness’ may be preferable. However this may be, we arguably need to be especially careful to avoid what I have elsewhere referred to as an inappro­priate sharpening of our analytic chisels when we might do better searching for the unifying glue provided by key cultural values, as Dr Brandström does here!

Overall, it is clear that despite one or two ‘blips’ – for instance on p. 24 he unfortunately misquotes my own discussion of the use of ideal types as refer­ence points in comparative analysis – Dr Brandström has produced a timely and impressive piece of interpretative ethnography which adds substantially to our understanding of Sungusungu and comparable vigilante movements. As such it constitutes a very welcome contribution to the existing literature on these topics.
Ray Abrahams
Ray Abrahams is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and a former staff member of the Cambridge Department of Social Anthropology (1963-1998). He carried out field research in the Nyamwezi and Sukuma area of Tanzania in 1957-1960, 1974-75, and 1986. He published an account of Sungusungu in 1987, followed by several papers and a book on vigilantism in compara­tive perspective (Vigilant Citizens: Vigilantism and the State. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998).

IMPERIALISM AND DEVELOPMENT: THE EAST AFRICAN GROUNDNUT SCHEME AND ITS LEGACY. Nicholas Westcott. James Currey, Woodbridge, 2020. xvi + 243 pp. (hardback). ISBN: 978-1-84701-259­3. £60 (e-book £19.99). Tanzanian Affairs readers can purchase the hardback at the discounted rate of £39 by visiting www.boydellandbrewer.com and entering the code “BB135” at checkout.

The history of the Groundnut Scheme is so overwhelming farcical that the entire episode could easily be fabricated satire. If only it were so. Sadly, this comedy of errors did occur and makes for a deeply tragic tale. Nicholas Westcott expertly unravels the fall and fall of this extraordinarily ambitious project in Tanganyika on its road to becoming the largest, most expensive, and most disastrous development scheme the British Government had ever undertaken. Readers will be quick to draw comparisons to various large scale, government-run megaprojects in the present and recent past that could easily rival this title. This contemporary resonance is well expressed – particularly in the closing chapter, ‘Legacy and Lessons’ – and many governments would do well to learn the lessons still to be taught from the fields of Kongwa, Nachingwea, and Urambo.

In response to a global fats and oils shortage after World War II the scheme set out to convert three million acres of bush into the largest mechanized groundnut farm in the world. The scheme swallowed up the equivalent of £1 billion in four years (1946-50) and was not only a catastrophic failure but a political scandal. That’s the story in a nutshell, at least. But this was a complex chapter in Britain and Tanganyika’s shared history, and the intricacies of the saga are exposed in ‘Imperialism and Development’ through an impressive balance of engaging narrative and serious research. Westcott draws from a variety of sources to detail with precision how Britain set out to utilise the soil of its eroding empire to curb a potential margarine famine.

Westcott asks and answers several key questions. What happened? Why did things go so terribly wrong despite the inspiration and effort poured into it? How did this reflect the imperial project in the mid-twentieth century? What does it tell us about agricultural development and its transformation in Africa? And are there lessons we can learn of relevance today?

This was a remarkable failure that has received little scholarly attention despite its infamy. The expense (then £36 million) was written off after the project went from bad to worse, ultimately producing nothing. The most worrying realisa­tion from reading the book is how little has changed. Although it is hoped that at the very least, the lesson of ‘do not plant seeds where it doesn’t rain’ has been largely learned.

Westcott’s likening of this development disaster to a Greek tragedy is apt, and this is a ripping good read. It conjures up the atmosphere of the time and anyone who had friends or relations who were ‘Groundnutters’ will get a very clear impression of the scheme.

Nicholas Westcott is well qualified to spin this particular yarn with wit and academic aplomb. He first encountered files on the scheme at the National Archives (UK) in the late 1970s while a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, then writing a thesis on The Impact of the Second World War on Tanganyika, 1939–1951. This book has therefore enjoyed a particularly long gestation which accounts for its richness. Westcott will be well known to read­ers as the incumbent Director of the Royal African Society (since 2017) and draws insights from over three decades of diplomatic service, many of which were spent in Africa (including as High Commissioner to Ghana, 2008-11).
Jonathan M. Jackson
Jonathan M. Jackson is a doctoral student at the University of Cologne and is part of the German Research Foundation-funded Collaborative Research Centre 228: ‘Future Rural Africa’ (https://www.crc228.de). His thesis – Past Futures: Histories of Development in the Kilombero Valley, Tanzania – will be submitted this year. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford (MSc, African Studies) and SOAS (BA, History and Swahili).

THE BOY FROM BOSKOVICE: A FATHER’S SECRET LIFE. Vicky Unwin. Unbound, London, 2021. xiii + 324 pp. (hardback). ISBN: 978­1783529063. £25.
To many colonial officials who worked in Tanzania during the last days of British rule, the name of Tom Unwin was very familiar. So too to many UN officials working in development during the 1960s and ‘70s. He was a gregari­ous character, great company, full of tales, and to all intents and purposes a quintessential Englishman.

But appearances can deceive. Drawing on a wealth of family papers and let­ters left to her when her mother died, his daughter, Vicky Unwin, has pieced together an extraordinary story of a man who completely reinvented himself. Arriving with his mother as a Jewish refugee in England at the outbreak of war, the lost ‘boy from Boskovice’ swiftly buried his past, adopted his new country and a new personality, and after impressive war service, became first a ‘Groundnutter’ and then colonial official in Tanganyika (as it then was), before working as a senior and influential UN official in South-east Asia for many years before his retirement in 1997. Like a chameleon, he had the capacity to adapt and blend effortlessly into his environment, with scarcely a backward glance at a past that became increasingly complicated as he slipped not only from one country to another but from one relationship to another.

Vicky Unwin’s account is fascinating as she uncovers secret after secret about her own father, able at last to challenge him with some of the secrets while he was still alive. It is worth the read for this story alone, which keeps you gripped to the end.

But for readers of Tanzanian Affairs it is the four chapters covering his time in Tanzania, from 1947 to 1964, that will hold most interest. He and his wife Sheila (Vicky’s mother) were among the first recruits to the infamous Groundnut Scheme and some of the very few who stayed with it until almost the end. The account here therefore has a real value in illuminating the work­ings of this hopelessly over-ambitious development scheme that promised to transform the country’s agriculture but which failed so spectacularly, it helped bring down Attlee’s government in 1951.

As the fate of the scheme became clear, Tom Unwin skipped lightly from farming to colonial administration, and became a District Officer successively in Mikindani, Mwanza, Tukuyu and finally District Commissioner in Kilwa – where they were visited, amongst many others, by the novelist Evelyn Waugh and became friendly (in Sheila’s case, very friendly) with the charming doyen of East African archaeologists, Neville Chittick.

From there he was transferred to Dar es Salaam and, as a member of the Secretariat, was given a job in the office of the new Prime Minister, Julius Nyerere, who later appointed him as the first Permanent Secretary of the Tanzanian Foreign Ministry. It is clear that his working relationship with Nyerere was both friendly and fruitful, and it would have been interesting to hear more about how he became such a trusted member of the PM’s senior team in so short a time – a testament to his charisma, competence and impeccable Swahili. But the account is understandably more from Vicky’s perspective as a young expat child in Dar at the dawn of independence.

Sadly, after the attempted coup and the union with Zanzibar in 1964, the last white officials were withdrawn. Tom Unwin returned to Britain and his career, and family life, followed other paths to other places.

In some ways the story of Tom Unwin is characteristic of Britain’s whole relationship with Africa: deeply committed, even affectionate, while there, not entirely understanding why it all came to an end, but then moving on to other places and other challenges, while a new generation of young Britons engaged with Africa in a very different way. This book provides one perspective on Britain’s past, well-written and fascinating in its own way. A recommended read.
Nick Westcott
Nick Westcott is Director of the Royal African Society and a Research Associate at SOAS. He first visited Tanzania in the 1970s, spending a year at the University of Dar es Salaam while studying for his PhD, then returned as the British Deputy High Commissioner in the 1990s, before being appointed Britain’s High Commissioner to Ghana in 2008-11. His history of the Groundnut Scheme is reviewed elsewhere in this issue.

OBITUARIES

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by Ben Taylor

President John Pombe Magufuli


The fifth president of Tanzania, President John Pombe Magufuli, died in March at the age of 61. Popular and controversial in equal measure, President Magufuli will be greatly missed by many in Tanzania, and long remembered by all.

An unexpected selection as the CCM presidential candidate in 2015, Magufuli emerged as a compromise choice when the party rejected more prominent fig­ures including former Prime Minister, Edward Lowassa, and Foreign Affairs Minister, Bernard Membe. At the time, Magufuli was Minister of Works, responsible for road building, his second time in the role, where he had earned a reputation as a no-nonsense, hard-working operator: the “Bulldozer”.

The nickname sums up President Magufuli’s approach remarkably well, to the extent that both supporters and critics used it: the Bulldozer that sweeps obstacles out of the way as part of building something new and better, or the Bulldozer that charges around causing damage and destruction. There is truth in both perspectives.

Born in 1959 in Chato on the shores of Lake Victoria, John Pombe Magufuli grew up in a grass-thatched home, herding cattle and selling milk and fish to support his family. He attended Chato Primary School, Katoke Seminary in Biharamulo and Lake Secondary School in Mwanza, and then Mkwawa High School in Iringa for his A-levels, graduating in 1981. That same year he began a Diploma in Education Science, focussing on chemistry and mathematics, and he later earned a BSc in Education from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1988. After teaching secondary school chemistry and mathematics, he took a position as an industrial chemist in 1989. He later added a Masters and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1994 and 2009, respectively, including some time at the University of Salford, UK.

Magufuli switched to politics in 1995, when he was elected as MP for Chato and was immediately appointed by President Mkapa as Deputy Minister for Works, promoted to Minister for Works after the 2000 election. In 2010, President Kikwete moved Magufuli to head the Ministry of Lands and Human Settlement and later the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, before returning him to his former post as Minister of Works from 2010 to 2015.

As the CCM presidential candidate in 2015, Magufuli led a party that had been damaged by persistent corruption scandals under President Kikwete and weakened by the defection of Edward Lowassa and many of his supporters. He faced the challenge of doing so without a significant power-base of his own in the party. He ran a campaign under the slogan “Hapa Kazi Tu” (work and nothing else) and staked claim to the anti-corruption mantle, taking advantage of the main opposition parties’ decision to select Lowassa, a figure strongly associated in the public mind with corruption. A relatively narrow victory (with 58% of the vote) followed, and President Magufuli took office on November 5, 2015.

As President, Magufuli’s energetic early actions drew widespread acclaim. He cancelled Independence Day celebrations to save money and called on Tanzanians to spend the day on community cleaning work, cut the size of the cabinet, and swept through key institutions including port and tax authorities, firing anyone alleged to be associated with corruption or waste. The cost-cutting approach and hard-line response to corruption allegations were immensely popular within Tanzania and attracted attention further afield, inspiring the social media hashtag #WhatWouldMagufuliDo?

Even at this early stage, however, there were also signs of a different, problematic side to President Magufuli. He called on the country to stop its obsession with politics and focus on development instead. In practice, this meant opposition parties’ activities became tightly constrained, with no public rallies permitted and even private meetings disrupted. He also suspended live broadcasts of parliamentary debates – the first step in a concerted, and largely effective, campaign to control the media.

Nevertheless, citizens seemed happy to accept some loss of democratic and media freedom in return for what they saw as someone working hard and taking on corruption and waste. The President’s popularity soared. One poll, conducted in the first year of his first term, found that 96% of Tanzanian citizens approved of his performance. The President had positioned himself as being on the side of the ordinary citizen, standing firm against corrupt elites, big business and foreign interference, and the public loved it.

The concerns grew, however. Restrictions on the media spread to include social media and civil society, and opposition politicians found themselves in never-ending battles with the law. Few significant opposition figures escaped a “sedition” charge, defined in an antiquated law as making “statements that are likely to raise discontent and promote feelings of ill-will”, and most spent some time behind bars. Some were subjected to much worse, notably Tundu Lissu, who miraculously survived an assassination attempt near parliament in broad daylight in 2017, for which nobody has ever been charged.

Meanwhile, the work-and-nothing-else continued. Tens of thousands of “ghost workers” and civil servant with “fake” academic certificates were fired, and hundreds of allegedly corrupt officials across government were fired in an act-first-ask-questions-later strategy. There was an industrialisation drive, efforts to upgrade key infrastructure including railways, roads and airports, a major new hydroelectric dam at Stiegler’s Gorge on the Rufiji river and multiple new aircraft purchased to revive the national airline, Air Tanzania. The President brought new energy to long-stalled efforts to fulfil President Nyerere’s idea of shifting the national capital to Dodoma. And he picked fights with major foreign investors, most notably Barrick / Acacia and their gold mining interests, and with the Chinese government over plans to construct a major port at Bagamoyo.

The public loved this, though there were signs that the honeymoon had ended. Another poll, half-way through President Magufuli’s first term, found his popularity rating had dropped to 55%: from a record high to a record low in two years. The decline was likely a result of economic hardships rather than concern for the state of democracy. The years 2017 and 2018 in particular were marked by poor harvests and food stress. With heavy-handed enforcement of tax rules and plummeting investment, many businesses, large and small, were also struggling. Many citizens felt poorer than before.

The 2020 election was a highly-flawed exercise, marred by the lack of a truly independent electoral commission, a politicised police force, opposition parties hobbled by five years of harassment and media worried about its own survival. To nobody’s surprise, President Magufuli was re-elected, this time with 84% of the vote. The election also delivered a near-total CCM dominance in parliament, holding 93% of seats.

One issue that barely arose during the 2020 elections was the Coronavirus pandemic, even as it devastated lives and livelihoods across the world. President Magufuli had declared victory over the virus earlier in the year, and the country had stopped reporting data on case numbers and deaths in April, to the despair of the World Health Organisation. There was no lockdown and only limited efforts to improve hygiene and encourage social distancing, with the President instead stressing the value of prayer, steam inhalation and traditional remedies. Once again he pushed opinions to the extremes, attracting high praise from far-right Covid-deniers in the US and elsewhere, and mockery from the international press.

It remains too early to conclusively assess the effectiveness of President Magufuli’s position – the country has suffered far less in economic terms than her neighbours, and evidence is mixed on the health impacts. But it will, internationally at least, dominate his legacy. The irony of the chemistry-graduate Covid-denier who emphasised prayer over science and perhaps succumbed personally to the disease proved too tempting for the international press to ignore.

Officially, he died on March 17, 2021, in Dar es Salaam from heart complications. Some or all of these details may be incorrect.

Within Tanzania, President Magufuli’s legacy will be fought over for years to come. The hard worker who tackled corruption and waste head-on, who stood up to foreign interests, who gave Tanzanians back their pride and made Tanzania great again (#MATAGA)? Or the despot who rode roughshod over human rights and the rule of law, who undermined the country’s economy, who set the clock back on gender equality, and who put Tanzanians lives at risk with a reckless response to a pandemic?

He leaves a wife, Janeth Magufuli, seven children, and a nation divided.

Vice President Seif Sharif Hamad

Vice President Seif Sharif Hamad of Zanzibar passed away on March 17, 2021, at Muhimbili Hospital in Dar es Salaam, at the age of 77. Known generally as Maalim Seif, reflecting his former profession as a teacher, Seif had been a dominant figure in Zanzibar politics for several decades, running for President six times and serving as Vice President twice.

Born in 1943 on the island of Pemba, Hamad attended primary schools on Pemba and King George VI Memorial Secondary School in Zanzibar town, where he was elected chairman of the Unguja and Pemba Students Council. After completing high school in 1963 he was unable to proceed to university as he was asked by the new Zanzibar Revolutionary Government to help fill the gaps in the civil service caused by the mass departure of British officials in 1964. He served as a secondary school teacher before eventually joining the University of Dar es Salaam in 1972, where he earned a first class honours degree in political science, public administration and international relations.

When he returned home in 1975, President Aboud Jumbe, previously Hamad’s secondary school teacher, appointed him as his special assistant. And from the late 1970’s Hamad served in various political and government roles, representing the ruling CCM party: Member of the Revolutionary Council of Zanzibar, Zanzibar Minister of Education, Member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives, Member of Tanzanian Parliament, Member of the Central Committee and National Executive Committee of CCM, Head of the CCM Economic and Planning Department. This culminated in four years as Chief Minister of Zanzibar from 1984 to 1988, first under President Ali Hassan Mwinyi and then President Idris Abdul Wakil.

At this point, he fell out with CCM party chiefs, including both Wakil and now Mwalimu Nyerere. He found himself dropped from his position as Chief Minister in January 1988 and expelled from the party four months later. A year later, he was arrested and taken to court to face highly questionable charges of possessing government secret documents. From two and half years in 1989–1991 he was remanded in Zanzibar Central Prison.

Upon Tanzania’s adoption of multiparty democracy in 1992, Hamad immediately became the leading opposition figure in Zanzibar. With other CCM exiles he co-founded Civic United Front (CUF), and represented the party as its candidate for the Zanzibar presidency in the first multiparty elections in 1995. He was narrowly defeated by CCM candidate Salmin Amour, winning 49.8% of the vote to Amour’s 50.2%. Observers noted serious irregularities in the poll and the CUF rejected the result as rigged.

This set the pattern for the next 25 years. Hamad ran again for President in 2000, officially receiving 33% of the vote in a poll that Commonwealth observers described the election as “a shambles”. In 2005 his official vote share rose to 46%, and in 2010 to 49%, though both elections were again marred by widely noted irregularities. Post-election violence in January 2001 prompted national dialogue but little consequential change until 2010, when newly adopted constitutional arrangements made Hamad, as leader of the largest opposition party, the first Vice President of Zanzibar.

Another disputed election in 2015, saw the result annulled. Early signs suggested that Hamad had won. In protest, the re-run election held five months later was boycotted by opposition parties including CUF and Hamad.

Hamad’s final opportunity came in 2020, now representing ACT Wazalendo, where he was recorded as achieving a highly implausible 19% of the vote. He played a critical role – as he had done nineteen years earlier – in defusing tension, insisting that justice and reconciliation must come through dialogue rather than violence. As he had done in 2010, he joined a unity government as Vice President, this time under President Hussein Mwinyi.

Vice President Seif Sharif Hamad died of the Coronavirus, the first person in Tanzania to publicly reveal a positive Covid-19 test result for 10 months, since President John Magufuli declared the country coronavirus-free. According to his ACT party colleague, Zitto Kabwe, to the last he was advocating peace and dialogue: “he stressed that it was time for the party to be at the front line to cement the accord.”

“The national unity government will continue to be honoured,” said Kabwe, “to ensure Maalim Seif’s dream for Zanzibar’s prosperity, justice for Zanzibaris and unity for Zanzibaris is not extinguished,” he said.

Throughout the turbulence years and flawed elections of multiparty politics in Zanzibar, Hamad was a much loved paternal figure. “We are where you are,” his supporters would shout in demonstration of their loyalty and dedication. As proof, they followed him en masse to ACT Wazalendo in 2019 when infighting within CUF led to a split in the party in, leaving CUF as little more than a hollowed-out husk.

His support was almost universal on the island of Pemba, but he also earned support and respect on Unguja island, in mainland Tanzania, and indeed across the globe. He will be remembered most for rising above provocation to secure peace and stability for Zanzibar, most clearly in 2001, but again in different ways after each of the six elections he “lost”.

Time and again in the face of great personal injustice he showed patience, understanding, dedication, intellect and empathy. Perhaps he lacked the ruthlessness to reach the very top. But he was a better person as a result. And with these qualities, surely, he would have made an excellent President.

Economist and former Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, Professor Benno Ndulu, died in hospital in Dar es Salaam in February, at the age of 71. He will be remembered as a highly qualified technocrat who changed the face of the central bank, and as a globally-respected economist of keen intellect, firm integrity and deep humanity.

Born in rural Kilombero in Morogoro region, Ndulu attended Catholic Church mission schools and a public school for upper secondary, after which he enrolled at the university of Dar-es-Salaam to study economics.

Prof Ndulu started his professional career at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in 1979, where his work underpinned many of the economic reforms introduced by President Mwinyi after his election in 1985. In 1992 he earned a PHD in Economics from Northwestern University in the US.

He moved to the World Bank in 1997, initially to lead the macroeconomic division in the Tanzania office, where he was closely involved with President Mkapa’s economic agenda. He later moved to Washington and served as advisor to the Regional Vice President for Africa.

President Kikwete brought Ndulu back to Tanzania in 2008 to take the reins at the scandal-hit Bank of Tanzania. He worked tirelessly to rebuild the bank’s reputation, and to protect the its integrity against political machinations, most notably in questioning and resisting payments relating to what became a major corruption scandals: the Tegeta Escrow scandal. He also focused on instituting monetary policies towards growth and containment of inflation, and encouraged expansion of access to financial services to Tanzanians who would previously never considered opening a bank account or taking a loan.

After his formal retirement in 2019, Ndulu did not stop working. His credentials and reputation earned him positions as visiting professor at Oxford University, member of economic advisory panels for President Ramaphosa in South Africa and President Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, board member of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and advisory board member for the World Bank’s 2021 World Development Report.

Professor Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, said: “Benno Ndulu exemplified outstanding public leadership. A brilliant, humane man with wonderful humour, whose sharp incisive mind made sense of complex issues, and whose empathy kept him in close touch with all those he served.”

President Ramaphosa said “Africa had lost a great thinker and visionary in the infancy of continental free trade, … an outstanding economic intellectual with an extraordinary and vibrant passion for African development.”

Tanzania’s most senior civil servant, the Chief Secretary, Ambassador John Kijazi, passed away in February at the Benjamin Mkapa Hospital in Dodoma, at the age of 64. He had been admitted to hospital two weeks earlier and had been receiving treatment but succumbed to a heart attack.

Ambassador Kijazi was appointed and promoted to the post of chief secretary and cabinet secretary in March 2016. He reached retirement age later in 2016, but President Magufuli extended his contract and he continued to hold the position until his death.

Born in 1956, Engineer Kijazi held a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Dar es Salaam and a Masters in Highway Engineering from Birmingham University. In 1982 he joined the Ministry of Public Works as an Assistant Engineer, before rising through various posts in the Ministry to the height of Permanent Secretary from 2002 to 2006. His time at the Ministry, including as Permanent Secretary, overlapped with President Magufuli’s time as first Deputy Minister (1995-2000) and then Minister of Works (2000-2005). He later served as Tanzania’s High Commission to India before President Magufuli called him back to serve as his most senior civil servant.

ELECTION RESULTS

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by Ben Taylor

Magufuli and CCM win big in disputed election
The various presidential, parliamentary and local government elections that took place in Tanzania on October 28, 2020, resulted in a resounding victory for the ruling party CCM and President Magufuli, though opposition parties cried foul, with some strong evidence to back up their claims.

Results as announced
In the vote for President of Tanzania, President Magufuli was announced as the winner with 84% of the vote, well ahead of the leading opposition party candidate, Tundu Lissu of Chadema, with 13%. None of the other 13 candidates achieved more than 1%. President Magufuli’s vote share rose from 58% in 2015. 14.8 million votes were cast, out of 29.8 million registered voters, representing a turnout of 50.7%.

In the parliamentary elections, out of 264 constituency seats, CCM candidates won in 256, leaving just four constituency MPs representing ACT Wazalendo, three from CUF and one from Chadema. This includes just two seats were won by opposition candidates on mainland Tanzania – one each from CUF and Chadema.

This almost total wipe-out of opposition MPs included several prominent voices in parliament and in public debate over the past five years. Freeman Mbowe, Joseph Mbilinyi, Halima Mdee, Ester Bulaya, Rev Peter Msigwa and Godbless Lema of Chadema, Zitto Kabwe of ACT and James Mbatia of NCCR Mageuzi all lost their seats.

In addition, votes cast for the party entitled Chadema to a further 19 “special seats” MPs – nominated women MPs allocated proportion to the votes cast for each party’s presidential candidate. In the same way, CCM was allocated 95 special seats MPs. Overall, CCM has 351 seats (93%) and opposition parties have a combined 27. In comparison, after the election in 2015, opposition parties held 114 seats.

Both ACT and Chadema initially declared that their MPs would not take up their seats in parliament, in protest at what they described as a fraudulent election (see below). Later, after heated debates within the parties, most of these MPs have taken up their seats.

For President of Zanzibar, the CCM candidate, Dr Hussein Mwinyi was announced the winner with 76% of the vote, with the ACT Wazalendo candidate, Maalimu Seif Sharif Hamad in second place with 20%. This ended a run of Presidential elections in Zanzibar that were either annulled (2015), boycotted by major opposition parties (2000, 2016), or where the CCM Presidential candidates in Zanzibar won extremely narrow victories (1995, 2005, 2010).

Grounds for dispute
Even before election day, opposition parties disputed the process and there were serious grounds for concern. As noted in the previous issue of Tanzanian Affairs, the playing field was far from level during the campaign.

Then, in the days immediately before the election ACT Wazalendo reported that police on Zanzibar had shot and killed at least nine opposition supporters who suspected soldiers of distributing pre-marked ballots, and that more than 100 people were arrested. Similarly, Chadema claimed CCM officials had shot dead two Chadema supports on the mainland. Tanzania’s inspector general of police, Simon Sirro, denied any deaths.

Maalim Seif, the ACT Presidential candidate for Zanzibar was arrested on the morning of election day as he went to cast his vote. Both Chadema and ACT continued to dispute the process as votes were counted and results announced.

Zitto Kabwe, the leader of ACT-Wazalendo, said there were reports of fraud from constituencies across the country, and that party workers had found thousands of ballot papers and large numbers of returning officers’ statements of results that appeared to have been filled in before the vote. One bag was seized when it fell off a lorry. “It was not an election, and the people of Tanzania will pay the price. The international community should not recognise this election or the legitimacy of the government,” Kabwe told The Guardian.

Tundu Lissu, Chadema’s candidate for president said it “was not an election …, it was just a gang of people who have just decided to misuse state machinery to cling to power”. His party alleged ballot boxes were tampered with after its agents were stopped from entering polling stations.

The two parties demanded fresh elections, after denouncing the vote as fraudulent. In a joint news conference, they also called for mass protests.

Seif Sharif Hamad, the opposition ACT-Wazalendo’s presidential candidate in Zanzibar, and other leaders were arrested, his party said, after he called for protests. The party also reported that a member of the party’s Central Committee Ismail Jussa Ladhu was badly beaten by security forces in Zanzibar.

The National Electoral Commission denied allegations of fake ballots, saying they were unofficial and unsubstantiated. Under Tanzanian law, elections results declared by the commission cannot be challenged in court.

International assessments
A combination of the Coronavirus pandemic, pre-existing tensions between the government and the diplomatic community, and a government decision to discourage international observers meant there were fewer observer missions present in Tanzania than in previous elections. The only mission in country represented the East African Community, and concluded that “generally, the Mission is of the view that the Election process was conducted in a credible manner.”

In contrast, other international assessments were damning. The United States Embassy issued a statement noting “serious doubts” about the credibility of the polls, citing “credible allegations of significant election-related fraud and intimidation”. The EU noted the disruption of social media, claims of opposition candidates that they did not benefit from a level playing field during the electoral process, limited possibilities for electoral observation, and concerning reports on irregularities. They concluded that “these serious allegations have an impact on the transparency and overall credibility of the process”.

The UK Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, gave a statement expressing concern at “widespread allegations of interference in the country’s elections, including pre-filled ballot boxes and party agents being denied entry to polling stations. We are also deeply troubled by the reports of violence and heavy-handed policing in the elections, including the arrest of opposition political leaders.”

There was also an East African independent election monitoring initiative, Tanzania Elections Watch (TEW), formed as “one of the last few remedies available in the absence of independent oversight of the elections in Tanzania,” designed to bring regional and international civil society and others together to critically debate key developments as they unfold. They noted that the electoral commission “does not pass the basic tests of an independent and impartial election management body”, and that the vote “marked the most significant backsliding in Tanzania’s democratic credentials”. They concluded that the process “falls way below the acceptable international standards” for holding free and fair elections.

Post-election tensions
The initial response to the elections from opposition parties was – as seen above – to cry foul. They also called for nationwide protests. Hampered in part by widespread disruption to internet access that remained an issue, intermittently, for several weeks, and deterred by heavy police presence on the streets, this protest movement failed to materialise in any significant way.

Tundu Lissu sought refuge at the German Embassy in Dar es Salaam after receiving death threats. He then left the country, with the assistance of diplomats, and has returned to exile in Belgium, where he previously spent several years receiving treatment for gunshot wounds after an assassination attempt in 2017.

Moments before his flight departed for Brussels on Tuesday, Lissu spoke with reporters. “Diplomats from Germany, Belgium, the United States and other countries have negotiated with the Tanzanian government to allow me to leave the country safely,” he said. “The threats against me kept increasing after the Tanzanian presidential election and I decided to leave the country.”

“I am also going to Europe with a political mission,” he added. I want to speak with the international community about what happened during the recent election, and what it means for Tanzania and the rest of the world”

Opposition parties struggled with the dilemma of whether engaging with the new administration would legitimise the election. Initially, both Chadema and ACT Wazalendo leaderships announced that their MPs would not take up their seats in parliament, but these decisions were later revised. In Zanzibar, where the constitution requires that the two largest parties form a national unity government, ACT debated whether to join CCM, and finally concluded that they should do so, for the sake of peace – “to give dialogue a chance”. As such, in addition to the swearing in of Hussein Mwinyi as the new President of Zanzibar, Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad was sworn in as First Vice President of Zanzibar on December 8th.
President Magufuli was sworn in for a second term as President of Tanzania on November 5th.

Looking forwards
The prospects have faded for either an opposition-led protest movement taking shape or international pressure forcing concessions by the government. Instead, these elections look set to mark a serious further deterioration in Tanzania’s relations with those parts of the international community that value democracy, and the country now faces a new political landscape going forwards.

Most obviously, parliamentary debates and scrutiny look set to be significantly weakened, with fewer opposition MPs present and with experienced and outspoken figures such as Zitto Kabwe and Freeman Mbowe now lacking a platform. In turn, this will weaken other critical voices in the media, civil society, and reduce space for public debate still further. For the next five years at least, then, there would seem to be little prospect of a democratic recovery.

Beyond that, the great uncertainty remains the question of whether President Magufuli will seek to amend the constitution in order to remove or extend term limits. Currently, the constitution places a two-term limit on presidents, and President Magufuli has always insisted that he has no desire or intention to change this. However, observers have noted that senior party figures close to the President have voiced the idea several times over the past five years. CCM’s overwhelming dominance in the new parliament would also make such an amendment relatively easy to push through.

When President Nyerere stepped down in 1985, he established a precedent for peaceful and orderly transition of power. Presidential term limits were brought in, and four successive transitions since appeared to demonstrate that in Tanzania this constitutional mechanism would be respected. This could well be tested over the coming years as never before.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE

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by Ben Taylor

Uncertainty rules
With no official data having been reported in Tanzania since May 2020 on Covid-19 case numbers or deaths, the prevailing situation continues to be one of great uncertainty. The government maintains that the virus has been defeated in Tanzania, and public debate on the matter has largely ceased.

There is no doubt that – in common with much of Africa – the most alarming projections of the early epidemiological models have not come to pass. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), for example, projected that there could be as many as 175,000 deaths caused by the virus in Tanzania during 2020, and Imperial College, London suggested the number could reach 360,000. These projections have, to widespread relief, proved wrong.

The reasons for the relatively slow rate of spread of the virus in much of Africa remain uncertain. The younger age-profile of the population may have contributed, or part of the population may have some form of pre-existing immunity.

Nevertheless, without official data it remains impossible to accurately assess the state of the pandemic within Tanzania. And as nature abhors a vacuum, where there is no official data, rumours and anecdotal evidence thrive.

It is worth, therefore, summarising what we know with more confidence:

First, neighbouring countries saw rising case numbers since the later part of 2020, including Kenya, Uganda, the DRC, Zambia and, most recently, Malawi. In Kenya, the daily number of newly confirmed cases rose above 1,000 for much of October-December. In Zambia and Malawi, where earlier in 2020 case numbers remained very low, sharp increases have been seen in the first two weeks of January, possibly linked to the more infectious so-called South African variant of the virus.

Second, relaxed travel restrictions into Tanzania since mid-2020 have brought rising tourist numbers, particularly from Russia, as those tourists willing to travel at this time look to take advantage of relatively cheap prices and look to Tanzania as a location where restrictions are very relaxed. If the country did truly defeat the virus locally in May and June, it has surely been reintroduced since.

Third, Coronavirus testing has continued among certain groups within Tanzania – such as those intending to travel outside the country or taking part in international sporting events. Six footballers (and three others in the touring party) from a Zimbabwean team in Dar es Salaam for an African Champions League tie received positive test results. (It should be noted, however, that there is further uncertainty in this case, as the Zimbabwean team’s leadership noted irregularities in the testing process and hinted this might have been a tactic by local authorities to hamper their performance in the match.)

Fourth, in the most obviously-comparably contexts – Kenya and Uganda – lockdowns introduced in response to the pandemic have had serious impacts on livelihoods and the economy. The data is not yet conclusive on this, but it seems probable that Tanzania will have thus far escaped some such impacts of the pandemic – though the knock-on effects of global economic difficulties have affected exports, tourism and more.

Finally, and importantly, hospitals have not been overwhelmed and alarming early rumours of night-time burials and mass graves largely dried up.

Given the lack of more dependable data, it is also worth noting, though with caution, some of the unconfirmed rumours that have been circulating more recently, including:
• Reports of a spike in case numbers in December and early January, with rumours centred on cases within the Indian community in Dar es Salaam.
• Hospitals and health workers under intense pressure to avoid speaking to the media, but rumours of patients with certain symptoms being turned away and certain hospitals having high case numbers persist.
• Reports on travellers leaving the country testing negative before departure and positive on arrival at their destination.

The ever-evolving nature of the pandemic is such that judgements on President Magufuli’s unique response are premature. For reasons that probably have little to do with the country’s policy response, case numbers have not reached anything approaching the heights of early projections. And the country has probably – so far – avoided the worst economic impacts. And yet, with rising case numbers in neighbouring countries, and new virus variants spreading rapidly around the world, there are plenty of ways in which Tanzania’s Coronavirus response could go badly wrong.

And there are yet more uncertainties as well. The government’s stance on vaccines, for example, is still unknown. On the one hand, why would a country that has officially defeated the virus need vaccines? And sure enough, the Ministry of Health has been notably reluctant to discuss the country’s attitude to vaccinations. In early January, the Minister of Health, Dr Gwajima, told a reporter: “I cannot tell you now; but we will issue a public statement soon. So, be patient.” A spokesman for the Ministry was also reported as saying that “there are no plans in place yet of importing vaccine for Covid-19, our health experts and scientists are still researching and undergoing clinical trials for the local herbs for covid-19.”

Post-Covid, it is also unclear how the wider world would view a country that decides on vaccine-scepticism. Travel advisory notices could impact on tourist numbers, for example. And if recalcitrance on combatting the virus comes to be seen as undermining global vaccination efforts and putting other countries’ progress against the virus at risk, this could cause further strain to Tanzania’s diplomatic relations, including with donor countries.

In short, while the government continues to claim victory, it remains too early to do so with confidence. And while the government’s critics continue to cry foul, their case remains, to date, inconclusive. Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position in which to move forward, yet it remains the only choice we have.