President Magufuli is Just a Taller Pygmy Among Many

While discussing Tanzanian politics with a Tanzanian friend in Kampala sometimes in August 2015, I told him that the opposition coalition UKAWA (Umoja wa Katiba ya Wananchi) stood a chance to wrestle power from in between the legs of the lion, that is CCM (Chama cha Mapinduzi) only if UKAWA found out a formula to bring in Dr. Lowasa who had defected from CCM without losing Dr. Silaa who was being seen as the possible coalition’s presidential candidate. Without which UKAWA would lose an election, in my view back then. Sure enough UKAWA lost Dr. Silaa and it went on to loose in a general election to CCM's Dr. John Pombe Magufuli. These days many people seem to talk highly of Dr. Magufuli. In my most considered opinion, he may be taller among pygmies but certainly he still remains one of them. I cannot prescribe Magufuli as the model African leader. He does not qualify because given a chance he will lead the country as he knows how not as the people want it led. Now that is in direct opposition to the very aspirations of social democracy that he claims to subscribe to. I am persuaded that President Magufuli has strong convictions, often personal, convictions to serve his his country and its people but then he leads a rotten system that is CCM. Within nonexistent or largely nonoperational systems that CCM has maintained for over 50 years, Magufuli will elide almost all fundamental tenets of social democracy that he was fond of talking about (which he does not mention anymore) and engage in the politics of status quo-sim that has retarded not only Tanzania but many other African countries for decades. It does not mean he will not achieve something, I think he will do better than many, but in as far as Magufuli leads a CCM government that thrives in suppressing alternative voices, he still does not make his government qualify as as the better alternative leadership that has been missing in the region and one that Africa yearns for, unless of course, Tanzania and the region is read to abandon the democratisation processes.