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.
President Magufuli is Just a Taller Pygmy Among Many
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
June 27, 2016
Rating:
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