by a correspondent
Following the Zanzibar revolution on 12 January 1964, the first President, the late Abeid Amani Karume said in an interview that there would be no election in Zanzibar for 50 years!
Karurne was leader of the Zanzibar revolution and very popular with the mass of the people of the Islands. He was not a polished leader, skilled in the niceties of diplomacy and politics. Karume was a blunt, down-to-earth, no-nonsense fellow who was only concerned with the welfare of his people.
Karume’s dislike of elections was based on the history and experience with elections in Zanzibar. In the period leading up to independence from the British in 1963, every election that was held on the island resulted in either the minority party winning or a political stalemate. The majority never won.
It is this experience that was the root cause of the 1964 revolution in which “one man one panga” replaced “one man, one vote.” In declaring that there would be no elections for 50 years, Karume was also saying that it would take that long for the Zanzibaris to forget their sad history.
Karurne was gunned down in 1971 and thereafter, Zanzibar went back to “one man, one vote.” But under the one-party system, there was no danger of reversing the political gains of the 1964 revolution. This was because elections under the one-party system only resulted in a change of faces, not policies. The recent introduction of political pluralism in Zanzibar now threatens a repeat of the Islands’ sad history.
To begin with, many of the people now in opposition on the Islands are people who are easily identifiable with the minority regime that was overthrown in the 1964 revolution. The opposition draws strong support from the exile minority groups who dream of restoring the past. There are of course other people in the opposition who are understandably opposed to Karurne’s successors because of enduring mismanagement, corruption and autocratic misdeeds. Most of these people are from Pemba island whose development lags far behind that of Zanzibar’s main island of Unguja.
It is against this background that one must consider the results of last year’s Zanzibar Presidential and Parliamentary elections.
In the election for President of Zanzibar, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) was pronounced the winner by a small margin of about 2 per cent. But before the official results were out, the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) had claimed victory by more or less the same margin. CUF continues to insist that it won the Presidential election in Zanzibar but that the official results were rigged to give victory to CCM. However, rigging or no rigging, neither CCM nor CUF can be said to have won a convincing overall victory.
This is underlined by the results of the Parliamentary elections in which CCM won 26 seats against CUF’s 24 with all Pemba seats going to CUF while the Unguja seats (except for two) went to CCM. It is this margin of victory which led retired Tanzanian President Nyerere to suggest the formation of a coalition government. The President-elect, Salmin Amour rejected the suggestion out of hand insisting that a win is a win even by one vote!
Amour’s decision to be the one and only has since been demonstrated on the Islands by the police and security forces flexing muscles. This was to an extent provoked by Seif Sharif’s equally stubborn determination to replace him as the President of Zanzibar. What is intriguing in the Zanzibar situation is Sharif’s acceptance of the parliamentary results; if rigging was the reason that led to his defeat in the Presidential election!
The problem in Zanzibar is not the result of elections having been rigged or even the violation of human rights as some external agencies are now trying to suggest. The problem is that the concept of the winner take all is a concept most unsuited for the reality of Zanzibar today.
The ruling party, CCM — the party of the 1964 revolution — is committed to maintaining the gains of that revolution and has a majority following on the main island of Zanzibar. The opposition, on the other hand, draws its strength from people unhappy with the way Zanzibar has been governed since the Karume days and who do not have much regard for the 1964 revolution. Most of these people are from Pemba, the island least affected by the Zanzibar revolution. This is the reality that must form the basis of a solution of the Zanzibar problem.
There have been attempts to resolve the Zanzibar problem through negotiations, but these attempts are being frustrated by Sharrif’s refusal to recognise Amour as the President of Zanzibar. Sharrif has said on more than one occasion that he will accept nothing short of Amour’s removal from the Presidency. . The CUF leader has even ordered his followers in the Union Parliament not to debate the situation in Zanzibar on the ground that doing so would amount to CUF’s recognition of Amour.
Having somehow convinced donor countries to withdraw development assistance to Zanzibar, Sharrif is now campaigning to have the same measures taken against the Union Government for what he describes as its failure to intervene in his conflict with Amour.
It is this uncompromising stance of the leader of CUF that led the President of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa, to announce his full support for the Zanzibar government. Mkapa’s speech in Zanzibar has been criticised in some quarters but the Tanzanian President maintains that when the leader of the opposition does not even allow his followers to discuss the situation in legitimate forums such as the House of Representatives in Zanzibar or the Union Parliament, the duty of the Union Government remains the maintenance of law and order.
It remains to be seen whether opposition members of the House of Representatives in Zanzibar and theUnion Parliament will submit to the dictates of Seif Sharrif or will rise to the responsibility and seek a Parliamentary solution to the problem in Zanzibar. That is the challenge and responsibility the opposition cannot avoid. (SARDC)
