Re-elected with 84% of the vote on 28 October, the outgoing President of Tanzania John Magufuli was sworn in on Thursday 5 November in the presence of national and international dignitaries and regional heads of state including Presidents Museveni of Uganda, Azali Assoumani of the Comoros and Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe. Many fear that the magnitude of this victory, combined with that of the ruling party that won 262 of the 264 seats in parliament, will spell the end of the multi-party democracy and stability that has made the strength of this strategic country that lies at hinged in southern and eastern Africa.
It was on suspicion of fraud and fierce opposition to the results of last month’s presidential and legislative elections that the inauguration ceremony was held in the Tanzanian capital on Thursday, November 5th. John Magufuli, the elected president. At the helm of the country since 2015, the man was elected to another term with 84% of the vote on a nationalist platform backed by promises of economic development and the continuation of his government’s fight against corruption, which has long plagued Dodoma.
The other big winner of these elections is the CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, Revolution Party), from which President Magufuli comes. In power without interruption since the country’s independence in 1961, this party, which is said to be losing momentum, has won almost all 264 seats in the Tanzanian parliament. CCM also largely won the victory in the Zanzibar archipelago attached to Tanzania and is considered so far as a stronghold of the opposition.
The opposition parties condemned “an unprecedented electoral fraud” and rejected the verdict. But as Tanzanian law forbids them to challenge the results of the presidential election in court, opponents urged the population to demonstrate in the streets. They also submitted another dossier Commonwealth including Tanzania, which asks the organization to publicly reject these elections, send a delegation and suspend this country from the organization of English-speaking countries. The U.S. State Department, for its part, said it was “concerned about credible information indicating election irregularities.”
For many observers, the crushing victories won by the Tanzanian power are in line with John Magufuli’s first period, which is marked by a clear decline in fundamental freedoms and an increase in attacks on the opposition.
The Tanzanian exception
John Magufuli is the fifth president to lead Tanzania since this former British colony gained independence in 1961. The country has long been a paradise for stability in a troubled East African region. The aura of its founding president, Julius Nyerere, whose name remains linked to his African-style socialist beliefs (“ujamaa”) and his commitment to the liberation of southern Africa from the colonial yoke, enabled him to play an important political role in this part of the continent. In the 1990s, the Tanzanian government successfully negotiated pluralism and in 1995 organized its first majority election.
We are talking about the Tanzanian exception, a singularity based on national unity, stable institutions and secularism. For a long time, CCM has incorporated these values. A former single-party party played that game with multi-party politics, while continuing its hegemony on the political spectrum. Continued at the helm since 1961, the CCM holds the record for longevity in power on the continent. Under his rule, Tanzania, home to about 120 ethnic groups, has hardly known any deadly divisions unlike its close neighbors (Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, DRC).
On this earth, marked by a strong sense of national identity, democratic standards flourished with the emergence of a vibrant opposition, whose electoral score has risen steadily since the first multi-party election in 1995. Opposition parties held a third of the seats in the outgoing parliament.
The turning point in 2015
The year 2015 was a turning point in Tanzanian political life with the entry on the stage of John Magufuli, who established himself as the real strong man for the regime. Born into a modest peasant family, chemist by training, the man, 61, has spent most of his political career within CCM. Almost unknown to the public, he was for a long time Minister of Public Works, before, to everyone’s surprise, winning his party’s primary election for the Supreme Court judge, facing more than thirty candidates.
Elected president of a relentless anti-corruption program, Magufuli landed at State House Palace in October 2015 and proudly wearing his nickname “Tinga tinga”, “bulldozer” in Kiswahili. This nickname referred to the extensive road construction program he had launched at the Department of Public Works.
True to his direct and authoritarian style, President Magufuli made a surprising morning raid the day after the inauguration in the still empty offices of the Ministry of Finance. Before leaving the room, he called the officials present and asked them to pass on the message to their latter colleagues that the era of general laxity in the public service was well and truly over. In the ensuing days, several thousand ghost employees, registered in the registers of the various government administrations, were dismissed without ceremony.
Among the first steps taken by the Magufuli administration, we must also mention the ban on senior officials traveling in first class, the abolition of the seat allowance for deputies, the cancellation of the Independence Day celebrations in favor of a campaign to clean up in public spaces where the president personally attended, diet in hand. It must be acknowledged that these initiatives, which aim to fight corruption and reduce government spending, have proved particularly popular with Tanzanians, tired of the underclass that had put an end to former heads of state.
The population also appreciated that their president forced foreign companies operating mainly in the mining sector to renegotiate their contracts in order to increase the share going to the country. Moreover, John Magufuli has made of this “muscular nationalism” a slogan for a campaign during the vote, which has just ended, and confirms that he was the greatest opponent of the multinational companies that qualified as “imperialist”. The president also likes to boast of having expanded free education, improved rural electrification and launched major infrastructure works, including the construction of a major hydropower dam that would double the country’s electricity production.
Another pride for John Magufuli is Tanzania’s entry into the middle-income category five years ahead of schedule in the government’s national development plan. His economic performance explains, according to Fergus Kell, a Tanzania specialist and researcher at the London think tank Chatham House, the popularity of the head of state. “President Magufuli continues to enjoy very strong support from his rural supporters, who appreciate his anti-corruption measures as well as the infrastructure projects he has launched,” the researcher said. .
But as the opposition parties have constantly repeated over the last few years, the popular support that the regime has enjoyed thanks to its media measures hides the very clear decline in public freedoms and human rights. which the country experienced during Magufuli’s first period. As early as 2016, political rallies were banned, live broadcasts of Parliament’s debates suspended, draconian laws against the media passed, journalists, activists and members of the opposition arrested, prosecuted in courts, sometimes simply for questioning government analyzes and statistics. “The last five years have seen, says Fergus Kell, that the Tanzanian democratic space is shrinking significantly as the country creeps worryingly against authoritarianism.”
For many observers, the recent election period, which was filled with incidents and violent disturbances that prevented opposition parties from participating freely in the campaign, translates as well as the authorities’ refusal to accredit foreign media to cover the election. President Magufuli’s form of government. The overwhelming majority that the president’s party has had in the renewed Chamber of Deputies, according to British Africanist Nic Cheeseman, is the end of the multi-party system and de facto returns to “a one-party regime disguised as a democracy”. It is a real regression for Tanzania by Julius Nyerere, which has long been the most stable and progressive country in the region.
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