Tanzania: Has President Magufuli forgotten Nyerere’s lessons?

By Nick Westcott

 

Nick Westcott is the Director of the Royal African Society. He has been involved with Africa for over 40 years as both an academic and diplomat with the UK government. 

 

August 22, 2019

 

https://africanarguments.org/2019/08/22/tanzania-magufuli-nyerere-forgotten-lessons/

 

The president seems to be repeating the mistakes of Tanzania’s independence leader rather than learning from his legacy.

I visited Tanzania last month for the first time in five years and for the first time since John Magufuli was elected president in 2015. I have been visiting the country regularly since 1976, living there for a year as a student in 1979 and for three years as a diplomat in 1993-6. I have followed its fortunes through the decades with close interest, meeting all its presidents (except the incumbent) at one time or another.
While I was there on this occasion, the journalist and African Arguments contributor Erick Kabendera was disappeared: that is, he was picked up by police and kept incommunicado for several days until he suddenly re-appeared in court and was improbably charged with economic crimes and tax evasion. This is not a lone incident: since 2015 it has become common for independent journalists to face harassment and even death, and for the government to obstruct news or even the publication of standard national statistics it dislikes. It is worrying both many Tanzanians and many of Tanzania’s friends overseas.
[I had to flee my home Tanzania for doing journalism. I was lucky.]
It is worth asking where this new trend has come from. Since independence in 1961, Tanzania has been a beacon of the liberation struggle in Africa and of peaceful political stability. The country’s moral and political compass was set very firmly by its first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, whose picture still hangs on many government, hotel and shop walls alongside President Magufuli. All Nyerere’s successors have appealed to and pledged to uphold his legacy.

Nyerere’s legacy

So what is that legacy? Nyerere was relatively unusual among African presidents in that he left a substantial body of writings that set out his political thinking and which enable us to see its evolution. While sometimes intolerant of criticism, he tended to respond with argument rather than force. Nyerere’s thinking changed over time, his ideas adapting in the light of experience, but some elements remained unchanged: a powerful moral tone; an intolerance of corruption; a central role for the state but with a real accountability to the people; and, above all, the value of unity at the national level, in the union with Zanzibar, and across Africa as a whole.
Nyerere started as an unabashed African socialist. Capitalism and colonialism had gone hand-in-hand and destroyed many traditional communal values. These needed to be restored and Nyerere justified Tanzania’s one-party state as necessary for building national unity and avoiding political divisions. He also advocated ujamaa villagisation as a path to economic and social modernisation.
Over time, though, the president came to see the drawbacks of both policies. Although the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) had robust internal competition and accountability, any single party that remains in power continually tends to become complacent and corrupt. The target tends to become climbing to the top of the party tree and reaping the benefits along the way rather than serving the people. Meanwhile, villagisation and state production proved socially disruptive and financially disastrous. Economically, Nyerere’s prescription just did not work.
In response, Nyerere did two things. Firstly, he put in place succession arrangements that allowed him to step back from running the government. Although he retained oversight as CCM chairman, he stepped down as president in 1985 and allowed his successors to liberalise both politics and the economy. In the 1990s, multi-party politics was re-introduced, a number of loss-making parastatals that were draining the government’s resources were privatised, and the country began to encourage outside investors. Nyerere’s personal interventions became increasingly rare, limited largely to upholding the sanctity and importance of the political union with Zanzibar and working for peace in neighbouring Burundi.
Nyerere’s legacy was to value unity but recognise diversity, not overstay his welcome, and be guided by principles but adapt his policies in the light of experience.
[Is Tanzania discarding Nyerere’s freedom-fighting legacy?]

Fulfilling or negating Nyerere’s legacy?

Like his predecessors, President Magufuli puts great emphasis on respecting Nyerere’s legacy. Selected at least in part for his well-known personal probity, he entered office breathing fire and fury against corruption in the state machine. His dramatic interventions appeared to shake state utilities out of their torpor and corrupt practices. He developed and delivered some basic infrastructure, including roads and energy. All of this was overdue.
But in other respects, Magufuli’s administration seems stuck in the early Nyerere-ite mode of suspicion, even hostility, to international capitalism and open markets even within its region. It has returned to preaching a narrow view of self-reliance similar to that which led the country to near bankruptcy in the early-1980s. In political terms, Magufuli seems have adopted an intolerance of criticism and opposition that Nyerere abandoned in his later years. CCM seems increasingly frightened of democracy, fearing that given a free choice and facts the people just might choose someone else.
To constrain the opposition and harass the free press will in the end destroy democracy and even the CCM itself. We have seen elsewhere political leaders deciding they should be the sole arbiter of decisions and stay on in charge long after their sell-by-date, presiding over ever-more corrupt and incompetent governments and leading their countries to wrack and ruin. In almost all cases, it does not end well. The same can apply to parties as to individual leaders.
Tanzania is a country of huge potential. It is rich in land, material resources and people. To make the best use of them for the benefit of its citizens, it must also be rich in wisdom as well as morals. As everywhere, these resources are best developed by a fruitful, harmonious and respectful cooperation between insiders and outsiders. There is competition, but it is best complemented by collaboration.
Tanzania has benefited greatly from regular political succession in its leadership, but it would be a betrayal, not a fulfilment, of Nyerere’s legacy to refuse the Tanzanian people a free and informed choice about the party and policies they want. Mwalimu would probably be angry as well as sad to think his successors had learnt the wrong lessons he was trying to teach them – that they preferred a closed to an open society and were looking to the past rather than the future.

This article was also published on the Royal African Society website.

Tanzania’s gamble: Anatomy of a totally novel coronavirus response

By Ben Taylor

 

Ben Taylor is a consultant with Twaweza, a civil society organisation promoting citizen voice and civic space in East Africa, and Editor of the journal Tanzanian Affairs. He writes here in a personal capacity.

 

May 7, 2020

 

https://africanarguments.org/2020/05/07/tanzania-gamble-anatomy-totally-novel-coronavirus-response/

In contrast to most leaders, Magufuli’s main strategies are to limit information, treat fear as the main threat, and keep the economy running.

 

Chapter One of Tanzania’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic came to an end in late April. The second half of that month had seen the number of confirmed cases rise to 480, up sharply from the 32 in mid-month. As I wrote at the time, the chance for early containment looked like it had already passed us by.
President John Magufuli had opted not to listen to the global scientific advice. Instead, he had put his trust – and the lives of millions – in the hands of God. And in some odd (and potentially dangerous) “scientific” thinking of his own. And in the belief, shared by some experts, that locking down cities such as Dar es Salaam might do more harm than good.
That was Chapter One. Chapter Two is now being written. And it is being written in the dark.

Are cases really much higher or…lower?

We no longer have any reliable estimates of the number of cases or deaths from COVID-19. According to the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Tanzania has conducted just 652 tests (as of 7 May). This compares to over 26,000 tests conducted in Kenya and nearly 45,000 in Uganda. Tanzania’s number is so low it almost defies belief. Have more tests been done but the results not released? Or is this the true figure, in which case is it the result of staggering incompetence or shocking indifference to the potential suffering of millions?
For some years now, statistics and the media have been a highly charged political battleground in Tanzania. Controlling the narrative means silencing facts that contradict the official line. Someone suggests economic growth may not be as strong as the government claims? Charge them with sedition. Someone publishes data showing political leaders are not as popular as they once were? Strip them of their passport.
The COVID-19 numbers are no different. The government is giving updates only every week or so, and sometimes the new data doesn’t even include basic figures such as the number of new cases and deaths. In such a vacuum, widespread reports of night-time burials and people dying with coronavirus-like symptoms take on more than anecdotal credibility. Many understandably question whether the true number of cases and deaths is substantially higher than the official figures.
On the other hand, even President Magufuli seems to distrust the official numbers – though in the opposite direction. In a speech on 3 May, he accused unnamed imperialist foreign powers of sabotaging the national response by providing ineffective testing kits or buying off laboratory employees. He said he had sent “samples” from a pawpaw and goat for testing, with some producing positive results. Heads rolled at the national health laboratory.
In the same speech, the president also suggested international media organisations – the BBC was not named, but the implication was clear – have been deliberately spreading scare stories to undermine Tanzania while ignoring the extent of the outbreak in their home countries. He called this “another form of warfare”. (Incidentally, he had previously wondered aloud whether masks and disinfectant sprays might have been deliberately contaminated with the coronavirus.)
In short, nobody believes the official figures and nobody know how many cases we have. That ship has sailed. Local community transmission has been going on for weeks. We have no meaningful lockdown. And the process of testing, contact tracing and isolation can no longer cope. The true numbers could be anywhere between one thousand and one hundred thousand. Even within the Ministry of Health, in quiet corridors well away from both political bosses and media scrutiny, nobody really knows.

Four pillars of Magufuli’s approach

What else can we say about Chapter Two?
Well, the president has continued to infuse the national response with his own personal style. His pronouncements are watched keenly by the nation and followed closely by public servants. And those statements appear to be informed more by his own personal worldview than any input from scientists.
If the first strand of Magufuli’s approach is a tight control of information, the second is an emphasis on religious faith. Having previously argued the virus could not survive in the body of Jesus, the president again called for religious services to continue on 3 May. He concluded: “My fellow Tanzanians, stand firm. We have already won this war. God cannot abandon us, and our God loves us always.”
The third element of the president’s approach is to put a premium on the avoidance of fear. “Fear is a very bad thing,” he said. “There might well already be people in this situation who have been killed by fear. Let us put an end to fear. Let us defeat fear.” This is the logic that saw him criticise international media and young people online for scaremongering.
There is some truth in this perspective. Fear and stress bring genuine dangers. But the argument has limits. The point at which fear-avoidance means the government reports only on recoveries but not new cases or deaths, insists religious services should continue despite the risks of transmission, and asserts that God will protect us, it starts to look more like denial. And with potentially devastating consequences.
The fourth strand of Magufuli’s approach is a determination to keep the country and its economy going. Schools and universities have closed, sporting events remain suspended, and people are being encouraged to main distance from others and wear masks when out in public. But the president has strongly resisted calls to introduce any tighter lockdown measures. Instead, he has emphasised the importance of working hard, keeping the economy going strong, and maintaining a healthy supply of food and other goods.
This all adds up to something very different to the responses seen in other countries. Every context is different, of course, and the president has rightly warned against a copy-and-paste approach. But is Tanzania really so different? It is facing the same virus that has caused havoc and heartache elsewhere, and epidemiologists’ advice to Tanzania must surely be similar to that being offered in Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere.

Turning bullets into water

Only time will tell whether Magufuli’s gamble pays off. But we should be in no doubt that it is a huge gamble. The stakes are the lives and livelihoods of millions of Tanzanians. Two lessons from history illustrate this particularly keenly.
The first is the 1918 Spanish Flu. This pandemic hit Tanganyika hard and came hot on the heels of the First World War, which itself had had a devastating impact. There are no exact figures – sound familiar? – but it is estimated that half the country of 4.2 million people was infected and over 5% (over 200,000 people) died. At the same time in Zanzibar, authorities introduced stringent quarantine measures that limited the impact considerably.
The second may be even more relevant. In 1905, Kinjeketile Ngwale (also known as Bokero) persuaded his followers in southern parts of the country that a certain “medicine” – a mix of water, castor oil and millet seeds – would turn German bullets into water. Maybe he truly believed this. Maybe it was an attempt to inspire confidence and overcome fear. Either way, the gamble failed. The Maji-Maji Rebellion against German rule was a disaster. Once again, nobody knows the true death toll, but it is likely that tens thousands of soldiers were killed and as many as 250,000 civilians died of hunger. Kinjeketile was arrested and hanged in 1905, but the fighting continued. Later that year, Ngoni soldiers retreating from battle are reported to have thrown away their war medicine as they cried out “the maji is a lie!”
Suggestions that Tanzania has found a new Kinjeketile spread online this week.