CUF, the strongest opposition party because of its strength in Zanzibar, was entitled, after the last election, to four special seats for women -the number being determined by the proportion of elected CUF MP’s in the National Assembly in Dodoma. They were duly nominated by President Mkapa and then insisted on taking up their seats contrary to CUF party policy. CUF MP’s elected from Zanzibar are boycotting National Assembly sessions as part of the party’s protest against how the 2000 general elections in Zanzibar were conducted. The women were then expelled from the party and lost their seats.

As a result of this, the number of all opposition MP’s in the House fell to 18 out of a total of 295 all of whom are CCM. Under Section 11 (4) of parliamentary rules, when the opposition numbers fall below 20 they lose their status and privileges as an official opposition. They can no longer chair parliamentary committees or act as shadow ministers and their leader no longer has a government car. Opposition leaders were indignant and spoke of ‘killing the spirit of democracy’ ‘digging the grave of democracy’ and ‘reverting to a one party state.’

On April 16th the Guardian reported that the High Court in Dar es Salaam had overturned the decision by CUF to cancel the membership of two of its parliamentarians (the others did not take up a case in court) and declared that they were still lawful MPs. The party was ordered to pay costs of the case. CUF said it would appeal. Meanwhile, the number of registered political parties in Tanzania has gone up to 16 following the registration on 18th January of the Forum for Restoration of Democracy (FORD). The party’s national chairman, Ramdhani Mzee said that development came as a result of democracy; in the absence of democracy violence and anarchy would reign.

According to the Tanzanian Sunday Observer, the Trade Union Congress of Tanzania (TUCTA) has issued a three-month ultimatum to the government demanding an immediate halt to what it termed “unbearable practices” towards workers in the country before it stages a nationwide strike. The main issue was what were alleged to be expected redundancies if and/or when T ANESCO and the Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) are privatised.

TANESCO
As this issue of Tanzanian Affairs went to press, problems at the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) were multiplying. In an environment in which the rapidly growing South African involvement in the Tanzanian economy is being widely criticised, and workers have had difficulty in the past in obtaining redundancy terms when other parastatals have been privatised, a management agreement was signed in April with the South African firm ‘Net Group Solution Company’ to run TANESCO. It was understood that this would lead to its privatisation in two years time. While its 65,000 workers were to be retained, some ten executives were to be given other assignments.

But, according to Mtanzania, TANESCO workers then announced that they were not going to cooperate with the new management. They demanded special terminal benefits before the new management takes over, something which the government has firmly refused. Then there were reports in the press that workers were going to blow up electric installations. The union leaders said that these threats were personal opinions expressed at a meeting where no resolution was passed.

TANESCO then caused further consternation when it announced new tariffs which would increase the cost for domestic consumption by 300% while lowering the high costs for industry which have been discouraging investment. Related to this was the expensive Malaysian-financed generating plant (IPTL) which has been the subject of litigation for some three years -see earlier issues of Tanzanian Affairs. TANESCO had appealed against a court decision that it must pay IPTL a monthly capacity charge, from the beginning of the dispute, totalling Shs 174 billion. TANESCO had won this case but IPTL electricity was still more expensive than what TANESCO was paying for other supplies.

Then Mtanzania reported that 46 MPs had petitioned the government to be more transparent on the whole issue of TANESCO -the management contract, the rise in power bills, the issue of the employees and IPTL. It was alleged that there might have been corruption in the drawing up of the original agreement. Prime Minster Sumaye told the MPs to submit any evidence of corruption to the Prevention of Corruption Bureau for appropriate action.

The government then began to climb down. It agreed to meet the workers and on April 18 it relented on the power tariffs. Prime Minister Sumaye announced a cheaper rate for domestic consumption which would now be from 0 to 100 units instead of 0 to 50 as previously announced and also said, according to the Guardian, that TANESCO would remain a parastatal. In his broadcast speech Sumaye said 350,000 consumers would benefit from this revised tariff. He said the price hike was partly necessitated by the IPTL contract. Regarding the four South African management contractors, Sumaye said they would be answerable to the TANESCO Board of Directors. He said the firm was awarded the contract after a tender was floated, with the involvement of the Energy Ministry, the Attorney General, the PSRC, the T ANESCO Board and the World Bank. There were 11 bidders which were eventually short-listed to two ­from South Africa and Ireland. But this did not appear to appease several MP’s.

The next day President Mkapa announced that Minister for Energy and Minerals Edgar Maokolo-Majogo had changed jobs with Minister of State (Poverty alleviation) Daniel Yona and that Yona was the new Minister for Energy and Minerals. The President gave no reason for the change.

STOP PRESS: Mtanzania reported on April 22 that the Government had forwarded the IPTL agreement to the Anti­Corruption Bureau. The Dar es Salaam Express under the heading “Word ‘Kaburu’ must go” objected to TANESCO workers saying that the government was selling the country’s major means of production to South Africa. What made their comment a candidate for critical examination was the fact that they used the label ‘Kaburu’ to refer to the South Africans. ‘Kaburu’ was a Swahili word referring to any person who is racist and was used to refer to South Africans during apartheid..

AIR TANZANIA
Rai reported on April 18 that Air Tanzania Corporation (ATC) was ‘in a dire condition’ and had been asked to sell its 10 houses to help pay allowances for 94 staff members made redundant (out of a total staff of 500). ATC had been affected by the same recession as most other airlines in the world following the events of September 11 last year. Rai added that, as a long term solution, the government had decided to privatise the airline. The Guardian had reported on 1st April that the government had given ATC Shs 2.5 billion in sureties to prevent its collapse because of lack of cash to pay for insurance cover. Representatives of the airline were reported to have said that ATC’s poor performance should not be blamed on the management but on the government because it had given it such a limited fleet of planes and an inadequate capital base. Meanwhile the executive director of the privately owned successor to Alliance Air, said that his newly-launched airline ‘AfricaOne’ was ready to team up with ATC. At the end of March ‘AfricaOne’ had received the first of four planes it was acquiring but was unable to operate in Tanzania because it had not yet received permission to fly from the Civil Aviation Authority.

RAILWAY PRIVATISATION
38 MPs contributed to the debate in Parliament which passed a new Railways Bill in February designed to provide for the winding up of the Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC). It is replaced by a new entity -‘Reli Assets Holding Company Ltd’. The government is not selling the TRC infrastructure but will lease out railway services to a private institution. The Tanzania Railway Workers Union has stated that it plans to take the government to court over this intended privatisation. Its Secretary General said that the government had contravened the Security of Employees Act of 1964 which provided for consultation with trade unions about any proposal to make redundant any employee.

IN DEFENCE OF PRIVATISATION
The Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSCR) has been coming under heavy fire for its privatisations but its Chairman, John Rubambe, has defended it in an interview published in the East African. Around the world he said, the Commission was regarded as efficient and effective. It had privatised 326 parastatals (taxpayers had been able to stop subsidising failure) out of 390 entities listed for divestiture. Tanzanians bought 100% of the 122 privatised firms, 14 were sold to foreign investors and 190 became joint ventures. The government had retained shares in 190 firms which would later be sold to countrymen through the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange. President Mkapa reminded CCM MP’s that privatisation was included in the party’s manifesto at the last elections.

The Guardian (November 27) reported the results of a survey entitled ‘Attitudes to Democracy and Markets in Tanzania’ by specialists in the universities of Dar es Salaam, Cape Town and Michigan State.

President Mkapa scored 90% approval overall; 61% of the 2,198 adults surveyed expressed much satisfaction with his performance. The report said the President attained far more positive ratings than any other political leader, possibly because of his efforts at fighting official corruption in society. Three quarters were satisfied with the performance of their regional commissioners; two thirds with their local mayors or council chairmen; 58% with their MP’s and 52% with political parties generally. Zanzibar President Aman Karume scored only 54%. Only one quarter felt the government was doing a good job in reducing the gap between rich and poor.

Following the issue of the report of a Presidential Committee into the Sugar Industry, with particular reference to the issue of licenses to import sugar, Minister of Industry and Commerce Iddi Simba resigned on November 5. However, because of the crucial role he had played in a July meeting in Zanzibar of trade ministers from the least developed countries (LDC’s) prior to negotiations for a new round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks at Doha in Qatar in mid­November, Mkapa asked him to stay on until November 16 to lead the Tanzanian delegation. Tanzania opposed the new round because it claimed that developing countries could not yet face open competition and the subsidies some western nations gave to their own industries. Simba said that he had had to resign to ‘demonstrate his political maturity’ and to save the government from being defeated by a vote of no confidence in Parliament. The enquiry had followed a motion tabled by Kwela MP Chrisant Mzindakaya in the National Assembly attacking Simba for ‘indiscriminately’ issuing sugar import licences’. Mzindakaya was the MP who in 1996 had raised another alleged scandal which saw the resignation of the then Finance Minister Prof. Simon Mbilinyi. The Commission recommended repeal of Government Notice Number 301 of 2000 which had given the Minister for Industry and Commerce wide powers to register any person to import sugar. Simba stepped down a day before Parliament began a debate on the issue of sugar import licenses. He was reported to have authorised 44 companies, instead of only 10 gazetted last August to import sugar. The enquiry concluded that the import licenses were issued in an environment surrounded with circumstantial evidence of graft.

On November 23 President Mkapa surprised many when he appointed former Minister of Natural Resources, Tourism and the Environment Dr Juma Ngasongwa to replace Simba in this key cabinet post. Ngasongwas had himself resigned in December 1966 after he had been mentioned in Judge Joseph Warioba’s Corruption Commission which had probed a scandal involving the allocation of hunting blocks. Ngasongwa was subsequently reprieved.

Dr Ali Mohamed Shein

Following the sudden death on of Vice-president Dr Omar Ali Juma (see Obituaries) president Mkapa appointed on July 12 Dr Ali Mohamed Shein (53) to take his place. According to the Guardian, President Mkapa’s nomination came as a surprise to most Tanzanians including journalists who had predicted that former OAU Secretary General, Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, and Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and former High Commissioner irl London Dr Abdulkadir Shareef would be the front runners. The Guardian article went on: ‘However, all those who had made predictions were correct on two things. First, that no woman politician stood a chance of taking the vice-presidency and second, whoever was to be appointed would come from Pemba.

Though Dr Shein is relatively unknown in Tanzanian politics, he has a long curriculum vitae with a strong academic background. He was born in Chokocho village, Pemba, in 1948 and attended Lumumba College in Zanzibar before proceeding to Voronezh State University in the Soviet Union where he obtained his A Level Certificate in 1970. He got his first degree at the Odessa State University in the Soviet Union in 1975 and later his Msc Degree in Medical Biochemistry and his Ph.D in Clinical Biochemistry and Metabolic Medicine from Newcastle University in Britain.

His political career goes back to 1968 when he was the Publicity Secretary of the Afro-Shirazi Youth wing at Lumumba College and General Secretary of the youth wing for all secondary schools in Zanzibar. Before his appointment as Minister in the Zanzibar President’s office, he was Minister for Health in the government lcd by Dr Salmin Amour. Reacting to the nomination of Dr Shein, many MP’s from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) hailed President Mkapa for injecting young blood into the government But opposition MPs expressed fears that because Or Shein is young he might find it difficult to ‘manage the old guards’ in the CCM government.

The National Chainnan of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) Prof Ibrahim Lipumba said that Dr Shein was an unknown personality in politics. “I have heard of him for the fIrst time today,” he said. Prof Lipumba claimed that Dr Shein was not accepted even by Pemba residents. He was the representative of Mkanyageni in Pemba, a constituency whose general election results last year were controversial. But the leadership ofthe opposition CHADEMA party praised President Mkapa for his wise choice.

The political situation in mainland Tanzania has been relatively calm during recent months but as the Swahili paper Rai indicated in June there is likely to be a big fight within the ruling CCM party next year when a new party leaders will be elected and when these leaders begin to jockey for the position of presidential candidate at the end of President Mkapa’s second five-year term in office in 2005.

Five leaders of the formerly influential opposition NCCR­Mageuzi party have defected to CCM in recent months of whom one, Dr Masumbuko Lamwai is now a nominated CCM MP (Special seats). The late President Nyerere’s eldest son, Andrew Burito was reported in Majira as having joined CUF ‘because of its economic policies’. Another son, Makongoro defected last year from the NCCR party to CCM and Mwalimu’s daughter, Rose Nyerere, is a nominated MP and a member of the CCM National Executive Committee.

The newly appointed Registrar Political Parties, John Tendwa has been making an impression by calling on the 12 opposition parties to unite saying that a strong opposition would not only strengthen democracy but also ease his burden. He made the statement in a visit to the main opposition CUF headquarters ­ the first visit it of its kind to any of the opposition parties. He said that, although some political parties had qualified for deregistration, he wouldn’t deregister them. “Politics needs some tolerance” he said.

THE SUGAR CRISIS
The relatively calm political atmosphere was disturbed however as this issue of Tanzanian Affairs went to press when some CCM MP’s began to exert pressure on their own Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Iddi Simba, because of what one described as the illegal issuing of sugar licenses. Details are given under ‘The Economy’ below. Michael Okema, writing in The East African on August 6 tried to explain the political implications of this controversy even though he said that what he was writing ‘might seem far-fetched’. Extracts: ‘Given Tanzania’s weak opposition parties any opposition (to the government) worth its name has been occurring within the CCM. Residues of past differences within the party come out in parliamentary debates. It (the sugar crisis) began with a complaint from Chrisant Mzindakaya CCM MP for Kwela accusing Mr Simba of misleading MP’s about sugar import permits. He submitted a private motion in Parliament seeking the formation of a Select Committee to investigate the matter. “Most of these companies did not deserve these licenses and this has created loopholes for corruption,” said Mzindakaya.

The motion to set up a committee to probe into what was described as ‘the sugar scam’ was supported by MPs of both sides of the House. At the end of July the Minister of State in the President’s Office responsible for good government, Mr Wilson Masilingi, said that the government would have no mercy on any person proved to have received or offered a bribe in connection with the importation of sugar. ‘

Okema went on: ‘This is the same Mzindakaya who in March 1997 raised hell over a tax waiver on cooking oil granted to businessmen – an affair which ended with the resignation of Finance Minister Prof. Simon Mbilinyi …. During 1995 there had been a heated debate over who should succeed the then President Mwinyi. Local papers at the time alleged that Mzindakaya had backed former Prime Minister John Malecela for the position, thus drawing the wrath of Mwalimu Nyerere. When Benjamin Mkapa became the CCM presidential candidate, the people who came to centre stage were not those who had enjoyed the political limelight under President Mwinyi. There was therefore some bitterness, especially as the ‘old guard’ were alleged to have been corrupt. A former Minister of Works Mr Nalaila Kiula is currently facing charges of corruption allegedly committed when he served under President Mwinyi (see below). It was important for the old guard to clear their name. So they have been trying to show that there is as much corruption under Mkapa as there was under Mwinyi.’

Writer Okema’s final words in the article were: ‘They are negatively proving their innocence. Mzindakaya’s dogged pursuit of Mkapa’s Minister over the years is not for nothing’. Reacting to Mzindakaya’s private motion, Attorney General Andrew Chenge said the government accepted the claims made by Mzindakaya in his motion. It also supported the need to investigate the matter but because the issue centred on the ministry’s failure to execute its duties, the motion should be amended to allow the government to carry out the investigation rather than a Select Committee. CCM MP’s accepted Chenge’s suggestion. However, opposition CHADEMA party MP Dr Wilbrod Slaa alleged that, by letting the government carry out the investigation, it would deny Parliament its advisory role. “The saga has been going on since April but the government has been silent. Why should it want to investigate now?” he questioned. He suggested that the minister and his deputy ought to do Parliament justice by resigning.

In his reaction to the motion, Minister Simba said “I am honest. I have not cheated this Parliament and I am not corrupt. The government can go ahead and investigate.” The sugar saga was only one of many conflicts that were bound to happen as the government moved from monopoly trade which did not allow free competition to open market business.

RE-ALLOCATION OF SUBSIDIES
Following the expulsion of 15 CUF MP’s from the National Assembly (TA No 69) the Government has cut the party’s monthly subvention from Shs 21.8 million to Shs 15.5 million the balance being divided amongst the other parties. The new allocations are as follows (Number of votes obtained in the 2000 elections in brackets):
CCM Shs 175 million (4,645,326)
NCCR Shs 489,000 (256,691)
TLP Shs 13.3m (657,965),
CHADEMA Shs1.9 million (298,536),
UDP Shs 1.4 million (315,427).
CUF got 892,075 votes.
Other parties with no seats: 11,731 votes,
TPP 10,206,
TADEA 9,652,
UMD 7,550,
UPDP 4,665)
NUJ 2,507,
NRA 70 -The Guardian.

EALA ELECTION RESULTS
The National Assembly has elected nine legislators – six men and three women (three from Zanzibar and six from the mainland) for the East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA) ­ eight from CCM and Mabere Marando from the opposition NCCR-Mageuzi. He defeated three aspirants from other opposition parties and got 206 largely CCM votes out of 261 total, defeating Bob Makani of CHADEMA who obtained 65 votes, Dr. F Masha of the United Democratic party who got 19 and Peter Mziray of the Tanzania Labour Party who got 15. Cheers and ululations from CCM MP’s greeted Marando’s victory – The Guardian.

In March the prosecution case against former Minister of Public Works Nalaila Kiula and four others faltered in the High Court. Eight prosecution witnesses failed to substantiate the loss of 2.7bn/= alleged to have been occasioned by the accused persons between 1992 and 1995 through contracts for two roads. The first witness, Fariji William, Prevention of Corruption Bureau (PCS) Chief for Dodoma Region, was not able to elaborate on how he investigated the losses. When he was cross­examined by a team of five defence lawyers, he said that further information which was ‘very technical’ would be brought to the court by other prosecution witnesses who were experts in that particular area of investigation.

In further evidence the wife of the former Minster was said to have been given an air ticket by Mitsubishi Motors Corporation in 1994 for a three-week trip to Japan. This was done a year after the company had sold 118 cars to the Ministry, the court was told. The sixth prosecution witness, Laurent Ndalichako, a Prevention of Corruption Bureau (PCB) official, told the Resident Magistrate’s Court that Kiula’s wife joined her husband’s official trip to Japan where he led the Tanzanian Delegation to a Communications Commission meeting. The witness said he had investigated the Minister’s salary particulars and allowances in the Ministry and other ministries where he had worked between 1971 and 1995 so as to compare the amount of money he had received with the value of property he possessed.

Ndalichako also revealed that Kiula and his family had eight bank accounts including two current accounts, a loan account and savings accounts for his four children, with a total amount of Shs 33 million according to five bank statements issued on 30 January 1996.

The 9th prosecution witness told the court on June 29 that the World Bank, which had provided finance for the integrated road project in Tanzania in 1991, had advised the Ministry of Works to exclude KV Construction Ltd from the list of bidders for pre­qualification to build the old Bagamoyo Road and New Bagamoyo Road. Former President Mwinyi had also questioned the credibility of the contractor. In spite of this, one year later, the road had been contracted to the company. The witness revealed that the contractor, apart from occasioning the government financial loss for not building the road, had not paid a Shs 385 million security bond to the National Insurance Corporation.

At this stage the defence asked for a month’s adjournment of the case so as to have enough time to study this testimony and the documents tendered as exhibits -The Guardian.