tanzania’s

missing opposition
Barak Hoffman and Lindsay Robinson

Barak Hoffman is the executive director of the Center for Democracy

and Civil Society at Georgetown University. Lindsay Robinson is a
master’s student at Georgetown University in the Department of Gov-
ernment’s Democracy and Governance program.

Just before the announcement of the results of Tanzania’s 1995 elec-

tions—its first multiparty contest in more than thirty years—the soon-
to-be president-elect, Benjamin Mkapa of the long-ruling Revolutionary
Party of Tanzania (Chama Cha Mapinduzi—CCM), proudly boasted that
the party “didn’t need to cheat because it was quite certain that CCM
was going to win.”1 Such swagger is characteristic of the CCM’s elec-
toral campaigns. In the nearly fifteen years since Tanzania inaugurated
multiparty elections, the CCM has not faced any serious opposition to
its rule.
What explains the chronic weakness of opposition parties in Tanza-
nia? The easy explanation is a combination of uninspiring leadership
and little popular demand for change, a line of reasoning that also
defines the CCM as a relatively benign hegemon acceptable to the
vast majority of Tanzanians. Although this argument is based on a sig-
nificant amount of truth, it overlooks the CCM’s deliberate attempts
to suppress those who contest its near-monopoly of power, including
its willingness to resort to coercion when other methods fail. Such
realities raise serious questions about the ruling party’s benevolent
reputation.
Many of the hurdles that CCM opponents face are self-imposed, but
that explanation alone does not suffice. Instead, the marginal status of
rival parties results in large measure from the CCM’s intentional meth-
ods of silencing them. The CCM employs three strategies to impede its
competitors: 1) regulating political competition, the media, and civil
society; 2) blurring the boundary between the party and state; and 3)
the targeted use of blatantly coercive illegal actions. Before considering

Journal of Democracy Volume 20, Number 4 October 2009

© 2009 National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press
124 Journal of Democracy

these measures in greater detail, however, we must first take a look at

the country’s history and the background to its transition toward democ-
racy.2
The United Republic of Tanzania was formed in 1964 as a union
between two newly independent ex-British colonies, Tanganyika (main-
land Tanzania) and the People’s Republic of Zanzibar (comprising the
islands of Zanzibar and Pemba). The unity agreement granted Zanzibar
a fair degree of autonomy, allowing it to keep its own president and
parliament in addition to its national representation. Julius Nyerere, the
leader of Tanganyika’s liberation movement and its president since in-
dependence in 1962, became president of Tanzania in 1964.
The mainland and Zanzibar possess sharply different demographics.
The mainland of Tanzania has a population of approximately forty mil-
lion, primarily black African with no dominant majority ethnic group,
and it is fairly evenly split between Christians and Muslims. Zanzibar,
by contrast, has a population of about one million, divided mainly be-
tween Arabs and black Africans, and is almost entirely Muslim. While
there are few ethnic tensions on the mainland, there are tensions be-
tween Africans and Arabs on Zanzibar, deriving from the long history
of Arab economic and political dominance over Africans on the islands.
Overall, however, the country has remained peaceful and united despite
its diversity, in part because of Nyerere’s advancement of Swahili as the
national language.
In 1967, guided by Nyerere, Tanzania became a socialist state. Ten
years later, with a new constitution and the formation of the CCM—a
merger of Nyerere’s Tanganyika African National Union and the is-
lands’ Afro-Shirazi Party—it became a de jure one party-state as well.
In the mid-1970s, however, the country’s economy began to atrophy,
and by the middle of the next decade, it had become clear to the CCM
leadership that socialism was not viable. Thus they began to move to-
ward a more market-oriented system.
Although the CCM undertook Tanzania’s economic transition to cap-
italism from a position of weakness, it initiated political changes from a
posture of strength. The party began to move the country toward democ-
racy in the early 1990s, largely due to the influence of former president
Nyerere, who had voluntarily left office in 1985. When Nyerere com-
menced discussions on a political transition, neither an organized oppo-
sition to the CCM nor a demand for a multiparty democracy existed. On
the contrary, in a 1992 public-opinion survey 77 percent of respondents
claimed that they preferred the country to remain a one-party state with
the CCM in control.3
Nyerere advocated a democratic transition in Tanzania not because
of internal opposition but because external donors, who provided more
than 30 percent of the country’s GDP in aid from 1985 to 1993, were
pressuring the government to open its political system. In addition, Ny-
Barak Hoffman and Lindsay Robinson 125

erere and his supporters believed that the growing number of democratic
transitions elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa would inevitably catalyze
pressures for similar changes in Tanzania. CCM leaders who supported
moving to a multiparty system understood that if they initiated changes
before calls for them grew strong, they would be able to shape the new
democratic rules in their favor. In this the party has largely succeeded,
and Tanzania today is not a democracy, but a one-party hegemonic re-
gime under CCM rule.
Tanzania’s transition toward democracy corresponds to what Gerardo
Munck and Carol Leff term “transition from above” and what Samuel
Huntington calls “transplacement.”4 These terms refer to a ruling power
that initiates a transition in the context of a weak opposition so that the
ruling power can establish rules favorable to its retention of political
control. The CCM’s actions correlate closely with Munck and Leff’s
argument that the mode of transition and the balance of power among
agents of change strongly affect posttransition political institutions. The
CCM took full advantage of being the sole agent of change, putting in
place a set of policies that significantly impedes the development of an
effective political opposition.

Lack of Demand for Democracy

One of the simplest explanations for the weakness of opposition parties
in Tanzania is lack of demand for them, and a reading of selected survey
data can support this contention. According to the 2008 Afrobarometer
survey, 56 percent of respondents in Tanzania claimed to trust opposition
parties either not at all or only a little bit, while 51 percent claimed to trust
the CCM a lot. Along the same lines, of the 81 percent of respondents
who said that they felt close to a political party, 90 percent responded
that the party they felt close to was the CCM.5 Similarly, 79 percent re-
sponded that if an election were held tomorrow, they would vote for the
CCM. In addition, Tanzanians are overwhelmingly pleased with the way
in which democracy is functioning under CCM rule. Seventy-four percent
of respondents considered Tanzania to be a full democracy or nearly so,
far above the mean of 59 percent in the nineteen countries included in the
2008 Afrobarometer survey. Moreover, 71 percent claimed to be satisfied
or fairly satisfied with democracy, the third-highest level of satisfaction
(behind Botswana and Ghana) and 22 percentage points above the mean
for all the countries surveyed. Given these results, one might surmise that
Tanzanians either do not desire multiparty competition or do not under-
stand the concept of democracy.
This reading of the data, however, presents a skewed picture of Tanza-
nians’ beliefs and knowledge about democracy. First, demand for multi-
party democracy is strong. In the 2008 Afrobarometer survey, 72 percent
of Tanzanian respondents preferred democracy to any other form of gov-
126 Journal of Democracy

ernment, and 63 percent rejected one-party rule. In addition, 61 percent

did not believe that party competition is likely to lead to conflict.
Moreover, Tanzanians largely understand the concept of democracy.
The Afrobarometer survey described three hypothetical countries and
asked respondents to what extent each was a democracy. Eighty percent
of respondents claimed that a country with many political parties and free
elections is a full democracy or a democ-
racy with minor problems. By contrast,
Opposition parties in 76 percent claimed that a country which
Tanzania need little has one dominant political party and a
assistance in marginal- feeble opposition, and where people are
izing themselves: They afraid to express their political opinions,
is not a democracy or is at best a democ-
fight each other con-
racy with major problems. Finally, only
stantly and consistently
20 percent responded that a country that
fail to work together, has one major political party and many
and their leaders behave small ones, and where people are free to
in ways that do not express their opinions (the situation that
inspire confidence. most resembles Tanzania today), is a full
democracy. Thus it is difficult to accept
the argument that Tanzanians do not de-
sire multiple political parties or understand the concept of democracy.
The aforementioned data are difficult to interpret. While the vast
majority of Tanzanians prefer multiparty democracy to any alternative
form of government, they express no strong desire to elect any party
other than the CCM. Although reconciling these divergent preferences
is challenging, they are understandable given the CCM’s conduct com-
pared to that of opposition parties, especially during elections.
CCM campaigns are highly sophisticated, and the party spends lav-
ishly on them. In the 2005 election, now-president Jakaya Kikwete at-
tended approximately nine-hundred rallies and spoke to an estimated
70,000 people each day. Most rallies were highly orchestrated affairs,
combining political speeches with entertainment and widespread distri-
bution of CCM paraphernalia, such as t-shirts, hats, and posters. More-
over, in a recent by-election for the parliamentary seat from Busanda
in Mwanza Region, the CCM dispatched twenty top leaders to election
rallies, including regional MPs and three ministers, and raised approxi-
mately US$1.5 million (about $12 per voter) for the campaign. Because
such organizational capacity and resources greatly exceed those of any
other party, it is not surprising that voters continue to choose the CCM
over the alternatives. In addition, while the CCM’s campaigns highlight
the party’s achievements, those mounted by opposition parties often ad-
vertise their weaknesses.
Opposition parties in Tanzania need little assistance in marginaliz-
ing themselves: They fight each other constantly and consistently fail
Barak Hoffman and Lindsay Robinson 127

to work together, and their leaders behave in ways that do not inspire
confidence, thereby discouraging all but their most loyal adherents. The
Civic United Front (CUF) is the only opposition party that consistently
wins a respectable level of votes in parliamentary elections, largely due
to its strength in Zanzibar, its home base.6 CUF supporters, however,
have attacked CCM members and destroyed their property, primarily in
Zanzibar, thus gaining a reputation for violence that has harmed CUF
efforts at widening its narrow regional appeal. During campaigns, CUF
partisans frequently tussle with CCM supporters, and they are the most
likely perpetrators of a number of assaults against the CCM and state
property—stoning CCM cars, attacking campaign meetings, vandalizing
CCM branch offices, and bombing government buildings. The CUF also
acquired a reputation for ineptitude after failing to negotiate a power-
sharing agreement with the CCM in Zanzibar following the 2000 elec-
tion (which many, including international observers, suspect that the
ruling party had rigged).
The most promising opposition figure outside the CUF has been
Augustine Mrema, formerly of the National Convention for Constitu-
tion and Reform–Mageuzi (NCCR-Mageuzi) and now the leader of the
Tanzania Labor Party (TLP). Mrema’s actions, however, make it dif-
ficult for voters to support him, as he has managed to wreck both op-
position parties to which he has belonged. Prior to joining opposition
forces, Mrema had held three ministerial posts, including deputy prime
minister, under various CCM governments and acquired a reputation
for integrity and fighting corruption. After being dismissed as minister
of labor and youth development in early 1995, however, Mrema left
the ruling party to become the NCCR-Mageuzi’s presidential candi-
date.
At the time, Mrema was the great hope of anti-CCM forces, and the
ruling party considered him a real threat. Despite CCM harassment dur-
ing the campaign, Mrema still managed to win 28 percent of the vote.
Yet after the election, he accused a number of NCCR-Mageuzi leaders
of being CCM infiltrators, causing a major rift in the party. In 1999,
Mrema quit NCCR-Mageuzi, stealing its property on his way out, and
then joined the TLP, where his embarrassing and reckless behavior es-
calated. Besides fragmenting the TLP’s leadership, he used members’
dues to purchase a home and, while campaigning for the 2005 election,
helped himself to $98,000 from the party’s coffers for ethically dubious
expenditures—$83,000 to buy alcohol for voters and $15,000 to hire a
monkey to attract people to his rallies. Not surprisingly, Mrema’s popu-
larity imploded. In the 2005 election, he received less than one percent
of the vote.
Finally, the opposition has consistently failed to work together. The
planned unity ticket between NCCR and CUF in 1995 collapsed be-
cause they were unable to agree on a running mate for Mrema. In 2000,
128 Journal of Democracy

both the CUF and the Party for Democracy and Progress (Chama cha
Demokrasia na Maendeleo—known as Chadema) backed the CUF’s
Ibrahim Lipumba as their presidential candidate, but other opposition
parties did not. And a coalition was never seriously considered in 2005,
because CUF leaders suspected that their counterparts in the smaller op-
position parties were CCM plants and refused to collaborate with them.

Suppressing the Opposition

Although the CCM’s opponents are weak and the demand for their
point of view is low, these factors alone do not account for the party’s
continued dominance in the multiparty era. In fact, opposition parties
have been more effective than many realize, especially considering the
methods—both legal and illegal—that the CCM employs to ensure that
those who oppose it do not achieve meaningful representation. Thus the
opposition parties’ electoral performance tells only part of the story.
The ruling party has developed sophisticated legal mechanisms to
ensure its continued control through the regulation of political competi-
tion, civil society, and the media. Groups seeking to oppose the CCM
routinely confront policies that regulate political competition in ways
that make them appear even weaker than they are. These include biases
in the electoral formula that allot the CCM more than its proportional
share of seats in parliament, an electoral commission that lacks indepen-
dence, campaign-finance rules that overwhelmingly favor the CCM, and
onerous party-registration procedures.
The most critical institutional design favoring the CCM is that of the
electoral system, which has guaranteed an overwhelming CCM majority
in parliament even though the party’s share of the vote has not always
been equally large. Tanzania uses a single-member, first-past-the-post
(plurality) electoral system for presidential, parliamentary, and local
elections—the same electoral system utilized prior to Tanzania’s return
to multiparty competition. The plurality system means that parties fail-
ing to receive a majority of votes can still win office.
Plurality voting has permitted the CCM to win a share of parlia-
mentary seats exceeding its share of the popular vote by 20 percent in
each of the three parliamentary elections since the country’s transition
toward democracy: In 1995, the CCM received 59 percent of the vote
and 80 percent of the seats; in 2000, it received 65 percent and 87
percent, respectively; and in 2005, 70 percent and 90 percent.7 As a
result, the CCM has kept the two-thirds majority needed to pass con-
stitutional amendments in the National Assembly, even though its vote
share reached that level only once, in 2005.8 The margins have been
similar in local elections.
The CCM has also used the design of the ballots to discourage voters
from supporting opposition parties. In the 1995 and 2005 national elec-
Barak Hoffman and Lindsay Robinson 129

tions, ballots provided a space for voters’ registration numbers or had

serial numbers printed on them that connected the ballot to the voter’s
identity. Despite opposition protest, the National Electoral Commission
(NEC) refused to change the ballot designs, and the NEC director de-
fended the system by saying that it was necessary to “assist when que-
ries arise through petitions after the polls and results are announced.”9
The NEC also allowed the CCM to use the Tanzanian national emblem
as its ballot picture in 2005, a clear suggestion that a vote for the party
was a vote for the country, while a vote for the opposition was not. It
is not surprising that the NEC allows ballots compromising secrecy and
portraying the opposition as anti-Tanzanian. While officially the com-
mission is independent, de facto it is not. The president has the sole au-
thority to appoint and remove all commissioners, and the commission’s
funding is dependent on the CCM-dominated parliament.
Campaign finance is another major built-in hurdle for the opposi-
tion. Campaigning in Tanzania is expensive and difficult. Much of the
country’s population lives in rural areas. Villages typically lie miles
apart on unpaved roads, making it difficult and expensive to visit vot-
ers. In the 1995 election, the government granted subsidies to all can-
didates for presidential or parliamentary office (approximately $10,000
and $1,000, respectively, per candidate), because it did not fear any
real threat, wished to appear supportive of democratic competition, and
wanted to divide its opponents’ vote share by attracting more candi-
dates. But when the opposition captured more of the popular vote that
year than the CCM expected—roughly 40 percent in the parliamentary
and presidential races—parliament passed a new subsidy law strongly
favoring the CCM.
The new statute disburses half the subsidy in proportion to a party’s
popular vote share in the previous election and the other half according
to how many seats a party holds in parliament and local governments.10
Since the distribution of seats in parliament and in local councils is
skewed heavily toward the CCM, the formula benefits the party dis-
proportionately even after accounting for the CCM’s massive margins
of victory. Take, for example, the 2005 election subsidies: The CCM
received more than seven times the amount of the next largest party,
the CUF, even though the CCM received only five times as many votes.
Moreover, this money often finds its way directly into the hands of the
electorate, as the law permits candidates to distribute gifts, including
money, to voters.11
Opposition parties must also overcome burdensome party-registration
procedures. In addition to fulfilling certain ideological conditions, such
as secularity and acknowledgment of the union, parties must produce
proof of a membership that includes at least two-hundred people from
ten or more of the country’s 26 regions; two of these regions must be in
Zanzibar. Thus parties that have a limited support base geographically,
130 Journal of Democracy

but in their own localities are stronger than the CCM, are not allowed to
compete. This policy also makes it costly to form a new party because
registration requires proof of a nationwide presence. In addition, the
statute prohibits existing parties from forming official coalitions with-
out registering as a new party.

Regulating Civil Society and the Media

The CCM actively thwarts not only aspiring opposition parties and
politicians, but also civil society and the media. The Non-Governmental
Organizations Act of 2002 is major roadblock that keeps civil society
from playing an active role in politics. This statute requires that NGOs
must serve “the public interest,” defined as “all forms of activities aimed
at providing for and improving the standard of living or eradication of
poverty of a given group of people or the public at large.”12 Since the
law defines the public interest in terms of economic development, the
government can and has prohibited NGOs from undertaking political
activities, thereby keeping groups unable to register as political parties
from forming NGOs as an alternative way to address political concerns.
The law also prevents NGOs whose interests might be aligned with op-
position parties from campaigning on their behalf.
The NGO legislation permits the government to regulate all aspects of
civil society, not just restrictions on political activities. Once an NGO has
registered, the government monitors it via a required annual report. If at
any time the organization oversteps its mission as outlined in its state-
approved constitution, the government has the authority to suspend the
group.13 Choosing not to register as an NGO, however, is risky. Any mem-
ber of a group that attempts to evade government regulation by not reg-
istering faces criminal charges and hefty fines (sometimes up to $400), a
year in prison, or both, plus a ban on joining another NGO for five years.14
The CCM has wielded the NGO law against organizations that it perceives
to be a threat. For example, when HakiElimu (Education for All) broadcast
a series of advertisements in 2005 criticizing the government for failing to
improve primary education as it had promised, the government prohibited
the NGO from undertaking studies or publishing information on the educa-
tion sector, and enforced the ban for eighteen months.
The ruling party has also imposed a legal framework inimical to free-
dom of the press. In 1993—two years before the country’s return to mul-
tiparty elections—the CCM passed a broadcasting law that established
state-owned radio and television, prohibited stations without a state-
issued license from operating, and allowed the government to regulate
media content.15 Since most Tanzanians get their news by radio, the law
allowed the CCM effectively to monopolize the dissemination of in-
formation to the vast majority of the electorate. As a result, the CCM
receives far more media exposure than opposition parties. During the
Barak Hoffman and Lindsay Robinson 131

2005 election cycle, it received almost thirty hours of radio coverage—

as much as the next thirteen largest parties combined and more than
three times the coverage of the CUF, the largest opposition party.
Legislation also deters journalists from criticizing the ruling party or
the government, and enables the government to keep the media from ex-
posing information that it would rather keep under wraps. The president
has “absolute discretion” to prohibit the broadcasting or publishing of
information that is not in “the public interest or in the interest of peace
and good order.”16 In addition, sedition and libel clauses are often vague
and give the judiciary wide discretion over their interpretation. For
example, defamation need not be “directly or completely expressed.”
Rather, speech must stay within the bounds of what is “reasonably suf-
ficient” to make a point, and judges have the authority to determine
what constitutes gratuitous criticism.17 Consequently, in 2004 there were
more than eighty libel suits pending in high courts,18 and in 2008 the
weekly Mwanahalisi was suspended for three months for publishing a
story alleging a rift in the CCM leadership.
The press’s fight against these regulations has succeeded in persuading
the ruling party to relax their enforcement, but not to change them. This
limited achievement is due in part to the rapid expansion of the media:
Between 1992 and 2006, the number of newspapers with more-than-local
readerships increased from 7 to 42; radio stations from 1 to 47; and tele-
vision stations from 0 to 15. These media outlets have joined together to
form a lobby powerful enough to impose a four-month-long blackout on
coverage of the minister of information, culture, and sport after he sus-
pended Mwanahalisi without what the media considered to be just cause.
The media also played an active role in exposing corruption scandals that
led to the resignation of former prime minister Edward Lowassa and the
firing of former Bank of Tanzania governor Daudi Ballali.
During Tanzania’s transition to a de jure multiparty system, the CCM
made no moves to separate the party from the state. Rather, its leadership
deliberately created a set of political institutions that blurred the distinc-
tion between the two in order to keep its position and power secure.
This strategy is twofold: First, the CCM’s rigid organizational structure
ensures members’ compliance with the prerogatives of the party leader-
ship. Second, the CCM’s control over civil servants allows the party to
use government institutions to inhibit the opposition.
In most Tanzanian cities and towns, CCM offices are typically open,
party officials are working hard, and their knowledge of the party’s poli-
cies is strong. The CCM leadership set in motion this machine-like ef-
ficiency by aligning its own goals (winning elections) with incentives
(advancement through the party) for the party’s branch-level workers.
CCM branch-office staffers are responsible for bringing citizens to party
rallies and for securing their votes. Senior CCM officials can easily ver-
ify how effectively the branch worker has carried out these tasks—the
132 Journal of Democracy

former by turnout, the latter by election results. Those who perform well
advance in the party hierarchy. In other words, ambitious junior party
officials have every incentive to give the CCM leadership what it wants.
In addition, since any elected official who votes against the party can be
expelled, the party structure allows CCM leaders the freedom to adopt
whatever policies they desire.
As a result of this impressive structure, the CCM has the capacity to
implement far-reaching social changes without losing political control.
Socialism (ujamaa) may have led to disastrous economic consequences,
but creating a one-party state, nationalizing the economy, and imple-
menting collective farming nonetheless required a highly organized po-
litical structure. This institutional setup has proven extremely useful and
resilient, and has allowed the party to change policies radically when
necessary without losing political control. For example, when in the late
1980s it became clear that socialism was causing an economic catastro-
phe, the party was able to restructure the economy along capitalist lines
without suffering any loss of political authority.
The CCM’s structure is as useful for suppressing opposition as it is
for implementing policy. This is most evident at the regional and district
(local) levels. The highest regional and district authorities—the regional
commissioner (RC) and the district commissioner (DC)—are appointed
directly by the president rather than elected.19 At the same time, the
CCM constitution explicitly states that the RCs and DCs are the party’s
representatives in the region and the district, thus obscuring where the
party ends and the state begins.20
RCs and DCs use their power—especially control over the police—to
promote CCM activities and interfere with those of the opposition. For
example, holding any large gathering, demonstration, or rally requires
police permission—due to public safety concerns, according to the gov-
ernment. Moreover, permit applications require that the applicant list
every topic on the agenda, and if an allowed rally strays from that pro-
gram, the police can break up the meeting.
The police frequently reject permit applications for rallies where
popular opposition leaders will be speaking—as happened in the run-
up to the 2000 elections. In late 1999, Mrema, running for the TLP,
was repeatedly refused permission to hold rallies in his home region of
Kilimanjaro. The following year, CUF’s Ibrahim Lipumba was barred
from speaking in the Kagera and Kigoma regions. By hiding behind the
defense of public safety, the state can claim that its decisions are for the
common good rather than for narrow partisan purposes. But the pattern
of bans belies these claims: Although opposition candidates consistently
run afoul of complex campaign procedures and laws, CCM candidates
seem to avoid these problems entirely.
RCs and DCs have final approval over not just the police, but all gov-
ernment employees in their jurisdiction. Civil servants are accountable
Barak Hoffman and Lindsay Robinson 133

to the district executive director (DED), who reports to the DC. DEDs
have employed numerous tactics to ensure that civil servants help the
CCM to maintain political control, including:

• Allowing the CCM to use public facilities (stadiums, schools) for

campaigning, but denying such use to opposition parties;
• Having tax collectors target opposition supporters as well as busi-
ness owners who fail to support or vote for the CCM;
• Threatening to revoke the licenses of business owners who do not
support the CCM;
• Ordering police to shut down businesses during the CCM rallies to
boost attendance;
• Telling public-school teachers to encourage their students to at-
tend the CCM rallies and to discourage them from going to opposition
gatherings;
• Telling citizens that basic services are contingent on a ruling-party
victory in their area;
• Threatening civil servants with firing if they fail to mobilize the
electorate for the CCM;
• Placing civil servants on fundraising committees for CCM candi-
dates.

Typically, these legal means of controlling political competition,

containing civil society and the media, and blurring the lines between
party and state are effective at suppressing opposition movements qui-
etly, and hence the party has a reputation for benign hegemony. When
these tools fail to eliminate a particular threat, however, the CCM has
employed clearly coercive and illegal measures to win elections.

Skirting the Law

As the ruling party, the CCM can for the most part act with impunity.
Because it controls the police and security services, it can even operate
outside the bounds of the law, jailing or beating opposition supporters at
will. And when campaign funding runs dry, the governing party can dip
into state coffers, stealing public monies so that it can keep campaigning.
The police have jailed opposition-party leaders and members, mem-
bers of NGOs, and journalists under numerous pretexts in order to pre-
vent an unwanted activity, in retaliation for something, or to intimidate
other activists. The CCM will go to great lengths when it perceives a
political threat. For example, during the 1995 presidential campaign,
the minister of home affairs wrote to the inspector-general of police,
requesting him to find some reason to arrest Mrema, the leading opposi-
tion figure at the time, and to ban his party’s rallies. When the private
weekly Shaba printed the letter making this demand, its editor and di-
134 Journal of Democracy

rector were arrested. The state did not deny the letter’s veracity; instead,
it claimed that the pair had been detained for revealing official secrets.
The CCM plot to end Mrema’s campaign was not an isolated occur-
rence. Before each election, opposition parties find that they are banned
from holding campaign events, and their presidential candidates spend
an inordinate amount of time in jail. Mrema was arrested on sedition
charges twice before the 2000 election and once before the 2005 elec-
tion. CUF’s Lipumba was detained without charge twice in the run-up
to the 2005 election. Christopher Mtikila, the outspoken leader of the
unregistered Democratic Party, has been arrested at least eight times
over the years. Yet only one conviction resulted from all these arrests—
Mtikila’s for sedition in 1999—and most cases never went to trial. The
police have never arrested a CCM presidential candidate.
The CCM has also frequently resorted to violence against its opponents
and critics. During the 2005 campaign, Lipumba received death threats
via cell-phone text messages and was beaten and robbed in Bukoba. In
2004, a popular opposition MP representing the Moshi Rural constitu-
ency, who had already been arrested five times while campaigning for a
by-election, was run off the road, beaten, and robbed the night before the
poll. In January 2008, shortly after Mwanahalisi published a list of cor-
rupt officials, two of the paper’s editors were disfigured when an assailant
threw acid in their faces. In October of that same year, police employed
heavy-handed tactics against Chadema in a by-election for the Tarime
District’s parliamentary seat. The deceased Chadema MP had been popu-
lar in the area, thus the CCM leadership saw his death as an opportunity
at last to capture the seat. Prior to the election, police broke up a Chadema
rally using tear gas and rubber bullets and arrested 29 people, including
Chadema’s parliamentary candidate. In response to the attack, the head
of police special operations said, “In a war anything can happen,” and ac-
cused the Chadema supporters of attacking police.21
The highest levels of violence that the CCM has countenanced have
occurred in Zanzibar. The October 2000 election, in particular, exposed
the willingness of the island’s CCM faction to use force to retain con-
trol. While harassment, violence, and intimidation occurred before the
election, the greatest brutality came afterward—once voters realized
that the CCM had rigged the poll. The blatant theft of the election led
CUF members to demonstrate. In retaliation, police fired on a group of
three-hundred or so CUF protestors, and there ensued a massive wave of
repression featuring the arbitrary arrest, torture, and murder of suspected
CUF supporters. The violence continued to escalate until January 2001,
when police killed at least 35 CUF supporters and wounded hundreds at
a party demonstration. It is important to recall, however, that because of
the semiautonomy of the CCM branch in Zanzibar, we cannot directly
attribute its actions there to those of the overall party.
Subjecting the opposition to physical violence and incarceration is
Barak Hoffman and Lindsay Robinson 135

not the only unequivocally illegal measure that the CCM uses to stay
in power. Party members have also conspired to steal state resources to
finance electoral campaigns. Most egregious was the 2005 theft of $111
million from the Bank of Tanzania. Those under investigation for the
crime claim that high-ranking CCM officials ordered them to do it, and
a Ugandan newspaper traced at least $20 million of this money to CCM
campaign expenditures in the competitive 2005 parliamentary races in
Songea Urban and Kigoma Urban constituencies.
A decade and a half after Tanzania’s transition to a multiparty sys-
tem, a viable opposition still does not exist, nor is there evidence to
suggest that one will materialize in the near future. On the contrary, the
opposition’s vote share has declined with each election, as has their rep-
resentation in parliament. Not surprisingly, public opinion about Tanza-
nian politics mirrors this pattern. While we can attribute the opposition
parties’ failure to win over the public in part to their own insalubrious
behavior, that alone does not explain why opposition parties remain fee-
ble in Tanzania. The ruling party’s sophisticated and ruthless techniques
have largely kept the opposition ineffective and unpopular. The CCM
has overwhelmingly succeeded in utilizing its vast spheres of control to
ensure its continued dominance. To repress opposition quietly, the CCM
manipulates the rules that govern political competition, civil society,
and the media, and consciously obscures the division between itself and
the state. If those methods fail, the party takes other actions, often coer-
cive and illegal, to guarantee that it will prevail at the polls.
Although it would be inaccurate to say that the CCM silences all op-
ponents—opposition parties do win seats in parliament, and the CUF is
a powerful political force in Zanzibar—there are nonetheless troubling
signs of political suppression. The international community has long
known that elections in Zanzibar have never been free and fair, but the
situation on the mainland also is far from perfect. The mainland CCM has
mobilized, sometimes violently, to squelch political threats. Beneath the
CCM’s image as a benign hegemon lies a merciless force. Relentless in its
quest to extend its reign, the CCM employs a deliberate strategy to repress
opposition. Thus, while the ruling party currently allows for generally
free and fair balloting, it is an open question how the party will react if a
nationally competitive opposition party should manage to emerge.

NOTES
1. “Future Tanzanian President Rejects Election Fraud Claims,” Agence France Presse,
20 November 1995.

2. Although the term “transition toward democracy” is awkward, it better character-

izes recent political changes in Tanzania than “transition to democracy,” as the country
still is not one.

3. Amon Chaligha et al., “Uncritical Citizens or Patient Trustees? Tanzanians’ Views

136 Journal of Democracy

of Political and Economic Reform,” Afrobarometer Working Paper 18, March 2002; avail-
able at www.afrobarometer.org/papers/AfropaperNo18.pdf.

4. Gerardo Munck and Carol Skalnik Leff, “Modes of Transition and Democratization:
South America and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics
29 (April 1997): 343–62; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the
Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

5. Excluding those whose responses were coded as “not applicable.”

6. The CUF consistently receives approximately 40 percent of the popular vote in Zan-
zibar and controls about 40 percent of the seats in the Zanzibar House of Representatives.
The party’s base of support is the islands’ non-African population.

7. Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, “Tanzania: Election Archive”; available at

www.eisa.org.za/WEP/tanelectarchive.htm.

8. One can argue that since single-member districts are the systems most likely to cre-
ate two parties, the electoral system will not benefit the CCM in the long run, as it will
hasten the creation of a national opposition. While this is certainly a possibility, so far it
has magnified CCM’s victories, not caused the opposition to coalesce.

9. “Opposition Party Threatens to Pull Out of Election Over Defective Ballot Papers,”
Radio Tanzania, via BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 16 October 1995; “Tanzanian
Poll Body Defends Ballot Paper Design,” Guardian (Dar es Salaam), 15 October 2005.

10. If a candidate runs unopposed, he or she is deemed to have won 51 percent of the
vote for purposes of subsidy allocation; see Government of Tanzania, Act No. 11 (1996)
to Amend Political Parties Act No. 5 (1992), secs. 16, 17, and 18.

11. Benson Bana, “A Framework Paper for Studying Political Parties on Issues Related
to Party Conduct and Management,” Research and Education for Democracy in Tanzania
Working Paper, 2007. Recently, the High Court judged the practice to be illegal, although
it is not yet clear whether it will be allowed in the 2010 election.

12. Government of Tanzania, Non-Governmental Organizations Act, 2002, part I, sec. 2.

13. Global Integrity, “2006 Country Report: Tanzania”; available at www.globalinteg-

rity.org/reports/2006/pdfs/tanzania.pdf.

14. Non-Governmental Organizations Act, 2002, part IV, section 35.

15. Government of Tanzania, Broadcasting Services Act, 1993.

16. Government of Tanzania, Newspapers Act, 1976, sec. 27 (2).

17. Newspapers Act, 1976, sec. 40 (2) and 43.

18. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Tan-
zania: 2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices,” 28 February 2005; available at
www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41630.htm; we were unable to find more recent data.

19. Government of Tanzania, Regional Administration Act, 1997, part II, sec. 5 (2).

20. CCM Constitution, secs. 5 and 6.

21. “Opposition Party and Police Spar in By-Election Campaign,” Citizen (Dar es
Salaam), 8 October 2008.