RUCCI
JF-Expert Member
- Oct 6, 2011
- 1,701
- 1,714
It is the period in which a man who has turned a thorn in the flesh of the prevailing Isles’ political status quo, Maalim Seif Sharrif Hamad emerged to the heights of politics and the period in which a man on the back burner of the Isles’ politics, former President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, came to power following the downfall of Aboud Jumbe Mwinyi.
Maalim Seif motivated Mwinyi’s endorsement, Jumbe’s fall and the decline of the Revolutionary Council’s powers.
The past three decades marked the beginning of the new epoch in both Isles’ and Mainland Tanzania’s politics when then Zanzibar President Jumbe, at the behest of Union President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, invited Zanzibaris to air their views about “how to strengthen the Union (government).”
But to Nyerere’s dismay, the campaign that was expected to yield the results in favour of his dream to assimilate Zanzibar into the Union for good, provoked anti-union and anti-Nyerere sentiments for the conspiracy against Jumbe, who was at the ulterior behest of the Revolutionary Council.
Nyerere had in vain expected red-carpet treatment reminiscent of the TANU and Afro-Shirazy Party merger into CCM in 1977.
It was a situation so intolerable to Nyerere that he branded it ‘pollution of the Zanzibar political climate.” He had to clear the air at any cost, lest he lost the archipelago he had more than two decades earlier wished he could tow farther into the Indian Ocean, had he not won the grip over it.
Maalim Seif, a former Zanzibar Education minister, had at the time been promoted as head of the party’s economic planning unit of the National Executive Committee (NEC), after losing his job in the Isles following grudges with Jumbe and the Revolutionary Council.
At the Father of the Nation’s disposal, Maalim was there to take advantage of the situation he had helped to create.
With Nyerere overlooking Maalim as a politically innocent small boy owing to his young age and apparent inexperience, he was too blind-folded to suspect anything ‘sinister’ in the personality of the small boy, who was harbouring anti-Nyerere sentiments and his version of the union between the two states.
But, unlike the conservative members of the Revolutionary Council, infamously known as the group of 14 who rebelled against the union on April 26, 1964 between the Republic of Tanganyika and the People’s Republic of Zanzibar, Maalim wanted Zanzibar free from the clutches of both Nyerere and the power-mongering group.
Therefore, the duo, Nyerere and the emerging politician, Maalim, started to use each other in retaining Zanzibar, which was on the verge of breaking away.
Earlier, when Jumbe sacked Maalim from his government, for the latter to be promoted by Nyerere in the party, Maalim had already masterminded plans to topple Jumbe through impeachment.
Among others, he had formed a wide clandestine network stretching from Zanzibar government’s inner circle that would gather compromising materials against Jumbe, to organized groups in Unguja, Pemba and Tanga that would carry specially classified materials to Maalim, who would present them to Nyerere for scrutiny.
Smelling the fishy climate, Jumbe resorted to a guess game in netting his enemies. A wave of arrests and detentions without trial of anyone suspected of ‘conspiring against the government’ started in August 1983 in which scores of Zanzibaris, mostly the youth, were jailed at the Central Prison, not only without trial, but with Jumbe’s vow “not to release them as long as I am alive.” Most of them belonged to Maalim’s network in one way or another, some without their knowledge.
But Maalim’s plot finally succeeded, culminating in Jumbe being relieved of all his government and party posts on January 30, 1984, amid the polluted political climate in the Isles, with the public overwhelmed by anti-union and anti-Nyerere political mood.
The fate of Zanzibar was in limbo, the least expected scenario by the Union guru who was so concerned that the leadership vacuum might be filled in with the filth of the very group that had steered up the pollution.
He was left with no choice, but to fill in the vacant presidential post with someone of his own, come what may. With anti-union climate at its peak in the Isles, his choice would be definitely dismissed as a marionette, adding storm to the rough seas.
But the Father of the Nation had only one Zanzibari at his closest disposal – Maalim Seif, who declined the offer, citing the prevalence of his former enemies who were still dictating the situation in Zanzibar. Another of Mwalimu’s good boys was Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, then the country’s foreign minister. But Dr Salim had stronger reasons to decline the offer than Maalim, given his political history in relation to Zanzibar.
He was chairman of Abdurahman Mohamed Babu’s Umma Party youth wing before the Zanzibar Revolution, an outlawed party whose members were believed to be behind the assassination of President Abeid Amaan Karume on April 7, 1972. Karume was chairman of the Revolutionary Council whose members were now battling Nyerere. So, Dr Salim would make the wrong choice.
It is at this stage that Nyerere summoned the duo, Maalim and Dr Salim, ordering them look for the right candidate for the Zanzibar presidency. They settled on Mzee Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who had long resigned from the Interior ministerial post.
It took long to convince Mwinyi to take the post in Zanzibar, saying it was too hot for a person who had never been involved in Zanzibar politics and someone who would be seen as having been imposed from Dodoma. Also at issue were negotiations over how he would pass the scrutiny at NEC where a green light by the group of 14 was necessary and over how he would be accepted by Zanzibaris, who hardly knew him.
It was also speculated that an informal agreement between Mwinyi and Maalim was that the former would decline the suggestion by Nyerere to become president of the Union government, as Mwalimu was recruiting someone to succeed him when he stepped down the following year. Maalim had long planned to loosen Nyerere’s grip on the Isles.
Mwinyi agreed on condition that Maalim and Dr Salim would lead the campaign for his presidency once endorsed by NEC.
But would he pass the NEC barrier where he would be likely vetoed by the former members of the ‘Committee of 14’?
The trio reached an agreement that an influential person who had the confidence of the group should be courted to declare Mwinyi’s name in NEC to conceal the conspiracy theory that the candidate was Nyerere and his team’s choice. This man was Sheikh Thabit Kombo Jecha, the sick old man who would be urgently hauled (from wherever he might have been) to declare the name of the candidate at the NEC meeting in Dodoma.
Members of the controversial group in the NEC applauded loudest, believing that the choice was theirs.
When Mwinyi was declared interim president of Zanzibar on January 30, 1984 he appointed Maalim as his chief minister the following day. Both Mwinyi and Maalim had their way back home for immediate political and economic reforms that were to be envied by their union partners and neighbouring countries.
The young men who had been jailed for allegedly plotting Jumbe’s overthrow were immediately released.
People of Zanzibar who could see through the curtain of the Isles political leadership saw Chief Minister Maalim Seif as the de facto leader of Zanzibar and President Mwinyi as a figure head.
It was an uncomfortable status for Mwinyi, prompting him to surrender to President Nyerere’s proposal to succeed him as Union president, defying the terms of the secret deal he had made with Maalim.
This marked the start of bad blood between the two which would in due course grow into a monster that has been defining the Isles’ political situation to date.
Mwinyi later became president of the very union structure which his younger mentor in Zanzibar had been itching to dismantle. It was a U-turn that would find Mwinyi fighting Maalim within the party which he later headed as chairman after Nyerere’s tenure.
But even without Mwinyi, Nyerere had already smelt a rat in Maalim’s undertakings, judging from the total anti-Ujamaa economic reforms he came up with in Zanzibar in the short span of his return home.
He was also pondering how to fight the former weak boy-turned-enemy and who had risen to popular acclaim at his expense.
But even Maalim had no longer any reason to remain behind the scenes. He finally came into the open in 1985 following a row over budget.
The Zanzibar House of Representatives had just passed the annual budget, boasting themselves of having passed the healthiest budget ever, when the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) suddenly announced devaluation of the shilling, thus rendering the budget estimates practically useless.
Worse still, the devaluation was made just a few days prior to the Union parliamentary budget session in Dodoma, giving cause for Maalim to suspect conspiracy by the Union government.
He immediately went on-air over the Voice of Tanzania Zanzibar radio to condemn BoT’s decision, saying it was a Union government conspiracy to undermine the economic and political status of Zanzibar. Addressing Nyerere, he said if that was the kind of union Zanzibaris were supposed to support, then the Isles people did not need it.
The remarks consolidated the Nyerere-Mwinyi-Maalim triangle of dispute, resulting in the dismissal of Maalim and his group from CCM in 1988, which was followed by imprisonments and other forms of political harassment until 1997, despite the introduction of a multiparty system in the country.
Maalim has never skipped contesting the Zanzibar presidency since the first multiparty election in 1995, but he has equally never “won” one, in what is widely believed as a Union government marshaled conspiracy not to allow him a hand over the Isles throne.
Mwinyi, for his part, has also never skipped being uncannily present at decisive moments – starting from vote counting to announcement of results by the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) to help settle the ever ‘controversial results’ that would otherwise favour Maalim Seif.
Mwinyi was in fact one of the six-member reconciliation committee mysteriously formed after ZEC Chairman Jecha Salum Jecha unilaterally nullified the October 25, 2015 election that reflected Maalim’s resounding victory.
He was notably a regular visitor to President John Magufuli’s State House after signs were rife that the newcomer was likely to support Maalim in the Isles’ dispute.
Therefore, among other factors, the political instability in Zanzibar owes much to grudges among key political personalities, with Mwinyi being at the centre.
Source: Guardian
Maalim Seif motivated Mwinyi’s endorsement, Jumbe’s fall and the decline of the Revolutionary Council’s powers.
The past three decades marked the beginning of the new epoch in both Isles’ and Mainland Tanzania’s politics when then Zanzibar President Jumbe, at the behest of Union President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, invited Zanzibaris to air their views about “how to strengthen the Union (government).”
But to Nyerere’s dismay, the campaign that was expected to yield the results in favour of his dream to assimilate Zanzibar into the Union for good, provoked anti-union and anti-Nyerere sentiments for the conspiracy against Jumbe, who was at the ulterior behest of the Revolutionary Council.
Nyerere had in vain expected red-carpet treatment reminiscent of the TANU and Afro-Shirazy Party merger into CCM in 1977.
It was a situation so intolerable to Nyerere that he branded it ‘pollution of the Zanzibar political climate.” He had to clear the air at any cost, lest he lost the archipelago he had more than two decades earlier wished he could tow farther into the Indian Ocean, had he not won the grip over it.
Maalim Seif, a former Zanzibar Education minister, had at the time been promoted as head of the party’s economic planning unit of the National Executive Committee (NEC), after losing his job in the Isles following grudges with Jumbe and the Revolutionary Council.
At the Father of the Nation’s disposal, Maalim was there to take advantage of the situation he had helped to create.
With Nyerere overlooking Maalim as a politically innocent small boy owing to his young age and apparent inexperience, he was too blind-folded to suspect anything ‘sinister’ in the personality of the small boy, who was harbouring anti-Nyerere sentiments and his version of the union between the two states.
But, unlike the conservative members of the Revolutionary Council, infamously known as the group of 14 who rebelled against the union on April 26, 1964 between the Republic of Tanganyika and the People’s Republic of Zanzibar, Maalim wanted Zanzibar free from the clutches of both Nyerere and the power-mongering group.
Therefore, the duo, Nyerere and the emerging politician, Maalim, started to use each other in retaining Zanzibar, which was on the verge of breaking away.
Earlier, when Jumbe sacked Maalim from his government, for the latter to be promoted by Nyerere in the party, Maalim had already masterminded plans to topple Jumbe through impeachment.
Among others, he had formed a wide clandestine network stretching from Zanzibar government’s inner circle that would gather compromising materials against Jumbe, to organized groups in Unguja, Pemba and Tanga that would carry specially classified materials to Maalim, who would present them to Nyerere for scrutiny.
Smelling the fishy climate, Jumbe resorted to a guess game in netting his enemies. A wave of arrests and detentions without trial of anyone suspected of ‘conspiring against the government’ started in August 1983 in which scores of Zanzibaris, mostly the youth, were jailed at the Central Prison, not only without trial, but with Jumbe’s vow “not to release them as long as I am alive.” Most of them belonged to Maalim’s network in one way or another, some without their knowledge.
But Maalim’s plot finally succeeded, culminating in Jumbe being relieved of all his government and party posts on January 30, 1984, amid the polluted political climate in the Isles, with the public overwhelmed by anti-union and anti-Nyerere political mood.
The fate of Zanzibar was in limbo, the least expected scenario by the Union guru who was so concerned that the leadership vacuum might be filled in with the filth of the very group that had steered up the pollution.
He was left with no choice, but to fill in the vacant presidential post with someone of his own, come what may. With anti-union climate at its peak in the Isles, his choice would be definitely dismissed as a marionette, adding storm to the rough seas.
But the Father of the Nation had only one Zanzibari at his closest disposal – Maalim Seif, who declined the offer, citing the prevalence of his former enemies who were still dictating the situation in Zanzibar. Another of Mwalimu’s good boys was Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, then the country’s foreign minister. But Dr Salim had stronger reasons to decline the offer than Maalim, given his political history in relation to Zanzibar.
He was chairman of Abdurahman Mohamed Babu’s Umma Party youth wing before the Zanzibar Revolution, an outlawed party whose members were believed to be behind the assassination of President Abeid Amaan Karume on April 7, 1972. Karume was chairman of the Revolutionary Council whose members were now battling Nyerere. So, Dr Salim would make the wrong choice.
It is at this stage that Nyerere summoned the duo, Maalim and Dr Salim, ordering them look for the right candidate for the Zanzibar presidency. They settled on Mzee Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who had long resigned from the Interior ministerial post.
It took long to convince Mwinyi to take the post in Zanzibar, saying it was too hot for a person who had never been involved in Zanzibar politics and someone who would be seen as having been imposed from Dodoma. Also at issue were negotiations over how he would pass the scrutiny at NEC where a green light by the group of 14 was necessary and over how he would be accepted by Zanzibaris, who hardly knew him.
It was also speculated that an informal agreement between Mwinyi and Maalim was that the former would decline the suggestion by Nyerere to become president of the Union government, as Mwalimu was recruiting someone to succeed him when he stepped down the following year. Maalim had long planned to loosen Nyerere’s grip on the Isles.
Mwinyi agreed on condition that Maalim and Dr Salim would lead the campaign for his presidency once endorsed by NEC.
But would he pass the NEC barrier where he would be likely vetoed by the former members of the ‘Committee of 14’?
The trio reached an agreement that an influential person who had the confidence of the group should be courted to declare Mwinyi’s name in NEC to conceal the conspiracy theory that the candidate was Nyerere and his team’s choice. This man was Sheikh Thabit Kombo Jecha, the sick old man who would be urgently hauled (from wherever he might have been) to declare the name of the candidate at the NEC meeting in Dodoma.
Members of the controversial group in the NEC applauded loudest, believing that the choice was theirs.
When Mwinyi was declared interim president of Zanzibar on January 30, 1984 he appointed Maalim as his chief minister the following day. Both Mwinyi and Maalim had their way back home for immediate political and economic reforms that were to be envied by their union partners and neighbouring countries.
The young men who had been jailed for allegedly plotting Jumbe’s overthrow were immediately released.
People of Zanzibar who could see through the curtain of the Isles political leadership saw Chief Minister Maalim Seif as the de facto leader of Zanzibar and President Mwinyi as a figure head.
It was an uncomfortable status for Mwinyi, prompting him to surrender to President Nyerere’s proposal to succeed him as Union president, defying the terms of the secret deal he had made with Maalim.
This marked the start of bad blood between the two which would in due course grow into a monster that has been defining the Isles’ political situation to date.
Mwinyi later became president of the very union structure which his younger mentor in Zanzibar had been itching to dismantle. It was a U-turn that would find Mwinyi fighting Maalim within the party which he later headed as chairman after Nyerere’s tenure.
But even without Mwinyi, Nyerere had already smelt a rat in Maalim’s undertakings, judging from the total anti-Ujamaa economic reforms he came up with in Zanzibar in the short span of his return home.
He was also pondering how to fight the former weak boy-turned-enemy and who had risen to popular acclaim at his expense.
But even Maalim had no longer any reason to remain behind the scenes. He finally came into the open in 1985 following a row over budget.
The Zanzibar House of Representatives had just passed the annual budget, boasting themselves of having passed the healthiest budget ever, when the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) suddenly announced devaluation of the shilling, thus rendering the budget estimates practically useless.
Worse still, the devaluation was made just a few days prior to the Union parliamentary budget session in Dodoma, giving cause for Maalim to suspect conspiracy by the Union government.
He immediately went on-air over the Voice of Tanzania Zanzibar radio to condemn BoT’s decision, saying it was a Union government conspiracy to undermine the economic and political status of Zanzibar. Addressing Nyerere, he said if that was the kind of union Zanzibaris were supposed to support, then the Isles people did not need it.
The remarks consolidated the Nyerere-Mwinyi-Maalim triangle of dispute, resulting in the dismissal of Maalim and his group from CCM in 1988, which was followed by imprisonments and other forms of political harassment until 1997, despite the introduction of a multiparty system in the country.
Maalim has never skipped contesting the Zanzibar presidency since the first multiparty election in 1995, but he has equally never “won” one, in what is widely believed as a Union government marshaled conspiracy not to allow him a hand over the Isles throne.
Mwinyi, for his part, has also never skipped being uncannily present at decisive moments – starting from vote counting to announcement of results by the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) to help settle the ever ‘controversial results’ that would otherwise favour Maalim Seif.
Mwinyi was in fact one of the six-member reconciliation committee mysteriously formed after ZEC Chairman Jecha Salum Jecha unilaterally nullified the October 25, 2015 election that reflected Maalim’s resounding victory.
He was notably a regular visitor to President John Magufuli’s State House after signs were rife that the newcomer was likely to support Maalim in the Isles’ dispute.
Therefore, among other factors, the political instability in Zanzibar owes much to grudges among key political personalities, with Mwinyi being at the centre.
Source: Guardian
