Tanzanian polls: Chadema remains unsure, Kabwe pledges to challenge Samia

Zitto Kabwe, the former leader of the ACT-Wazalendo party, is the first opposition figure in Tanzania to publicly declare her desire to run for president in the general election of 2019.

Speaking on May 5 at an event honoring the party’s tenth anniversary in Kigoma, Zitto declared he was prepared to rescind his earlier declaration that he would first concentrate on winning back the parliamentary seat he lost in the contentious 2020 election and then pursue a presidential bid at a later date, most likely in 2030.

He declared that although though he had resigned from day-to-day party leadership in March of this year, if ACT-Wazalendo needed him to, he would put himself up to challenge the current CCM party president, Samia Suluhu Hassan.

He declared before an enthusiastic assembly of ACT-Wazalendo backers, “I have prepared myself psychologically, mentally, and cognitively to be President of the United Republic of Tanzania at any time if that is in the immediate interests of the party.”

After being elevated from vice president to succeed John Magufuli by constitutional decree in 2021, President Samia will be running for office for the first time in 2025.

She is qualified for a single, full five-year term, and the ruling CCM, which has never deviated from its long-standing practice of accepting incumbent presidents for reelection, is probably going to support her candidacy.

Zitto, 48, is well-known as one of Tanzania’s most well-known opposition stalwarts. Earlier this year, there were rumors that he would run for president while Samia was still in office. This was presumably because he knew there was little chance he would succeed her before her second term ended in 2030.

He stated that, at the moment, his primary goal was to rejoin parliament as the representative for the Kigoma constituency and rekindle the opposition’s potent influence in the House, which had vanished after CCM won nearly all of the legislative seats in an election in 2020 marred by widespread irregularities.

However, at the party anniversary event, ACT-Wazalendo vice-chairperson for Zanzibar, Ismail Jussa, seemed to convince him otherwise, stating that other deserving party members might stand and win the Kigoma constituency legislative seat in his place.

Though Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema) is generally considered as Tanzania’s largest opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo has traditionally had its strength in Zanzibar, where it is anticipated to launch a major challenge to Hussein Mwinyi’s authority over the archipelago in the upcoming year.

The party’s preferred candidate for this endeavor is probably newly elected chairman Othman Masoud, who is still vice-president in the increasingly precarious coalition government with CCM.

Chadema hasn’t yet stated who will run against Samia for president on its ticket, preferring to concentrate on leading the opposition’s battle for substantive constitutional and electoral system reforms that will level the political playing field prior to the 2025 election.

In anticipation of a deliberate effort to reclaim a strong grassroots presence across the nation in the local government elections scheduled for October of this year, the party is now holding internal elections to establish new zonal leaderships nationally.

Later this year, there will be elections for the top leadership, and it is already widely anticipated that longstanding party chairman Freeman Mbowe would win to keep his 20-year term in office.

However, last week, when the party’s vice chairman, Tundu Lissu, openly questioned the source of “dirty money” being tossed around in the zonal placement sweepstakes, there was talk of potential cracks emerging in Chadema’s top leadership.

When Mr. Lissu hinted about the smell of corruption, it seemed like he was setting off a hornet’s net within the party. Time will tell if this assertion is true or false.

At a May 2 public gathering in Iringa, he cautioned party members about the possibility of bribery with illegal monies in the quest for votes in the zonal elections.

“We need this money for mass mobilization and demonstrations—where is it coming from and why wasn’t it available then?” he said.

“Is there any way that the party benefits from the way it is currently used?”

With the municipal elections only five months away, his remarks brought CHADEMA under additional public scrutiny. Since then, other prominent party officials have refrained from commenting until the next meeting of the central committee, which is scheduled for an undisclosed date.

Amos Makalla, the propaganda and publicity secretary for CCM, quickly distanced the party from the situation, claiming that the ruling party was involved in any attempt to use deceitful divide-and-rule tactics to undermine the opposition party in an effort to gain the upper hand ahead of the municipal elections.

Makalla, in typical predatory political fashion, instead demanded that the Registrar of Political Parties and law enforcement investigate Lissu’s allegations as a simple case of corruption against the Chadema establishment as a whole.

Mbowe and Lissu, who were running for president on the Chadema ticket in 2005 against Jakaya Kikwete and 2020 against John Magufuli, respectively, have both previously lost to CCM candidates.

The two are still thought to be the party’s sole realistic candidates for leadership of a 2025 campaign, though, which is why Tanzanian political watchers have been so focused on the most recent indications of instability inside the party.