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Tuesday, 27 March 2012
http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/component/content/article/37-tanzania-top-news-story/21028-
msekwas-bitter-sweet-revelations.html

Dar es Salaam. CCM has lost its popularity among Tanzanians.  And the party knows it, with the CCM second-in-
command (Tanzania Mainland) revealing how they plan to walk the rough road ahead.In his nearly 4,000-word
article exclusively published in The Citizen today, Mr Pius Msekwa reveals that CCM knows its reputation has
suffered a lot judging from the 2010 election results.And quoting a report by a “small but dedicated think-tank
group of CCM cadres” he cites key weaknesses that have cost the party popularity as being among others “the
party’s leadership had distanced itself from the people”. 

“The party took the election results as a wake-up call, prompting the leadership to assign its dedicated think-tank
to look into the cause of the sharp decline and suggest a way forward,” notes Mr Msekwa in the article serialised
in our Political Platform pullout. 

The report identified other major factors that contributed to the situation, including the legacy of the one-party
political system that has “turned leaders into bosses of the people”. 

“Working in this mode, the leaders order and direct the people instead of serving them, listening to their problems
and helping solve those challenges. “Some leaders at all levels of the party’s hierarchy reportedly do not only
ignore the leadership code of ethics but also violate it,” he notes. 

Meanwhile, CCM’s efforts to clean itself before the public commonly known as ‘kujivua gamba’ in Kiswahili ended
up perceived as a witch-hunting exercise in some quarters, threatening to split the party even further.
But the former Speaker came to the defence of its re-branding exercise, dismissing claims that it is a witch-hunt. 
Mr Msekwa says there is nothing more to it than a makeover ahead of a campaign to sell the party better in the
face of evidence that its popularity is on the decline.

The party’s “sloughing” campaign, better known by the Kiswahili version kujivua gamba, is as old as the history of
the party itself, said Mr Msekwa, the deputy chairman (Mainland). 

The CCM National Executive Committee (NEC) announced key decisions last April, including a rebranding
strategy aimed at positioning the party better on the political market. This promptly triggered a chain of
conspiracy theories. 

Mr Msekwa argues that the re-branding option did not mean witch hunting as many people appear to believe.
“Acquiring a new image was precisely the intention behind the party’s NEC resolution,” Mr Msekwa says in a
detailed article published in our Political Platform section. He explains that the strategy entails discarding
outdated structures and methods and introducing “new blood” at all levels of the party’s leadership ranks.  

Way forward
The NEC chose to address all the weaknesses stage by stage, beginning with the organisational structure, and it
was decided that the best option for bringing the NEC closer to the people was to have its members elected at
the district rather than regional level. 

“This rule has unfortunately been badly misrepresented by attributing it to some improper motive of wishing to
exclude Members of Parliament from NEC membership,” Mr Msekwa said. “This is wrong.” 

The overriding objective of electing NEC members at the district level is to make the post a full time occupation.
“There is no prohibition imposed upon MPs on the CCM ticket to vie for NEC seats,” he says. “It should be
understood clearly that this rule applies to the NEC membership at district level only.”   

MPs will keep their allocated quota of 10 seats on the NEC, plus five seats for the Zanzibar House of
Representatives. In addition, CCM parliamentarians will continue to have the option to contest other NEC seats
at the national level. “These provisions confirm that the alleged prohibition does not exist,” Mr Msekwa stresses.

Last year’s re-branding of the party, he says, was not the first. Tanganyika African National Union (Tanu) and
Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) regularly applied the strategy to ensure greater appeal to members and voters.

Timing the rebranding

The political party’s mission and objectives were crucial considerations in determining the right time to re-brand
the party, according to Mr Msekwa. The ideology, policies and programmes were important too, as were the
organisational structure and its leadership personnel. 

When it was founded in 1954, Tanu had only one mission—to liberate Tanganyika from colonialism. The party
had to re-brand in 1961 to cope with the change from opposition to ruling party.

The Tanu chairman and Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, found it necessary to resign from his
Tanganyika premiership to take up the monumental task of re-branding the new ruling party.  “He rightly felt Tanu
required a new stimulus to enable its members to understand the true meaning of what had been achieved and
remained to be done,” Mr Msekwa says.  “The task was indeed monumental, because the system of government
by party replacing the colonial system was an entirely new concept in the minds of the majority of Tanganyikans.”

In the local government system that hinged on chiefs, the hereditary rulers did not have to contest the position on
the basis of political parties.The next re-branding occurred in 1965 with the adoption of the single party system
when Tanu re-positioned itself for the new tasks brought about by major constitutional changes.