How lifting ban on Opposition is boost for Suluhu

There is a well-deserved excitement about the return after six years of political rallies in Tanzania.

Unbanned last month by President Samia Suluhu Hassan - Mr Magufuli’s successor, it has even prompted the return of opposition politician Tundu Lissu, who had fled the country after surviving an assassination attempt. He was able to address his ecstatic supporters at a massive rally in Dar es Salaam last week within hours of landing.

Such gatherings are the engine of politics here: the convoy of motorcycle taxis disrupting traffic and businesses on main roads, supporters chanting party songs and later the blaring of loudspeakers as politicians address the crowd. They really give life to local politics.

As Dan Paget, a University of Aberdeen political lecturer with a focus on Tanzania, has said, they are the country’s real form of mass communication.

“Indefinitely banning rallies does to public communication in Tanzania what indefinitely banning television, or the internet, would do in the global north,” he wrote.

They were the way the late president spoke to the country - especially after coming to office in 2015. He roamed freely on the road, making endless stops at villages and towns where he embarrassed and fired unpopular local officials and announced off-script policies.

He wanted the world to believe that he was the hardest-working president the country had ever had.

Yet at the same time he forbade the opposition from exercising their constitutional right to assembly - his administration harassed and even arrested rival politicians when they held internal party meetings.

Magufuli made us believe that he did this to defend his ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, saying the opposition were puppets of foreign interests.

But the opposition actually posed no real existential threat. Magufuli just loved power, never missing an opportunity to bully those who did not agree with him - and seemed to delight in the suffering of his opponents.

Banning the rallies effectively cut off the opposition’s political lifeblood. It must have given him ultimate satisfaction.

Many analysts agree that the return of rallies comes down to efforts made by the new president, who has been in negotiations with the opposition Chadema party for a while.

She summed up her mission in a surprise op-ed printed in Tanzanian newspapers last year to mark the country’s 30 years of multiparty politics.

It was, President Samia wrote, to fulfil the four Rs: reconciliation, resiliency, reforms and rebuilding.

Her critics may argue that this is easy to achieve given she has taken over from someone with such a poor record on democracy - also pointing out that she served as Magufuli’s deputy for nearly six years.

Yet since taking over in March 2021, President Samia has demonstrated that she does seem to genuinely care about fixing a broken system. She was under no real pressure to change.                             - BBC