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The big blunder of Dole Sheha and Isles politics
2005-04-24 21:59:29
By Hillary Joseph
Come Thursday next week and we shall have the name of the presidential candidate from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), and most probably, if the party will put up a strong candidate, he will be our next president unless, of course, the opposition decides to put up an even stronger candidate. That will be the day, indeed, a president from the opposition!
Indeed, since aspirants for flying the CCM flag in the presidential race come October this year began picking nomination forms, the talk in almost every place (except perhaps in some corners of our rural villages) has been about who will be the CCM candidate.
The media ran after them as the aspirants criss-crossed the country getting sponsors or guarantors, trying to catch every word the aspirants uttered for posterity and sometimes concocting their own words when a particular aspirant decided to keep mum or could not be reached. This country is big and the press is growing multi-dimensionally.
As the D-day approaches, the aspirants’ temperatures must be rising day by day until they will wish they did not have to put on even singlets, but they cannot do anything now except pray to their gods and hope for the best. Devastating period for them, it must be.
As I was saying, the CCM aspirants have been dominating airtime of the local radio and television stations and front pages of almost all of the local newspapers until late last week when a seemingly minor incident in Zanzibar triggered off an avalanche of rhetoric from the opposition Civic United Front (CUF).
And the media gleefully turned their attention to the incident, or rather to the CUF leaders. They needed some attention too, didn’t they?
The incident might have been passed unnoticed by the media or just mentioned in passing in two or three sentences as many such incidents involving ordinary people like you and me matter but little to the media.
I mean people whose names rarely make news as per journalistic parlance. This time, the name made not merely news, but headline news because it involved a big potato, as they say.
The issue was about Seif Sharrif Hamad being denied registration in the voters’ permanent register. Yes, the same powerful Hamad who is the national Secretary General of the Civic United Front (CUF) and CUF’s candidate for the Zanzibar presidency.
The same Hamad whom some of his party followers believe has already won the presidency and is just waiting to be sworn in come October. Zanzibar politics can sap your reasoning capacity dry.
Now, imagine someone blocking such a person\'s registration in the voters’ permanent book, and to think that such a person doing the blocking is a mere sheha of some location in the Isles of cloves.
Again, for some reason known only to the Zanzibar authorities, no one was quick enough to ‘denounce’ the foolhardy sheha and his dangerous game on the honourable Hamad. Didn’t the sheha know who Hamad was, or is?
The sheha should have known that it was one thing to block registration of a mere CUF member or CCM member, but quite another to even try to play games with the honourable Hamad.
He should have known that even if the sheria (law) was on his side and that it was true that Hamad was on the wrong side, the sheha should have thought twice before embarking on his ‘brave’ move to say the ‘truth’.
It is even more surprising that the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) did not react quickly enough to censure the erring sheha knowing the consequences of such grave error committed by the sheha not only to the government of Zanzibar, but to the United Republic of Tanzania.
What? You don’t agree? Didn’t you see the huge demonstration that took place not in Zanzibar, but in Dar es Salaam? Didn’t you hear what they said, that if they wanted to, they could order the multitude that converged at Jangwani grounds to ‘invade’ the isles? And, mark you, on foot!!
That horrendous mistake by the sheha has cost the ZEC its integrity, it has also jeopardised the Peace Accord (Muafaka) between the two antagonistic (in all senses) CUF and CCM and has threatened peace in the Isles.
We all heard what the honourable leaders of CUF said on that day after the demonstrations. And some local media said ‘CCM wamejitakia’, literally meaning ‘they asked for it and now they have to bear the consequences’.
I raked my mind trying to figure out how CCM had come into it, and then I remembered that the sheha was put there by CCM. So, yes, CCM should have known better that installing a sheha who was prone to making such not-so-wise judgments.
Poor sheha. Now that honourable Hamad has been registered, will the sheha look Hamad in the eye, and say, perhaps, “sorry, but I was only doing my duty according to the laws of the land”? Will the two men shake hands and say ‘let’s forget the past?’ I wish they did.
But the sheha’s blunder, if you may call it that, has somewhat removed the veil over the intentions of some political leaders in the Isles, and laid bare their ambitions and machinations.
We now know what and who they really are. Through their intimidating threats they have shown us their lust for power at whatever cost. Thanks in part to the sheha, we should know what to expect in October.
The Swahili people say ‘mwanzo wa ngoma le le le’, or the English say ‘an inferno starts with a spark’. The situation in Zanzibar has gone past the stage of le le le, or the spark has caught on wind and the big drums are beginning to beat, or the fire is now roaring.
Let us all pray to the Almighty that the fire dies down and He grants us free, fair and peaceful elections. Amen.
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