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On CCM`s meeting at Mwalimu Nyerere`s birth village of Butiama
2008-03-28 10:01:27
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
This week Chama Cha Mapinduzi`s National Executive Committee meets in Butiama, the birth place of the Father of the Nation, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, where members will discuss, among other things, the peace accord between CCM and the Civic United Front.
The talks, which aim at finding a lasting solution to the political crisis in Zanzibar are said to have reached a conclusive stage and reportedly, the two parties are likely to go for power sharing government in the Isles.
Speaking to members of the press in Dar es Salaam this week, CCM Secretary General Yusuph Makamba said the report on the political situation and progress on the talks would be presented by the party\'s negotiating team during the meeting.
Makamba told the media practitioners that the meeting will also hear reports on the recently held Kiteto by-election and on the celebrations to mark the party`s 31st anniversary held on February 2, this year.
The secretary General was also quoted as saying that also to be discussed is Bank of Tanzania Governor Prof Benno Ndulu`s state of the economy report that is expected to highlight the vexing issues of food shortage amid the rising prices of oil, food and construction materials.
He did not give any clue why CCM for the first time has decided to hold one of its highest organ`s meetings in a village contrary to the common practice in the past where almost all national party meetings used to be held in cosmopolitan places.
But there is all the reason to believe that the aim, and perhaps the main one this time, is to honour the late Mwalimu Nyerere, who besides dedicating much of his time in tackling national issues pertaining to the common people, he also used to hold some of the important party meetings in the villages.
The case in point is the 1976 TANU Congress, which was held in Kizota, Dodoma that also became the meeting point of a similar meeting last year under the chairmanship of President Jakaya Kikwete.
However, what was common with Mwalimu is that he used to order such meetings to be convened in such places whenever he had a very burning national issue, that if it would otherwise be divulged in cosmopolitan places like Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Arusha or even Zanzibar, probably it would not have created efficacious results than if it was held at a spatial location.
This is not to say that the issues mentioned by the CCM Secretary General, Honourable Makamba-concerning the union, economy and elections are not important, but here one can clearly see that there are some preponderant issues about our nation, which need serious policy guidance, which one may perhaps say, are not given the weight they deserve.
The issues to be discusses in Butiama-of the political accord, economic situation and the like are merely results of a certain system of socio-economic-political transformation, which we have either chosen to adopt or accepted to see it creep into our system of governance.
The result is that currently we are engaged in some kind fence mending rather than system management.
The present economic situation whereby commodity prices have soared up, in fact quadrippled or quintupled, is the result of the bad economic management we are pursuing whereby we have built bigger avenues for capital stashing, popular economic activities neglect in favour of less employing ventures like tourism and mining, and government leadership pursuance of individual economic Aids that work at the expense of the marginalised poor.
This is the paradigm that has been in place over the past 23 years since Ujamaa was thrown into the dustbin of history.
Now when CCM meets in Butiama, the birth place of the architect of Ujamaa and Self Reliance, to discuss, among other things, the negative results of the bits and pieces of an economic paradigm that many people are displeased with instead of looking at the entire socio economic reform journey as a way of charting out the way forward for the nation`s prosperity, one fails to understand the seriousness of the leadership in the whole issue of transformation.
Here is a situation where over the past 23 years we have been carrying out grand reforms in bits and pieces out of Ujamaa, where there is little or no stock taking done on what is going on and nobody is trying to seek the people`s views (common men) as to how we should go about and whether the journey towards prosperity is painful or not.
It should be remembered that CCM has two major national roles, which no other party in this country can play. One is that it is the ruling party and it is therefore charged with the management of the day to day running of government activities.
This is well understood-despite mishaps here and there CCM has relatively been doing a fair job on this.
The second job is, during this age of socio-economic-political transformation (the reforms) it is the coordinator of management of the country\'s transition in view of the worldly unfolding, both locally and internationally.
It is sad to learn that CCM`s performance in this latter role has not been impressive right from the beginning.
At times it has been fast to go into the reforms, and sometimes it has played a shoddy role, simply because it wants things to go the way it wants.
It should be borne in mind; however CCM and its management of the country`s affairs ought to change now in view of the changed realities, if Tanzanians are to be led to achieve the realistic goals of prosperity.
People ardently need to know where they are going and how they are going to get there and with whom as their partners.
They want to be treated to the realities that are closer to what they see in their daily life in the manner that Mwalimu most of the time stood for during his lifetime.
Clear stipulation of the country`s socio-economic reforms direction as CCM\'s NEC meets in Butiama could therefore have been the overriding feature of the meeting as this appears to be the key issue that most Tanzanians currently stand for .
mwonga19@yahoo.co.uk
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