Zanzibar police watch over a group of men in Stone Town in Zanzibar
Tundu Antipas Lissu, the man who tussled with John Pombe Magufuli in the presidential election last October, has left the country to go into exile, claiming his life was in danger.
His departure was preceded by some daylight Dar drama, including: Lissu running to the embassies of European countries to seek asylum; security forces grabbing him and taking him to a police station; European diplomats following them and demanding Lissu be handed to them; Lissu getting protection in the residence of the German ambassador for a few days; the German ambassador personally escorting Lissu to the airport. Talk of the proverbial Chinese curse about living in interesting times!
Lissu claims that he had a tipoff from someone in the security apparatus who told him an order had been given for him to be done away with ‘for good’, which is a serious claim to all except the government spokesperson who suggested that it is ridiculous for someone who has just participated in an election campaign for two months to claim that his life is in danger.
I do not know how some people want us to think they think, but if someone told you that they had been shot 16 times in a government compound in broad daylight and that his assailants had not been found three years later, what level of incredulity will you need to believe he is joking if he now tells you that those same people are stalking him?
At any rate, Lissu is reportedly in Belgium. Whatever political action he will choose to be undertaken while there is not clear, but the fake news that he is slated to address the European parliament is just that, fake news because such a privilege is reserved for heads of state, and Lissu was thwarted in his quest to become one last October, remember?
INTO KENYA
He is not alone. A number of opposition politicians are apparently on the move to somewhere else because they say their lives have been threatened, including the former Arusha MP, Godbless Lema, who crossed into Kenya at about the same time and has seemingly obtained a status that allows him to live there. Others may soon follow.
It is not the first time that Tanzania is producing political refugees.
In 2001, under the presidency of Benjamin Mkapa, scores of Tanzanians in Zanzibar found themselves being mowed down by police fire as they protested what they deemed to be electoral fraud.
It looks like we are settling down into a disquieting pattern of electorally fuelled centrifugal tendencies so that every time there is an election we would be expecting large numbers of people to be leaving on unplanned excursions for unknown periods of time, and that is not a healthy thing to admit in your body politic.
It will help nobody at all if our elections are organized by state agents who take every lever they hold in their hands to pull a fast one on their competitors because they have an opportunity to earn an unmerited advantage.
If one is incapable of winning fair and square in a loyal contest, then one is incapable of winning anything whenever one finds oneself in a contest in which one does not control the playing field.
For anyone to think that the results that have been made public by the electoral commission handpicked by the government will have satisfied even half the people that took part in the electoral exercise is to try to make people believe that they can extract blood from a cactus, which to me is a no-brainer.
Furthermore, for anyone to think that the near quiet that has descended on the country after the conclusion of the election means acquiescence in what went down is to engage in dangerous levels of self-deceit.
ONE STRAND
Tanzania belongs to all Tanzanians, whatever their political creeds and beliefs; no one strand of opinion should have the right to arrogate to itself the right to be always right, because that does not proceed from anything the people of this country agreed upon.
We had a single-party dispensation which lasted almost 40 years and it was found wanting, the reason for which it was disbanded as we opted for competitive politics.
If after 25 years or so there is a paradigm shift and the belief is that we should go back to what we used to have, let us be frank and say so.
According to reports by the authorities, we have security issues close to our southern borders that suggest some of the more nefarious geopolitical players may have an interest in us. This is no time to give them succour by refusing to listen to legitimate calls for greater political inclusion.
It is my ardent hope that President John Magufuli will listen to some of our better angels who will, I am certain, whisper in his ear that magnanimity goes a long way toward healing the bruised soul of a society that is struggling to find itself.
This will take courage, and I believe Magufuli has that by the tonne. It only needs redirecting.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.com
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