Political Trouble in Tanzania

Elections in Tanzania have been quite troublesome in the past and protestors do not exactly stick to throwing the occasional pie in the face of a politician. Especially on Zanzibar whereover 30 opposition protestors died in clashes with authorities in the aftermath of the elections in 2000. Although this is an extreme case and no one died during the previous elections in 2005 it is still advised to avoid crowds during or after the elections as some voters still tend to get a little antsy.

 

At the time of the Elections we were in Mwanza (by Lake Victoria) for the FFA monitoring. Except for some minor organizational issues Election Day itself passed without a lot of problems. The day after, we continued our monitoring activities in the field and returned to Mwanza in the afternoon. After a late lunch we decided to return to our hotel. However as we approached the road to our hotel we saw a crowd in the distance moving in our direction. We would have turned back right away if we hadn’t been stuck in traffic.

 

It seemed that young supporters of the leading oppostion party, Chadema, were protesting the delay in announcing election results by Electoral Commission officials. They were convinced the results were being tempered with. As we proceeded towards our hotel more and more Chadema supporters surrounded our car and many other cars stuck in traffic and an orange glow appeared in the distance. Suddenly, one of the protesters stepped in front of our car holding a big rock in one hand. He threatened to throw the rock while giving the Chadema sign (peace sign) with his other hand. We immediately responded with the same sign and were allowed to go through.

 

As we drove on, we saw that the orange glow was coming from a building that was set on fire by the protesters. Later I was told this was the CCM office were the Electoral Commission was ‘working’ on the results. We passed the burning office, continuously giving peace signs to show we were one of the ‘good guys’. Out of nowhere, we heard two loud bangs on the side windows of our car. Probably because we were in an official vehicle, some protesters (not the brightest types) thought we were with the government and had started to throw rocks at us. We tried to get away as fast as possible although the traffic was still quite bad. The moment we almost drove away from the scene and started to feel a bit relieved we heard another loud bang followed by the sound of breaking glass… A rock had hit our rear window, breaking it into pieces.

 

The day after it seemed we were not the only ones that got unlucky: thecitizen.co.tz/general-elections-news/5212-chaos-reign-as-nec-delays-releasing-results.html

 

As Rutger already mentioned in his last blog: www.movingtheworld.org/blog/2010/11/10/politics, politics can sometimes really get in the way of progress, the rivalry between parties and their supporters is so intense that the common goal of development of the country suffers. Often this takes the form of people not willing to cooperate with one another and sometimes it takes the form of an angry teenager with a rock. Next time I’d rather take a pie in the face