Tanzania: Oprydning i eliten, men partiet styrer videre

In 2008 the then prime minister of Tanzania, Edward Lowassa, resigned amid accusations of corruption made by a parliamentary select committee. It was led by a member of his own party, CCM. Nothing similar has ever happened before in Tanzania.

In April this year, the Controller and Auditor General (Rigsrevisor) issued his annual report summarising the financial performance of the country’s government organisations. His past reports have often been highly critical but subsequent actions to reprimand those in error have been rare.

This time, however, members of parliament from both the opposi-tion and the ruling party demanded that six ministers be removed.

In May, again in an unprecedented move, President Kikwete ordered precisely that.

What is happening within the core of Tanzania’s ruling elite?

Is CCM finally coming clean – having ruled Tanzania for fifty years but amidst increasingly vocal accusations about wide-spread corruption? Is the party renewing itself – as it has done in the past?

There can be no certain answers to these questions. Tanzanian politics is, as it has always been, full of unpredictable surprises.

Nevertheless, reading “Continuity and change in Tanzania’s ruling coalition: legacies, crises and weak productive capacity” will provide a very useful basis for a better understanding of Tanzanian politics.

The paper does so through analyses of the current composition of Tanzania’s ruling coalition, comprised mainly of the ruling party (the CCM), the bureaucracy and the military.

This is based on analyses of how the coalition and its funding has changed since independence in 1961. Several things stand out in the analyses.

Continuing dominance of the ruling party