Why the CCM won't lose: the roots of single-party dominance in Tanzania

Abstract

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the factors contributing to single-party dominance in Tanzania. Despite the fact that Tanzania has had a multi-party democracy since 1995, the party which governed during single-party rule, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), has won the vast majority of seats in the National Assembly in the first four multi-party elections. In order to understand the CCM's grip on power, this article analyses the results of a survey conducted amongst subsistence farmers in Tanzania, which provides information on farmers’ livelihood conditions, access to media and political views, and hence provides insight into the preferences underlying voting behaviour. It discusses the dominant reasons for CCM support, as well as the characteristics of farmers who are more likely to support an opposition party. It concludes by discussing possible policy options for enhancing political competition in Tanzania.

Keywords:

• single-party dominance
• rural neglect
• voting behaviour
• Africa
• Tanzania
• economic and political liberalisation

Notes

1. Given the focus of this paper, whereas Basedau (2005) requires that parties in question have won the last two legislative elections, I require that the party ruled during single party rule and has won all legislative elections since the opening of the political system to multiple parties.

2. For example, data compiled by La Porta et al. (1999) indicates that Tanzania was 10th out of 105 countries in terms of the extent of state ownership in the economy over the period 1975–1995.

3. CHADEMA's support is clustered in the urban constituencies of Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Arusha. The party ran on a platform of bringing about market-based solutions to poverty and reducing corruption. Recent demonstrations by CHADEMA supporters have caused President Kikwete to warn that CHADEMA ‘will plunge the country into unnecessary conflict’ (Citizen 2011). As in the case of South Africa, the recent decrease in CCM support in urban areas may indicate that the ‘liberation dividend’ (Southall 2005) is waning.

4. The Afrobarometer surveys (available at http://www.afrobarometer.org/index.html) provide a wealth of information on public attitudes towards democracy and economic reform in a number of African countries. My survey differs from these in that it samples only subsistence farmers and provides greater detail on their livelihood conditions as well as the reasons they give for their political affiliations. Such household-level data is necessary for identifying characteristics that drive voting behaviour.

5. Kitschelt (1995) suggests that the suppression of civil society and limits on the extent to which citizens could criticise the government is indeed a legacy of single party rule. He suggests that in post-communist democracies, incumbents have been successful given their ability to entrench themselves in different aspects of civil society and therefore repress opposition.

6. Sivalon (1999) found that farmers actually feared multiparty democracy because of a sense that the opposition parties (mainly centred in Dar es Salaam) did not have their interests at heart.

7. 62% of farmers in the sample had seven years of schooling, 6% had more than seven years of schooling and the remaining 32% had less than seven years of schooling.

8. The correlation coefficient between numeracy and literacy is 0.9, between numeracy and educational attainment is 0.72 and between literacy and educational attainment is 0.75.

9. The Ease of Doing Business index of the World Bank indicates literally no change over the past few years in the ease of doing business in Tanzania, with the exception of the ease of trading across borders (http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/tanzania?topic=dealing-with-licenses). Hence farmers who are members of a business organisation and with an export orientation may be reacting to the CCM's platform of trade liberalisation.

10. The proportion of seats won by these parties in the last election was 89% for the PDGE, 77% for the PDG, 79% for FRELIMO and 75% for SWAPO. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) is also a very dominant political party on the continent, however it was never a one party state.

11. MVIWATA is a national network of local-level farmer's organisations with the purpose of representing and advocating on behalf of farmers. Its membership is still small, with only 600,000 current individual members, but it has grown each year since its inception in 1991. Its membership base consists of individuals whose livelihood depends on agriculture, and it is representative of the agricultural Tanzanian population as a whole (Wennink, Nederlof, and Heemskerk 2007).