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PRAYER FOR
PEACE AS ZANZIBAR HEADS FOR POLL Updated:
28 October 2000 The Isles, locked in a union with mainland Tanganyika since 1964, elects its own president and members of the House of Representatives. Islanders will also help elect the President of the union and 50 representatives to the parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania. CCM's presidential candidate for Zanzibar is Amani Abeidi Karume, currently a member of the incumbent government while Seif Shariff Hamad is his CUF opponent. Both men predict outright victory, though observers are less hopeful that either party would manage a two-thirds majority.. More importantly, the possibility of violence is worrisome and neutrals pin their hopes on the leaders of the two main parties keeping their supporters apart regardless of who wins. The Union government, meanwhile, quietly responded with the deployment of the Tanzanian Defence Forces, who landed additional troops almost unnoticed on the shores of Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar, and Pemba at the break of dawn Thursday. "The army is very disciplined, it rises above politics", says Said Suleiman, a local tour guide who is a moving compendium of knowledge on the island's politics. Suleiman, like so many Zanzibaris, is praying for a peaceful post-election scenario as the main campaigns wound up. Suleiman believes the islanders are too ethnically integrated to fall back on the turbulent politics of old that pitted the original African inhabitants against the Arab and Asian settlers. The Isles have had their fair share of foreign occupation and settlement: Persian Shirazis came and inter-married with the local Africans; then followed 200 years of Portuguese occupation who in turn were ousted by the Omani Arabs. Back in 1955, this ethnic divide was reflected in the manner of party formations. The Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) emerged from the Nationalist Party of the Subjects of the Sultan while the Afro-Shiraz Party resulted from the formation of the Afro-Shiraz Union (ASU) composed of the African Association and the Shiraz Association. When independence came in 1963, it was the Arab minority that won a violent and highly disputed poll; the alliance of the ZNP and the Zanzibar and Pemba People's Party (ZPPP) took 18 seats and the ASP 13. The British were accused of deliberately apportioning more constituencies to Arab-dominated areas. Barely 30 days later, the African majority revolted and seized power, firmly putting the Afro-Shirazi Party in control led by Sheik Abeid Amani Karume. The late Karume's son, Amani, is now the CCM's presidential hopeful (The incumbent President if the Isles, Salman Amour has served his constitutional two terms). In 1964, Zanzibar joined Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania. The union was consolidated by the formation of the CCM in 1977 with the merger of the Tanzanian National African Union (TANU) and the ASP. For some, CUF and CCM represent the divide of old; the first, predominantly Muslim and driven by people of Arabic extraction, the second a largely Catholic-dominated movement with the original African flavour. More than 90 percent of the multi-ethnic people of Zanzibar are Muslim. However, to an outsider, ethnic considerations are not easy to discern. Some believe Zanzibaris are more integrated now than ever before and it is the issues, rather than religion or ethnicity that finally determines who wins the poll. There will be more than 425,000 people likely to make that decision tomorrow. Depending on how they absorb the calls from religious and political leaders for peace, these beautiful islands will be concentrating on development rather than political dog-fights in the aftermath of elections. One of the main fears of an opposition victory in Zanzibar is how it would work with a CCM government on the mainland. Union President Benjamin Mkapa says he would work with a CUF government on the Isles, guided by the constitution. Mkapa and CCM are tipped to easily sweep the mainland poll. CUF's Presidential candidate for the mainland Ibrahim Lipumba is given no chance against the incumbent. But a CUF victory on Zanzibar is likely to complicate the structure of government in the union as the opposition leader Hamad has publicly demanded the introduction of a three-tier government which would give Zanzibaris greater say in Union matters.(SARDC). This article can be reproduced with credit to SARDC and the author Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) |
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