In his moving farewell speech at the Diamond Jubilee Hall on 4th November, 1985 Mwalimu Nyerere made two statements, of great moment, about Muslims in Tanzania. In a way, those statements encapsulate and crystallise both Tanzania’s looming political tragedy and the fading hopes of averting it. In the first part Nyerere paid glowing tribute to Muslims for their political maturity and patience, qualities which greatly contributed to the country’s enduring peace. He acknowledged the existence of enormous religious disparities against Muslims in education and employment when the country became independent. And that the inferior status of Muslims was so conspicuous that it could have easily been used to divide the nation. He said that attempts were indeed made to use those imbalances to disrupt the unity and solidarity of Tanzanians, but Muslims spurned them. In the second part Mwalimu Nyerere expressed his satisfaction that as he was stepping down from government leadership Tanzania had already successfully rectified whatever imbalances that existed between Christians and Muslims in education and employment.

Nyerere’s second statement has baffled me, and I hope many other Tanzanians since. And like many Tanzanians also, I have too much respect for Mwalimu to accuse him of lying. But how could he commit such a grave factual error in his public farewell speech? There are several logical possibilities. The first one is that he sincerely believed religious imbalances had been redressed. It is a possibility which is difficult to accept. Throughout his political career Nyerere kept himself very well informed about local and international affairs. The position of Muslims in Tanzania is a subject which even the dullest students could hazard a correct answer, how could their teacher, and one who ruled the country for twenty five years, have got it so wrong? The other possibility is that Nyerere like everyone else knew that those imbalances had not been corrected and that in some cases like political appointments the Muslims were even worse off in 1985 than they were in the early sixties. Nyerere had promised Muslims in 1959 that their lowly position could only be set right after independence. After ruling the country for a quarter of a century and after acknowledging the enduring patience of Muslims throughout that long period, Nyerere found it difficult to admit his failure in that regard. But again that is very uncharacteristic of Mwalimu. Way back in 1962 Nyerere wrote Tujisahihishe. The onus of his narration in that small booklet was to underline the need for acknowledging and correcting our mistakes. And in his leadership Nyerere displayed admirable courage in admitting mistakes and even failures without equivocation. The Arusha Declaration: Ten Years After is but one example. But why was Nyerere suddenly unable or unwilling to admit failure in religious imbalances?

We may never know why Mwalimu made that puzzling statement but many Muslims have been forced to suspect a trace of religious prejudice against them. One can understand why in his book, Said (1998) has described that speech as a "farce". Muslims argue that Nyerere could not have possibly been ignorant of their situation. Nor could he have been embarrassed by his failure to keep his promise. For if that were the case he could have easily ignored that subject altogether as he had done throughout his rule as president. He was under no pressure to raise it. Nyerere not only raised the matter but also attempted to close the Muslim file by misrepresenting it. It was mentioned in chapter one how Nyerere, a Catholic, had vowed to do everything in his power to strengthen Catholicism in Tanzania. Was Nyerere afraid that the new president, a Muslim, would also misuse his power to strengthen Islam in the country? In any case, Nyerere had failed to fulfil his promise. Why was he now deliberately discouraging future leaders from addressing that problem? Did he believe Muslims would perpetually continue with their suffering without any bitterness? A year before Nyerere made that statement Mazrui and Tidy (1984:377-378) noted in their book, Nationalism and New States in Africa that the political leverage of Muslims in Tanzania was well below commensurate levels and that ‘Most observers do not even realise that there are more Muslims than Christians in Tanzania’. They also wrote, (and in retrospect quite prophetically) that while Tanzania had fared better in terms of religious harmony, ‘but the risk that Muslims might become increasingly discontented as they witness a disproportionate share of privilege enjoyed by Christians continue to hang over Tanzania, especially in the years which would follow the departure of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’.
 
 

Was Nyerere shedding crocodile tears?

In Tanzania Christians have dominated key government appointments for so long that they now seem to consider it anomalous to see a Muslim beyond the rank of an office cleaner, messenger or driver. Malekela (1993) for example claimed that under Mwinyi’s leadership the tendency was to favour Muslims to assume positions of high responsibility even when they were ill-qualified. He could not cite even a single example. In fairness to him however, he did acknowledge that he was quoting a rumour. In his pastoral letter Pengo (1993) also reported but discounted the claim that Christians were being discriminated in government appointments. Reverend Curthbert Omari (1994) went even further. He cautioned his fellow Christians to be on their guard against possible Muslim "infiltration" in "our" various government institutions! Far from remedying religious imbalances, Tanzania was becoming more and more exclusionary as far as religious affiliation was concerned. Baraza Kuu (1993) in their booklet Madai ya Haki za Waislamu did not rely on rumours. They compiled a list of Christian and Muslim officials in various government offices and parastatal organisations. They pointed out for example that in that year 1993 there were 8 Muslim District Commissioners against 113 Christian. In the Prime Minister’s Office, the Prime Minister himself, his Principal Secretary, Deputy Principal Secretary, and all the five Directors were all Christian. Likewise in the Civil Service Department a Christian Principal Secretary was assisted by five directorates all of which were headed by Christians. The Tanzania Electoral Commission had seven members all of whom were Christian except one member from Zanzibar. The Tanzania Law Review Commission had nine members all of whom were Christian except one member from Zanzibar. Muslims called upon the government to rectify the religious under-representation of Muslims.

In the same year 1993, following the pork butcheries riots, hundreds of Muslims were indiscriminately arrested and denied bail on very flimsy grounds. During that trying period Shivji (1993b) stood out as an eloquent if lone voice to speak out in defence of the underprivileged. Even Nyerere was alarmed by the ferocity with which the government pounced on the Muslims. He criticised the government of the day by saying that during his presidency the primary duty of the government was to fiercely defend the constitution, not pork shops; whereas the major task of the current government was to fiercely defend pork shops, not the constitution. He was alluding to the Union government’s wavering stand on Zanzibar’s membership to the OIC. Of course Nyerere was conspicuously silent about the Mwembechai killings. But perhaps more significantly it was in 1993 that Nyerere for the first time admitted in public that there was indeed religious hatred against Muslims in Tanzania. He said that it was nothing but religious hatred against Zanzibari Muslims which was behind the call for the creation of Tanganyika. In an interview with a local Kiswahili newspaper Nyerere said that when he opposed the G55 motion for the creation of Tanganyika a team of clergymen went to see him at his Msasani residence. They told him that it was important for Tanganyika to have its own separate government because of the cultural incompatibility between Zanzibaris and Tanganyikans. Nyerere asked them whether the people of Bagamoyo were culturally closer to their fellow Tanganyikans of Bunda than they were to the people of Unguja. Or whether the people of Tanga or Mafia were culturally more compatible with their fellow Tanganyikans of Tunduma than they were with the people of Pemba. He told them that there were more Muslims in Tanganyika than in Zanzibar. The same problem of cultural incompatibility would confront them within Tanganyika. In his book Tanzania, Tanzania! Nyerere (1993) repeated his charge about religious hatred against Islam and Muslims in Tanzania.

I am aware that there are formidable arguments, both constitutional and political, in favour of three governments. Those arguments have also been presented by some of our best legal minds in Tanzania, and not all of them out of religious prejudice against Muslims or Christians. Way back in 1983, at a meeting of the Tanganyika Law Society, Wolfgang Dourado, a patriotic Zanzibari Catholic, presented closely reasoned legal bases for the creation of Tanganyika. Shivji (1990) and Jumbe (1994) have also argued that the 1964 Articles of Union envisaged three distinct jurisdictions. My interest here is not to discuss the legality or political suitability of having the government of Tanganyika, but rather to underscore the fact that Nyerere at last made a public acknowledgement of the existence of the cancerous curse of religious animus in Tanzania. Quite unfortunately however, Nyerere made those admissions at a time when Muslims were already so disenchanted with him that they accused him of shedding crocodile tears. He was the one who laid the foundation of a structure which guaranteed the continued dominance of people of his own religious faith. If there were more Muslims in Tanganyika than in Zanzibar, those Muslims were virtually invisible in the government machinery. Nyerere did not say how this terrible monster of religious rancor against Muslims crept into Tanzania, "the citadel of peace". Any serious effort to disentangle ourselves from its fatal grip must begin with an equally serious effort to understand how it came to haunt us. In the foregoing pages I have attempted to show in the light of my understanding and experience the nature and complexity of the political malaise which now weighs so ominously upon our society.
 
 

What should be done?

To avert political catastrophe in Tanzania I suggest the following:
 
 

(a) The president should address the dominant group

President Mkapa has acknowledged the existence of Muslim grievances. He has also expressed his willingness to resolve them. Muslims have many complaints but they all fall under the rubric of religious discrimination. Perhaps the strongest political advantage which Tanzania has, but one which may not last long, is that religious discrimination against Muslims is still hierarchical and therefore unilateral. It is not so far horizontal and therefore not yet mutual. Muslims suffer religious discrimination and humiliation in their contact with vertical institutional power, in schools and government offices. Muslims do not experience religious discrimination horizontally in their social relationship with Christians at the market place, or as neighbours and friends. Even at those trying moments when Muslims were being hounded up by the government, in some cases it was a perplexed Christian neighbour who took care of the children of the arrested Muslim parents. And in most cases Christians would be among those people who would come to comfort a bereaved Muslim parent or spouse.

Because of their inferior position, Muslims, even if they wished, cannot possibly discriminate against Christians at a vertical level. It is the Christians who dominate positions of power who have unilaterally decided to discriminate against Muslims. And it is this group which the president should address. Female Muslim students for example have a constitutional right to follow the Islamic code of dress. The Ministry of National Education and Culture had issued a circular letter to that effect long ago. Yet in practice Muslim students are daily being harassed by Christians who head those educational institutions. When Muslims staged a demonstration in protest, they were reassured that putting on an Islamic dress was their constitutional right! The government should have addressed and warned those who were unilaterally discriminating against Muslims. The government drive should aim at changing the arrogant mind-set of the dominant group before its discriminatory tendencies trickle down and induce exclusionary tendencies at the horizontal level.

Muslims suffered religious discrimination under the colonial rule and they rose against it. Why is it that after independence Muslims have endured religious discrimination for so long? Why are they now becoming increasingly discontented? The patience of Muslims rested on two major factors which are now crumbling away. For better or for worse Muslims did believe that they would get a fair deal after independence. It did not occur to

them that like the colonialists, their fellow citizens would also count them as political or religious enemies. They hoped that after independence one’s religion would not be a determinant factor in upward social mobility. That trust is poignantly captured in Nyerere’s 1985 farewell speech. Nyerere recalled and recounted the brotherly treatment Christians received in a predominantly Muslim city of Dar es Salaam. That speech was reproduced in Uhuru, 5 November,1999 following Nyerere’s death. Forty years after independence Muslims are not only disproportionately under-represented but are also openly perceived as enemies. The second factor was that despite the gross religious inequalities in access to education and employment, Muslims as a community were still regarded with respect and treated as dignified human beings. They were not deliberately held up for public scorn or humiliation. The government sensitivity towards Muslims was such that Independence Day celebrations were postponed if they fell on the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan. Forty years after independence the government insensitivity towards Muslims has been such that in 1999 Muslim students were initially scheduled to sit for their examinations on Eid-el Fitr Day! And when Muslims raised concern some government officials said with unmistakable insolence, "The time-table will not be changed. It is up to them (the Muslims) to decide whether to sit for the examinations or not" (Kondo, 1999). Despite repeated Muslim protests, the humiliation of Muslims is becoming a favourite form of "entertainment".

At a sensitive period of national anguish when Mwalimu Nyerere passed away, and even before his body had been laid to rest in Butiama, Mtanzania ( 23 October,1999), one of the leading daily newspapers in the country decided to entertain her readers by publishing a cartoon which reviled Muslims and their religious leaders, and which proudly presented Nyerere as a Catholic religious leader. The cartoon had two parts. In part one the uncle by the name of Kepu says to his nephew, Wavisa, "Do you know, Wavisa, that Mwalimu’s funeral has set an unparalleled record this century?". The nephew responds by saying, "You are quite right, uncle Kepu". In part two the nephew adds by saying, "But the funeral of a Muslim religious leader in our area set an unparalleled record in having the greatest number of pick-pockets and thugs." The overjoyed uncle jumps up in a hearty laughter. Was Nyerere a Catholic religious leader? Why should his funeral be compared with that of a Muslim religious leader? Forty years after independence Muslims are publicly portrayed as the dregs of the Tanzanian society. In whose interest? In their letter of protest Muslims said that they were greatly saddened to note that the occasion of Nyerere’s funeral should be seized to vilify Muslim leaders who sacrificed so much to facilitate Nyerere’s rise to power. The letter also stated that under normal circumstances the government would have taken action against the newspaper or at least reprimanded it, especially since the cartoon was religiously insulting and politically divisive. But Habari Corporation had the effrontery of publishing it at a time of national mourning because of the sure knowledge that Muslims and their religious leaders were not regarded as normal citizens (Walid, 1999).

If Mtanzania maligned Muslim religious leaders, a Radio Tanzania play "Niachieni Mwenyewe" ridiculed the Holy Qur’an and the Sunday Observer reviled Muslim women and the Muslim dress of Hijab. In all the above cases and many others Muslims protested but their protests do not seem to stem the tide of slurs against them. In July 1999 the Dar es Salaam Consultative Assembly of Imams issued a statement against the stigmatization of mosques by CCM’s Secretary General, Philip Mangula (Mbukuzi, 1999). The gross religious inequalities of today are not only accompanied by a structural exclusion of Muslims but also by their conspicuous humiliation as a sort of national pastime. The process of changing the negative mind-set against Muslims must include disallowing the dissemination of negative images of Muslims in the mass media.
 
 

(b) The establishment of religious checks and balances

The promotion of national ideals should not largely or solely be dependent on the good sense of individuals in positions of power. It is important to establish in-built control mechanisms. It is of course true that to a very large extent having a good government means having good people in government. But in-built safeguards would help the government to spot and flush out bad elements before it is too late. Any serious bank for example would carefully scrutinize the past history of its employees and admit only those with unblemished records. Despite their trustworthiness the bank would still put in place financial regulations to monitor all transactions. Any foul play would be discovered almost immediately. Unfortunately, there appears to be a very well established image in our country that Christians are such good people that their own self-policing should be enough. To be sure, many Christians are indeed good people, but certainly not all of them. And since human beings are capable of moral degeneration it is always important to have checks and balances.

By way of illustration I shall here mention only three examples. The first example is connected with the massive leakage and subsequent cancellation of National Form Four examinations in November 1998. The government has not yet published its official report about the leakage. But it came to light in the aftermath of the leakage that while most schools had a new invigilator every year, some schools were lucky to have the same good invigilator for a period ranging between ten to fifteen years! Of course for the purposes of administering an examination what is important is not the face but the trustworthiness of the invigilator. But why is it that certain invigilators must always go to particular schools year in year out? It was also revealed that no external invigilator was usually sent to those schools which were known to be headed by virtuous and highly trustworthy people! The actual integrity of those individuals is not at issue here, our concern is on the potential danger such capricious regulations pose. For we may not even know whether the probity of such people is still beyond question. If left unchecked we may soon find ourselves having more and more first classes matched up with less and less competence, like in George Orwell’s Animal Farm where statistical economic growth goes hand in hand with deteriorating living standards.

The second example is the vulnerability to which our country is exposed by the numerous airfields owned and controlled by the Christian churches. The idea behind allowing churches to have their own airfields is to facilitate the provision of emergency medical or relief services. But human beings even if they are Christian clergymen are liable to human weaknesses. Without reliable controls the flying in doctors may abuse those facilities to bring into the country illegal drugs or even arms.

The third example is a perplexing revelation made in an official report by the Roman Catholic church in Tanzania and submitted to Pope John Paul II when he visited Tanzania in 1990. In its report titled Activities of the Church in Tanzania the Catholic church has reported about the existence of a Commission of Armed Forces within the church. The report is silent about when that Armed Forces Commission was established within the Catholic church in Tanzania (Baraza Kuu, 1998). Muslims formally requested the government to clarify on that matter with a view to allaying their fears. The government has yet to respond. In the absence of an official clarification we do not know whether the Armed Forces commission of the Catholic church works within the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces or operates as an independent military wing of the church. In either case it is not clear why the Catholic church would need a commission of Armed Forces. The hierarchy of the Catholic church is such that all Catholic leaders in Tanzania including His Eminence Polycarp Cardinal Pengo have to answer for their actions directly to the appointing authority in Rome. Was the formation of the Armed Forces Commission a directive from Rome? Could it possibly be that it was this commission which was behind the killings of Muslims at Mwembechai? Could this be the reason why Catholic leaders rushed to defend those killings? The government can easily put to rest such wild speculations by explaining why it believes it is necessary for the Catholic church to have a military wing or a commission of Armed Forces, and whether other religious groups can also form their own Armed Forces Departments.

The above examples underline the need for establishing religious checks and balances. Part of the problem in our country is that the government is almost exclusively run by Christians. One way of controlling religious excesses is to strike a religious balance in appointments. This would imply adopting a deliberate policy of affirmative action in favour of all underprivileged groups. To effect such changes the Tanzania leadership would need the courage of taking intelligently fearless action. In The Prince, Machiavelli (1940:65) offers a different advice. He argues that it is politically useful for a leader to ‘seem all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity, and religion’ but it is politically dangerous to actually and always put them into practice. The political tragedy in Tanzania may partly be precipitated by the seeming tendency to heed Machiavelli as far as the question of religious discrimination is concerned.

Tanzania: A Citadel of Peace?

Our leaders have always described our country as a citadel of peace. We do not seem to have drawn any meaningful lesson from the Rwanda tragedy of 1994. The Rwandese, like Tanzanians, do not constitute a special species of human beings. Tanzania may do well to learn something from the social roots of that chilling tragedy. For what happened in Rwanda could happen in Tanzania. Is Tanzania a citadel of peace? There is a charming anecdote in East Africa which warns people against the folly of being entrapped in their own propaganda. According to one version, a hungry and physically exhausted farmer returned home at nightfall and lay in his bed. But since it was a brightly moonlit night children were playing at his compound and their wild noises irritated him. But how could he lure them away? He decided to invent a lie. He opened his window and addressed the children: There is a sumptuous banquet going on at the mosque now and the choicest dishes are available. Why don’t you go to enjoy the feast? All the children rushed to the mosque and they did not come back again. But when the children did not come back, the hungry farmer said in his heart: There must be a feast at the mosque, otherwise the children would have come back. He put on his clothes and went to the mosque! Of course the mosque was closed and he heard the children playing in another compound. It was asinine of the hungry farmer to believe his own lies.
 

"I am afraid of normal people"

As I was walking along the streets of Gainesville, Florida, in September 1999 I saw a woman driving a car which had a bumper-sticker with the following statement: I am afraid of normal people. I was struck by the vibrant ambiguity and complexity of that deceptively simple statement. I do not know why that woman was afraid of normal people. But her statement provoked me to recall an upsetting experience I had with "normal people" at the Kariakoo Market in Dar es Salaam in 1991. It was an experience which nearly cost me my life. I had finished my shopping at around 11.a.m. when I saw a young man of about 16 years fleeing from his pursuers who were shouting "thief! thief!" The young man fell down about four metres from where I was standing. I saw "normal" passers-by who a minute before were calmly walking along the road rushing to take bricks and other missiles. By sheer good luck I managed to calm them down. I inquired about his crime and they told me that he stole some three or four bananas. I volunteered to pay for all the bananas the young man had stolen. The owner of the bananas was not even among those who were murderously beating up the young man. I told them that I was very much against theft, but it was an enormous crime to unilaterally enforce a death penalty for such a petty crime. The angry mob was about to disperse when suddenly someone who was not in the group came rushing with a brick and hit the young man in the head. And suddenly all the people who had seemed to agree with me now resumed their attacks. When I tried to intervene again they told me that they would kill me also. In less than fifteen minutes the energetic young man was no more. After which the same "normal" people went about their business as usual. Why is it that those apparently peaceful and normal people felt no remorse at all after clubbing to death that young man? What would have happened if those people had access to fire arms?

Available records show that in Rwanda Catholic clergymen did participate in the massacres of their fellow Catholic citizens in 1994. The fact that even such a highly respected personage and highest ranking Catholic leader in Tanzania as His Eminence Polycarp Cardinal Pengo could, without the slightest tinge of contrition, justify the killing of unarmed Muslims at Mwembechai should give us a foretaste of the tragic possibilities that lie ahead of us. I am not afraid of normal people, but I have no illusions about them.

Tanzania cannot long endure half privileged half oppressed.