Elections

In Bukoba and district you cannot fail to notice that the national elections are imminent. Kikwete’s face – smiling and sincere – is everywhere and you really can feel the excitement in the air! 

The official 2 month campaign draws to a close with tomorrow’s National elections for President, Members of Parliament for each District and Ward Executive Officers to hold office for the next 5 years.

How do you get your political message across in a country where many are illiterate and very few have access to television and radio?  From the back of a truck!  The major parties have flat bed trucks loaded with speakers that have been patrolling the town blasting music, interrupted only briefly by a policy statement, at a decibel reading that would shame Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs.  The minor parties are doing the same from the backs of utes.  The photo shows a CCM street party just breaking up before moving to another part of town.

CCM (Party of the Revolution) being the dominant party has the biggest speakers and the loudest music. They seem to have access to more money and have had green and yellow hats, t-shirts and kangas printed that many supporters are wearing in towns and villages.  Everywhere you look there are green and yellow spare wheel covers and there are posters on everything – plastering cars (obscuring the middle of the windscreen in one I saw!), houses, fences, telephone poles and road signs.

Chadema, the second most popular party, has little strongholds around town with their red, white and sky blue flag fluttering and the serious, bespectacled face of their candidate gazing from the poster.  CUF (Civic United Front) is very much the minor party – posters are only A4 size and rallies could be held in a phone box.

Mostly we hear the noise from a distance unless we are in town.  Passing one of the trucks on the road is an experience painful to the eardrums and to be avoided.  When the trucks travel down our street they make the glass louvres vibrate but luckily they only stop where they can draw a crowd – on the corner of the main road or down at the little market – so they are a passing annoyance (unlike for Mark, Michelle and Abraham who had the CCM headquarters next door and were being blasted all day from pre-dawn to mid-night) 

Monday it will all be over, I predict a CCM victory, and the town will settle down again.

In some countries elections are a time of civil unrest and can be hazardous – not so here.  Tanzania has been one of the most stable democracies in Africa since Independence in 1961 and there is no danger, though having two companies of soldiers run through the main street chanting this morning while we were in town shopping was a little unsettling.  To say it was a show of force would be overstating the case as they were a ragtag group armed with only wooden sticks but their presence had no immediate explanation.

Anyway, how does the election affect my work?  For the past months the Ward Education Co-ordinators have been continually apologetic about being unable to get to the seminars and review visits – their time has been taken up with National Exams but also with preparations for the elections.  The WECs are the Returning Officers for their wards and have to prepare voter lists and polling places. 

Teachers are also employed in running the election.  Last Thursday my visit to two schools had to be rescheduled as most of the teachers were at a seminar explaining what their responsibilities would be as electoral officials.  Another review visit had been rescheduled the week before because all the teachers were at interviews to see if they could be electoral officials!  It is interesting that although the teachers are not at school the children still are with those few teachers who are at work taking responsibility as we found when we arrived at Kashangati to a clamorous reception from the several hundred children and two apologetic teachers.

School are used as polling places, as in Australia, and have lists of eligible voters already pasted up on the wall outside the Head Teachers office.  I suggested to Mr Josiah that the school committees could run the Tanzanian equivalent of sausage sizzles to raise much needed funds but he just laughed.

I am glad we were here to witness the election process, its impact on us has been minor, and I expect tomorrow to be trouble free.  But I will be glad when it is all over and life in the schools gets back to normal.

Happy Melbourne Cup Day to everyone for Tuesday - I'll see how I get on running a sweep in the office!

Jenny