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Does Kinana’s resignation signal the final goodbye to CCM’s 2012 rebranding strategy?

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I am delighted to be able to provide space for this guest post from Aikande Kwayu, but also sad that it is necessary. Aikande has very understandably decided to close down her own blog following the introduction of the Online Content Regulations. This is a big loss.

Does Kinana’s resignation signal the final goodbye to CCM’s 2012 rebranding strategy?

Aikande Kwayu

Rebuilding party and country, one brick at a time – from June 2015

Rampant corruption scandals in the country and bitter internal conflicts among party members in 2008, threatened the survival of CCM – the ruling political party in Tanzania, which has been in power from the independence era to date. In 2009, a committee, chaired by the former President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, was formed to prevent the party from breaking up. The weakened party was further exposed in the 2010 general elections in which its votes’ share dropped from 80% in 2005 to 64%. To rescue the situation, the party leadership deployed a party rebranding strategy, which could be traced from 2012. In the 2012 party anniversary celebrations, the then chairman of the party President Jakaya Kikwete emphasized the need to restore (kukihuisha) and to give the party new image (taswira mpya) and attraction (mvuto) to society. He further illustrated the rebranding urgency by shedding (kujitoa gamba) the party’s old image. To do so, the party needed a vibrant, agile and smart secretariat. It was in that context that Gen. Abdulrahman Kinana was appointed as the Secretary General of CCM.

From 2012 to 2015, Kinana embarked in what I termed as #PoliticsOfImage. Kinana engaged and related the party with the lifestyle of an ordinary Tanzanian. Under his leadership, the party secretariat moved across the country in rural and urban areas using public means of transport, participating in wananchi (citizens) activities including improvement of social services and economic development such as farming and building classrooms and health centres as well as repairing weathered roads and bridges. The image of the party gradually changed from being the party of rich and corrupt people to the party of every citizen. Enhancing the original implicit mandate of CCM as a national movement/institution rather than a mere political party. As I have argued previously, my theory for Magufuli’s nomination as a party presidential candidate in 2015 was a result and a manifestation of the rebranding strategy. Magufuli, in comparison to other nomination candidates, was perceived as hard working and a modest politician.

It is unfortunate that since 2016, CCM is increasingly seen as a national dividing institution separating the citizens of Tanzania into the “others” vs “us”. The national movement mandate is being diluted for mere political gains and partisan interests. The new slogan “CCM Mpya” became a joke if not an antithesis to the very actions of some of the key party figures. Or was the CCM Mpya a departure from its core mandate? The silence of Kinana amidst CCM’s self destruction of its legitimacy (as manifested in violent bi-elections and other pronouncements by government officials with party membership), led to rumours of his dissatisfaction. On social media, active users kept asking “where is Kinana?” At one time, apparently as a response to these rumours and questions, the party chairman volunteered information that he had sent Kinana to India for treatment.

His resignation on the 28th May 2018, therefore, did not come as a surprise to many. In fact, even the party chairman attested that Kinana had been asking for the same for a long time. It was almost evident that his rebranding ideology did not fit in well with the new CCM Mpya style. Upon his resignation some of his former colleagues commented with emotions, which can be interpreted as nostalgia and sympathy for the strategy of 2012-2015 that has now been officially stamped bye bye.

To end this brief entry, it is fair to have a note on the newly appointed Secretary General, Dr Bashuri Ally, an academic at the University of Dar-es-Salaam. For me, it came almost as a surprise, since I never knew or imagined Dr Ally as a party insider to the extent of being appointed as a Secretary General. However, President Magufuli has many times appointed people in an unconventional way. For him, party experience or prior affiliation does not matter much. Under Magufuli’s chairmanship it is, thus, not shocking to see a full time academic being moved to a fully fledged political top position. This unconventionality proceeds to a “baptism of fire” from which the appointed, in defense of anything the regime does, turns into the opposite of everything that he/she stood for before the appointment. Time will tell as to what extent the fire baptismal will “refine” the mind and actions of Dr Ally towards cementing CCM Mpya.


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