Chapter 5: Political Parties and Civil Society

Introduction

As we have been alluding to in all of the previous chapters, political parties with potential for growth and influence are those that have anchorage in movements and organizations. We would like to conceive of civil society as a multiplex of organizations of various movements which stand for a multiplex of ideas or interests which political parties would like to exploit by converting those ideas into political platforms. This brief chapter explores relationship between political parties and civil society in Tanzania. A lot of research work is required to arrive at some meaningful discussion on this very important topic. Our intention is to speculate on what institutions and organizations of civil society are developing and how the new political parties attempt to establish some relationship with those emerging organizations of civil society.

The evolution of institutions and organizations of civil society arise out of general societal or group concerns/interest which members convert into demands through their organizations which are outside state control. In that regard political parties are interest aggregation organizations. The role of political parties is therefore to harness those interests through programmes and then draw the organizations of those interest groups into their fold. Interest groups therefore are the actual foundations of political parties and the political parties are derivable from those interest groups.

Organization of Civil Society in Tanzania

In Tanzania formal organizations of civil society that are independent and autonomous are just emerging as are the political parties themselves. They are yet to develop and grow. At the same time, the political parties are formally in place without their actual foundational basis. The Tanzanian case therefore projects a unique situation whereby the social foundations of the political parties is growing parallel to the organs of their aggregation. In any event, present observations suggest that, organizations of civil society have formed along a variety of lines. The two major lines are the traditional interest groups and secondly, groups of the modern society.

Traditional Interest Groups

Organizations of traditional interest groups coalesce first around ethnic lines. Tanzania has more than 122 ethnic groups and ethnicity remains one of the central instruments through which political association is organized.

Alongside the ethnic associations, there are local group identities based on existing administrative regional or district units. For some people, residential localities have a high pulling effect and this leads them to act politically on the basis of localities.

At a more local level, the two main traditional group identities form sectoral associations; for example institutionalized work parties, genealogical associations etc.

Interest Groups of the Modern Society

Interest groups of the modern society seem to be growing and are likely to replace those of the traditional ones in terms of their political impact. These include: Business interests, Religious, Organized labour. Farmers Associations, The Media, Various NGO's, Gender Organizations, Occupational Associations, Cultural bodies, etc.

Unlike the groups based on traditional identities, which are mechanical and parochial in character, the interest groups of the modern society are more organic and cut across a number of ethnic identities. It is in this regard that they are likely to play a more significant role in the evolving political system than the groups based on mechanical solidarity.

Interest Groups and Political Affiliation

We have come to learn that the interest groups of both the traditional and modern society have been exploited before and even in contemporary times by the single party regime as a basis of building its support. This, as has been discussed elsewhere on the tendencies of monopolistic regimes, had been established through coercive mechanisms of both hegemonic and physical types. Interest groups were depoliticized through a socialization process that put the only party in a position of prominence thereby denigrating those groups to an inferior position as actors in the political process. Alongside those steps, the interest groups were by law forced to accept their participation in the political process via the only party. On the basis of these two mechanisms as well as on a number of organizational and administrative arrangements, the interest groups lost their autonomous growth and became part and parcel of the monolithic regime.

In the wake of the revitalization of plural democratic system, the interest groups of both variants are surfacing along with the emergence of the new parties. The question is, can we find a relationship between the interest groups and the new parties? From our study, the following observations have been made. First, the new political parties have emerged concurrently with the emergence of interest groups of the modern, society and the revitalization of interest groups of the traditional society. Thus the experience of particularly the Western democracies whereby interest groups preceded political parties does not apply to Tanzania. Interest group development goes parallel with political party development. If the Western experience is one to go by, then Tanzania's new political parties have truncated growth because they do not have their foundational basis in the respective infrastructure.

What then are the likely results of this unique experience? There are probably three possible outcomes to this development. One is for the new political parties to attempt to link up with the emerging interest groups thereby assuring themselves of constituencies they can claim to rely upon. Secondly, is for the interest groups to transform themselves into political parties that reflect the agendas of their group, in the first scenario, either the new parties, the interest groups or both will have to compromise their individual positions in order to establish the link. In the case of the second scenario, the internal dynamics will set the agenda of the new party. In this regard we are of the strong view that more viable political parties are likely to grow out of the second approach than the first, although this may take a long while.

The third scenario is for completely new parties to grow based on the aggregation of the interest groups that are now emerging. This may likely not be the case because over the period that such development may occur, political parties of either the first or second approach may have firmly established themselves such that many shades of opinion will have already identified themselves with some political party. While that is the general case, a second observation is that already there are tendencies for the new political parties to reach out in order to align themselves with at least some interest groups, corresponding to the first scenario. The following is a table of tendencies towards party and interest group affiliation observed thus far.

New Political Parties and Interest Group Affiliation

Column 5 of the figure gives an indication of the groups leanings toward the existing political parties. In most cases, such leanings are not explicit at least for the moment. This remains a subject for further research.

By and large, affiliation of interest groups to the political parties remain scanty. We would nevertheless want to make more concrete observations of this scanty affiliation by presenting the main channels through which some of the existing political parties link up with the organizations of civil society and to which organisations some of those parties are linked.

Channels of Affiliation

Realizing the significance of the organizations of civil society in the progress of their parties, the existing political parties have sought to link up with them via three main mechanisms.

Constitutional Provisions

Most of the political parties have provided for the inclusion of some of the key organization of civil society in their constitutions as a mechanism of affiliation. Characteristic of these are the CUF and NCCR-Mageuzi constitutions. Both the CUF and NCCR-Mageuzi constitutions have provided for sectoral departments of the parties. Among the departments they consider important and which they have made provisions for are the Women's departments (CUF items 24, 8 and NCCR-M item 1.15.1) and Youths' departments (CUF items 24, 7 and NCCR-m item 1:15.0). Leaders of these departments were subsequently represented in the highest policy making organs of the parties.

Policy Positions

Another mechanism the political parties have sought to link up with civil society is through taking formal positions on issues related to the interests of the respective groups. All political parties have made such positions in their formal programmes. But as an example we quote a section of the Chadema Programme on Women and Youths.

.... CHADEMA will therefore encourage women and Tanzania Youths to form national and non-partisan bodies, to pursue issues related to women and Youths without regard to political leaning or affiliation to parties.. (Chadema Programme 17.2).

Political Patronage

Another mechanism that has been employed by the parties to link up with the organizations of civil society is through patronage networks. Various private and public associations have been employed in specific situations to promote certain specific programmes of the parties in return for certain benefits e.g. position in government once in power, material benefits such as cash payment etc.

Main Civil Organizations to which Parties have Attempted Linkage with

As noted earlier on, the affiliation between the new parties to organizations of civil society is scanty, yet one can probably say the following at least in the interim about some of them.

First, Chadema seems to have cultivated fairly strong ties with the local business community. This is very clearly expressed in the composition of the executive committee of the party. Similarly, NCCR-Mageuzi has drawn a number of supporters from the Youths and Academics. All parties have extensively relied on cultural groups particularly music artists, dancers and sports clubs for their party propaganda work at rallies and other centres.

Inspite of these tendencies, one needs to clearly say that such efforts are still fluid. The organizations of civil society to which the parties are attempting to link with are themselves still nascent, often parochial and their competence level still dormant, perhaps non existent. Thus as we suggested before, the Tanzanian case provides a specific case where the political parties emerge alongside the organs that should have formed their foundation. It will be interesting to see which of the three scenarios will eventually reflect the reality.