Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: Exotic Island Flashback: Zanzibar Ruling Party Wins; Opposition Rejects Results

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Exotic Island Flashback: Zanzibar Ruling Party Wins; Opposition Rejects Results

The opposition party in Zanzibar has rejected the results of multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections, which were won by the ruling CCM party. As I reported from Zanzibar town in late October 1995, tensions rose as the opposition claimed the voting had been marred by irregularities.

A senior official of the opposition Civic United Front says his party will not recognize the results of the elections.

The chairman of the CUF's technical committee, Mohamed Dedes, spoke after hearing from several of the party's polling station monitors. Mr. Dedes said they had reported in some key parliamentary constituencies, more votes had been cast than there were registered voters.

Opposition party officials said the constituencies included key ones on the main Zanzibari island of Unguja which the CUF had hoped to add to its expected sweep of seats on the smaller island of Pemba. Loss of these key constituencies was crucial to the Ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party's projected control of the new 50-seat Zanzibari parliament, as well as its retention of the presidency of the Indian ocean islands.

The Civic United Front's presidential contender, Seif Shariff Hamad, had told reporters his party would abide by the results even if it lost. But Mr. Dedes said the pledge was only intended to apply if the voting had been free and fair -- and Mr. Hamad was quoted as saying the CUF would not recognize nor be obedient to the new CCM government.

Opposition activists said they were considering a boycott of upcoming scheduled voting on Zanzibar and the Tanzanian mainland for a new president and parliament for their united republic. Those will also be multi-party elections, the first in the 31-year post-independence history of Tanzania.

Disappointed opposition supporters gathered outside the party's headquarters and at other locations around Zanzibar's historic Stone Town, angrily denouncing the election results announced over Radio Zanzibar. Most shops were closed out of fear of violence. Some minor scuffles were reported between police and CUF backers. Opposition leaders were appealing for calm.

Despite the opposition's claims of voting irregularities, international election observers reported no serious problems at any of the polling stations or during the laborious ballot-counting process.

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Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Exotic Island Flashback: Zanzibar Ruling Party Wins; Opposition Rejects Results

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