Zanzibar politics all about cloves

But election politics has always overshadowed the nation’s development and production policies that could be worth attention in helping the people in solving their problems since politics and the economy are often intertwined with mutual affects.

Together with other factors including exclusionist politics in which some regional and ethno-racial sections deemed as supporting the opposition are left out, the decline of clove production and the weakening of other major little developed employing sectors such as fishing, the people of Zanzibar and especially those from the Island of Pemba, are continually emigrating en masse to Tanzania Mainland and foreign countries in a run away from the Isles’ economic hardships.

Some circles have even put forth the claim that Zanzibar’s current population of 1.3 million could be lower than the number of Zanzibaris living abroad.

The trend provides yet another avenue to test the popular hypothesis worked out by Darren Acemoglu and James Robinson, among other scholars, that, in whatever form of government, economic development determines political stability.

Linking the economy to politics in the Zanzibar context, a political scientist from the Isles Dr Mohammed Bakari claims that the post-revolution politics, including such things as the ineffective land reforms and poor marketing whereby the state was the only buyer at a price it fixed, among other factors, had discouraged clove producers for they were not getting a commensurate returns for their labour.

The farmer’s income from clove could not even sustain production, leave alone meet the subsistence requirements of its producers in the food-importing Islands.

It is only in the previous four years when people’s renewed hopes through the short-lived Government of National Unity (GNU) that farmers’ witnessed a fair price by the state, a situation that revived their interest in continued clove production.

Paradoxically it may sound for a country with massive dependence on a single cash crop, Zanzibar’s farming methods have remained the same as 80 years ago when it enjoyed the status of a major producer for producing nearly 85 per cent of world cloves.

This anti-economic policy making has cost Zanzibar its clove world market monopoly, now taken over by traditional competitors including Madagascar and the Dutch East Indies.

On the other hand though, it can be argued that the post-revolution politics in Zanzibar brought about a labour challenge to the clove industry in general since the people of African descent were no longer interested in providing labour to the formerly Arab-owned plantations.

Thus, racial politics to some extent also played a role in the decline of clove production as it had for centuries played the same role in the making of Zanzibar.

Moreover, in what could be termed as ‘the Zanzibari exodus’ in search for green pasture can be among the causes of labour shortage and apathy in cloves since the elderly, women and children at home can hardly produce anything significant.

With land reforms, labour shortage, price fluctuations in the world market and the unending turmoil in Zanzibar, it can rightly be said that Zanzibar politics is all about cloves.

Hence, its production decline is tantamount to economic and political instability.

With the increasing trend of global unemployment and specifically considering Tanzania’s demographic composition whereby its population is estimated to be composed of 60 per cent youth, adding efforts and seriousness to reviving clove and fishing sectors, could help reduce political tensions.

Investing in other production activities could as well be the best way to absorb the otherwise desperate loitering population and thereby help reduce the existing political tensions channeled through the people’s age-old unmet demands for better economic systems.

Given the Islands’ suspicious politics, the unending turmoil and the consequences of its economic troubles, it has become difficult to figure out who and how to rescue Zanzibar from her economic drowning.

The people are under pressure as the police and other security forces are always deployed in response to the ever tense socio-political situation.

It is difficult for a community to engage in any meaningful economic activities while it has become the norm for that society to be preoccupied with politics throughout the five-year presidential term in a situation where elections campaigns and preparations dominate almost the first two years after election, leaving only the third year for production on the way to following year marking the start of other election campaigns.

The situation is worsened by prevalence of other challenges including poor technology, low prices for the products as well as poor marketing.

Although the situation in Zanzibar may seem to support the notion that better economy leads to political stability, attention should rather be focused on how to marry the two to avoid the crises.

Reconciling the two by translating them into a substantive practice for the benefit of the people of Zanzibar through the discourse of political and racial tolerance in the cosmopolitan Islands can help bring the people together to help their country develop as opposed to the current political maneuvering where politics of suspicion and domination of one group in leadership.

There would have been an economic and the political solution to Zanzibar state-of-affair had its production sectors been modernized and the ethno-racial politics been brokered by and for the benefit of the people irrespective of race or political creed.

*Francis Semwaza is a Dar es Salaam-based Political Strategist and Development Communication Specialist. For comments: E-mail: frsemwaza@aol.com; Phone: +255 71 646 6 044.