Despite not having held national leadership posts in that party, the late Ndesamburo was more than a national leader, one of the party’s strongest advisers in its internal circles, a sort of alter ego to founder chairman Edwin Mtei and for that matter a sort of foster father to ‘youthful’ national chairman Freeman Mbowe.
It was hence not strange that the chairman didn’t have the right words to express how deep a blow his death was felt.
In a way he was the party’s guiding light in various respects, as he was more of a consummate politician not just generally but also for his age, in comparison with his fellow pioneer of the party who has an incomparable title as the proper founder of the party, Edwin Mtei.
The latter had long experience and renowned service, first as governor of the central bank, secretary general of the East African Community and then finance minister, while Ndesamburo came from business.
He was to an extent the very sort of people that traditional one party politics had sought to keep out of running national affairs, with an attitude bordering on revulsion. The problem is that the ruling party has never been able to get its act right on business generally, and has made enough progress to comprehend informal sector activity to make ends meet in a family, or to occupy women not holding formal employment, etc.
The ruling party has never been able to transcend its view of society as that of peasants and workers and include entrepreneurs, who all the same made their way into the party and recently started to pay for the sin of trusting that the party had changed. Successful entrepreneurs in the party mostly looked upon ex-premier Edward Lowassa as a role model - and are being ferreted out.
This background of the sort of mistrust that successful entrepreneurs are held in the country generally may to an extent explain the relative lack of ambition on the part of the late Ndesamburo, known to his fans especially in the twin urban areas of Moshi and Arusha as ‘Ndesapesa.’
It was for a while being said that he was running a hotel in Britain (some were saying that hotel was in London) but this reviewer has never come across an interview or article on ‘Ndesapesa’ which ascertained that impression. Still he was in the hotel business like the Mbowe family and scores of other entrepreneurs from the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro.
What marks out ‘Ndesapesa’ in opposition politics was thus his strict concern with Moshi Urban as his principal sphere of activity, apart from internal consulting and meetings with other members of the party regional and national leadership.
He was virtually unknown in national leadership, thus a quintessence local big man and parliamentarian, with the onerous record of having virtually swept the ruling party from the municipality.
The ruling party had mixed fortunes in other areas, succeeding to put up spirited contests and in some instances winning back seats, for instance after NCCR-Mageuzi declined after 1996, not Moshi Urban.
It still wasn’t altogether due to organisational prowess of the senior CHADEMA leader but a social fact, that contending the ruling party is more fashionable or feasible in urban areas than in rural areas, partly because social elders (e.g. in clans, religious denominations, etc) have less influence in urban areas than rural settings.
A study before the 1995 general elections indicated that the ruling party would obtain around 70 per cent of the vote in rural areas and an overall vote of around 62 per cent. That is precisely what happened by late October 1995.
At the same time the late Ndesamburo was among the pivot figures who gave the party an enduring image of a ‘northern’ group, perhaps even a ‘Lutheran’ character, which was by and large an accident, and at the same time it was unavoidable reality of political affinities.
The late Kenyan political science guru Prof. Ali Mazrui set out the matrix of the problem in his classical espousal of the paradox of the quest for continental unity, saying that in order to attain unity, national identity has to be low enough to accommodate the idea of merging with other countries to create an African ‘super-state.’
At the same time a durable low level of nationalist sentiment in any country risks tearing it apart into its constituent ethnicities, etc.
In that sense to accuse the late Ndesamburo of building up an ethnic party is to ask him not to have devoted his energies to rally around the party those around him, for instance to seek a parliamentary position, which is vital to demonstrate that the party is alive and popular.
If each political leader works to bring closer those around him, and Edwin Mtei succeeded to bring the late Bob Makani, Ndesamburo, Said Arfi and others, there is a concentration of support in a core area where Mtei knew more people and was likely to be more appreciated.
And when such a following collects, it attains ethno-religious identity as in the early TANU. One of the most enduring conflicts in the formative years of nationalism and early years of independence is the way TANU was transformed from a mostly coastal movement with its senior leaders closely identified with one another.
It was the three-way vote of 1958 which was for all intents and purposes dictated by the colonial regime with likely connivance of TANU president Julius Nyerere that split this coastal homogeneity, to the outcry of its core elements, like elders council chairman Sheikh Suleiman Takadir.
He led a rejectionist front of dissidents against absorption of starters in the three way vote, thereafter filling the cabinet.
While Nyerere and other TANU leaders had ample room to fight this impression of TANU being dominated by its early leadership, CHADEMA as an opposition party doesn’t have as much leverage on the matter.
It needed and still needs the most devoted people capable of supporting the party in an often difficult contention with authorities, and can’t have the luxury of saying ‘we have enough cadres from the northern zone,’ etc.
Those who accuse the late Ndesamburo, Mtei, Mbowe and others of building a zonal party ought to know better.
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