By Victoria Lihiru (Ph.D)
One year and a few months have passed since the Political Parties Amendment Act (PPAA), 2019 was passed and assented into a law in Tanzania. Unlike the Political Parties Act, 1992, the PPAA contains unprecedented ‘progressive’ gender and social inclusion provisions. Its section 6A(5) requires political parties to promote gender, youth, and social inclusion in the (a) formulation and implementation of its policies; (b) nomination of candidates for elections; and (c) election of its leaders. This provision is celebrated by women rights organizations and activists as paramount for engendering political parties’ constitutions and strategies. It is also celebrated for enabling women to become political parties’ leaders and electoral candidates.
Gender and social inclusion frameworks pertain to key groups, such as women, youth, and people with disabilities. This article however, focuses on women. It looks at the status of women representation in the political parties’ national level leadership positions since the enactment of the PPAA. Party national leadership is defined to mean the highest level of the party main leadership which, for the purpose of this article, does not include leadership of the parties’ wings and or national directorates.
Four political parties, the Civic United Front (CUF), NCCR-Mageuzi, Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA) and Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo) have conducted their internal national level elections since the PPAA came into existence. All of them are opposition parties. The ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) conducted its internal elections in 2017. Hence its first experience with the PPAA will be during the nomination process of candidates for the forthcoming general elections in October 2020.
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| Magdalena Sakaya, Secretary General, CUF |
CUF conducted its internal national election one month after the enactment of the PPAA. Out of its seven national leadership positions, CUF has one woman, Magdalena Sakaya, as its National Deputy General Secretary. In July 2019, NCCR-Mageuzi conducted its internal elections and elected three women, to occupy the positions of National Vice Chairperson (Mainland) Angelina Mutahiwa; Secretary General, Elizabeth Mhagama; and Vice Secretary General (Mainland), Rehema Kahangwa. Few months later, CHADEMA concluded its intra-party election in December 2019. They elected only men for all of their national party leadership positions. A special seat parliamentarians (Sophia Mwakagenda) aspired for the Vice-Chairperson position, but she later withdrew her candidacy few days before the election day.
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| Elizabeth Mhagama, Secretary General, NCCR-Mageuzi |
In March 2020, ACT-Wazalendo concluded its internal election and elected a woman, Dorothy Semu, as National Vice Chairperson and several other women. ACT-Wazalendo has also managed to elect the first ever woman in Tanzania, Janeth Rithe, to serve the position of National Secretary for Publicity and Communications – arguably the most public facing position for a party.
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| Dorothy Semu, Vice Chairperson, ACT-Wazalendo |
It is apparent that, notwithstanding the PPAA’s requirement for political parties to promote gender and social inclusion in the election of its leaders, women are unevenly represented in the national level leadership positions across different parties. NCCR-Mageuzi is leading with three women, ACT and CUF follow closely with one woman each while CHADEMA has no woman at the helm of its national leadership as defined above.
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| Halima Mdee, Chairperson of Women’s Wing, CHADEMA |
Although there exist apparent inconsistencies in women representation at the parties’ national leadership positions, it is surprisingly difficult to conclude which party has complied or faulted in respecting the gender and social inclusion provisions within the ambit of the PPAA. The root to this stalemate is within the framing of the gender and social inclusion provisions under the PPAA. Unlike gender and social inclusion provisions adopted in countries such as Kenya and Rwanda, the PPAA is silent on the threshold/quota, which is basically the numbers or percentage of women under which compliance by political parties is measured.
Adding to this problem is the fact that, although the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP) has specific roles stipulated under section 3(5) of the PPAA, observing the gender and social inclusion provisions is ironically not one of them. Since the ORPP oversees implementation of all provisions under the PPAA, non-stipulation of the duty to oversee the implementation of gender and social inclusion provisions among the ORPP’s specific roles communicates a presumption that such role is played through the “any other business ‘AOB’” section. Section 3(5) (j) of the PPAA requires the ORPP to ‘undertake any other business required in the implementation of the PPAA.’
For the case of CHADEMA, which elected all men in its national leadership team, and despite that oversight of gender and social inclusion provisions is not among the ORPP specific roles, there was reasonable expectation for ORPP to use its highly contested power of monitoring political parties’ intra-party elections to provide guidance for CHADEMA to take efforts to ensure certain percentage of its national leadership is occupied by women – unfortunately, that never happened. It is likely that the ‘AOB’ treatment of the Registrar’s role to supervise the gender and social inclusion provisions subconsciously made the ORPP turn a blind eye on CHADEMA’s omission.
The PPAA presents no rewards for compliance or penalties for the gender and social inclusion provisions hence making political parties unmotivated to comply. In Kenya, for instance, political parties are not entitled to receive funding from the Political Parties Fund if they have more than two-thirds of their registered office bearers from the same sex. On the related point, the PPAA provides a list of offences with their respective penalties. However, the law does not include breaching of gender and social inclusion provisions as one of the punishable offences.
The ‘AOB’ treatment of the gender and social inclusion provision is again witnessed in this aspect. Section 29 of the PPAA requires any political party contravening any provision to which no specific penalty is prescribed, to be liable to a fine of not less than ten million shillings and not exceeding fifty million shillings or suspension or to deregistration. Sadly, the ORPP cannot successfully invoke this provision in dealing with gender and social inclusion omissions such as those painted by CHADEMA. This is because the PPAA is silent on the number or percentage of women the political parties must have in its leadership positions.
Without a clearly stipulated threshold, the level of compliance to gender and social inclusion provisions remains a matter of discretion of the parties, consequently hindering compliance audit by the ORPP. This brings a situation where political parties and the ORPP make a wrong presumption that women leaders in the women wings and a handful in lower parties’ leadership positions are sufficient to meet gender equality principles.
The ORPP explains the non-inclusion of gender and social inclusion threshold/quota (numbers and or percentage) as a way to take parties through awareness raising phase and awakening voluntary compliance before setting the binding quotas and enforcement mechanisms. It is my humble view that, in order for the PPAA to meaningfully facilitate the substantive and descriptive integration of women in the political parties, it must move from boxing the gender and social inclusion provisions as merely ‘awareness raising provisions.’The PPAA must be amended to provide for clear, measurable and enforceable gender and social inclusion provisions.
When the PPAA includes clear thresholds, incentives and enforcement mechanisms, parties will be moved to take deliberate efforts to realize the gender and social inclusion provision. The threshold will further allow the Registrar and other stakeholders to assess compliance levels by parties. The PPAA could borrow from the 1977 Constitution of United Republic of Tanzania and demand 30 percent of political parties’ leadership positions/structures and candidate nominations to be women. The PPAA could also set a more ambitious 50/50 per cent men and women representation threshold as per international and regional commitments.
Critics of numbers emphasize that substantive representation is better than numerical representation. I argue that the two are not mutually exclusive and that at times the substantive representation argument has been used to reduce the number of women in leadership positions in a manner that affects realization of substantive representation. The PPAA Regulations are underway, hopefully they will address the already observed challenges associated with the implementation of the gender and social inclusion provisions. Without the inclusion of specific numbers or percentage to accompany the gender and social inclusion provisions, women will continue to be ‘AOB’ within the eyes of political parties and that of the ORPP.
With the ungrounded nature of the gender and social inclusion provisions in the PPAA, let’s watch with enthusiasm the extent of parties’ compliance to gender and social inclusion principle in fielding women candidates in wards and constituencies in the coming October 2020 elections.
About the Author-Victoria Lihiru is Lecturer of Law at the Open University of Tanzania. She is also a Legal, Governance, Gender and Disability Inclusion Consultant. Email: victorialihiru@gmail.com.
We women we are supposed to be the first but for that of CHADEMA is too much even only woman
Good analysis. But let I also share my observation, the progressiveness of the law may be well applauded, but the progressive character of it needs to be institutionalized in the parties and amongst the party members. Look for instance a party like NCCR which perfectly appeals to the law, the saw party is arguably a pocket party for someone… despite the numbers if they wont be institutionalization of the party's doing then in simple terms the numbers would simply be a representation of impotency (with all due respect). As for CHADEMA, it is sad that that is the case, but I'll still applaud HALIMA for what she has done and is doing to the women wing. Of all the parties, CHADEMAs women are more vibrant and articulate and shed more light to the future of women in politics. My views. Again… Good Analysis.