The political party known as Chama Cha Mapinduzi has been in power in Tanzania for nearly 50 years now and is known as the longest ruling political party in all of Africa. Even with economic growth and a country that is improving astronomically every year, there still lies a ton of corruption behind the political scenes. Political corruption in Tanzania ranges from bribing, kickbacks, and even theft of public funds. In this essay I will argue about these illegal corrupted activities and how it has affected Tanzania’s general population and government.

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            After gaining independence in December of 1961, Tanzania’s first president Julius Nyerere took power and implemented a socialism type ideology for his government. This like every other African country to take on “a socialist or Marxist agenda failed”. After the failure of socialism in Tanzania a multi-party system was implemented and established which was the birth of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party. Over the course of 50 years there have been many prime ministers affiliated with the CCM that have underwent serious corruption. In recent history Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa stole the show for corruption in Tanzania by firing port officials who stole public funds. According to Kazim News “Majaliwa said the government received only 70 percent of revenue collected by TPA and the other 30 percent was pocketed by individuals, including some of the TPA staff”. Obviously pocketing public funds is a very big problem as it directly impacts the potential growth of a country, but this isn’t the only incident where theft has occurred. Similar issues happened in Zanzibar, a Tanzanian owned island where theft and embezzlement happens regularly.

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            Bribing has been a huge problem in politics all over the entire world. No matter what country you can think of the chances that political bribing has taken place in that country is extremely high. In Tanzania bribing is just another thing added to the list of political corruption that occurs frequently. Earlier in the semester we watched “The Ivory Game” which was an expose on elephant poaching in African countries. Tanzania being one of the hot spots for elephant poaching obviously must have strings being pulled inside the government to allow this illegal activity to prosper. According to Journalists for Transparency bribing in Tanzania works by having “Secretive criminal syndicates pay off police, judges and customs officials to keep their lucrative trade moving. The poachers operate based on “take the money or the bullet,” causing many officials to turn a blind eye to their activities”. Having government officials take bribes from big criminal organizations is not only a very weak look for a government standpoint, but also endangers the public to being exposed to this sort of crime and violence.

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            The last main problem with corruption in Tanzania is “kickbacks”. Even though this is very similar to bribery as kickbacks are illegal payments as well, kickbacks don’t deal with big criminal organizations, but mainly businesses and the government. Tanzania kickbacks directly affects businesses and the government causing debt in many situations. Tanzania’s judicial court is known as “tainted by corruption and is subject to executive influence”. Having this corruption in the judicial system makes for a great risk to honest businessman and politicians.

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            Corruption in Tanzanian politics is stronger than ever and has been dominating the political party CCM for several decades now. Things like bribery, theft of public funds, and kickbacks have been lingering on for far too long and its only holding Tanzania’s political potential back. Tanzania is an improving country year by year making great forward strides of progress, but with corruption in play the people of Tanzania might not ever get to acknowledge how far the country has come from imperialism and independence.