Election 2015/The Weekly Sneak: John Pombe Magufuli

I used up all my words today writing my EA piece rather late.* So just gonna do an excerpt here and one or two other comments.

"A picture of an old election ballot surfaced on social media as I sat nervously monitoring media for the results, back from the days when voting in Tanzania mean that you either said 'yes' to Nyerere or you said 'no' to Nyerere. Aside from being beautiful, it was a great reminder of just where we began with this democracy and sovereignty business. It took some time for Mwalimu to concede the leadership to a successor, it took a while longer for the state to accept multi-party democracy, it has taken us 20 years to get to a point where the opposition presented a sustained and credible challenge to the ruling party- at least on the mainland."

We have a President-elect and Zanzibar is looking very... um. Hmmm.**

Okay, it has been a long week (by which I mean three months) so ama just go do anything but politics for as long as I can stand it. But before I go, let me leave you with this one thought: has there ever been a Tanzanian President without facial hair? hmmm? has there? #tafakari. 

*so. late. so many feels. so tired. 

**Zanzibar: I do not feel qualified to talk about Zanzibar, ever. If anyone tells you they can talk about Zanzibar and they are not Zanzibari? Don't buy into that. All I can say is: don't take your eye off Zanzibar for now.