Tanzania's Individual Freedom Champion Ex-President Ali Hassan Mwinyi Dies

Africa | Tanzania | Human Rights March 1, 2024

Tanzania's ex-President Ali Hassan Mwinyi is dead. He died in Dar es Salaam on February 29, 2024, at the age of 92.

Ali Hassan Mwinyi was Tanzania's second president. He ascended to power in 1985 after the country's first President Julius Nyerere stepped down and selected him as his successor. He then ruled the East African Community nation for two 5-year mandatory presidential terms that ended in 1995.

Dubbed "Mzee Rukhsa", that can be loosely translated into English as "Elder Who Permits Everything", for what he reportedly advocated as "Everything goes", President Ali Hassan Mwinyi is said to have liberalized morals, believes, values, and the economy in the country during his reign. As such, he was probably one of the greatest champions of individual freedom in Tanzania, Africa, and beyond.

Furthermore, Mzee Rukhsa is said to have been a down to earth person who embraced minimalist lifestyle. For instance, after stepping down as president, he said to have been sighted on many occasions using public transport in Dar es Salaam like everyone else there.

In more strict political terms, President Ali Hassan Mwinyi was considered to be the leading pioneer of Tanzania's dramatic paradigm shift in the 1990s, from command economic system to market economic system. Also, he reportedly initiated the process of peaceful transition from the then notorious one-party political system to the current multi-party democracy in Tanzania.

Tanzania officially adopted multi-party political system in 1998. However, the country has been struggling to make the system work as it should, with opposition parties persistently accusing the powerful ruling party CCM and the the country's non-independent electoral body, of all sorts of foul play during local and national elections. CCM ruled the country under the one-party political system and was allowed to transcend into multi-partyism unchanged hence carrying with it all public assets as if the party owned them. That definitely did not offer a level playing field for multi-partyism because all opposition parties were established from the scratch with mainly private assets, after abolition of the one-party political system.

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