As an accidental President, it is tempting to see President Samia as weak and at the mercy of Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) big beasts.  But what she has done in office appears to confound this comforting assumption.  Despite an apparent lack of enduring CCM power base, she has managed to coalesce significant power around and below her.

The security sector appears either to be loyal or to see her as a useful means to their (as yet unclear) ends.  The military has stood up firmly for constitutional process, presumably acquiring her gratitude in the process (a chip they may wish to cash in at some point).  And she has managed to populate key Cabinet positions with people loyal to her.  In these respects, she appears to be the personality of the hour – albeit one seemingly ruling despite the CCM rather because of it.

Whilst theoretically prey to CCM power brokers, Samia is also apparently able to work around them.

But the changes which she represents are not entirely new.  At one level, she has continued a trend set before her by former President Magafuli, whose death in office catapulted the accidental President into power.  This at least suggests that Samia herself is not a blip, but a function of a trend.

A lot of western policy towards Tanzania is seemingly predicated on a ‘Goldilocks’ assumption about the CCM – that it is just representative and democratic enough and just controlling enough to keep the reputational risk of partnership if not ‘just right’ then at least within manageable bounds.  It is perhaps too reassuring to assume that watching and waiting will allow the Samia phase to pass and for business (in some instances quite literally) as normal to return.

The apparent regionalisation of opposition politics in East Africa; the growth of an increasingly young, frustrated, urbanised and marginalised yet connected population in Tanzania; and the decreasingly influential levers available to western powers in the face of more attractive (albeit superficial) partners with deeper pockets elsewhere all raise questions over the role, purpose and direction of the CCM itself, rather than one President or another.  There may be plate-tectonic movements going on within the CCM and these may be rather more important than any one prevailing Presidential personality.  The recent elections may suggest that it is the CCM which is changing, not just the Presidents which it generates.

The question then is what are the trends which are unfolding?  As ever in Tanzanian politics, the issue is not so much a choice between CCM or not, but about the changing nature of the long-ruling liberation party itself.  Wishful thinking is a poor basis for strategic planning.  Clumsy and brutal but effective as it turned out to be, the state’s response to the 2025 elections suggests that revolutionary change is probably not in the air.  But being prepared to at least consider the unthinkable is vital.  Planning for the future will require a stoney view of what is happening now and what it might mean for the future.

That future will almost certainly be dominated by the CCM, a colonial era liberation movement and founding member of the Front-Line States with its nationalist, socialist and anti-imperialist ideological roots in the fifties and sixties.  Insights about its future nature may therefore lie beyond the boundaries of the East African Community and any sense of a Swahili brave new world (‘Jasiri Ulimwengu Mpya’).  In this respect, CCM shares more ideological DNA with Angola’s MPLA, Mozambique’s FRELIMO and Zimbabwe’s ZANU than with Kenya’s KANU or – especially – Uganda’s NRM.

In a kind of southern African Jurassic Park re-make, might it be that a dinosaur-like CCM, clinging to power in increasingly heavy-handed ways, follows a post-Mugabe trajectory as in Zimbabwe?  Or a CCM Renovada emerges catalysed by self-preservation – the dinosaurs’ meteorite – and increasing populism gravitates away from its more recent partnerships and alliances as has happened in post Dos Santos Angola?

Neither are entirely desirable or undesirable.  But understanding the direction of travel will be important to any attempt to partner the Tanzania of the future.