Social movements in Tanzania – maybe they are actually out there?

The analysis of civil society in Tanzania, leaves a general picture of a civil society still in the mushrooming stage, however with a few very capable Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) now emerging. However, a big dilemma is the apparent widening gap between the “capable few” and the rest. And another dilemma is the fact that very few CSOs in Tanzania seems to be based on a solid social foundation or constituency – there is, in other words, a very weak tradition of social movements (something which seems a general phenomenon in Sub Sahara Africa, but especially so in Tanzania), as compared to e.g. countries in Latin America.

In a dialogue with Prudence Kaijage, Principal at MS/TCDC, this issue also came up. Prudence agreed in principle with the above analysis of civil society; however he suggested a novel approach to what could be seen as potent civil society movements.
Maybe – he suggested - we need to look more for some of the informal social movements that exist, but which would never access funding, because of the informal character.
He mentioned as an example the ‘busdrivers association’ in Dar es Salaam, who managed very effective to mobilize all the drivers, after a court case against a fellow-driver was conceived as grossly unfair. The driver had been sentenced 30 years to jail for his involvement in a fatal traffic incident, involving two killed persons, as compared to a similar case a minister had been involved in earlier, from which the minister walked free.
Prudence point was to highlight that there are actually social movements in Tanzania, and they have the capacity to mobilize and act. However, they have a very different nature as compared to all the criteria’s in civil society funding guidelines! So he wanted to raise the discussion, whether it would be possible to look at such movements a potential area of civil society support.

This would be a challenge to donors (and northern CSO partners…)! But it might be worth a consideration?