Tanzania Profile.pdf - WorldMap

After Nyerere had stepped down from the presidency in 1985, he was succeeded by Ali HassanMwinyi. During Mwinyi's administration, Tanzania began making political and economicreforms.In 1986, Tanzania began a program to lessen its economic controls and encourage the privatesector to be more active in the economy. The program consisted of many new policies, includinga reduction of the budget deficit, removal of most price controls, easing of restrictions on themarketing of food crops, and restructuring of the financial sector.By early 1992, Tanzania decided to switch to a multiparty democracy. Eleven political partieswere registered. Tanzania held its first multiparty elections in early 1994 in order to fill vacantparliamentary seats.In 1994, events outside Tanzania once again had a major impact on the country. The details arecomplicated and sometimes unclear, just as it was 12 years earlier in Burundi. The feud betweenthe Hutu and Tutsi people was also fierce in Rwanda. Some believe the tension in Rwanda wasthe result of ethnic rivalry, but others think it was more about class differences and politicalcontrol.Government leaders from Rwanda and Burundi had been meeting in Arusha, Tanzania to discusspower-sharing agreements between the Hutu and Tutsi people. After one of those meetings, theplane carrying the presidents from Burundi and Rwanda crashed near the Rwandan capital onApril 6, 1994. Many believe the plane went down under suspicious circumstances.The next day civil war erupted in Rwanda. Over the next three months, Hutus killed between500,000 and 1 million people. While most of the victims were Tutsis, many Hutus who did notjoin in the violence were also murdered. Hundreds of thousands of people fled Rwanda to escapethe violence, and many of them made their way to Tanzania.In July 1994, armed Tutsi rebels from neighboring countries invaded Rwanda and stopped thegenocide. Fearing reprisals, hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled Rwanda and sought refuge inZaire and Tanzania.In 1995, Tanzanians elected CCM party candidate Benjamin Mkapa as president of the union.Mkapa was elected to a second term in office in October 2000. The CCM party also won 202 ofthe 232 available seats in parliament.On the islands of Zanzibar, Abeid Amani Karume, son of Zanzibar's first president, defeated theCUF party candidate and was elected president. There were allegations of voting irregularities.Related violence three months later resulted in the deaths of at least 23 people, most of thosewere on the island of Pemba. Sixteen members of the CUF party boycotted parliament in protestover the Zanzibar election; they were later expelled from parliament.In October 2001, the CUF and CCM parties worked toward reconciliation by signing anagreement that called for reforms in the election process on Zanzibar. A Commission of Inquiry