Walking rallies: opposition party’s new campaigning approach in Tanzania’s 2020 election

Abstract

ABSTRACT Rally-intensive campaigns have been one of the main characteristics of elections and political parties’ communication and organising practices in Tanzania (Paget, 2019). However, due to a changing political landscape – intensified authoritarianism from 2016 – opposition political parties have had to think of new ways of mobilising and organising. These new ways of political mobilising and organising had an impact on opposition parties’ election ground campaign. In this article, I explore and analyse the campaigns of Chadema, the main opposition party in Tanzania, in the 2020 general election. Through participant observation, personal experiences, interviews, and documentary sources. I examine the new campaigning activity, which I describe as a walking rally, deployed by Chadema’s parliamentary candidates. The article contributes to the studies on electioneering and campaigning in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, the study adds to relatively sparse analyses of African opposition parties’ mobilisation, organising, and campaigning practices.