#Karume did not #sign any union order, says ex-clerk By Katare Mbashiru and Mussa Juma,The Citizen Reporters >#Dodoma. As Tanzanians today commemorate the death of the founding partner of the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar which gave rise to the United Republic of Tanzania, Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume, who was assassinated 42 years ago, fresh details indicate that the Revolution icon never signed any decrees on the merger, The Citizen has learnt. The revelation casts doubts over the Constituent Assembly chairman’s directive that the presidential decree that ratified the Articles of Union be brought in Dodoma. The first clerk of Zanzibar’s Revolutionary Council, Mr Salum Rashid, told this paper in a telephone interview yesterday that there has never been such a decree signed by Sheikh Karume. After a heated debate on the whereabouts of the original Articles of Union, Members of the Constituent Assembly (MCAs) rejected an Act to ratify the Articles of Union of April 1964 that was brought here to resolve the rising political tensions in the ongoing constitution making process. The MCAs said the signatures appended to the Act were a forgery. This prompted Mr Samuel Sitta, the CA chairman, to invite Mr Pius Msekwa who by then was the clerk of the National Assembly to give clarification on the document that also contains his signature, but the clarification did not seem to help much. To resolve the issue of the authenticity of the Articles of Union that gave birth to Tanzania, Mr Sitta directed the authorities to ensure Zanzibar’s 1964 Presidential Decree about the matter is made available to the House, given that both the Decree and the Tanganyika Act were important documents. This should clear doubts over the legitimacy of the Union, he told The Citizen.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 06:41:04 +0000
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