Dodoma. The government yesterday firmly attempted to clear the mystery surrounding the Union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar by vowing to submit the Articles of Union to the Constituent Assembly (CA) chair tomorrow.
“Articles of the Union are in place and in good condition just as they were in 1964,” the minister of State in the President’s Office (Coordination and Relations), Mr Stephen Wassira, told the Assembly.
Mr Wassira said shortly before he tabled a report of the CA Committee Number Six on Chapters One and Six of the second Draft Constitution that he was speaking on behalf of the government.
He assured Members of the Constituent Assembly (MCAs) that the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, and the first President of Zanzibar, Abeid Aman Karume, did actually append their signatures to the Articles of Union in question.
A heated debate emerged in the House lately on whether the Articles of Union, which serve as the birth certificate of the merger between Tanganyika and Zanzibar ever existed.
The UN reportedly refuted allegations that it had a copy of the same, saying the organisation would have issued a certificate to the United Republic of Tanzania to acknowledge receipt.
The CA member Tundu Lissu earlier laboured to prove in the House that the Articles of Union were illegal if not inexistent, provoking his colleague, Mr Peter Serukamba, who queried “who are we here if the Union is non-existent?
”Mr Lissu was clarifying on a report by the minority of the CA Committee Number Four on Chapters One and Six of the second draft constitution.
