Dar es Salaam — President Samia Suluhu Hassan is making appointments that signal her need to build a team of people with unquestionable integrity and who can stand by what they believe to be right irrespective of the circumstances, analysts say.
On Saturday, President Hassan appointed several Regional Commissioners and leaders of other key government institutions. For example, she dropped the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) Director General, Brigadier General John Mbungo, and replaced him with Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Salum Rashid Hamduni.
Mr Hamduni, a former Regional Police Commander (RPC) for Ilala in Dar es Salaam, was promoted to the rank of Commissioner of Police. Other public offices that saw change of guards was that of the Clerk of Parliament where President Hassan appointed Ms Nenelwa Mwihambi to replace Mr Stephen Kagaigai who was appointed Regional Commissioner for Kilimanjaro. Sylivester Mwakitalu was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), replacing Biswalo Mganga who was appointed High Court judge last week.
A close analysis would show that Mr Hamduni is the kind of person who could not be easily swayed when it comes to standing for someone’s rights despite ‘pressure from above’.
“He will not be easily swayed or tempted into obeying orders which, once obeyed, may result into infringing on other people’s rights,” said a source who has known him for years but who did not want to be named.
It is probably due to his respect for human rights that, while working as Ilala RPC, he at some point found himself in the wrong books of former home Affairs minister Kangi Lugola. In January 2019, Mr Lugola revoked the appointment of Mr Hamduni as Ilala RPC on what he termed as failure to heed his directives.