Summary
·
He served
as a Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2015 under President Jakaya
Mrisho Kikwete.
· In February 2020, the CCM's central committee expelled Membe from the party after accusing him of ‘indiscipline and violating the party's ethics and constitution’.
Dar es Salaam. Tanzania’s former foreign Minister and Diplomat Bernard
Membe 69 has died, at Kairuki Hospital in Dar es Salaam where he was rushed in
the early hours of Friday, sources have confirmed.
The cause of death was not
immediately communicated.
He served as a Minister of Foreign
Affairs from 2007 to 2015 under President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete.
Following his death President Samia
Suluhu Hassan sent condolence message saying she had received the news with
profound sadness.
“I have received with sadness the
news of the death of Bernard Membe. For more than 40 years, Membe was a
brilliant public servant, diplomat, Member of Parliament and Minister who
served our country professionally,” she wrote on her twitter handle.
Membe’s political career kicked off
in 2000, after he was elected as a CCM Member of Parliament representing Mtama
constituency in the general election. He was re-elected in 2005 and 2010.
Prior to this he had served as a
national security analyst at the President's Office from 1978 to 1989.
He thereafter attended Johns Hopkins
University in Washington, D.C. where he studied international relations from
1990 to 1992.
In 1992, he was assigned to serve as
an Advisor of the Tanzanian High Commissioner in Ottawa, Canada, where he
served until 2000.
He was appointed as Deputy Minister
of Home Affairs by President Jakaya Kikwete after the 2005 general
elections. In the October 2006 cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed as
Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals.
In January 2007, he was appointed as
the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation after his
predecessor Asha-Rose Migiro was appointed as the United Nations Deputy
Secretary-General by then United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
He has also served as a member of
the National Executive Committee of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party since
2007; having been re-elected in 2012 at the 8th CCM Congress in Dodoma.
In January 2013, Membe informed his
constituents that he would not be vying for a seat in the next parliamentary
elections in 2015 thus giving rise to speculation that he may be considering to
run for the presidency.
This was to set stage for the hotly
contested CCM candidacy in the 2015 intra-party primaries between him and
Former Premier Edward Lowassa.
It was contest that threatened to
divide the party into the Membe Lowassa factions, the two were dropped in
favour of John Pombe Magufuli.
He, later in an interview,
compared his defeat in party's primaries to the infamous 'Sudden Death'
goal in football.
However, in a sudden turn of events,
in February 2020, the CCM's central committee expelled Membe from the party
after accusing him of ‘indiscipline and violating the party's ethics and
constitution’.
He denied any wrongdoing, saying it was
all about the Presidency in the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi.
In July 2020 he handed back his CCM
membership card and later that month he joined the opposition Alliance for
Change and Transparency (ACT- Wazalendo) and said he was willing to stand as
its candidate in the 2020 General Election
In March 2022 he returned back to
CCM after the Central Committee for CCM agreed and decided to reinstate his
membership.
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