Tanganyika, the mainland part of Tanzania, emerged into independence virtually as a one-party state by popular vote. For Julius Nyerere that was not surprising - a struggle for freedom from colonialism is a patriotic struggle which leaves no room for differences'.

But what was to happen once the struggle against the colonial power had been brought to a victorious conclusion? For Nyerere the unity which had been forged by the colonial struggle should be jealously preserved in the service of other national 'battles' after independence. And the organizational expression of that unity was to be the single party - the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).

The distrust of organized factionalism in Nyerere’s political thought got stronger with the years. At first Nyerere was almost apologetic about the de facto one-party state - arguing that he could not help it if the people wished to support only one major movement. He thought that a genuine and responsible opposition might arise in time and would be 'no less welcome than it is in Europe or America'. Indeed, Nyerere added in 1961, 'I would be the first to defend its rights'.
But it was not long before reservations crept in. As he came to put it a few years later,

Our Union has neither the long tradition of nationhood, nor the strong physical means of national security, which older countries take for granted. While the vast mass of the people give full and active support to their country and its government, a handful of individuals can still put our nation in jeopardy, and reduce to ashes the effort of millions.

If a handful of individuals can be so dangerous, an organized faction might be an even greater risk. From this premise springs Nyerere’s increasing suspicion of having more than one party in the country contesting for power. The two-party system became suspect not just within the conditions of Tanzania but inherently.

Nyerere had begun to feel that the two-party system, by its very nature, reduced politics either into an argument about trivialities or into' a state of potential civil war'. Where the differences between the parties were not fundamental, the two-party system promoted 'a spirit of purely artificial rivalry, like that which exists between a couple of soccer reams'. But where the differences were 'fundamental', Nyerere could sec all the signs of the potential for internal conflict.

And so the same Nyerere who, in 1961, had declared his readiness to defend the rights of a responsible opposition party, was by January 1963 announcing the intention of his party to inaugurate a system of government in which an opposition party would no longer be permitted. President Nyerere defended the decision partly on the grounds that without a one-party system Tanganyika would not enjoy real political contests in its elections. TANU was so overwhelmingly supported that opposing candidates stood no chance.

Only a one-party system in which candidates belonging to the same party could compete for election would restore the principle of choice to the Tanganyika electorate so he argued. One year later he announced the appointment and terms of reference of a special Presidential Commission on the Establishment of a Democratic One-Party State. In his instructions to the commission, President Nyerere said;  I think I should emphasize that it is not the task of the Commission to consider whether Tanganyika should be a one party state. That decision has already been taken. Their task is to say what kind of a one party scare we should have in the context of our national ethic . . ."5
The presidential commission submitted its report in March 1965, and its recommendations were substantially accepted. As the commission was not arguing the desirability of a one-party state but had taken that for granted, there is little in their report about the dangers of having alternative parties. This too seems to have been taken for granted. Yet the commission's report still betrayed a deep consciousness that 'for a young nation, public order is precious but it is also fragile'; and went on to quote Nyerere’s apprehension that 'a handful of individuals can put our nation into jeopardy'.

It turned out that, in the case of Tanzania, this was no mere rhetoric to rationalize a self- prolonged tenure of service for those in authority. Tanzania turned out to be the most sincere of all African champions of the one-party state. In September 1965 a genuinely competitive general election under a one-party umbrella was held. Several ministers were defeated in the election, including the influential Minister of Finance, Paul Bomani.

The electors were indeed free to vote for the candidates of their choice, but the candidates had not been free to raise the issues of their choice, The Tanzanian election of 1965, though an admirable experiment in competitive elections under a one-party umbrella, was nevertheless dominated precisely by that old fear of creating conditions for civil disorder, if not civil war. Certain topics were simply 'taboo' in the campaign- These were in fact the most fundamental ones. They included ethnic differences, religious suspicions, the fragile union between Zanzibar and Tanganyika and the whole basis of the one-party structure. Nyerere had once criticized the two-party system as tending to become either an argument about trivialities or a catalyst for potential civil war.

In the 1965 election under a one-party system in his own country, Nyerere’s Government was so apprehensive of creating a State of potential civil war that the election was perhaps reduced to an argument about trivialities.

This does not suggest that the election was valueless. On the contrary, it remains an historic experiment in Africa. And in any case the electors could vote on the basis of what they silently regarded as the fundamental issues, even if these could not explicitly be raised in the electioneering campaigns as such.

The one-party state in Tanzania permits at least some political expression of dissatisfaction as is evidenced by the large numbers of MPs, including ministers, who have lost their seats in successive elections in 1965, 1970, 1975 and 1980. Since 1967, the year of the Arusha Declaration which proclaimed the policy of 'socialism and self-reliance', voters have shown their support for the new policy by registering to vote in large numbers and by tending to exclude from parliament those members whom they feet have not made a major contribution towards implementing the new policy. There has also been a tendency for voters to reject those leaders who they believe have flouted the Leadership Code introduced with the Arusha Declaration and the Mwongozo (Party Guidelines) of 1971.

In 1977 TANU was merged with the ASP of Zanzibar to form a new party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM or Party of the Revolution). Zanzibar's political integration with the mainland was completed in December of that year when Zanzibar went to the polls for the first time since the 1964 Revolution in order to elect its CCM MPs.