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Kikwete’s charisma magnetic
2006-01-01 10:03:02
By Wilson Kaigarula
That is an attribute with which President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete has been richly blessed, and which he discharges liberally, to the delight of Tanzanians whom he now shoulders the challenge of leading.
During the election campaigns that culminated in last month’s election to the top post of the man known fondly as JK, representing the abbreviated combination of his first and last names, the people got a taste of the 55-year-old politician’s charisma.
In middle-of-the-road and road-side wananchi greeting sessions, as well as at public rallies, as he combed the length and breadth of the vast country that Tanzania is, JK charmed the people whose votes he sought, as CCM Union presidential candidate.
The charm was a product of his friendliness, easy-to-grasp speeches spiced with humour and jokes, smartness, and the virtually permanent smile radiating from his youthful face, which has evolved into a symbolic trade mark of sorts.
That taste veritably graduated into a strong dose in Dodoma on Friday, when President Kikwete inaugurated Parliament, the legislative entity that is also known as the august house, and which is one of the three key estates of the state, the others being the Executive and the Judiciary.
They are, literally speaking, ’’escorted’’ by the media, which is known as the Fourth Estate, and which in his two-hour plus speech, he commended for being among the leading facilitators of the electoral exercise from which he, and CCM, emerged resoundingly triumphant.
A speech is essentially a speech, whereby someone delivers it and a group of people listen in. But Friday’s speech, targeted primarily at members of parliament, but subsequently to the people whom they represent in Bunge, was different in a hugely pleasantl way, giving it that element of the charismatic dosage alluded to earlier.
What charmed the people, who kept track of the goings-on within the house through live radio and television broadcasts, was that while the President had a prepared text, he didn’t read it as such, but picked points from there periodically, and proceeded to expand on them off-the-cuff.
What’s more, he put his direct listeners and the broader audience beyond the magnificent Bunge building at ease and in a consistently happy mood, with humour and jokes, on top of being a pleasant personality.
As they followed and digested the speech, and in postmortem discussions thereafter, many people remarked that Kikwete was an echo of founding president Julius Nyerere, whose speeches were interesting and enjoyable because of simple, entertaining delivery, no matter how complex a subject being tackled was.
They recalled that then, as now, a semi-literate peasant and a university professor were equally at home in grasping what Nyerere and Kikwete said and says.
One of the jokes that got the listeners’ ribs cracking with laughter was that Mr. Mkapa’s shoes were over-sized, but the new wearer can solve the problem by stuffing the empty spaces with pieces of paper.
It was an analogy of the impressive achievements that his predecessor had recorded, which he said he would try his best to sustain, in spite of the challenge being herculian.
Mwalimu Nyerere, who was Mr. Kikwete’s mentor, was charismatic as well, in addition to being brilliant, as his ’’political son’’ demonstrably is.
He had, furthemore, modest dressing tastes, fancying, first, Mao-ist, then Kaunda suits, with Cuban shirts chipped in-between. His trade mark was a medium-sized baton (kifimbo).
His two immediate successors, Mzee Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Mr. Mkapa, donned the two types of suits as well, but also fitted themselves out in impressive western suits. The younger president belongs to the dressing league as well, but his wardrobe is more varied.
Beyond dress, the second and third phase presidents didn’t have a trade mark like Mwalimu’s kifimbo, or, across the immediate borders, the bigger baton (rungu) of retired Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, the flywisk of his predecessor, the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the crystal white handkerchief of Zambian statesman Kenneth Kaunda and the wide-brimmed hat of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Fourth-phase President Kikwete may or may not have a trademark, but even minus one, it doesn’t matter to Tanzanians and their well-wishers elsewhere, who, instead, are eager that the government he is in the process of forming will deliver on CCM’s electoral campaign pledges, focussed on making the country economically more developed, socially more prosperous and democratically more consolidated.
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