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Tanzania’s Pandora Box is now open: Watch this space!
2006-02-19 08:04:35
By Hilal K. Sued
The launching of the Phase IV government has been a painful affair, but by no means irresolute. Within just a short time of its coming, a lot of water has passed under the bridge.
Tanzanians have been, and are still being subjected, albeit slowly, to scandalous revelations on the state of the union – the realities of the nation hitherto unheard of.
For a society that has for so long been in the dark on the shenanigans in high places, coming to grips with the disclosures has been a matter of much incomprehension if not infuriation.
To say that the CCM government has all along been thriving on fraud and deception may be saying very little.
Our indigenous version of Pandora’s Box is slowly opening up and Tanzanians are crossing their fingers without even a vague inkling of what will come next, other than praying that all will perhaps be for the good.
Personally, I still bank on JK to make a clean up of the mess he has inherited – a monumental task in any translation.
He will no doubt have to grapple with forces that have been crystallised in criminal activity for a very long time.
Much of the goings-on in JK’s endeavours to rid the administration of the filth is being kept away from public view, for good reason, but any speculation, however rife, shows that something is going on.
And this is happening at a critical moment – when he is trying to consolidate his power.
For any president, there are certain things that need a high degree of audacity to speak about.
Not his castigation of the Land Ministry over stinking corruption by its officials, or his vociferous outcry on the gross embezzlement of public finances in the Councils. For these we have heard before, and got used to them.
But to say that some contracts, specifically mining contracts into which the previous government entered with foreign firms were not in the public interest (meaning they were in the interests of a few) and will be reviewed must have sent chills up the spines of many people, those higher up in particular.
It is a courteous way of saying that the previous government was corrupt.
Some of them are still in the administration and will no doubt do everything in their power to frustrate the intended reviews.
Contracts also send chills up my spine whenever I think of the current goings-on in our northern neighbour.
Are there also ”hewa” contracts in Tanzania through which some people have pocketed billions?
Whenever I read about the Kiraitus, Mwirarias and Saitotis, I keep on asking myself – don’t we have their replicas here? No doubt we do, and time will tell.
We Tanzanians have always considered ourselves a tranquil island, and therefore unique in a sea of disturbing happenings and upheavals that surround us – civil wars inside our immediate neighbouring countries (in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC) as well as serious instances of corruption that have been revealed (in Kenya, Zambia and Malawi).
I believe it is our turn now, inevitably. There are indications, however faint, that we were not so unique after all – we were in the same dirty league, maybe even more so, especially on high level corruption, only that here, the level of the art of the mutual cover up among the involved had always been high and airtight.
And all this has to do with the type of politics we have – the de facto single-party politics.
And that is why it had always been difficult to have disclosures at the level of the Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing scandals. It had been hard to flush out the people behind high level graft because almost everyone who counts is ’in it’ and in the circumstances finger-pointing was out of the question.
Many political observers held the view that only the opposition, when it comes to power, could uproot corruption, even though, as we have seen in regard to Kenya, that the opposition, when it came to power, outshone the former regime in corrupt practices.
However, as I have said before in this column, what happened just across our border, the opposition taking over the country, was not a good example, as it was not a ’genuine’ opposition. However, despite this, things are hotting up in that country.
Ministers are resigning due to their involvement in corruption. We may reach that stage, who knows with JK at the helms?
To clean up the mess accumulated over such a long time, JK needed a team that in itself is not tarnished with corruption (I sincerely hope he has one) so as to overcome the notorious concept that ’if you reveal my sins, I’ll reveal yours.’
This concept, as we have seen, ensured that underhand deals remain under wraps forever.
We are now seeing that this mutual protection racket is what is being attacked, and I believe that one more final heave, the house of cards will come crumbling down.
What it will reveal will send shock waves that will reverberate for a long time to come.
Of course some will say, or are already saying, that this is bad because it may split the ruling party.
This proves the commonly held notion that what holds the party together are the vices and not the virtues.
Personally I agree with the Father of the Nation, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, when he said that the State House is not a place over which prospective tenants should be too enthusiastic.
And that is despite all the trappings and other accoutrements the place carries, which if its occupant is not careful, can carry him away, and make him think that he’s some kind of a demigod – his word instantly becoming law.
However, all this does preclude the Phase IV government from identifying and spelling out its priorities.
The country it has inherited has been hit by severe problems – a sudden wave of violent crime, a power shortage and famine – the last of which has already reportedly caused the deaths of some Tanzanians.
All these make JK’s guiding slogan, especially the ’kasi mpya’ portion a tough proposition.
How can you run in the darkness, while hungry, and not knowing when a bandit will clobber you?
For instance, the war on violent crime, has been taking some painful twists and turns, reflective of the grisly manner in which the vice had entrenched itself.
There have been silly attempts to blame the crime wave on an opposition party .
All this shows that the people benefiting from it are not in deep slumber, they are putting up some stiff resistance, including diversionary tactics.
We may not even wonder now if we get to hear that an opposition party could also be behind all the corruption in the government!
As for the priorities, these should occupy the minds of JK’s government and not some wacky debate in Parliament over whether or not to have national leaders buried in one place.
If at all, the debate should have been on treating the living who become ill — through better medicare, or burying with dignity the dying villagers who are currently dying from hunger(reported as ’severe malnutrition’), rather than providing the dead with what the living consider a better last home for them.
The Leaders Funeral Bill, a pet project of Big Ben’s administration, should have been shelved, for the time being, if not forever.
As for the famine, on Thursday, the front page of MWANANCHI came up with a very heartbreaking, if not poignant photograph that showed very old men and women from a village in Mpwapwa virtually mobbing the Prime Minister, Edward Lowassa, begging for food.
It reminded me of Defence Minister Prof Kapuya who, as he was disembarking from a military plane at Urambo airfield while on a private trip to his home village, was greeted by his hungry constituents who had expected him to come with some food, a few bags of maize at least. He had nothing with him, save for his suitcase.
However, the Lowassa photo provides a different story – outrageous nonetheless.
It shows that the hunger stricken villagers had no one or where to turn to, who could address their plight. It is as if the government does not exist in their area.
Where were the government functionaries at village level, including the councillors, Ward Secretaries, or even the area’s MP, DC, and eventually the RC?
Must the Prime Minister in person move about in the rural areas to be told of the hunger problem and be expected to solve it on the spot?
The unfolding events show how rough and dangerous is the terrain that JK has to traverse to attain his objectives .
However, this should not make us adopt a defeatist attitude, or look for excuses for an undertaking that has barely begun.
It has often been said that excuses are the nails with which to build a house of failure.
Last week, the Prime Minister, Edward Lowassa, while winding up debate on President Kikwete’s Bunge speech, told Parliament that Tanzania was still an island of peace and stability and that is why investors still find it a good place in which to invest.
He said Tanzania’s current violent crime wave has not reached the level of Soweto in South Africa and other countries where people feel themselves very unsafe 24 hours a day.
That is absolutely true. But with due respect to the Prime Minister, should we really take any solace from this yardstick that is essentially misleading simply because people several thousand kilometres away are more violent than our own people? Is such solace deserving of us?
Surely, the current level of violent crime in South Africa has grown from what we can say the ”humble beginnings” that it was a decade or so ago, and no doubt the leaders also saw it as insignificant, and therefore tolerable as compared to that of Lagos (at that time). So they sat back and relaxed.
This kind of yardstick for measuring ourselves is also dangerous, because if we plunge into some civil war we may even say: what’s the big deal? We have not even reached the level of the civil war in the DRC!
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