AS preparations hot up to mark 60 years of the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Vice President Dr Philip Mpango was yesterday expected to lead a large presence of the government in a national prayer session in the capital. The regional commissioner was emphatic that at the prayer service, clerics will pray for the country’s future as it marks 60o years of union, while on a secular note, the prayer event would be preceded by testing standard gauge railway electric trains, ahead of operations by early July. The two events show hope, success.

In the way nations live, the way individuals live, one reaps what he or she sows, and in many cases our prayers constitute in appealing to divine help so that we don’t face the consequences of our own mischief, and that is why many prayers go unanswered. Prayer is one face of society while real economic and social activity show a different face; the first image wishes good for all, while the second face is one of tearing at what there is, with no hold barred, in pursuit of privileges. Prayer indicates living solidarity or well-wishing, not an insurance.

Another difficulty on the way ahead in ensuring that harmony remains in place is errors in locating the sources of satisfaction or desperation, where habits may at times form the biggest obstacle to alleviate systemic sources of disaffection. In the mid-1990s for instance political loyalties were rocked by the issue of privatizing the National Bank of Commerce (NBC), despite that it was vital to rationalize the banking and financial sector. Since then there is no appetite for privatization as local professionals don’t want their commanding positions to be taken away by appointees chiefly of foreign investors. As a result the economy is not expanding enough and job creation is sparing, with a resulting advisory industry on how youth can employ themselves, or start skimpy farming units.

When top leaders appeal to Dodoma residents and even those living in the neighbourhood to come out in large numbers and join the prayer event, it sounds as if this is a lifeline to the nation. There is no doubt that prayers are held high esteem by our relatively intense religious culture, but there are aspects in which we ignore cardinal principles we learned at the time of coming to independence, for instance “all men (human beings) my brethren and Africa is one,’ which we have largely repudiated for a more simplistic ‘all human beings are equal,’ which begets no duty of accepting others. Thus we aren’t inclined to open our economy, we let burdensome parastatals off the hook easily; we have no choice.

There is also something else we aren’t learning that it will be a source of trouble despite the signs being there every day, that the land cannot carry as many small farmers as we wish it does, and the youths growing in town or coming to cities can scarcely find jobs. In Haiti the cocaine industry has become the city pastime and the country has completely collapsed while in Sudan tribal contention of natives and migrants leads to genocidal dispossession by armed militia. No one in the global multilateral agencies tells them that landholding is a problem, so the armed herders and meek small landholders are asked to live democratically.