A few days ago, Tanzania’s biggest news was the Tanganyika Law Society (TLS) elections. However, the only national broadcasting channel, Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC), blackout this critical national event, reminding us there is something fundamentally wrong with our national broadcaster.
TBC has been a ruling party’s unrepentant propagandist, giving viewers a one-sided national image and consistently refusing to capture our national identity based on diversity. TBC never tells or reports Tanzanian true stories but to distract the nation in most of its broadcasts. It’s the act of irresponsible journalism which serves the rulers of the day but not the citizens of this country. It is a referendum on the management.
Under Tido Mhando’s capable leadership, TBC showed us it could, albeit as a national broadcasting body, meet our collective expectations. In those days, they covered newsworthy events notwithstanding political inclinations. The ruling party had no fondness for Tido, and he was pushed out.
The late President Dr John Pombe Magufuli appointed Dr Ayub Rioba Chacha to be the TBC Director General there, and many held out forlorn hope that he would revamp the TBC and restore the lost glory that Tido Mhando had established there. That hope of resurrecting Tido Mhando’s powerful legacy was short-lived.
Read Related: After The Tough TLS General Election, Is Mwabukusi Ready for the Big League?
TBC became a CCM’s mouthpiece and a proud cheerleader. It reduced itself to an invisible CCM department and erased any illusion of a national broadcaster. Even then, President Magufuli instructed TBC to be a national broadcaster, cease reporting favourably to CCM, and widen the reportage to cover opposition events. According to Magufuli, TBC’s poor ratings were due to biased reporting.
Dr Magufuli concluded TBC viewership would not improve until there was impartial coverage. Sadly, the TBC never took that advice seriously. It is also unclear why Dr Magufuli did not sack the management there. Looks like Dr Magufuli, too, had taken us for a ride. It was a lipservice not coming from his heart. No sooner after Magufuli’s death and the coronation of President Samia Suluhu Hassan,
TBC coined another election clarion that had no way of justification: “KISHINDO CHA AWAMU YA SITA”. For TBC viewers, it was difficult to relate that banner to an incoming administration. The query that kept coming back was, what has this inchoate administration done to be considered a force to reckon with? There was nothing really at that time.
Perhaps what has wronged us most is elevating President Samia Suluhu Hassan to the deity status. It has robbed all Tanzanians of ownership of our country’s development agenda, and now the current President is doing it on our behalf!
As far as TBC is concerned, Tanzanians are our beloved president and are mere spectators for everything. Such propaganda defeats the development paradigm and framework on which this country is built. To put it mildly, this is a damning affront to our collective intelligence.
J.K Nyerere’s speech at the UN when we were campaigning for our independence proclaimed we were ready for self-governance. Self-governance is the citizens determining their destiny, not their leaders doing it for them.
So, deliberately or out of sheer ineptitude, TBC has been perpetuating a wrong development narrative that the president is our Deliverer, not ourselves. Nothing can be further from the gospel truth.
Most of its dissemination to the public gives full credit to the president, and the people of this great nation are left as passive recipients and men of gratitude to their benefactor, the president, but not the planners and doers of their development. Such misguided information projects this nation as belonging to an individual, not all of us.
It places us as subjects under the mercies of a queen who disburses development according to her whims. Whatever development comes our way is not based on our plans; everything is top-down and heavy. Development is not an interactive process between the governed and their governors but a one-way highway dispensation.
TBC erroneously affirms that national planning is based on the president’s personal preferences, not grassroots initiatives. When the channel carefully relays the messages of thanking President Samia as our provider, they unwittingly elevate her to a deity.
Under Dr Ayub, the channel has retrogressed decades of building a nation whose citizens are a vital plank in development by converting them into the extra cast in a movie and helpless beggars devoid of any role save for the perpetual adulation to their omnivorous president.
TBC by airing unfounded accolades to the president such as “…tunamshukuru Mheshimiwa Rais Samia Suluhu Hassan kwa kutujengea barabara….kwa kutuletea maji zamani tulikuwa tunasafiri mwendo mrefu….kwa kutuletea umeme…” etc they are divorcing the contractual relationship between the governed and the governors.
It has downgraded the governed into the stature of the powerless, who have no role in determining their destiny. This spurious effort misleads and disempowers citizens from providing leadership in causes closer to their hearts.
Our president unleashes a psychological blow to our independent-minded attitudes as they prepare and lead us to worship. Over time, it is grooming us to accept the recolonization of our own country through subjugating bombardments contrary to our collective independent resolve.
Once ingrained in our mindsets, a barrage of messages of powerlessness and hopelessness culminates in mental infirmities that erode self-belief and action. Slowly but surely, we begin to act as zombies and robots, robbed of independent thinking and action.
TLS Election Blackout!
Over the years, we have learnt to endure the insinuations, propaganda and outright lies about the predicament of this nation. These days, we expect to be reminded repeatedly of a recurring theme of the SGR and Nyerere hydroelectric power plant feats as if we have no other success stories to tell.
But now, even in the TLS national elections, we have to pursue them through private social media. TBC deliberately behaved as if TLS elections were not newsworthy while they were. Deep down, the circumstances leading to the TLS snub expressed the executive view that an anti-establishment move was happening there.
TBC followed suit by ignoring the most significant election at TLS in recent memory. By doing so, TBC ceased to be the national broadcasting franchise. Despite gobbling national resources, It has become the de facto CCM campaign tool.
Can TBC Ever Be Reformed?
Experience has shown that whoever runs the government tends to hijack a national broadcaster to serve personal interests. No wonder appointments at TBC are highly political, and the beneficiaries are compulsive in ingratiating themselves with those who have employed them. So, it is a high order to reform it.
So long as it’s not a business concern but a service one, it is not forced to change its operating modus operandi to respond to market demands; therefore, changes are despised. TBC will continue to depend on government subsidies, so a business angle is not urgent.
TBC does not care whether there are sufficient viewers. So, even the change of guard at the top will not necessarily lead to reformers taking charge. From this, I see gloom, not light, at the end of the tunnel.
I know very well that My God is jealous and will never give His glory to another. I am also fully versed in the scripture that warns against exalting creatures more than the Creator. God always humbles those we elevate and promotes those we humble. Do you visualize what I see?
