In soccer, a game loved by many across the globe, when a coach keeps reshuffling the pack, many pundits ask whether the coach knows his first eleven or if it is a work in progress. The same kind of analysis can safely be extended to politics. One must ponder what happens when the president reshuffles her cabinet on a conveyor belt. Is the appointer really on the grips of the matter, or has she run out of ideas?
Four faces in the recent reshuffle caught my attention, and I wondered if the focus was on productivity, loyalty, or assembling an election-winning team. The four individuals in question are Professor Kabudi Palamagamba, William Lukuvi, Jenista Mhagama, and Ummy Mwalimu.
I’m not a fan of Hon. Ummy, and I’ve been open about this before. It’s nothing personal, but I’ve always felt she lacks the X-factor needed in the cabinet. While she has skills that could serve the country well in other roles, I don’t see her as an independent thinker and actor—crucial qualities for a cabinet position.
Inherent Cabinet Appointment Constraints Acknowledged
Before assessing the current Ministerial appointments and their entailments, it is important to acknowledge that many variables limit quality prioritization in forming an effective cabinet.
From constitutional flaws, save for the 10 positions, and the President is limited to appointing only MPs to be Ministers. We all know how MPs are elected. The minimum constitutional qualification to be an MP is to possess unproven literate skills. The rest is just a luxury he can do without. Most MPs are good at lobbying for those positions, but a handful have extensive experience in the public and private sectors, let alone academic credentials.
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The president’s hands are shackled from “on your marks” before “getting ready” to appoint. They cannot prioritize merits and are forced to pick most MPs who lack relevant skills, experience, and interest in the fields where they are trusted to provide leadership. In the past, to circumvent these hard facts, former President Jakaya Kikwete dismissed the overriding issue of merits by saying ministers are mere administrators! Well, they are not.
Ministers must be technocrats in their respective fields to have an impact. I shall cite a few examples to drive this point home. We have a Minister for Energy right now, and the only thing he has brought to the table is loudly reminding us of what we already know:
“….Watanzania Wanataka Umeme wa Shakira.” So, what? Tanzanian expects the Minister to inform us how he will run the Ministry differently from his predecessors. So far, we have seen nothing to that beyond deafening decibels.
We have a Minister for Water, and he is clueless as to why the cost of almost all water projects is three to five times the market price and the designs did not accommodate at least thirty years of water demand. Most water projects will cater to current demand but will need extensive and costly interventions that could have been avoided if future demand was incorporated.
In the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Minister says there is an excess baggage we can do without. He knows nothing about road construction, and therefore, he has brought nothing to the house. Yet, he still plays a tourist role in a crucial Ministry that goes up trillions annually.
The only thing that has placed him there is loyalty to the appointer but nothing else. Today, bridges are being constructed to dam water, and during rainy seasons, either water passes over them, interfering with transportation or eroding large chunks of roads. Roadworks are shoddy, and he has no plan to correct that!
The Minister, lacking the technical prerequisite, reads nothing and has nothing useful to contribute. The road’s construction cost is five to ten times higher than market rates, but the Minister has no plan to prosecute the embezzlement of public funds. I keep wondering what is wrong with us. Collecting taxes to burn them in such a manner is not smart governance. Something must cede space if we are to move forward.
As I indicated earlier, the President is not solely to blame since the Constitution imposes limits on accessing quality. Efforts to constitutional reforms in the White Paper during President Mkapa’s reign considered replacing politicians with technocrats as ministers. Still, they concluded that we could get away with a hodgepodge of both.
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This was achieved by giving the president 10 parliamentary appointments to add quality to the cabinet. The Warioba Constitutional Review Committee was a huge disappointment partly because it failed to acknowledge that the era of MPs doubling as cabinet ministers was over. They retained the status quo ante, condemning economic management as being left to politicians whose history of performance is pathetic.
The Current Reshuffle Examined
Many Tanzanians are wowed by academic credentials, and for that reason alone, Professor Kabudi’s appointment seems like a safe choice. However, his performance history leaves a lot to be desired. We came to know the good don during the Magufuli administration when he was a Minister in the same Ministry of Law and Constitutional Affairs.
What I remember most during his tenure was that his ministry wrote a threatening letter to the African Court of Human Rights and People’s Rights. Professor Kabudi’s threats were designed to intimidate the court so it could issue regime-friendly decisions, just like our own courts mostly do.
Professor Kabudi was irked by NGOs lodging their complaints in the African Court. He wanted to remove us from that court, or the court would have capitulated to Tanzanian executive whims. This kind of leader has no business sitting in the cabinet, period. He hates justice for all despite touting excellent academic papers.
Hon. Jenista Mhagama is another long-serving minister who should be involved in today’s problems. She is a holdout of both former President Kikwete and former President Magufuli’s administrations. Still, if you ask me about all the decades she has been there and what she has brought to the table, I will say nothing without hesitation.
The question becomes, why keep appointing her; she has no notable technical know-how to justify keeping her in the cabinet. The best way was to let her go and find someone else who knows the Ministry of Health. The issue of NHIF is the biggest challenge in the Ministry, and Hon. Mhagama is a greenhorn who should not come near it.
My considered view is that NHIF is a wastrel that must be placed on a “chopping block” before its weight leads to needless deaths. Every time the appointer picks the wrong people at the Ministry of Health, we must ask ourselves: Is it a deliberate effort to mess up our health, or is it a habit?
William Lukuvi has been in the cabinet since I was in school, with only a few brief absences after his tenure as the UVCCM national chairman. He previously served as the Minister for Land, but during his time in that role, land issues continued to escalate, and he showed little ability to address them. So why does he keep getting recycled into these positions?
I cannot comprehend this “business as usual” attitude. I assess that his time in the cabinet was long over. Even his affairs overlap with those of other ministries. We do not even need the ministry to begin with. Sadly, cutting costs is never in the CCM code of conduct. It is tax and spend administration.
Like most of us have experienced before, this cabinet reshuffle points to a larger problem of constitutionally designated manpower misallocations, which we need to acknowledge as a first step in addressing them once and for all.
