It looks like a horror movie when news quickly spread that African footballers playing for Tanzania’s top teams have been fast-tracked to obtain citizenship. This happens at a time when the diaspora, who have irredeemable biological citizenship, have seen their constitutional rights upended by an ordinary law.
This article peeks at the emerging furore and what it portends for the diaspora.
Tanzania government, eager to excel in global soccer, has taken dramatic steps to lure African soccer players trading their talents with the Tanzania Premier league teams to secure citizenship.
Most of the players in question play for Singida United and Simba Sports Club.
The list may grow exponentially to include Yanga and other teams in the top league.
The idea here is to strengthen Taifa Stars so that it may have sufficient talent to successfully challenge in continental and possibly global competitions.
Our hunger for soccer glory has taken a dramatic turn but our own diaspora have been treated poorly with a denial of dual citizenship.
So, you see our diaspora have constitutional right to citizenship, but we have a law that has peeled off those rights.
This is now an axe our own diaspora are grinding against us. They feel cheated, unloved and mistreated by their own government. They have been sharing their anger on social media platforms.
One of them asked what is the point of granting citizenship to footballers whose career may only last for less than five years when diaspora contributions to Tanzania’s economy are limitless.
They say records have shown countries that respect and incorporate their own diaspora such as Kenya and Rwanda have seen the monthly remittances quadruple while Tanzania is stagnating.
They say unless their citizenship is restored they have no reason or motivation to contribute significantly to the national development because they feel treated like aliens in their own country.
They also reminded us that the new law was designed to entice them to feel like half citizens in order to milk their pockets dry.
However, they are too smart to fall into that trap. They will cautiously continue to monitor the situation until when they see gigantic steps have been taken to restore their constitutional citizenship.
The only caveats to their citizenship may be getting hired in public sector or politics.
In such circumstances, diaspora or any citizen should be required to have a minimum of residency requirements such as 19 years before seeking public office.
We cannot legally discriminate against them as we did in the recently crafted law. We need a ministry specifically to cater for the diaspora armed with an app and a website too.
We need to keep up the conversation because what was done didn’t accommodate their actual demands.
We never called them to have a fruitful conversation but we imposed our own will without their involvement. What is needed here is an honest interactive dialogue, not a top down policy initiative.
All over the world nations are recognising the vitality of pulling together their own human resources but in Tanzania out of myopia and narcissism we tend to pull ourselves apart.
We do not see the multiplier effect of diaspora to our wholeness.
The only reason we associate with them is because of the regular remittances which carry zero interest payments.
Beyond that we do not see their value, which is very wrong, indeed.
Why should we see soccer that is outlasted by the diaspora more valuable than them beating the odds?
A soccer player has a very short life span but he is being overvalued in comparison to our own diaspora that have infinite genealogical roots that defy comparison.
What we did amounted to discrimination. In the diaspora we also have soccer players who would love to play for Taifa Stars but here is an encumbrance: they cannot rescind their current citizenship in order to be Tanzanians.
Some of the soccer players who have been granted citizenship have dual citizenship and that is where the discussion gets interesting.
Will they annul their dual citizenship to be Tanzanian? For example, a Kenyan national who has dual citizenship, how can he renounce his Kenyan citizenship seeing that it is impossible to do that?
What has happened is that we have constrained our own diaspora from playing an important role in the national building while we have enabled African players for reasons which are temporary.
This is what in Kiswahili adage is labelled: “…….usiache mbachao kwa msala upitao….”
This is what we have done: we have jettisoned our own diaspora whose potential to contribute to the economy by a mileage surpass what these nine or so African players would ever add in their optimum playing career of 3 – 5 years.
Let’s get serious and do the right thing. We need to write the dual citizenship law and revoke the current one because it is discriminatory and erodes constitutional rights well embedded there.
If we have issues on loyalty then the only area it is relevant is in public service.
Residency requirements can be piled to ensure the diaspora have been living in the country for at least a decade or more to understand our challenges and appreciate their nationalism, and therefore be productive.
Read more articles by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
