There were sad events involving security forces disrupting Baraza la Vijana wa Chadema (BAVICHA), who were heading to Mbeya for a meeting and to participate in International Youth Day. The police apprehended those youths in buses, cars or hotels, arrested them and proffered a lame excuse that the police were preventing mass rallies like those that happened recently in neighbouring Kenya.
After the international day, most arrested were released without being charged! This article interrogates whether the security forces can stop an idea that has matured and is ripe for implementation.
Kenyan Rallies Were Dissected
Before I discuss BAVICHA’s tragic developments, I need to review why there were violent demos in Kenya led by Gen Z. Self-serving leadership, like in Tanzania, is at the heart of the Kenyan political impasse.
Kenyan Gen-Z asks loud and clear questions: Why is an MP earning severalfolds more than a medical doctor doing more to save lives than an MP who mainly hibernates in the Augusta House?
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They are also asking why Kenya is a nation of few billionaires and tens of millions who are paupers. The debate about a Kenyan system of governance that breeds few billionaires and a majority who can barely make ends meet is not new in Kenya.
Paradoxically, it was an MP who, during the reign of President Jomo Kenyatta, had cautioned during parliamentary proceedings that Kenya was hurtling into a civil war because it was churning out few millionaires while leaving out millions of Kenyans languishing in extreme poverty!
He was no one else but the unforgettable Josiah Mwangi. Kariuki. In 1975, JM. Kariuki was abducted at night from his car by personal bodyguards of President Jomo Kenyatta and other security officers, tortured and killed. His remains were later dumped in a Nairobi mortuary.
In 1975, the Kenyan authorities deceived themselves by killing J.M. Kariuki, who had successfully eradicated his uncontested vision, but now we know they did not. Kenyans still perspire to hatch an egalitarian society that serves everybody.
From constitutional reviews to bitterly contested elections followed by judicial arbitrations, Kenya has marched on to rummage for that magical bullet to ensure everyone has a place to live comfortably in Kenya. Kenyan Gen-Z in 2024, about 49 years since the political assassination of a seer, J.M. Kariuki, was a catharsis of his ominous foresight.
After Kenyans realized the horrors that accosted J.M. Kariuki, public pressure led the Parliament to form a probe team whose findings indicated that close confidants of the then president Jomo Kenyatta plotted and executed the murder.
Once the report was placed on his desk and had perused its contents, President Kenyatta ordered the Parliament to expunge all the implicating evidence. President Kenyatta surmised that since his subordinates were implicated, he, too, by association, was “guilty as charged” in the political assassination of J.M Kariuki.
No sooner than Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s orders were obeyed, the parliamentary report of the murder of J.M. Kariuki was hastily hushed up. Today, Kenyans have not come to terms with who Kariuki’s murderers were and their real motives, let alone seeking retributive justice for him and his beloved family!
Clearly and without a shred of doubt, Kenyan security forces in 1975 failed miserably to kill J.M. Kariuki’s vision of a better Kenya for everybody, as amply demonstrated 49 years later by Gen-Z. My reverberating question is: Can Tanzanian security forces achieve what the Kenyan security forces have failed to achieve since 1975? This is the gist of this discourse.
BAVICHA Saga Examined
BAVICHA operated within the law when they pitched tents in Mbeya, something UVCCM had done in Dodoma. Both sides aimed to celebrate International Youth Day in style and at places of their preference. Regrettably, the police perceived ill-motiveness on the part of it but did not express the same apprehensions when it came to their employers: CCM! The police were biased, abinitio.
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So, the police acted outside the law, taking matters into their own hands and arresting Chadema leaders and their supporters. There was nothing to suggest either from the past conduct or during the arrests that signalled BAVICHA was plotting to unleash hell. They were assembling in Mbeya like UVCCM was huddling in Dodoma to carry out their celebrations.
The question we need to ask ourselves is why we have security forces that act outside the law and are tormented by paranoia. Why did the police feel Kenyan demos were for BAVICHA and not UVCCM? The law is clear on demos: Whoever plans to do them must consult the police. So far, the police have not claimed to have received a demo notice from anybody. So why were they overreacting?
In this particular circumstance, BAVICHA, who always follows the law, was provoked but still behaved within the law, which all peace lovers should praise. Kudos to them for raising above the unsolicited frail.
Tanzania Choking Dilemmas Considered
Tanzanian problems are self-inflicted and mostly can be traced from a colonial legacy of having an imperial governor calling the shots; the rest are her crouching subjects. Tanzania’s post-colonial legacy has retained a system of governance that perpetuates gross injustices against her people. What we lack is the imagination to define ourselves, and we have voluntarily opted to be prisoners and slaves of colonial manipulation and capitulation.
Efforts to implement reforms have been, at best, half-hearted and, at worst, a wanton sellout. At best, the reforms have strengthened the president at the expense of the peripheral, and at worst, the empowerment of aliens has been ferociously pursued to the chagrin of the citizens of this great nation. The socio-economic tension in this country can be sliced with a butchering machete.
An average Tanzanian politician has drawn out a spurious analysis and conclusion that all they need is to dole out bribes to the citizens, and everybody will be very happy! We all know we are more than peanuts thrown at us. We are worth more than infrastructure, and certainly, we are more than what our politicians’ flippant projection of us.
We are more significant than they can imagine. And we are not cheaper, as they delude themselves. We are God’s masterpiece, which narrates why he made us according to his image. We proudly remind all and sundry that we are priceless!
The crux of Tanzania’s perplexing toothache is that we have been denied the power to elect our leaders. We are now condemned to destitution. Over six decades after we obtained independence, we have not been allowed to elect our leaders.
Most of the presidential appointees managing our economy are unqualified and extremely unpopular. No amount of SGR or new road kilometres constructed will quell the hunger for picking our leaders.
We have no reason to have Regional Commissioners (RC), District Commissioners (DC), District Executive Directors (DEDs), and MPs who heavily borrow without paying interest income and snatch up CDFs as if they are their small pocket change.
Borrowed money drags the economy, and since it is squandered into consumptive luxuries like SUVs imported abroad, the economy bleeds to a painful natural death. The scripture cautions that a borrower is a surety of the creditor, but our leaders never flip this page oozing with wisdom. Debts are iron shackles worse than colonial rule. We are willingly handing over our prized assets for a song!
The terms of engagement, or our social contract, between the rulers and the ruled must change for the better. We have no scapegoat for a medical doctor being paid less than an MP.
Something is fundamentally wrong in the way we have structured ourselves. Employment in public service is now accessible to those enriched by political connections. This was a tinderbox in Bangladesh’s recent mayhem. Do we need to bake the same explosives in the oven?
When I hear magistrates and judges have been hired, I usually ask myself how they found them. It boils down to whom you know rather than what you know. There is no advertisement or interview, but public officers are hired while the public is not involved. This is our own way of fomenting violent protests over time. Everybody needs to feel part of a society, but any attempt towards favouritism stokes a failed state.
Regional administration must take a decisive U-turn. We need to abolish regions and remain with districts alone, run by directly elected mayors who will appoint heads of departments.
We are fatigued by the president’s selection of leaders on our behalf. The regional leaders appointed do not care about us but exploit those appointments for self-enrichment schemes.
At one time during the climax of privatisation, one prominent RC for Arusha threatened us that if South Africa mining Tanzanite were kicked out, he would resign his regional commissioner portfolio! I did a few investigations from small-scale Tanzanite miners on why their RC would resign.
All those I interviewed said he was on the Tanzanite miner payroll receiving a monthly 1-kilo class B Tanzanite package priced at Tsh 70 million. I could not, however, independently verify the veracity of those serious allegations. Do we need to fund these unaccountable bureaucrats who are only answerable to their pot-bellies?
There are clandestine operators behind the scenes who intensively lobby to place one of their own in those highly sought-after posts. But for whose gain? Certainly, not mine.
It’s like District Commissioners are useless. First, they are not accountable to the electorate. Second, most of them lack residence requirements in the areas they govern.
Third, they are not accounting officers controlling purses or involved directly in development plans and execution. Fourth, they lack the prerequisite skills to inspire, lead and direct development agendas in their respective enclaves. Fifth, they cannot arraign theft and embezzlement of public funds.
As if this is not enough, if we go by the last election recounts, D.Cs have been involved in massive electoral rigging to keep CCM illegally in power indefinitely.
Of more concern, DCs have been deployed to abduct individuals whom the regime perceived as belligerent nonconformists and renegades – a case of the abduction, kidnapping and disappearance of investigative journalist Azory Gwanda of Mwananchi daily newspaper is instructive here. Who needs them, anyway?
DEDs have been involved more in helping their pockets than channelling funds according to the budgets, reducing ward councillors into mere spectators. Ward councillors should have hired DEDs to empower the electorate, but the contrarian view is vigorously sustained in Tanzania.
How do we expect Tanzania to prosper someday if we keep hatching laws that promote and protect thieves to manage our economy and beat the odds? Ironically, Ward Councillors are the ones shouldering the bulk of local government responsibilities but receive no salary and are condemned to be beggars and bribe extortionists to eke out a living.
It is a small wonder that Ward Councillors apportion most contracts to themselves or the ones who can “pay to play”. Although Ward Councillors are not members of tendering committees, they wield influence through “politics of affection.”
Tanzanian internal reforms call for constitutional effort, which CCM snubs as a “no-go zone”! CCM’s top leaders believe they are the ones who are bringing development to us through foreign mercenaries called “WAWEKAZAJI.” If the gospel was true, why do they still compel us to pay taxes?
Where are their gods whom they have bowed down to absolve and redeem them? I have seen none. All aliens are shielded from paying taxes through statutory provisions and unfaithful tax collectors who are busier, locking up illegal deals for themselves at our collective anguish.
These regional leaders have played a key role in land expropriation, leading to mass landlessness. On 13th August 2024, two pieces of news caught my attention. Mwananchi newspaper bemoaned on its front page, “Wananchi wagomea Shilingi milioni 2 kupisha mwekezaji.” Habari Leo bragged, “Sera ya Taifa ya Vijana hadharani.” The two articles may appear to display unrelated messages but are identical twins in all four corners.
Nobody will ever convince me that aliens are investors and we are not! Our hypocritical leaders always and without let up urges us to self employee ourselves but no sooner we heed their call, they descend upon us to chase us away like criminals to benefit their bogus foreign investors who can bribe them.
Nobody takes it to heart that these small miners have invested heavily in their toil to discover wealth underground. They fully deserve to enjoy the fruits of their sweat. To say otherwise would not accord with justice but would cede diabolical outcomes. If you look over the historical development records of Southeast Asia, you will see that they had visionary leaders that we desperately needed.
During the Mao Tsetung era, Deng Xiaoping advised Mao that China was blitzing in the wrong direction. A new development paradigm ought to be pursued. Mao was adamant, and he took Deng through a Kangaroo court that condemned Deng and his three associates to death. All media “name-shamed” Deng Xiaoping and his assistants as the “GANG OF FOUR”.
Years later, the ageing Mao entertained second thoughts and decided to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. As the Chinese economy continued to nosedive, Mao Tsetung marshalled the humility and gravitas to concede Deng Xiaoping was right all along: the Chinese economy was crying out aloud for internal reforms that would pivot the Chinese people to the vortex of any development plan and strategy. Mao pardoned Deng and his acolytes and anointed him as his sole successor.
Deng Xiaoping wrote a famous book called “The Green Revolution,” the rest is history. Chinese leadership knew what Tanzanian leaders failed to grasp: that any development paradigm we follow must have Tanzanians at its core. At the moment, our people are being ostracised, displaced, and abandoned by their government.
In our short post-independence history, we are now eyewitnesses to a regime whose appetite to disempower her own people has assumed frightening proportions. It recklessly borrows and brazenly taxes us. All these aberrations dwarf our collective initiative, creativity, innovations to self-employment, and contributions significantly to our national cake.
Inspiring examples like Cuiaba in Brazil, who has trusted her people to develop farming and livestock, must teach us that we are better than our leaders portray us. Our leaders diminish our potential.
We must continuously resist this kind of subjugation in our own country. We should refuse to cede ground to be second—or third-class citizens as a result of our leaders’ perpetual efforts.
In the 2010 elections, First Lady Salma Kikwete, campaigning for her husband’s presidential reelection campaign, lamented that Tanzanian youths hated CCM. She said this: “Sijui kwanini hawa vijana wanaichukia CCM?” I have an answer for her today: They hate CCM because it loves the wages of sin more than them. The animosity between CCM and the youth is mutual, and efforts to “reset the button” with the youth through “MPANGO WA TAIFA WA VIJANA” just missed the plane. What we are left with is extrapolation maths gone wayward.
The Tanzanian youth’s quest is the power to elect their leaders, and “MPANGO WA TAIFA WA VIJANA” was silent on that! Moreover, CCM does not view crafting election laws or refurbishing the constitution as matters of utmost urgency to ensure competent minds manage our economy.
What we have today is chest-thumping lice, or “Chawa,” squeaking and chirping to the top of their voices to attract the attention of the appointer. Their deafening clarion is simple: “Put us in those plum jobs that way may bite a piece of bread…..” They have neither a calling nor the prerequisite expertise to govern us but yawning mouths to feed. This is what Tanzania is left of uncertified beggars jostling for power. How sad!
This is an excoriation of government efforts to justify allocating closer to Tshs 800 billion to burn on SUVs for regional administrators rather than purchasing tractors for our peasants. The government defends the money-guzzling V8 as crucial to supervising development projects. Can they not drive on Suzuki for our own sake?
I boldly insist we do not need regional leaders near our development projects because most of them lack the legitimacy to govern us. They neither have the skills, experience, nor proven feats to inspire or shepherd us to the Promised Land. What we despise most is pushing bureaucracy down our throats, akin to kneeling on our necks.
Regional administrators are influence peddlers whose parochial interest is to steal our money for personal gain. They are excess baggage, and we would love to unload them sooner rather than later.
Do you believe the security forces can perpetually suppress youthful dreams of a better Tanzania? Your response will help shape Tanzanian politics for the better or for worse. That power rests in you.
