The Chadema vision and the proposal to do away with MPs sitting allowances is just the start of our salvation.
The Loliondo cure needs to be investigated carefully.
Some MPs do not act in the Nation’s interests
The National Budget 2011-12 is still fragile (hurts)
I’d say that’s as astute an analysis of Tanzania’s budget as you’ll find in any of the print media here. And it’s from the Kigamboni signwriters, previously featured here.
As always, they present their views with a populist sensibility. But in conversation too, the headline budget figures trip off their tongues (13.5 trillion envelope, over 900 billion on allowances), and they’re not so partisan or of one mind as the first headline may suggest. And ongoing concerns about the Loliondo cure are not brushed aside in the budget fever – these boys want answers.
“Batwing” of course is no stranger on the East African coast. The terrifying Popobawa (literally, Batwing in Swahili) has been terrorising the coast and Isles on and off since at least the the mid1990s if not earlier, sodomising men and women alike in the dead of night.
The Police Force has launched a two-week online patrol training to its officers, in a move designed to curb cyber crimes in the country.
……. The Head of Development and Training SACP Abrahaman Kaniki said that online patrol training was one of the plans by the Police Force in improving effectiveness and efficiency in executing their duty of fighting crime in the country.
That’s from today’s state owned Daily News. Twelve officers are taking the two week training with ambitions “to impart online patrol knowledge to every officer”.
And recall that the Jamii Forums people are no strangers to ‘online patrols’. Its two founders were arrested and detained in 2008 and their website (then known as Jambo Forums) shut down for nearly a week, supposedly for publishing leaked government documents.
And given western donors predeliction for funding internet based initiatives under the rubric of ‘transparency and accountability’, is there now a countervailing force from China? The report doesn’t say if this training is supported from overseas, but “online patrols” are not unusual there.
And what will it mean practically? How does an “online patrol” take place? Where exactly will be patrolled? And who? We are living in interesting times, to be sure.
Tanzania’s foremost astrologer, numerologist and, allegedly, spy, passed away today in Dar es Salaam’s Mt. Mkombozi Hospital. With a busy practice in Dar’s Mwembechai area, just behind the Oilcom petrol station, he was also in demand across the region and indeed the continent.
Swahili Street deals too much with Tanzania’s politics – there’s a lot more to life than that – and so it has not been possible to avoid touching on the occult, which is never far away in Tanzania’s public discourse or private contemplation. Inevitably, this meant engaging with the Sheikh and his predictions, respectfully I hope.
Sheikh Yahya Hussein was taken seriously by Tanzania’s mainstream media. His predictions always made the news pages, more often than not the front page. And as often as not, he was wrong. In March of last year he predicted that the 2010 election wouldn’t take place and that Amani Abeid Karume would seek a third term in Zanzibar, romping home with a clear majority.
Rumours of his closeness to State House were not exactly dampened when President Kikwete paid for his medical treatment in India in 2009, nor when the Sheikh promised “an army of djinns” for Kikwete’s protection during the following year’s election campaign.
More mundanely, allegations of secret service activity on behalf of Julius Nyerere emerged in Ludovik Mwijage’s memoir of dissidence in the 1980s, The Dark Side of Nyerere’s Legacy. It is worth reading for his economical descriptions of a younger Sheikh Yahya, plying his trade in Swaziland.
Maybe his boldest prediction was that last year’s 2010 election would result in a coalition government, with a Prime Minister coming from the oppostion. In this, we were of one mind, and we were both wrong.
As much as the media took the Sheikh seriously, he was always seeking to use media in new ways. Mwijage mentions his almost daily advertisements in the Nairobi press, and indeed Zanzibar, where Mwijage saw yet more advertisements for his nemesis during detention following his extraordinary rendition back to Tanzania.*
In recent years, his weekly TV show on Channel 10 was at times amateurish but he never stopped trying to innovate with set design, costume and format. The worldly attractions of a pretty co-presenter were not lost on him. His love of garish jackets also hinted at the showman within. And while he never made it to twitter or facebook, he had an irregularly maintained website, that was packed with fascinating detail of the spirit world.
For now, enjoy footage of Sheikh Yahya’s TV show, Nyota Zenu,where he was joined for this episode by his webmaster, Abdulrahman Abbas, promoting the then relaunch of the website. Yet Abbas’ focus on how the site highlighted the Sheikh’s past glories in Swaziland and Nairobi maybe hinted at his decreasing relevance in the 21st Century.
But he kept on keepin’ on, a true Dar original.
*surely ‘extraordinary’ should be reserved for occasions when such exercises are facilitated by a mystic?
With those words, Ambassador Liu Xinsheng ushered in the Year of the Rabbit at Chinese New Year Celebrations in Dar es Salaam just over two months ago. At street level – specifically, the Chinese Embassy on the appropriately named Kajificheni* Close – there’s less reason for optimism.
Visa applicants tired of overnight queuing demonstrated last week and, if Ijumaa is to be believed (another impressive front page montage pictured above), were forthright in their views:
“This is our country, we’re tired of your harrassment. You lot come here to do business but if we want to do the same you treat us like dogs”
[it was claimed that the Chinese ] government limits the numbers of those going to buy Chinese goods so that the Chinese here acting as agents for producers back home can profit while locals die economically.
“We know their game and we’re not having any of it. If that’s how they want it, the Chinese should be denied entry here”, said one.
Ijumaa is merely mimicing government posturing. Just a couple of weeks prior to Chinese New Year, Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Lazaro Nyalandu went street level himself and called for foreign petty traders in the Kariakoo commercial area to desist within 30 days or be deported. And a spin around Kariakoo this weekend will indicate just how successful that was…..
But trade is a two way street. The Tanzanian visa applicants will be looking to make their way to southern China, often via Hong Kong, looking to stock up on everything from cheap elecronics to wedding dresses. In the 90s, they would have been boarding a bus to Nairobi with some dash ready for the return via Namanga.
Tactically one has to question the move by the crowd at the embassy to harangue embassy officials to the point where riot police are called. As this article advising Africans on doing business in China notes, in a piece of advice that could apply to both sides at Kajificheni:
You should not damage the honour, good reputation or respect of any other party or do anything that might cause someone else public embarrassment.
And though empathy is in short supply, it may also be worth considering the commonalities between Kariakoo’s Chinese traders and their Guangzhou-bound Tanzanian counterparts. Global trends and national interests are important to understand. But the individuals caught up in these movements – whether Chinese or Tanzanian – have something in common, what Eamon Kircher-Allen calls a “a common mix of adventurousness and ambition.” Check out his excellent piece on Chinatown, Dar es Salaam.
Kigamboni is a remarkable part of Dar es Salaam. Just a short ferry ride from the heart of the metropolis and you are in the countryside. It is astonishing how it has been overlooked in city planning.
A bridge across the creek has been on the agenda for at least fifteen years. A visit to Vijibweni last week by John Magufuli, our reputedly can-do Minister for Infrastructure, has raised hopes that it may finally take off. As reported by Haki Ngowi:
[the National Social Security Fund] expects to start construction of the bridge early this year after after advertising the tender and getting a contractor. The Kigamboni Bridge is expected to cost TZS 130 billion.
Plus ça change. Given that it’s now the end of March, it’s hard to know what is meant by ‘early this year’ and how it will still be ‘early this year’ once the tender process has been completed. But there is a bigger question: is a bridge the best use of well over USD 80 million?
Two bottlenecks block: the development of Kigamboni – the ferry from the city centre and the mayhem at Mbagala Rangi Tatu which holds up traffic taking the long way around to Kigamboni via Kongowe. Congestion there is caused by the abrupt ending of the dual carriageway followed by what can only be described as an open space – about 70 metres wide and 500 long. Cost of completing the dual carriageway so that it segues neatly into the final unattached stretch of Kilwa Road? About USD 1 million, I’m told. Not much.
At the other end, ferry congestion is easily tackled by redeveloping the area around the ferry dock on the Kigamboni side to improve traffic flow and improving roads running away from it – and ensuring that they have dedicated space for the great number of bicycles and three wheel flat beds that run those routes. That should eat up another few million.
Then let’s throw the remainder at very basic issues like maintenance of existing roads, drainage, extension of the Tanesco grid and waste management.
But obvious steps won’t be taken because they are not as simple as they look. They demand some joined up thinking and planning, an examination of options and involvement of people and government at all levels. Talk about throwing money at a bridge is cheap and easy. And throwing up a bridge under current planning norms will just lead to a boom in uncontrolled chaotic development and Kigamboni will turn into another Mbagala.
And of course Kigamboni is just indicative. In Mtwara and Mchuchuma power plants are being planned without transmission lines. And of course in Loliondo Minister Magufuli has been taking the old man’s one cup cure and has promised TZS 1 billion to develop the road to Samunge village – money which, let’s face it, the dogs in the street know Tanroads doesn’ t have.
So, bora kujenga daraja?
*With apologies to my friends in Daraja and also Mrisho Mpoto.
“This is the end of days. You must choose a righteous church to lead you and not allows yourself to be blown around like a scrap of paper. Trample on the old man of Loliondo! Destroy the old man of Loliondo! Crush his works!”
Words from Dar’s leading preacher, Bishop Kakobe of the Full Gospel Bible Fellowship, as reported in yesterday’s Mwananchi newspaper. The Old Man of Loliondo is retired Lutheran pastor Ambilikile Mwasapile. He claims to have been told by god in a dream of his special brew which with one dose will cure AIDS, diabetes, asthma, and whatever you’re having yourself. The price of the dose too is divinely fixed – at 500 shillings (c. 25 euro cents).
On Mwananchi’s website, the story was filed under “Habari za Siasa” – Political News. If politics involves trying to attract scarce resources to your place, then politics it is. The crush of the sick and the desperate has led to calls for improved roads, parking areas, accommodation and eateries.This has worked before – not in Tanzania, but in Ireland. An energetic priest and faithful hordes managed to convince Charles Haughey‘s cash strapped 1980s government to stump up £10 million for an airport serving the Marian Shrine at Knock – where Mary was believed to have appeared the century before last and where miracles are still believed to occur. Surely Loliondo people will be making a pitch to TASAF soon, if only for a new bus stand.
Or maybe it should have been in the Business News section? Kakobe’s reaction was not atypical of a powerful player in a crowded market when faced by a quick witted upstart. And the reported impact on taxi and bus fares in the area – more than doubling – would have justified such a classification too.
And neither is the connection between politicians with colourful pasts and the supernatural limited to Ireland. In a timely intervention yesterday, speaking at the launch of a fundraiser for orphans , former Prime Minister Edward Lowassa placed himself in the front line against witchcraft. As reported in Mwananchi (and not in response to the old man of Loliondo):
Lowassa, who is also the CCM MP for Monduli, called on religious leaders to spread the word of the lord in order that people may change and follow the lord and abandon witchcraft.
He said that this is a great challenge for religions leaders and reiterated that he too is ready to participate wholeheartedly in efforts to change Tanzanians.
Working out the boundaries between ‘religion’, ‘witchcraft’ and traditional healing is never easy. And it gets more complicated when politics and religion business are introduced – for news editors as well as everybody else. It may make daily life problematic for the sceptical, but the Loliondo case vividly reminds us of the centrality of spirituality and the supernatural to most aspects of Tanzanian life.
The destruction arising from Gongo la Mboto’s exploding munitions dump, as well as the lack of clarity in official responses, has highlighted civil military relations in Tanzania in a bloody and unwelcome way. Such relationships have been stable for the most part, but they haven’t been static. The attempted coup in 1963 shook Nyerere and ensured that TANU (CCM’s forerunner) brought the army in from the cold.
As a result, the military is set deep and wide in Tanzania: most people over forty have National Service tales. And the military’s business interests are not to be sniffed at: the golf course at Lugalo, Msasani Beach Club and the JKT furniture factory in Chang’ombe are the least controversial.
The issues around the Gongo la Mboto blasts – demands for accountability, issues of control and working out when public safety trumps national security – will work themselves out for better or worse in the short term. In the medium term, the test of the seriousness of the upcoming constitutional review will be how the issue of civil-military relationships is tackled – if at all.
In the meantime, get reading. Abillah Omari gives a useful overview of shifting relationships in “Civil-military relations in Tanzania“, a chapter in “Ourselves to Know“, published by South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies in 2002.
Stefan Lindemann has done a useful piece for DfID, examining the “persistent exceptionalism” of Tanzania and Zambia. In other words, why no coups? He’s quite clear: the military has been cut into the elite bargain through shifting combinations of inclusive recruitment strategies, political control through the ruling party and access to state patronage.
Neither Omari nor Lindemann conclude optimistically.
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They’re getting good music out. Get yours here, from the Society HAE.
Education (x) Health (x) Agriculture First (x) New Constitution (√) Dowans (X)
Education is going backwards, health services are a mess, Kilimo Kwanza* is too little too late, Dowans is a disgrace. We need a new constitution to suit the times. The current one lets our leaders do what they want. There are no means of keeping a check on them. The Chief Justice is appointed by the President and then is sworn in by the same President. Others are appointed to multiple positions. What’s all that about?
The translated and paraphrased words of the two signwriters who put together the concise overview of Tanzania in 2011 pictured above. It’s pretty succint, and it’s at Kigamboni Market.
So have they read the constitution?
Sure, a mate has a copy – we’ve all been reading it. He’s gone into town to get more. Why aren’t they easily available to everyone? I saw Pius Msekwa on the telly the other night and he was complaining that he didn’t have one. And he’s the Deputy Chairman of CCM!!
Such civic awareness is heartening and commendable. There’s a real debate taking place. But I never asked them why so many signwriters are heart-on-sleeve gooners?
Swahili Street 