Bombs explode in Dar

Yesterday around noon, tremors were felt across the city after a weapons and ammunition dump exploded killing at least three people and leaving hundreds injured. The explosions took place at an Army Barrack in the Mbagala suburb, 15km from the city centre. From The Citizen:

The Government yesterday appointed a team to investigate a series of explosions at a Dar es Salaam military depot, in which 10 people, including several army personnel, are feared to have died. 

Sources in the Tanzania People's Defence Forces in Dar es Salaam told The Citizen last evening that the explosions occurred as Katyusha and anti-aircraft rockets were being moved.

Hundreds of Mbagala residents were injured in the blasts and taken to Temeke District Hospital, which was overwhelmed by a sudden influx of people seeking treatment. Scores of parents reported their children missing.

One of the doctors at Temeke District Hospital, a medical student from Britain, told the BBC of his experience:

When the first casualties arrived, we received a lot of people who were very shaken up. All the doctors dropped what they were doing to help. There were children coming in with school uniforms on. There were a few people with explosion injuries. Some had severe head injuries. I also know of at least one amputation carried out on a casualty. I'm told that a lot of people were injured evacuating the area. I heard one of those people died. And there were a lot of people admitted with things like asthma.

As harrowing eye-witness accounts continue to make their way onto news reports, the question that's on everyones mind is: why did the army store such dangerous weapons near a residential neighborhood? 

UPDATE: These cats took 'the don't let a crisis go to waste' mantra a little too far:

[T]hieves and pickpockets had a field day helping themselves to an assortment of booty -- even as soldiers and their families ran for their lives from the base. At least two young men were arrested and were found to be in possession of ten explosive devices. “I saw them walk around the base … then I decided to follow them … they had various explosives when I arrested them … there were four of them … but another two managed to escape,” said Mr Abeid Mchopa, an auxiliary police, who was helping to guard the base during the blasts.

UPDATE II: The local press is reporting that the death toll has risen to 20 but unconfirmed, anecdotal reports say that the actual casualty number is higher than that being reported by the media. Then there is this troubling bit of news: 

The Dar es Salaam Red Cross announced that over 500 children had been missing since Wednesday. 

Initially, some 1,180 children had been reported missing, according to Red Cross chairperson Mayasa Mikidadi.

We pray that they will soon be re-united with their parents.

Bernie Madoff spawns disciples in TZ

Elsie over at Just Another Day In Paradise is on the case:

Development Entrepreneurship for Community Development (DECI) was registered by some shady independent church as a business, which allowed it to fly under the radar of our hawk-eyed Government undetected for quite the while. The organization encouraged people to 'plant' their investments so they could 'reap' returns of 100% interest or more...

CCM definitely in trouble

So claims a new poll. From The Citizen, the key findings:

A poll by the Research and Education for Democracy in Tanzania (Redet) shows that the ruling party's popularity has declined by half, from 60 per cent in 2006 to 32.6 per cent last year. 

Redet principal researcher, Dr Bernadeta Killian said the survey indicates that public support for opposition parties grew from 18 per cent in 2006 to 27 per cent in 2008.

On President Kikwete, the poll shows that while he remained popular, confidence in his leadership fell from 90.1 per cent in 2006, to 79.4 per cent in 2007. 

It dropped to 78.5 per cent in the latest poll. The President lost huge ground on public confidence with the percentage of those who said they did not trust him jumping from 7.8 per cent in 2006 to 19.3 per cent in the November 2008 poll. 

Now, polls can be notoriously unreliable. Ask Hillary Clinton. They don't necessarily foretell which way the electorate is going to vote. What they can provide, however, is a snapshot at a given moment of what voters are thinking. And the two most recent surveys (Read my review of the Steadman poll here), tell us that while the President remains enormously popular, his party is struggling. And the fall of support for the ruling party seems to have translated into significant gains for the opposition. 

What does this mean? I think for the first time since the beginning of multiparty democracy in this country, voters are tentatively expressing a desire for divided government. They are clearly not yet sold on the opposition as a viable governing alternative. But i think it is reasonable to extrapolate from these two studies that they want a more powerful opposition presence in parliament. They are giving a serious listen to what the opposition are offering. The question then becomes, will the opposition take advantage of this opportunity or will they continue to be ill-defined, disorganised and listless, the way they have been in the last 15 years? The next 18 months should give us an answer.

IN THE NEWS: A SCANDAL AT BOT, EAC DITHERING

• The Controller and Auditor General, Ludovick Utouh, finds evidence of inflated insurance payments and other suspicious irregularities in the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) accounts.

• The East African Community (EAC)-Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda- again fail to reach a consensus on the regional common market. Sukhdev Chhatbar lays out the challenges facing the EAC at their upcoming meeting in Arusha.

• Via The New Yorker Book Bench, Canadian women would rather read a book than have sex with their partners. (I wonder if Tanzanian women hold similar views).

• According to The New York Times Barack Obama's presidency is having a profound impact on the way Americans view race relations.

• Over at Louder Than Swahili, Ms. Pernille Baerendtsen relays some useful advice.
  

No natives allowed...

This is what David Maige, a local employee of Lake Manyara National Park, was told when he took his family to visit the Lake Manyara Hotel in Arusha. From The Guardian on Sunday:

Upon approaching the main gate of the prestigious lodge, watchmen relayed a piece of information to him which didn't register immediately as being factual - that the facility was a no-go zone for natives, but the preserve of foreigners and members of the power elite.

The reason:

'Since terrorists have no labels, the management decided to restrict an influx of local people into the lodge,' the hotel boss noted.

Ah, these bloody natives. Always annoying Master when he is having fun. Why do they not understand that this here territory is only for Master and his House Negroes? Go back to the plantation and stop bothering Master when he is trying to have a good time. 

Obama's 100 days

Joe Klein is on point. Money quote:

The most important thing we now know about Barack Obama, after nearly 100 days in office, is that he means to confront that way of life directly and profoundly, to exchange sand for rock if he can. Whether you agree with him or not — whether you think he is too ambitious or just plain wrong — his is as serious and challenging a presidency as we have had in quite some time.

Also take a look at this wonderful photo essay by Callie Shell documenting the man's historic first three months in office.

UPDATE: Gary Younge, over at The (British) Guardian offers a more sombre analysis:

His pledge to take on both the immediate (the financial crisis and economic recession) and the apparently intractable (healthcare, Cuba, immigration, the environment) even as he ramps down one war, escalates another and raises taxes on the rich, is epoch-defining in its ambition.

So far it seems to be popular. When Obama took the presidential oath, 78% thought the country was heading in the wrong direction; today that is down to 48%. His approval ratings are around 65% - only Reagan was in better shape at this stage (and even that was within the margin of error).

But this popularity is precarious. People like Obama far more than they like his policies. And even though they think the country is moving in the right direction, polls show this to be one of those rare periods where those same people remain unsatisfied with their lives. In other words, people are suffering and are optimistic at the same time. And the reason for their optimism is Obama himself. In a reprise of the spirit that distinguished his primary and presidential campaign, people have embraced who he is as a portent of what he might do.

Is Islamic Finance Capitalism's Future?

From Jeremy Harding in the latest The London Review of Books:

What fascinates the markets about Islamic finance, however, is its dramatic growth in recent years and confident predictions that it’s set to expand at 15 to 20 per cent every year. Its allure for moderately prosperous, pious Muslims – and quite a few non-Muslims recoiling from the debt crisis in anger and disgust – is different. They admire what they see as a promise to achieve stability and transparency, and a sense of proportion about money: look it in the eye, tell it you like it, but admit that you have lingering doubts about the transcendent value of paper. That’s an unsophisticated position, but since the credit crunch not many people trust the sophisticated keepers of the modern money culture; in this sense the rise of sharia-compliant products is also a challenge to the unofficial, polytheist faith of offshore Britannia: the worship of markets in general and financial markets in particular.

Key word: Trust. Everyone has been calling for a new architecture of the global financial system, but most of the ideas offered seem to be mere band aid solutions that aim to go back to where things were. This is the only article i have read that points at a real alternative to the status quo. Read the article in its entirety. It makes for a fascinating read.

Department of WTF??!!!???

So there I was last night, sitting at my desk, reading the paper when I came across this story, 'Who are the African Writers', on page 5 of The Citizen's Education supplement. Here is the lede:

Looking at 75 year-old Professor Wole Soyinka deliver his lecture at the University of Dar es Salaam last week, Rose Athumani started wondering what would happen to literature in Africa when renowned African writers like the Professor, Chinua Achebe and Ngungi Wa Thiongo call it a day? Who is documenting our current affairs and who will write about us in the future?

She then proceeds to ask, "what is keeping our young writers from writing in big numbers"and conclude that "they are relatively few," relative to what, she never explains. Well, where do i begin? Surely, Ms. Athumani cannot be that ignorant? Even if she is not a big reader, you would think that at least she would know how to use Google search. I mean how else do you explain her not knowing who Ben Okri is. You know, the Nigerian cat whose novel, The Famished Road, won the 1991 Booker Prize. Okay, may be that was a while ago and since the dude has veered off into more spiritual and esoteric subjects, it is forgivable that she is not familiar with his oeuvre. Then she should at least be aware of Mr. Okri's compatriot,Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who has just published her fifth book, a collection of short stories titled, The Thing Around Your Neck. I hear you say why should a Tanzanian pay attention to what Nigerians are doing. I don't agree with you because I believe a journalist should be inexhaustibly curious and be as informed as it is humanly possible. But fair enough. Nigeria is a bit far and to expect folks to keep up with what goes on up there may be asking too much. If this is true, then her ignorance of Tanzanian novelists Abdulrazak Gurnah and MG Vassanji is unforgivable, so is her cluelessness of The Caine Prize for African Writing or her being oblivious to the wonderful presence of Kwani? I could keep going but it gets kind of mean, so i'll stop here.

But I have to say reading that article, I was shocked. How could a journalist miss all this? But what I found most disturbing was that she seemed completely oblivious to her own ignorance. Now I realise that as an adult not everyone is going to share my love for everything literary (though I have to say I find it odd that someone who claims to be a writer would seem to be utterly disinterested in reading) but we can all come together on the idea that a reporter should at least be able to retrieve basic information for her stories, no? I am unable to provide the link to the article in question. It has yet to be posted on The Citizen's website. And if I was Ms. Athumani I would pray that they never do. It is embarrassing and Ms. Athumani should be embarrassed by it. At best it is an example of lazy journalism, at worst it lays bare her stupidity for all the world to see. Neither of those are laudable accolades.

'In this great future, you cannot forget your past'

Mohamed Isa re-members an almost forgotten part of Tanzania's history

Nationalisn't?

Mwalimu Nyerere with former Cuban President Fidel Castro talking to a Cuban aid worker during a visit to Ruvu, Tanzania, in 1972 (Photo: Bertmann/CORBIS       

In his beautiful love letter to former Tanzanian President the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in last week's The East African, Philip Ochieng observes:

The Tanzanian nationalist leadership was much longer-sighted. At independence, it consciously sought to transform the elite nationalist unity into a real mass or inter-tribal unity. The war on tribalism that it launched was thus a thousand times more genuine and more intense. At the instigation of Mwalimu Nyerere himself, there was a massive campaign to raise one national consciousnesses. In its attempts to dismantle the colonial structure of thought and action, Tanzania is the only African country that nearly succeeded in annihilating tribalism. 

Now, it is a matter of historical consensus that Mwalimu Nyerere's great achievement was the success he had in moving his people away from the narrow, tribal self-definitions to a broader, more nationalist identity that makes us think of ourselves as Tanzanians first and everything else second. This was/is his great victory. And the forty years of peace we continue to enjoy is a testament to the enduring legacy of this vision. 

But what has been clear for a long time now is that his 'Ujamaa' policies were disastrous. Even Mr. Ochieng himself admits that '[they] were not a recipe for rapid development.' Nevertheless he excuses Mwalimu thus:

His failings were not a result of any deliberate anti-people policy. He fought will full energy every manifestation of arrogance, corruption, tyranny and chauvinism in leadership [...] his failings stemmed from the subjective inadequacies of an ideology and his system's inability to come to full grips with all the extremely powerful objective forces-national and international- that were ranged against his policies.

Since i know Mr. Ochieng to be a fan of Shakespeare, he would do well to recall the Bard's warning that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Yes, Mwalimu's policies were well-meaning. But his ideological experiments were not the intellectual theorizing of an academic sitting at his desk on his ivory tower. They had real and adverse consequences whose ramifications we are still having to contend with. The policies that came out of the Arusha Declaration sounded good on paper, but in practice they simply could not work. Their failures were almost immediate with with regional leaders using the collectivisation programs to enrich themselves at the expense of local farmers and in the process bankrupting the government. This lead to the forced nationalisation of private property in 1974 with the so-called 'Operation Dodoma.'  All these programmes did little to improve returns on the huge investments poured into these expensive policies which in turn plunged the country deeper into debt and led to our version of the 'Great Depression' in the 1980s.

Mr. Ochieng, who is Kenyan, is blinded by his admiration of Mwalimu and chooses to gloss over his many failures, like a man who is in love with his neighbour's wife despite being told over and over about the woman's deep flaws. And just like this dude, Mr. Ochieng is being misleading in his selective praise of Mwalimu. The point i am making is we should tell the truth about our history. Mwalimu was a great leader who was instrumental in the liberation of our country. But he was also responsible for gigantic failures of governance and glorifying him only obscures the man and the context of his times.

Pondering History

   President Obama welcomes the 'first dog', Bo, with a short stroll inside The White House (Photo:Pete Souza/AP) 

With all that has been going on in the world, it's been easy to forget the astonishing fact of President Barack Hussein Obama. So just wanted to remind folks how cool this new reality is.

Chelsea Madness

This was one of the most pulsating, compelling, memorable and nerve-racking games in the history of European football.

The second leg of the Champions League quarterfinal tie between Chelsea and Liverpool finally ended at 4-4, with the Stamford Bridge side scraping through 7-5 on aggregate. Next is a mouth watering semifinal against the mighty Barcelona. 

Twice they were within a goal from being knocked out. The game was exciting for neutrals. I could tell by my neighbours' shouts and screams three houses away. But for a fan, like myself, it was a nervous, unsettling experience, like being on a dangerous roller coaster ride. Nevertheless, the resilience shown by the players, especially Didier Drogba who has been rejuvenated since Guus Hiddink took over, to come back and secure the win was laudable. And the toughness they showed should bode well for the next round. 

Yet, i can't help but be worried. In the last two games Chelsea have conceded a total of seven goals. We keep conceding like that, Barcelona's terrifying holy trinity of Henry, Etoo and Messi will crucify us. This is the deadliest attacking force in Europe right now, having combined to score over 86 goals this year. We need to go back to fundamentals and remember that while offense can win a game, it is defence that wins championships. Hiddink should burn this into the minds of his players before they head to the Nou Camp. Otherwise, it will be another year of disappointment in Europe. 

UPDATE: Kevin McCara agrees:

Of the four sides left Chelsea looked the most disorderly. No one anticipated them scoring seven times over the matches with Liverpool or conceding five. Together, they and Liverpool came up with 12 of the 28 goals in the quarter-finals. If Chelsea have morphed into entertainers it is mostly against the wishes of Guus Hiddink. Were they to attempt to outgun Barcelona, the English club would probably be mown down. There is a lack of instant remedies for the current laxity. On Tuesday, against Liverpool, the goalkeeper Petr Cech was in the throes of a crisis so personal that it made a spectator feel like a voyeur. Somehow that has to be addressed by Hiddink since there is no credible alternative to the Czech.

CCM in trouble?

 President Kikwete speaking to voters at a CCM rally 

A few days ago, Steadman Group, the research and media monitoring firm which does a lot of work in sub-saharan Africa, released a poll on Tanzania that made for some interesting reading. From the Daily News:

President Jakaya Kikwete remains outstanding in leaders' popularity rating by 62 percent...The research findings show that the National Chairman of the Civic United Front (CUF), Prof. Ibrahim Lipumba and the National Chairman of Chadema, Mr. Freeman Mbowe, are the president's closest contenders, tying at 14 percent in popularity rating.

After a difficult year politically, State House will justifiably feel emboldened by this news. And by any standard these numbers are impressive. If Mr. Kikwete's approval rating remain this high going into the general election in 2010, it should translate into another huge landslide for him and his party. 

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that his current popularity is a significant drop from when he was first elected in 2005. Four years ago he won 80% of the popular vote to become Tanzania's fourth President. So looking at the poll from this perspective, it does suggest a significant loss of trust in Mr. Kikwete's ability to govern. This is why only 41% of voters approve of the government's overall performance in the last twelve months. While it hasn't yet gnawed on the personal popularity of the President, it definitely will if voters don't notice any improvements in the coming year.

The poll also implies that if the elections were held today, the opposition parties would garner over 30% of the vote.  If something close to this were to ever happen here it would completely transform politics in this country. It would probably mean a more effective opposition in parliament and hopefully give a much needed jolt to Tanzania's democracy. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. A year is a long time in politics and with the opposition as it is currently constituted, such a change is still unlikely. However, for the first time since the multiparty system was introduced, a significant bloc of voters are signaling that they are prepared to listen to an alternative. Whether they will in the end actually vote for one is difficult to predict. But it is still a significant development. How the political parties deal with this new reality in the next few months will be interesting to watch. (Photo courtesy of jakayakikwete.com)

UPDATE: The same poll indicates that folks from the isles are heading for yet another nail biter. Here is the intriguing little nugget:

Tanzanians are likely to vote for either Maalim Seif Shariff Hamad (23 per cent) or Dr Mohammed Gharib Bilal (21 per cent) respectively as the next Zanzibar president.

Beginnings...

So, here we go. A brief post about what i am trying to do here. In what is already a crowded blogosphere starting another one may seem self-indulgent. But at African Bambataa, i am going to attempt to do something a little different: write about Tanzanian 'Policulture' in an intelligent, non-patronizing way. What do i mean by Policulture? Basically i am going to bring together politics and culture in one space of conversation. I am going to talk about my five loves: music, literature, woody allen movies, politics and football. I am going to be honest and truthful, celebrate what is worthy of being applauded and provide constructive critiques when it is warranted. Welcome and enjoy!