Obama on Africa: Is He Sending Mixed Signals?

In today's British Independent, Eric Kabendera suggests as much:

The initial signs from the Obama presidency were far from encouraging as far as promoting good governance was concerned. The first of the continent's leaders to be granted an Oval Office meeting with the new black occupant of the White House, was my own president: Jakaya Kikwete, of Tanzania.

He had just finished his stint as the rotating head of the African Union, so it might have been a matter of diplomatic protocol, but it was a disappointing choice nonetheless. While at the AU helm, President Kikwete was far from impressive. He stuck to the Africa old norm of "respecting your elders even when they are convicted thieves". So even when ordinary Zimbaweans were suffering at the repressive hands of Robert Mugabe, Mr Kikwete failed to denounce the rigged election and call him to account.

I am not sure Mr Obama grasped the signals he was sending by choosing the Tanzanian leader as his first African guest. This was a man who rabble-roused the AU into refusing to cooperate with the International Criminal Court regarding the indictment of the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for his role in the genocide in Darfur. The AU's refusal was a blessing to corrupt criminal leaders around the continent.

You can read the rest of the article here

Swine Flu in Tanzania

Agence France reports:

Tanzanian officials said Wednesday that a 17-year-old British student who was hospitalised earlier this month has been confirmed as the east African country's first case of swine flu.

Andrew Swai, director of clinical services at the country's main referral hospital in the capital Dar es Salaam, said the teenager was among a group of 15 students and teachers who flew in from Britain via Kenya on July 2 to carry out volunteer work.

"The victim has undergone a first diagnostic test and it was positive" for A(H1N1), he told AFP. "No need for panic this is just a single case and we know how it came about."

Swai added there was no cause for alarm over the patient's condition.

The government's chief medical officer Deo Mutasiwa said Tanzania was well prepared for an epidemic, that stocks of Tamiflu were satisfactory and that doses had recently been sent out to the touristic island of Zanzibar.

The Daily News also quotes Dr. Swai reassuring the country that the government was taking all the necessary precautions to contain the situation:

He said that the government would distribute more PPE at all port of entry, facilitate the production of health declaration forms and strengthen patient management and care. However, Dr Swai said that there was no cause for panic, giving assurances that everything was under control and that the disease would not spread beyond Tanzania borders.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm...

The country is poor. We can barely educate our children or provide them with adequate healthcare. Consistent electricity service is still a luxury and, for 80% of the people, an unattainable dream. 40% of our budget is foreign subsidized. So what does our government choose to focus on? A national dress code:

Tanzanians will soon be officially introduced to a national dress, a move that would help put in place a dressing code to preserve African tradition norms and culture, the Parliament was told yesterday.

Responding to a question by Hafidhi Ali Tahir (Dimani, CCM), who had wanted to know if Tanzania has a national dress, Deputy Minister for Information, Sports and Culture, Joel Bendera said the process of introducing a national dress was progressing well.

Bendera admitted that the style of dressing by most young Tanzanians was not satisfactory despite efforts made by the government and its stakeholders in sensitizing the community on decent dressing.

“If this habit is left unchecked, it might lead to moral decay among young Tanzanians,” he said, adding that dressing in provocative outfit presents a negative picture of the nation. “The whole nation, I believe, is not impressed by this,” he said.

Venansio Ahabwe reacts:

The Comrade pledges his prayers for Tahir and Bendera to surmount the gigantic wall that they have offered to scale. 

Yes, let the dressing policy come into force; whereupon we can separate aliens from residents. Two things can then happen, however. 

Some Tanzanians will forge documents to present themselves as visitors who know little or nothing about the official dress code and thus cannot abide by  the rules. 

Others could resort to hide and seek games: carry spare outfits all the time, pull on the official attire when authorities are in sight and revert to the illegal code anon.

Mh. Bendera must be prepared to erect roadblocks and plan for a special police unit to supervise the implementation of and adherence to the national garb [...] The Comrade knows that such a policy was successfully executed in Uganda by Idi Amin Dada. 

Well, good then. As long as we are following the path laid out by such upstanding role models.

Making History

                                                  Photo by Fred Beckham/AP

Hasheem Thabeet becomes the first Tanzanian to make it into the National Basketball Association (NBA) as he is picked 2nd by the Memphis Grizzlies in the draft held in New York last night.

We wish him the best of luck.

The way we live now

Every year, half a million women die over preventable pregnancy complications. Denise Grady, over at The New York Times has a piece about how small communities in Tanzania are dealing with this tragic reality. In her second of three article on the subject, she looks at how a small orphanage in Berega, a village in Tanzania's midwest, is dealing with children whose mothers died giving birth: 

The orphanage here, started in 1965 by United German Mission Aid, an evangelical Christian mission, began recruiting relatives to move in about five years ago. Ute Klatt, a German missionary and nurse who has been director of the orphanage for 10 years, said she learned about the practice from another orphanage in Tanzania. Now many of the children at the orphanage are cared for by a teenage girl from the extended family — a binti, in Swahili — often a sister, cousin or aunt, who lives with them and learns how to take care of them.

You can read the rest of the article here

Hail To The Chief

This week's African Voices on CNN features this intriguing little interview with President Kikwete.

 

From the Deep South

A friend of mine, who is a Peace Corps volunteer in Madaba, Ruvuma, sent me this email about an ugly incident that took place at his school. I feel it is worth sharing. Here it is in full:

I think it was May 9 that the riot took place.  I was in the laboratory preparing a practical for the following day.  A student knocked on the door - the laboratory is in a building that is almost in the center of the campus - and asked for the teacher on duty (TOD). I told him he had gone home and didn't think much of it until around 9:30PM - about twenty minutes later - when the TOD came into the lab with a different student. His face was swollen and his nose bleeding. The TOD said that he had been hit by another student with a club. The student himself then recounted his story - the first of three times that I would hear his story that night. 

The student who had been hit, Oscar Kiyao, lives with the TOD in one of the school's teacher's residences.  He was at home in his room with the lights on - we run a generator for three hours in the evenings each day - when he heard a noise in the sitting room.  He got up and investigates.  He saw that another student, Jackson Mponda, had entered the home and was in the process of stealing something off of a table in the sitting room. Jackson was startled and ran out of the house, Oscar pursued him across campus, through the boys' dormitories, into the forest and down to the river. Oscar caught Jackson near a river in a valley adjacent to the school, at which point Jackson hit him with a club he was carrying or a branch he had picked up.  He then threatened Oscar that if he followed Jackson any more, Jackson would stab him with a knife. 

After I had heard the story we went to see the acting head of school, PHD Mgaya. Oscar recounted his story again and PHD said that the I, the TOD, Oscar and some of the students' leaders should go to Jackson's home.  In hindsight it appears that this decision helped to escalate tension and it helped spread the word that a teacher had been robbed and who the culprit was.  So we went to his house - he lives only a ten minute walk from the capmus - and found his mother there, asleep.  We had someone wake her and told her what had happened. At this point I suggested we wait until the next day to deal with the situation.  Jackson's mother is quite old and I didn't see any reason to wake her and tell her that her son was a thief.  The TOD disagreed and we woke her.  Again, Oscar recounted his story.  The mother threw her hands up and began weeping. Nothing came of the visit except that Jackon's mother was alarmed.  We then all returned to school. 

I went back to the lab to close up and then left to go home.  It was about 10:20 at this point.  On the walk home I heard commotion at the boys' dorms so I went to check it our.  Many boys were out, half clothed, running and shouting in all directions.  I proceeded back to the staff room, in the middle of campus, and saw that Jackson had returned and was standing outside with the acting head of school and TOD.  At this point the boys had organized themselves and were approaching the staff room from their dormitory. Then I started hearing rocks and brick fragments landing on the metal roofs of the classrooms.  The boys were throwing bricks.  They were also chanting "mwizi apigwe!"  We sent a student leader to talk to them, he was repulsed with flying bricks.  We entered the office with Jackson and decided it would be best if we escorted him off campus.

We went opposite the boys' dorms, past the girls dormitories towards the field, and a back way out of school which leads to his home.  As we passed the girls' dormitories they were singing and jeering Jackson. As we left Jackson at the border between the school and our soccer field, near the path the leads in a roundabout way to his house, the acting head of school told him to go straight home and that if the students got their hands on him, they would kill him.

We turned to go and saw that the boys - now a mob, really - had been following us and continued to encroach.  The acting head of school suggested we go through the girls' dormitory to avoid them, and then back to school.  I refused, preferring instead to confront the boys. I stood my ground after the TOD and PHD had left.  The boys approached, stopped, continued chanting and rattling their clubs. Then I saw and heard bricks falling near me.  I had to duck and dodge a couple that were heading for my face.  At that point I realized these people would not be reasoned with.

I don't know if you've ever looked into the face of an angry mob but it was jarring for me.  I couldn't see faces because it was dark but felt as though the people I was looking at were not human beings because they had lost their faculties of reason.  Culpability for whatever they were prepared to do was going to be shared amongst them and spread so thin that feelings of conscience and guilt were nonexistent. These people were mindless, living in a consequence-free space and, perhaps, believing that whatever punishment they were prepared to mete was justified.

The TOD rang the bell and called a meeting near the staff room, in the center of the campus.  A group of, about 50 students, assembled in front of us in various states of undress. PHD started to address them and there was lots of back-talk so I went to stand among them in the back.  I identified a few and tried to confiscate their clubs. I grabbed one kid's shirt and he hid his face and started pulling away. I didn't let go and asked him "utanipiga?"  He eventually relented and put down in club.  At this point I realized that we, the teachers, had completely lost control of the school and that if the students were prepared to beat someone to death we would be powerless to stop them.

We decided it would be best if I went home, which I obligingly did. The TOD escorted the boys back to their dorms and noticed that others had stayed behind, collecting kerosene - normally used for lamps and studying after-hours - and making preparations for a raid on Jackson's house.  The TOD was able to talk them down but, he said, only after some heated exchanges.  The students had been, apparently, prepared to go to Jackson's house, pull him out, douse him with kerosene, and immolate him.  This realization still disturbs me today. In the following days I talked with some teachers and villagers about it.  All the conversations I had were horrifying and deeply disturbing.  No one seemed to think that what had happened warranted a special meeting or punishments for the ring-leaders.  One teacher said that the students were merely protecting law and order.  A villager said that thieves should be killed. The TOD told me that when he was in secondary school, some of his classmates had beaten a student to death because he had been suspected to be a thief. They beat him and killed him - or left him to die - on the school track.  The police didn't come to take the body - dead? rotting? - away for two days.  In short, no one was shocked by the riot, no one was upset by it or felt it required special attention.

Thinking back, I am still as shocked and disgusted now as I was then. In the days following I seriously considered leaving the country. Some of the student ring-leaders are students of mine.  One student, Jejison Ngomano, stood up in front of the teachers and students present that night, after the TOD had rung the bell and called the meeting, and said that that very day he had had two t-shirts stolen and that someone had to pay with his life. And I'm supposed to just let this kid into my class, teach him like nothing happened? Exams have started so I have no pressing school work to do until July. I'm so glad that we have this time off.

Wait! But I am way cooler than him!

At least that is what Kenyans are thinking after President Kikwete became the first African leader to meet with the new kid on the block, President Obama. Or as The Daily Nation put it, 'Tanzania elbows Kenya to become darling of US. It continues:

Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete this week claimed the honour of being the first African head of state to visit President Obama’s White House, in a move that will further highlight Kenya’s diminished status on the international scene.

The visit came on the back of a public snub by President Obama, who has opted to make Ghana the destination of his first visit to Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Sunday Standard got all hot and bothered, whining, like an insecure child, that Mr. Obama and Mr. Kikwete were gossiping about Kenya:

[US Ambassador to Kenya] Ranneberger spoke against the backdrop of a closed-door meeting between Obama and Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete. It is believed Kenya’s troubled coalition and the gradual loss of grip by the weak-kneed Somali government featured at the meeting.

Our Kenyan brethrens can be so self-involved. Not everything is about you, man. Now I know this must hurt. You've always thought of yourselves as a more civilised peoples than us folks down south: better educated, more sophisticated, possessors of a more cultured sensibility. So the prospect of seeing Obama, someone whom you've embraced as one of your own, making nice with the Tanzanian President must sting a little. But this doesn't have to mean that you've lost your mojo. It's just that we have that 'peace' thing. Nowadays, that will get you a lot of play. Ask Obama, he'll tell you. No need to cry, though. We'll show you how its done, okay. Wipe them tears, now. Its all gonna be fine. 

They are laughing at you...

The Economist, in that self-righteous, holier-than-though tone, turn their focus on Tanzania:

Yet those who set up shop in the country are often disappointed. Tanzania, many complain, is a “slow” or even “terrible” place to do business—and “ungrateful” for foreign aid or investment. Even its boosters admit it is wrapped in red tape and lacks skilled workers. Almost everyone says Mr Kikwete is spending too much time burnishing Tanzania’s image abroad and not enough fixing problems at home. Last year he chaired the African Union. 

I like that 'ungrateful' for aid bit. But what do you expect when almost 50% of your budget is subsidized by foreigners. You are always going to be a joke to these people. Here is the lede from the same article:

THE country already gets 40% of its government budget in aid, but now it wants even more foreign cash to help it through the economic downturn. How much is enough? Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Kikwete, smiles grimly. “We’re trying to bring down our dependency, but we’re grateful for what we receive.”

Where is your dignity, man? This is what we are reduced to: a bunch of beggars. It is embarrassing. Reading the article, you can't help but be ashamed to be Tanzanian. 

(h/t to Louder Than Swahili)

Begging to Master

This little piece news was missed by most of the local press:

Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), issued the following statement on Tanzania today:

“In the context of the ongoing dialogue under the Policy Support Instrument, an IMF staff mission and the Tanzanian authorities have reached broad agreement on policies that will help Tanzania address the impact of the global financial crisis. These policies aim at bolstering the Tanzanian economy, which has been affected by declining receipts from traditional exports and tourism, and protecting the most vulnerable segments of the population.

“In support of these policies, and to help mitigate the exogenous shock stemming from the global economic downturn, Tanzania has requested financial support under the high-access component of the Exogenous Shocks Facility. It is expected that the request will be considered by the IMF's Executive Board before the end of May," Mr. Strauss-Kahn said.

The statement is too vague for my liking. What are the strings attached to this bail-out money and why is the government being so secretive about it all? Something fishy is going on here that they don't want us to know about. We'll be keeping an eye on this as it develops.

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.

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.

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. 

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.