Why TZ risks becoming a land of zombies

Sometimes in the mid 70s my then Member of Parliament, the late Jackson Makweta, rattled members of the National Assembly by tabling a motion urging the august House to legalise the use marijuana.

To many, this was rather an unsettling motion taking into account the disciplined and high moral standards upheld by the then no-nonsense Mwalimu Nyerere.

However, most of us, those hailing from Njombe, then Makweta’s constituency, found nothing wrong with the motion.

After all the marijuana plant was widely cultivated by most farmers in almost all the villages in that part of Bongoland. Actually to us marijuana was simply another traditional vegetable.

Njombeans, of that era, were therefore very shocked to learn that the leaves of this innocent plant had another sinister use; that it could be smoked like tobacco. And that this was the problem.

“How could one smoke a vegetable?”They wondered. In due course, however, Makweta’s motion was thrown out by all the honourables.

Understandably, side effects of consuming marijuana, like a vegetable, are rather scanty. I do, however, remember coming across a scientific paper which concluded that consumption of large quantities of marijuana leaves – as a vegetable – by parents, adversely affected the health of their newly born babies.

It alleged that these babies were likely to suffer brain damage. Indeed I do recall that there was an abnormally high percentage of brain challenged pupils in my primary school.

Otherwise everybody knows the more perilous side effects of smoking the common marijuana leaves. And presently, after many years of smoking marijuana, many young men and women have graduated from the use of marijuana to that of more potent drugs including cocaine and heroin.

Now that is a very grim situation. The use of these new generation drugs gravely destroy the health of our young men and women; expose them to predatory diseases including HIV; destroy families; raise crime; affect the economy; and even produce powerful and dangerous crime cartels which end up controlling all sectors of the economy and even usurping political power.

This reminds me of the famous 19th century Opium Wars in China. The British had been exporting opium mainly from India to China from the 18th century to destablise and subdue the later. In the 1820s this perilous trade grew dramatically resulting in widespread addiction in China. Naturally this caused serious social and economic disruption.

Subsequently the Chinese government, in March 1830, decided to suppress this trade. It confiscated and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium – some 1,400 tonnes of the drug.

Naturally the British were not happy.

And soon after, a vicious war broke out with the British sending many warships to fight the Chinese.

After much loss of life and property, some ten years later, peace negotiations took place resulting in the Treaty of Nanjing, signed on August 29, 1942.

This is the treaty whose provisions, very imperialistic among others, required China to pay Britain a large indemnity and cede Hong Kong Island to the British. A decade or so later, another similar Opium War was fought. But that is a story for another day.

The imperial Britain had gone to war with China to, among other exploitative reasons, safeguard its lucrative opium trade which ensured that millions of Chinese people would subsequently turn into zombies.

In their weakened position they would be easily controlled and exploited by the mighty British. Notably this was at the height of the famous Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong decadent nightlife of drugs, gambling and prostitution.

That is why we all have to join forces with the authorities in the current fight against narcotics in our country.

Otherwise we should be prepared, in the very near future, to become a land of scrawny and semi-dead people. A land of Zombies!

Danford Mpumilwa is a Journalist and Communication Consultant based in Arusha