By Bernard James

There is growing concern over the increasing state of lawlessness and disregard for authority in the country, with the most shocking example being the recent arson attack on a police station in Kilimanjaro Region by a mob of nearly 300 villagers.

 

Civil and human rights activists are warning that this could have devastating consequences for Tanzania’s future political, social and economic progress.

 

Legal experts, academicians and ordinary citizens are worrying about the mounting incidence of disobedience and disrespect for laws, with those mandated to enforce compliance time and again proving incapable of reversing the sorry situation.

 

But contacted for comment yesterday, the minister for Home Affairs, Mr Lawrence Masha, and his Justice and Constitutional Affairs counterpart, Mr Mathias Chikawe, declined to give government’s view on the issue.

They were speaking to the Sunday Citizen by telephone from Dodoma.

 Mr Masha said he needed time to look into the issue before giving his position.

 

With the apparent widespread inefficiency of the law enforcing institutions, rampant disobedience, the flagrant flouting of road traffic regulations, high incidence of mob justice, and corruption, the activists warn, the very fabric of the society is threatened.

In the Same District incident, the villagers stormed and burnt a police station in an attempt to seize and punish people who had been arrested over alleged involvement in the supposed kidnap of a schoolgirl. The villagers suspected the girl had been lured and killed in a ritual by miners to boost their luck. But it turned out that the girl had only strayed from home, following a stranger and ended up in Moshi Town, but was later reunited with her parents.

 The invasion of police stations by civilians has happened three times in the recent past. The others include a villagers’ raid on a police post in Ukerewe, also to seize suspects, which is indicative of lack of public confidence in the justice delivery system. There has also been an increase in other anti-social habits. They include littering, widespread occupation of road pavements by petty, building on road reserves and public open spaces and smoking in public places. There is also a proliferation in counterfeit goods, and bearing the brunt of these negative occurrences are law-abiding civilians. 

Also contributing to the mayhem are some members of the disciplined forces. One of the most talked about incidents is that of a soldier, who assaulted a police officer controlling traffic at the busy Ubungo intersection in Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania People’s Defence Force man was apparently enraged that the military bus he was traveling in had been held up for a long time.

Some commentators view the villagers’ raids on police stations as a crude means of communicating their dissatisfaction to their government. 

An outspoken Dar es Salaam lawyer, Mr Mabere Marando, said there was a link between the rising spate of lawlessness and the weak governance arising from the shortcomings of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). He accused CCM of having failed to govern the country.

“The concern of our leaders is wealth accumulation. Their focus is on what to get out of their positions of leadership rather than serving the country,” he said.

According to Mr Marando, a former member of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), the solution is to improve governance by strengthening opposition political parties.

He said the frequent armed robberies and killings in Dar es Salaam’s affluent Mbezi and Kimara suburbs were a clear manifestation of how laws had failed to serve their purpose.

“The situation is going to get even worse. Armed bandits rob freely because of weaknesses in governance. They rob and the police get their cut,” he claimed.

Mr Marando said such lawlessness was common in countries, whose ruling elites had remained in power for long time. “This is not peculiar to CCM. It happens where other ruling parties have overstayed in power,” he said.

A law lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Dr Sengondo Mvungi, said the current state of affairs was indicative of lack of common national ethics and ideals. He charged that those in power had lost direction and didn’t now what to do.

“People do not voluntarily respect the law and our constitution because they were not involved in the making them. Efforts must be made to ensure that they have a feeling that the laws and the constitution belong to them,” he said, adding: “We’ve reduced ourselves into a population of hooligans.”

The consequences of the growing lawlessness, he said, were obvious, citing the double allocation of plots/land by the councils, high level of corruption, and growing crime.

In its 2009 annual report, the Police Force says there were 926,593 reported criminal offences compared to 735,481 in 2008, a 26 per cent increase 

Dr Mvungi, a constitutional lawyer, added: “We hear every day of incidents in the Mbezi and Kimara suburbs. People are being killed and robbed off their money. That is what we have created. The possible consequence is social disorder. But we can reorganise our country with rules and laws, which give justice to the people. We need to create q judiciary that is responsive to the people’s needs.”

 

But the lecturer said there was no need to point the finger at CCM, Chadema or any other party. “What we need is to create a mechanism to ensure that the people we put in power understand what it means to be leaders.”

 

The Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) executive director, Mr Francis Kiwanga said they were also disturbed about the current state of affairs. “The respect for the rule of law in Tanzania is in jeopardy,” he warned.

He said it was sad that some leaders had been blatantly breaking the laws, which they had helped to enact. “Under the law we are all equal. Every citizen has the duty to respect the law,” he says.

 “Normally disobedience of the law starts gradually but later the consequences could turn to be worse than we could have imagined,” he said. 

 

The government, he said, found it difficult time to administer Tarime District in Mara Region “because law enforcers failed to control the lawlessness since the beginning.”

 

A renowned law scholar, Prof Issa Shivji, said the inefficient law enforcement machinery was blame. “If you have an inefficient enforcement machinery how many people will you charge in court and punish?”

He added: “In our system, the law enforcement machinery is too weak, inefficient and corrupt. That is why lawlessness is rife. The consequences of creating a society of people who do not feel they have an obligation to obey the law can have far reaching implications.”

 

Prof  Shivji warned that the attack on the traffic policeman by a soldier at Ubungo was dangerous. “When institutions of the state do not respect the law, citizen rights are breached there will be no protection for them.”