Enough talk! It’s time for action
President Samia Suluhu Hassan is surely coming with a new style, both literally and – more importantly – with her actions.
However, we are still in the early days of her administration as the President of Tanzania. She was only sworn in on March19 this year, and her first 100 days in the highest office in the land will culminate on June 26, 2021.
Although it is not our established tradition here, in 2015 this writer conducted an opinion poll to coincide with the first 100 days of the late President John Magufuli, Tanzania’s first President to die in office on March 17 this year.
Heady days
Those were heady days in which excitement was galore about the new broom in town sweeping clean, proverbially speaking..
President Hassan is confounding both friend and foe, at home and abroad. Her presidency seems to be laying down a marker, and I dare tell you this: her being the beneficiary of an act of fate seems to have given her the opportunity to get real – and not to worry too much about popularity and pandering to the whims of our fickle electoral college, the veteran ruling political party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi.
In the course of being somewhat ‘presidential’ in gait and gesture, President Hassan this past week said the time for talk-talk-talking is over.
‘Marathon’ talkers
Tanzanians are marathon talkers. We can talk ourselves out of awkward situations – and many are the times that we can talk ourselves into or out of, anything we would want ourselves to be.
For instance, that talk about Dar es Salaam being like California.
We are so adept at talking that we forget that talking and walking the talk are opposite sides of the same coin.
Look at our sports which – for lack of a better term – we shall declare moribund: breathing their last, so to speak. A country of 60 million souls is unable to shine in any sport – including football in which we are immersed willy-nilly, compliments of Simba and Yanga football clubs.
Listen to us talk of our greatness in sport… Where are the Olympic and other World Championship medals Tanzanians won ages ago? Where are the continental (African) diadems? It seems we all have to go back to the era of sports greats the likes of Filbert Bayi, current chairman of the Tanzania Olympics Committee (TOC).
We now have the opportunity in the form of an all-caring woman in the Union Presidency: a woman of few words; a gracious lady who seems determined to walk her talk and deliver in measured manner.
President Hassan is keen in whatever she says – and does not make outlandish, outrageous claims, promises, from the rooftops in what amounts to hot-air: empty talk intended to impress.
It is early days yet, but President Hassan seems keen to talk straight rather than pump up Tanzanians with empty talk that makes us swell with false, unbridled pride. It is this hollow talk by some past Presidents that Ms Hassan is trying to wean us from.
Look at our performance in sports. Radio and TV broadcasts continue to spill out false narratives as to how successful we are as a sporting nation. The narratives prosper on the basis that if we ignore a sports as if they don’t matter – while other countries are excelling in, and thriving on, sports, then we are finished in the world of sports.
Former stars
Also, we should ask ourselves: where are our former top sportsmen and women? There was a time in the past when we participated in continental volleyball championships. Alas, that is no longer the case today.
Do we still know anything about hockey? Forget about rugby; apart from a few private schools that still honour rugger, the game has “gone with the wind” (to borrow the title of the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell).
But you won’t understand this by looking at the many copies that Mwanaspoti sells daily.
You will not know that our sports sector is dead – perhaps excepting Simba and Yanga Sports Clubs. On that score, football itself is virtually on its deathbed.
