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Recalling the heroic Salim Ahmed Salim

It is time Tanzania and Tanzanians start addressing the ISSUE of awarding and honouring our unique individuals.

We are quick to draw swords and stab anyone found to have done something wrong. We are equally fast in praising and praising and praising and eulogising those who just died.

I just saw numerous pictures of someone’s funeral. They included the food, colours and clothes and gold plus a very posh, luxurious car, buried with this rich African.

We love saying goodbyes but, not heaping praise on those still living and doing well across our streets and Shambas.

The UK impresses me very much with her numerous annual awards.

Most famous is knighting (Sir and Dame) and other accolades like MBE and OBE and ...all given to LIVING people who have done well, by the Queen. The British do not wait for someone to die to call her Dame so and so, or Sir this and that.

They do it NOW.

It is all about acknowledgement.

About support and appreciation.

Tunafikiri tukimsifia mtu atavimba kichwa. (We think if we praise someone face to face their head will swell).

We, however, do it in whispers; behind their backs, but never to their shining eyes. Very few characters get swollen skulls, upon being congratulated. Being told you did well make us feel special. And if we are genuinely good we get humbled and contribute BETTER to our communities.

That is why we must start dishing awards.

SOON.

And...

I would like to speak about the amazing Salim Ahmed Salim.

During my days as a reporter in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s I never got the chance to interview him (like I did Robert Mugabe, Remmy Ongala or the Jamaican Rasta poet Mutabaruka)...no sir.

Salim Ahmed Salim was a name you heard and voice you listened over the radio. He was as supersonic and praiseworthy as Barack Obama was to the younger generation ten years ago. Someone you just loved to listen to. Mind you, we did not have TV then. Nor social media. We just heard.

So I must confess I know very little regarding Salim Ahmed Salim.

I just saw him up close once while walking around Oyster Bay - early 1980s.

Nothing else.

Yet

What I know about the man is worth shouting about.

Salim Ahmed Salim was young and fresh and spoke so articulately. Take the 1970s. Tanzania was the super star African country. The beacon of hope.

We had Ujamaa- which some readers might smirk and grunt and say all sorts of negative blahs, blahs, blahs, - yet we were original. Then we had the principled stand of supporting neighbours that were still under colonial rule. We opened doors and our souls to so many refugees and freedom fighters.

What is going on in South Africa (beating up and chasing fellow Africans like wild dogs) would have made Mwalimu Nyerere, Rashid Kawawa, Sheikh Abeid Karume and our past Tanu leaders faint with horror and shame and embarrassment and scandal and loss of face...

Where is the gratitude?

Overseas we stood firm on so many issues. And these would be discussed at United Nations. And that is why hero Salim Ahmed Salim spoke out loud and we would hear him (of course there were many others like John Malecela and the broadcasters Chama Omari Matata, Salim Seif Mkamba, etc)...

Recently the Foreign Minister, Prof Palamagamba Kabudi, mentioned Salim Ahmed Salim officially.

China offered him their highest national award for contributing to these two nations’ friendship.

The short clip is impeccable.

Historical.

Professor Kabudi hailed this man’s legendary input.

During the 1960s Salim would have been a very young man. Still in his 20s. Those days, China was looked down; really badly, as communist and “trouble.”

Under Chairman Mao Zedong. China was not allowed into the United Nations. Meanwhile China supported freedom fighters across the world, which was significant.

Tanzania was among those who fought hard and nail for her to join the UN’s Security Council. And Salim’s voice was our own in the UN. Our own from developing nations. There were personal threats. Mr Salim should have a book out. It would make interesting reading.

Early this week I saw a clip of a frail Salim in hospital. This is one of our political icons.

Let us award him so his children and family and friends will say, Baba you did well. So that the man feels the joy of being Tanzanian and a patriot and a hardworking diplomat. As pointed earlier: this should be THE beginning. There are many, many others. Our unsung heroes. Genuine individuals.

Past and present.