Whither Tanzania? The country we need and the one we happen to have

There are two “Tanzanias”, so to speak: the one we already have, and the one we think we should indeed have. The two are as alike as chalk and cheese.

While the latter is a figment of the imagination, the former is the reality on the ground. The question then arises: can the Tanzania we want one day replace the Tanzania of today?

The Tanzania we wish we had is spotlessly clean all over. It is so flawless that our newly-appointed Minister for Information, Communications and Information Technology, Dr Ashatu Kijaji, 45, has no qualms on this.

But, pardon me… Four years or so ago, we of the “squeaky clean Tanzania” were agog over ourselves as we celebrated (?) some people called “economic terrorists”.

From the Chief of Chiefs to the ordinary Tanzanian in the street, the word on everyone’s lips was “Ruge, Ruge, Ruge...”

Yes, the “Ruge” who was out of Segerea remand prison and a free man last week after four-and-a-half-years of confinement was really the reason why we were stagnating from achieving the lofty dreams of Tanzania, like Chicago.

Were we speaking about Chicago in the State of Illinois in USA? Why did we pick Chicago and not, say, New York City, for our example here?

Squeaky clean Tanzania thinks if the port of Mombasa in Kenya next-door is efficient, then Kigali and Kinshasa must be part of the economic saboteurs who are against our land of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the founder of Tanzanian nationalism.

Our perfect Tanzania adherents do not know any other gospel – except perhaps the gospel as preached by those who go out of their way to praise the Hanganya, and see no evil.

It is these perfectionist Tanzanian adherents who ran around during Fourth Phase government of President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete saying our security forces were so top-notch that Al Shabab terrorists would find no mwanya (gap) to perpetrate their evil intentions on us.

Those of us – like cartoonists – who see the tar or the tatter that is the cloth of Tanzania represent us as they see it. But those of us who are switched around like musical chairs think, and believe, that all of us must see Tanzania as they wish it to be the Tanzania that we are in.

What is it that happens to people who, of essence, hold public office by dint of being elected, nominated or appointed? Why is there a penchant to feel that, once sworn into public office, one almost automatically becomes a god or goddess?

Those who want this mystic and idyllic Tanzania must be reminded that: nowhere in the world do we have a country in which, for instance, only news that those in power wish to go public, goes public.

Our new Minister in-charge of the news sector should have a lot more serious issues to lose sleep over than expect only news that Watanzania wish to hear.

Similarly, the idea of going into prayer houses to find those spewing negativity is a bad idea. Frankly, there are people who are truly determined to make the President of the United Republic of Tanzania look bad.

No country in the world – except maybe North Korea – manages to control not just what people think and say, but also how they think it!

Our new “news minister” wants to control that -- and is ably assisted in that by her internal security counterpart.

Democracy? Naah…! Why even think of that when we have an able police and other security services providers?

We spend billions of shillings on them and see how that has turned out in the nolle prosequi against a man we had been made to believe was the epitome of all that is evil.

Rest assured, my esteemed readers. The Tanzania we dream of shall remain just that: a mirage, a figment of our fertile imagination.

We can only attain the Tanzania we want by allowing ideas to fester, not clamp down on them.