Our political systems have failed but we are insisting on keeping them

These electoral processes are what the departing colonial masters foisted on us as they went away, without so much as tuition in how to run them. FOTOSEARCH 

In Summary

• I suggest that election time in Africa is the period when levels of integrity are at their lowest and also the season of unreason.

By JENERALI ULIMWENGU
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The saying has now become common that doing the same thing the same way over and over again and expecting to see different results is a sign of lunacy.

It is repeated by almost everyone observing others, but we hardly apply the wisdom of that saying to ourselves, maybe because everybody thinks they are different from all the rest.

It is funny, because if we lived by that adage and changed the ways we did things every after a couple of failed tries, this our world would be a place of permanent mutation and swift rearrangements that produce new and dynamic situations, in which each new invention would arrive with its own sell-by date.

But we are blessed with inertia, the reluctance to do anything we do not know even when we realise the futility of whatever we are doing, and how we are doing it, at present.

It is the wisdom of the comfort zone that may hold very little comfort for us but keeps us going to the rhythm of ‘better the devil you know’.

My idea is that the lethargy that keeps us in the same unsatisfactory place without the dynamism of wanting to change it is what is holding us back in terms of socio-economic development.

So, I say, since politics is key to everything in fostering a healthy society, we must change the way we do politics. One of the things we ought to train our eyes on would be the way we designate those we want to lead us.

Right now, as matters stand, I do not think we have given this part of political life more than a cursory glance.

The average voter spends way more time examining a sheep he is going to slaughter tomorrow than he does examining campaigning candidates and what they promise him if he gives them his vote.

With the sheep, he will be scrutinising the sheep’s hooves, horns, wool and teeth; with the politician, he will be happy to eat and drink to his satisfaction, and maybe get a pair of khanga, a T-shirt and a cap.

That is enough to persuade the voter that the candidate is fit to guide him and his interests for the coming five years.

In this way we participate in the “collective imbecilisation” of our people, stunting their mental growth to the extent that they accept that we offer ourselves to serve them but at the same time we bribe them so that they allow us to be their servants.

What idiocy. What would be our reaction if someone turned up at our gate and offered to work for us as a gardener and at the same time brought us food and drinks to persuade us to employ him?

There is clearly a problem that our political scientists have not addressed, and which our rulers – current and aspiring — are happy to continue with because it serves them well. The people do not choose their “leaders,” rather the so-called leaders choose their people.

Blind reliance

I argue, thus, that the political systems, especially the electoral mechanisms, have failed miserably, and our continued blind reliance on them only proves that we are all raving mad.

It is a madness that would have been a little more tolerable if it only made us look a little ridiculous, because ridicule does not kill. But African elections kill, and that should be of concern for those who rule over us, but alas.

I suggest that election time in Africa is the period when levels of integrity are at their lowest and also the season of unreason.

If we continue along this route for another fifty years, each of our countries, and the continent generally, will have managed to make us more corrupt, more belligerent, more violent, more beastly.

These electoral processes are what the departing colonial masters foisted on us as they went away, without so much as tuition in how to run them.

We have pretended we could take them in our stride, but that has been revealed as a fallacy.

It is high time we thought of alternatives, and we had better do that before the whole edifice, rotten to the core, comes crumbling around our ears.

These electoral processes, with all their lying, dissembling and assassinations only demean us and dehumanise us. And they do not produce leaders.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com