Tanzania's President John Magufuli. PHOTO | FILE
Dear Online Friend.
This is in response to your challenge with regards to my open letter addressed to His Excellency President John Pombe Magufuli, which I pray was received with wisdom, kind indulgence and an
understanding of the amour patrie that underlay the endeavour.
understanding of the amour patrie that underlay the endeavour.
Your
premise is an important one: Why focus on the Executive when our
government has three branches? Well, comrade, I hope that the Speaker of
the House and the Chief Justice will forgive me if I address you
instead of them.
L’etat, c’est moi. ‘I am the
state.’ These words are famously attributed to Louis XIV, the Sun King
of France and they succinctly express a sentiment that is so
unfortunately common to men, and sometimes women, in office. As kings
go, he was pretty formidable, yet even in a monarchy there are
separations of powers. You cannot be all things to all people.
We are a Republic, in fact a United Republic, because we are also of and with Zanzibar, a fact we must respect.
Doesn’t
that make ‘I am the state’ a much more interesting and nuanced concept?
Hence the checks and balances, the delicate work of not crushing
individualism while enabling the needs and wants of the majority, the
constant conversation about how to do it.
We, the
people, wrote ourselves a Constitution to try and figure it out.
Unfortunately, the 1977 edition was kind of awful. Julius Nyerere, chief
architect of this deliberately flawed document, admitted as much. He
said, and I paraphrase: “Y’all better fix it because it concentrates too
much power in the Executive.”
So we attempted reform a
couple years ago. And then the process was deliberately stalled. So I
come to the issue of the three branches.
They are meant
to be independent, aren’t they, comrade? I came of political age under
the speakership of the late Samwel Sitta, who embraced media in
parliament as well as constructive debate from the opposition.
After
decades of Pius Msekwa, you best believe it was refreshing. But if I
wrote a letter to the current Speaker and his deputy, it would be
nothing more than a sorrowful expression of extreme disappointment in
what the House has become under their... whatever they are doing. Why go
there?
Compromised technocrats
As
for the Judiciary, I trust that the fellowship of lawyers, including
the Chief Justice, do their best to quietly work in the interests of the
Republic when and where they can.
They want to be
legalistic technocrats. But. How independent, how professional can a
judiciary be when so much is about presidential appointments? Learned
friends, learned friends. You, too, are compromised.
Republics
are complex organisms, one can focus on the top for the sake of impact,
but I also have in mind the gigantic civil service that tries to run
our government every day. These folks raised us. Much of what they do is
thankless work, not well-paid, and we know that’s why there is a lot of
corruption going on.
In brief, I reject the
simplistic dichotomy of an us-versus-them situation. There is only an
us. Once one embraces that, the classic tactic of divide and conquer
loses its potency completely. Do not be divided, ergo... do not be
conquered.
This is the basic premise of the current
activism we are witnessing. We are trying to be a republic not just on
paper, but in reality. Tanzania is not only made up of disgruntled
students and broke taxpayers and Kihansi Spray Toads and women farmers
who keep us all fed while trying to get back to school because some
horrible person made education and reproduction incompatible.
It
is also made up of police officers who are now facing the prospect of
being ordered to harm fellow Tanzanians, and tired civil servants, and
mothers and fathers and innovators and dreamers and athletes who are
vegan and Babus who can out-walk everyone else at marathons, and
immigrants, and emigrants and retirees who just want all the noise to
stop.
As you know, our national coat of arms has a
woman and a man holding up a shield over the saying ‘Freedom and Unity.’
It is inherently inclusive. I don’t think democracy has any easy
answers, I think democracy has all the essential questions.
But
as long as power is concentrated in one individual, I am afraid,
comrade, that most of the letters will just have to continue to be
addressed to the Executive branch.
One of the biggest
challenges of pluralism is that with 50+ million people in a polity,
we’re not going to agree on how to do things. That is fantastic! Nobody
should have The Answer. That’s the interpretation of ‘I am the state’
that I hope to advance.
It might result in a living
constitution that is worthy of this beautiful country and her people, to
begin with. We’ll talk about the New Pan Africanism in further
correspondence.
Comrade, I hope I have answered your challenge adequately, and look forward to your further work. Peace be with you.
Elsie.
Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report. E-mail: elsieeyakuze@gmail.com
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