Tanzania: So, Govt Is Playing a Game of Cards With IDs Project

opinion By Elsie Eyakuze

Occasionally one has to do a check-up of political stances and utterances, see if they are in good health so to speak. Things can go awry when you are not particularly happy with current

circumstances. You start finding reasons to pick a fight with the powers that be because of frustration.

Think of it like road rage. You're a perfectly reasonable person who probably doesn't swear much and lets the daily irritations of life wash off without too much aggravation.

Then within the space of a week your new boss demotes you without a warning letter because new management has "its own style".

You find yourself yelling "Eff You!" at pedestrians for daring to use the pedestrian crossing when you want to get to work on time, yet you are the one who is on the wrong side of the law and you know it. Stress is warping you. You need a little chill time, and some perspective.

So I asked my usual coterie of folks who can balance my frustrations with political issues about the discrepancy in my experience obtaining my National Identity Number and my updated voter ID card.

You see, the national identity card project was rolled out nationwide in 2019, although there had been previous instances of ID registration at events like the annual Saba Saba (July 7) Trade Fair. I was sceptical that the government would cover this vast country and her 60-plus million people within 12 months by December 31, 2019.

It took me, oh, between May 2019 and January 2020 to get my National Identity Number (NIN) so that I could register my Sim cards and continue providing you, dear reader, with my unsolicited opinions. I still don't have a card, but I am a fingerprinted number somewhere in The System.

Meanwhile, National Identification Authority electronic system has been knocked out since mid-February at least with no signs of awakening yet. So that process has stalled.

At the same time, the updating of the voter's register by the National Electoral Commission kicked off this year in the west of the country. Based on my experience with the national ID, when Dar told us to update our voter's cards within a week I thought to myself: this is going to be a spectacular failure of epic proportions. A columnist's dream. The mission was clear: boots on the ground, pursue the card.

It happened quite by chance, one Sunday, I passed by local government offices only to see four people setting up the familiar black suit-case sized ID machines. I asked if they were working, they said "yes come back in an hour". I did. It took me 10 minutes at most to walk away with a freshly minted voter's identity card.

How do they know who is a citizen who can vote if they can't use the national ID to identify individuals? Why was it so easy to get a voter's card? I asked the usual suspects: bar flies and taxi drivers and other sources -- and everyone had the same questions.

So here we are, stressed again and deeply cynical about our upcoming elections. The government is playing an opaque game of cards, and we're not sure that we're fine with that.

Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report.