In 1999, two years after Joseph Mobutu’s death, a Belgian filmmaker named Thierry Michel released a documentary about him titled Mobutu, King of Zaire that can be found on the Internet for some idle holiday viewing pleasure.

Far from vilifying his subject, Michel used footage and interviews to try to understand the man and the country that he created in his own image. A regime that was so uniquely corrupt that the English language created a whole new word for it: Kleptocracy. Namely a government or ruler who uses her power to steal her country’s resources.

There is footage in the documentary that shows the two-metre tall Mobutu in an open-roofed car touring Kinshasa in glorious pomp with a diminutive Julius Nyerere standing next to him politely waving to the crowds.

Seeing them together underscored how much of a shared political ancestry we have among African countries, dating from the Independence era.

A common script of nation-building, African-style, if you will, adopted to varying degrees by different countries. There’s the ritual rejection of Western dress and the adoption of nationalist costumes — which Nyerere thankfully kept very simple, and Mobutu didn’t.

There are the obligatory dancing troupes at every state function. A well-meaning focus on women’s rights is common: Women under Mobutu’s regime benefited from an incredible boost in their legal and social status as valued citizens... at least on paper.
And then there’s my personal favourite: That insistence on a single party of national unity, under the guidance of a father-figure, for the good of the nation.

Zaire had the MPR, we got CCM. No greater nor more effective tool to disenfranchise “independent” African citizens was invented than the party of national unity. For to vote other than the ruling party could be painted as unpatriotic, or at its extreme, seditious.

I raise this because if there’s one thing the past has a habit of, it is shaping the present. Yes, Tanzania wears the pelt of a multiparty democracy like a queen. She has also been sliding towards a decentralised kleptocracy for a number of years now, although we don’t talk about it in those terms exactly.

It is one thing to be able to attack individuals for corruption, but wide-reaching systemic decay is an altogether different proposition.

We insist on a progressive view of the future, but I don’t buy such a simplistic position for African countries. So the Tegeta Escrow Saga, Tanzania’s 2014 gift that keeps on giving, broke into the national psyche at the right time before local government elections.

The opposition has been able to make credible inroads into village and street government, growing its share of local government seats to 25 per cent overall from 8 per cent in 2009. This is grassroots validation that has only taken two decades to come through.

Some folks have been crowing that “Tanzanians still prefer the ruling party.” Sure, especially if we can admit that voting in Tanzania is a bit like gambling in big casinos: The house always wins. Yet here we are in 2014, the Grand Old Party having ceded nearly a third of its grip on the country to te opposition.

This form of trickle-up change is great. Modern optimism demands hysterical achievements in order to be noted and celebrated. Sometimes I think that this helps us ignore just how far we’ve come from the restrictions, challenges and pathologies of a single party state.

That’s why I like Africa’s bad boys: Reading about the Mobutus, the Gaddafis et al of this continent provides great benchmarks for the measurement of change. It’s much more visceral than an Infographic, or a routine report on GDP per capita. It’s also a reminder that progress is by no means inevitable.

Tanzanians have found a relatively safe way to push back against an establishment that has fallen into a dangerous complacency. The real story here is how we are using institutions and opportunities such as the legal framework, and the ballot to challenge the status quo in manageable increments.

Because those increments mean that as per our unspoken rules of political engagement, we’ll all have a relatively peaceable end of year holiday and live to irritate each other another day. If that’s not something to celebrate, then I don’t know what is.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com.

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