The theatre of the absurd that the Constituent Assembly in Dodoma has become has exceeded even what its worst detractors had predicted in terms of churlishness and uselessness.

The ugly shouting matches have not added any lustre and the insults traded between the delegates have descended to levels one would expect from fishwives.

Now, not many people expected enlightened disputation from this crowd, seeing as debate based on knowledge and thinking has become more and more foreign, and too many politicians rely on other organs in the place of brains when trying to make a point.

But one would have expected that they would at least show more decorum and self-respect.

But what the Tanzanian public has been treated to by some of these individuals is, to say the least, unjust. Let’s be fair. There were a few laudable speeches made with intelligence and occasional wit. Some were even pedagogical as they revealed facts and data. Still, too many of the contributions were from the gutter.

Some of the wit I enjoyed. Like when an argument arose as to the size of the cohort sampled by the Warioba Commission, a delegate suggesting it was too small. The retort from a young man was: If you want a blood sample to test for malaria or HIV, you don’t go collect five litres. Superb!

Much of the rest was worse than pedestrian, and some of the utterances could not even be called childish; they were simply outrageous. Listen to this one, for instance, made by a young-looking delegate who even started by stating, “I am an intellectual,” without seeming to know what that meant. After thus introducing his intellect, the young man goes on to do violence to the very notion of intellect.

In short, he has an explanation as to why the delegates gunning for a three-tier government in the Union are from the island of Pemba. He goes on to say that the reason is that people from Pemba — one part of Zanzibar — are not really our brothers, unlike the people from Unguja — the other part of Zanzibar. He goes on to declare that Pembans, even when they come to the mainland, are not inclined to be close to the mainlanders because they are different!

I was incredulous. First of all, even a blind person could see that not only are there people from Unguja in the three-government corner; there are even many mainlanders in that group, the decisive factor being party stand rather than area of origin. Never mind that this young loudmouth was claiming to defend the ruling party’s stand on the matter, and I know this cannot be the position of his party.

That a young “intellectual” claiming CCM membership can say something so divisive —forget about stupid — and seem to attract no censure from his party superiors speaks to the rot and bankruptcy in that party.

It was heartening, though, that another delegate castigated his CA colleagues (from CCM) for applauding the young man’s “foolishness,” one of the few times the word was employed judiciously.

It comes hardly as a surprise that the most popular social media “joke” doing the rounds these past two weeks is the one that asks why the whole CA was not on that Malaysian airliner. Sad, but true.

At the end of one of these fatiguing experiences, last week an alliance of opposition CA delegates decided to stage a mass walkout, a move that once again threatened to wreck the process.

They may still come back, something may still be patched together, and the process could still chug along, coughing and whizzing. But this is hardly the way to go about constitution-making.

Tanzanians are watching the proceedings on live TV with growing exasperation. Are these people aware of how much expectation we have invested in them and how much money we have expended on them?

It is going to be an even more expensive undertaking in terms of the psychological toll it will exact on the minds of a populace that may feel that it was sold a dummy.

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: [email protected]