Subtle but deep shift in Tanzania’s power balance

It has been interesting to observe the rise of “movementism” these past couple of years as the leading philosophy for social change. Certainly the Arab Spring has accelerated the growth of the idea that this venerable institution — the popular movement — has come back to the forefront as an important political tool. Civil society in many countries is being strongly encouraged to follow suit and recruit visible grassroots support for their various causes.

It is a good thing, generally speaking, and a most empowering evolution in the development sector. In many ways it is moving people with problems out of the category of voiceless and passive victimhood into the much more interesting if complex category of active citizenship.

How much this point of view has been adopted by the Tanzanian political system is hard to tell. In the news, political and social change is only visible when it happens through explosive events. This has led to the belief that the only way to get things done is to do something dramatic and newsworthy. If someone gets arrested or smacked in the face with a police baton, well, then, clearly they must be doing something right.

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on your taste for violence — the Tanzanian state machine has a deep fear of civil unrest and is handier than most African governments at defusing public anger. Although protest marches and strikes and collective actions are hardly foreign to us, these events are less exciting than the news media might want. That’s consensus politics for you — everything gets managed to death.

Which can make it very difficult, I think, to take things from the symbolic level of political action and really drive a message home to the government when it is crucial to do so. The successful doctors’ strike seems to have provided the spark that we perhaps needed. Utterly peaceful, there wasn’t much to see except for roving crews of TV journalists looking for anyone who was willing to have a microphone stuck under their noses.

In spite of the relative quiet, however, everyone was hurting badly. It raised tempers and caused rifts to widen in unexpected areas.
Who could have predicted, for example, that the doctors’ strike would result directly in parliamentarians getting publicly humiliated for trying to enrich themselves through a sitting allowance? And even more exciting, who could have predicted that this frustration would grow into a number of face-offs between the prime minister, his boss, the Speaker of the parliament and ruling party MPs that would drag the proposed Constitutional reform process into the fray?

Last week, a tiny but effective protest may have tipped the scales further in favour of the Tanzanian people’s struggle to get the government to address the important problems. A number of civil society organisations crowd-sourced a wee little picket line that locked down Salendar Bridge, the main causeway into the CBD and all the major government offices, to demand that the government end the doctors’ strike. For all that social media is locally derided as the domain of the Blackberry class, this is probably the first time an effective protest has been pulled off using online platforms.

Anyone watching that evening’s news could pick up on the complicity of the policemen and women who were supposedly breaking up what was clearly an illegal gathering. It took all of one hour and involved handwritten signs, a few chants and the obligatory screaming into journalists’ microphones, and that was it. Those watching that night’s news broadcasts would also have picked up the strong whiff of desperation with which Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda was “inviting” all doctors and medical staff for a meeting at Muhimbili National Hospital for a sit-down at 9:00 am sharp the following morning.

Every day that sick Tanzanians went untended in hospitals, a large chunk of government credibility swirled down the drain. Parliament, having shamed itself with its rampant greed, began making vague noises about putting out a statement. Perhaps all that taxpayers’ money was burning a hole in their conscience, but more likely they were desperate to win back voter confidence.

Underlying it all is the realisation that we can engage our government relatively peacefully, certainly smartly and with considered stubbornness, and come out the better for it. We can thank this administration for enabling so deep and subtle a shift in the power balance — these days, when we speak, our government must listen, however grudgingly. Now, if only we could convince President Jakaya Kikwete to show up every so often at these mediations...

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