Long before Twitter became a thing we do in Bongoland, we had the meme thing absolutely down. We’re an oral culture and a good turn of phrase is mightily appreciated. Made us a society that is quite friendly to a bit of daring advertising, and the telecommunications companies have taken advantage of that to their benefit.

Eh, why not. If we must be subjected to snake-oil salesmen, the least they can give us for our attention is an occasional giggle, right?

I’ve been a bit sad lately, what with my country’s economy circling the drain and the day-to-day grimness of it all. Excuse me while I take a trip down memory lane.

Tanzania in the 1980s and early 1990s may have been “admirable” but it wasn’t fun and nobody wants to go back to lining up for a kilo of state-rationed sugar if we can help it. So, as a mood-lifter, I have been watching the speeches of one Julius Nyerere.

Obligatory caveat: I don’t agree with all of his ideas or his execution of his vision. But I am a desperate fan of his forever, and I love his oratory on a gloomy day.

Sure, there is a lot to think about in his speeches and one could do worse as a scholar of Africanism than spend time listening to him. He was also something that I am coming to seriously miss both domestically and internationally. He was a funny guy. Not bad-joke funny, not someone-wrote-this-for-me funny.

Nyerere was cheeky and he had a slightly high-pitched giggle that he would punctuate his anecdotes and quips with to break up the heaviness of a public address. And in listening to him, I am constantly reminded of the scientific fact that there is a correlation between humour and intelligence.

No book-learning can do it for you: This comes from a combination of the right environment during childhood and a fine few kilos of grey matter between your ears.

So back to the present: There’s a current advertising campaign by one of the telecoms that is catching some heat. Its tagline is a risque double-entendre encouraging people to “put it in if they want to”... oh, never mind, it just doesn’t translate well into wooden English. For those of us who have the sense of humour of a teenager, it is delightful, yet for the first time in years there is actually some pushback against this sort of edginess. This is a new sort of development.

A marketing ad by Tigo Tanzania that is catching some heat.

There are those of us who are loving it and taking every opportunity to up the ante with filthier and filthier innuendo that can still be printed on a billboard. And then there are those who actually find this kind of juvenile humour offensive.

What is the world coming to when a Tanzanian can’t laugh at inappropriate marketing slogans? Let us note this down as yet another marker of a dangerous turn towards heedlessly dangerous conservatism in our society.

Not to belabour the point, but at present the world is littered with autocrats who couldn’t laugh at themselves if their countries’ fates depended on it: Strong Women and Strong Men who seem about as much fun at a party as a barefoot walk across hot coals. This is patently against the social contract of this country: We are lovers, not fighters.

A good dirty joke is about more than just the giggles at the end of the day. It is a test of values, an exploration of where “the line” is so it can be pushed ever so slightly. It is about daring, and knowing that seriously, people who take themselves too seriously are never a healthy idea.

It is not important if this particular Kiswahili meme sticks around: For every joke that dies, five more take its place. I do care what our reaction says about our society today though. As unfair and pedantic as it may seem to compare subsequent incumbents to Nyerere, there are some values that are worth holding on to.

Mildly off-colour jokes and the public willingness to revel in them is one, a litmus test, if you will, of our historic resistance to totalitarian douchebaggery. In 2017, you better believe a sense of humour is important and if I judge my society by this measure, so do I judge our leadership.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report. E-mail: [email protected]