President John Magufuli’s ministers are being made to go through a number of complicated dances, but probably the most challenged dancer will be the former Minister for Constitutional and Legal Affairs, who found out on Thursday, March 23, that he had been shuffled to the less distinguished docket of sports, culture and information.

In effect, Harrison Mwakyembe has probably had the most hectic two weeks since he swore to deregister the Tanganyika Law Society (TLS) if it elected as its president someone the government loves to hate. This so infuriated the lawyers meeting at Arusha that they elected Tundu Lissu with 88 per cent of the vote.

That Mwakyembe finds himself relegated to a relatively junior ministry should not come as a surprise except to himself. Previously, Magufuli had publicly castigated the functioning of his ministry for the poor rapport between its two most senior officers who, according to the president, spent all their time quarrelling.

Then Mwakyembe, in between his tussles with the TLS and Lissu, goes and issues another of those fatwas that our rulers are so fond of. He declared any marriage to be null and void unless the partners can produce birth certificates to prove they are of age, a virtual impossibility in much of rural Tanzania. Ominously for the minister, that fatwa was overturned the very next day by the ayatollah himself, President Magufuli.

Even more ominously, all this time Magufuli had parked another lawyer, Palamagamba Kabudi, in parliament (Tanzania’s constitution allows the president to appoint 10 MPs) without saying exactly what he intended to do with him. Now we know that if Mwakyembe had had cause for concern he had been vindicated. Palamagamba has been appointed to replace him in the Law Ministry.

The sports and things ministry where Mwakyembe has been shunted was until Thursday occupied by a dynamic young man by the name of Nape Nnauye, who just this past week sought to prove that the Dar es Salaam regional governor, one Paul Makonda, was wrong when he stormed a television station and forced the screening of material damaging to a charismatic preacher who is critical of the governor.

It was Nape who was wrong, because Magufuli came out in public to defend his governor, calling on everybody to quit paying heed to rumours and idle talk about the governor, who now looks untouchable. Ministers will now have to relearn the pecking order when they find themselves dealing with a provincial chief meddling in their area of ministerial responsibility, especially if that regional biggie has the ear of the supreme leader.

In the meantime, an editorial forum has passed a fatwa of its own against the regional commissioner, saying it will not report on him and his activities, because of the way he broke into that TV station and threatened journalists and other workers, but who will really care about that particular blackout?
The government controls TV and radio stations, as well as daily papers, all paid for by the taxpayer, which can now all be directed to do little else than cover, publicise and praise Makonda. And his boss.

Poor Nape! He thought — I suspect he still thinks — that no one has the right to trample on basic people’s rights and that the invasion of a news organisation to try and impose one’s particular type of news.

But this is what we have been fighting against as we challenge the Media Services Act, a particularly obnoxious law which Nape himself steered through parliament late last year.

Yes, the naked police invasion of the station is as abhorrent as it is arrogant. It proceeds from the type of thinking which cynically takes note of the inability of those offended to take action in their defence. But the more nuanced violence inherent in many of our laws can cause greater harm, because it is shrouded in spurious legality, even when it is bereft of all legitimacy.

There is very little to choose between Nape, Mwakyembe and Makonda. They all seek to serve a dispensation, which is inimical to the freedom of expression, a fundamental right without which no other right can be enjoyed. It is the duty of all who cherish those rights to take a more hardnosed stance when dealing with those in positions of authority who may, from time to time, make pleasant noises to lull us to sleep.

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]