Today, Tanzania’s entire political class is up for sale

Several years ago I wrote an article in the local press that put forward a simple hypothesis: If it is true that whatever is taken to the marketplace is for sale and that what is for sale, for the right price, will find a buyer, then our politics will soon find a buyer.

Not your regular retail buyer who, in commerce with your regular retail seller, transacts a village government here, a council there and a parliamentary constituency elsewhere, but a huge, strategic investor who wants seriously in and has the wherewithal to acquire a country lock, stock and barrel.

Today, it is obvious that Tanzania’s politics has been undergoing a sea-change, from the long-gone days of relative innocence, when not only was it obscene to flaunt your money as inducement for people to vote for you, but the very suggestion of personal affluence was frowned upon and could be a drag on political ambition.

There are no prizes for guessing who the national and international incarnation of this era was, but suffice it to say that just a decade or so after Julius Nyerere’s death, the country he founded is now mired in a politics that even his worst fears could not have conjured up.

This is the politics of the souk, the bazaar, the rialto, wherein all is sold and all is bought, and where soon national sovereignty will be coming under the hammer.

This is what I said in that ignored article, whose substance can suffer repeating:

Since our electoral politics is a matter of selling and buying, and since we have hardly any serious domestic potential buyer, soon our rialto will attract external bidders with the kind of financial muscle that our Lilliputian local players can never dream of matching.

The bidder could be from anywhere: Arabia, where oil seems to grow out of the ground in sheikhs’ backyards, or America, where billionaire corporates give away their billions and the latter always find a way of getting them back.

Or it could be hyphenated mongrels conceived in illegitimate beds offshore.

They could act alone or in concert; they would certainly rely on domestic actors — those who are currently involved in our petty trade in votes would be the best candidates — as commission agents, providers of local knowledge, bid placers and notaries public.

The maths would be incredibly simple. How much do the most enterprising candidates pay currently to win a councillorship? Maybe $10,000. How many councils are there?

Maybe 200 countrywide. Okay, let’s take only half of them so as not to arouse too much suspicion.

After all, serious commerce does not transact at that level. So, multiply 100 councils by $10,000, and you get $1 million to buy half the country’s district councils.

Of course, parliamentary seats cost a little bit more, and the going price, officially sanctioned, is $50,000 per seat.

Of the 300-something seats, we need perhaps 250 to have enough weight to throw about, and at that price this transaction will set the investor back $12.5 million.

And now, for the jackpot: The presidency. The best fundraisers, we are told, fuelled by the state machinery and an entrenched scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours culture, intend to raise $15 million. This is an important office, and in Africa whoever occupies it can get away with murder, literally. To pulverise all bids, put up $50 million.

Handsome returns

The final reckoning in this hypothesis would be $1 million plus $12.5 million, plus $50 million, a total of $63.5 million for a country’s electoral system.

The rewards — the whole exercise would not be for sporting purposes — would include unbridled control over all the natural and human resources of the country, and the power to determine the role to be played by that country in regional and international affairs.

Farfetched though this scenario may seem today, it’s true to say it looks more plausible than it did only a few years ago and may look even more so a few years down the road.

Who was it that said that if anything can go wrong it will, and at the worst possible moment?

Well, this can go very wrong, and though I take the vantage point of a Tanzanian, what I say goes for Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as most other African nations.

Some time ago, people used to place their hopes in the youth, as the uncorrupted members of society who would take over and right the wrongs of their forebears, shake off the debilitating corruption and sleaze of the past and build their future on the bedrock of patriotism, selflessness and solidarity.

A few months ago, there were reports that the “young pioneers” organisation of the ruling CCM was holding elections, and that the contestants — aged 12 to 16 — were busy distributing money to influence voters, at that age!

It also transpired that these rich kiddies were sons and daughters of party honchos who think this is the way to build the political careers of their progeny.

That these reports were not denied is evidence of serious rot within the hierarchy of that party, a rot that is already seeping down from generation to generation.

Bet on the winner

At a higher level, the so-called yuppies (young urban professionals) also want in, and they have been either seeking nomination through the ruling party to go to parliament, with their eyes on a ministerial post, or financially supporting friends who look like they stand a better chance.

The prize, apart from cementing friendship further, is a ministerial pal who can pull strings in favour of those who showed proof of proper friendship in the campaigns.

Inept leadership

In the face of all this, the leadership within the ruling party appears clueless.

Despite repeated declarations that those who engaged in corruption and other malpractices would be severely dealt with, the party has proven singularly inept at dealing with the gangrene that is wasting it.

In a feeble attempt to show it meant well, it outsourced its problems to the anti-corruption police, who made matters worse with their bull-in-a-china-shop approach.

There is more than just suspicion that the anti-corruption police is itself corrupt and that since it was attacked by a number of MPs in the outgoing parliament over its incompetence, and worse, it is generally seen as damaged goods, kicking up dust and raising a hue and cry simply to camouflage its impotence, and in the end doing someone else’s job.

The task of cleaning up the party’s stables is the party’s own, and outsourcing it to police organs is serious shirking on the part of chairman Jakaya Kikwete and his coterie of absentminded lieutenants.

Too many of them are busy chasing that extra shilling, and too many of them consider their posts more important than the country they are supposed to be serving.

In the recent party organs’ meetings called to designate party flag bearers in the civic and parliamentary elections, we are told, one cardinal principle was to endorse whoever won in the primaries no matter how they won.

As a result, the list that emerged at the end reads like a roll call of Jack the Ripper, Houdini, Benito Mussolini, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Adolf Hitler, Son of Sam, Falstaff, Mata Hari, and the Artful Dodger, together with Mother Theresa and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Go figure how to fashion a leadership.