Reliable sources dismiss ‘absurd’ Mkapa claim to being a traitor to his class

I hope that is what Mkapa meant when he said that he had become a traitor to his class, especially on account of his having forgotten about agriculture.

Surely, if one is leading a nation whose population comprises 80 per cent agriculturalists and one forgets agriculture, one is a traitor indeed.

While making that statement he could also have been thinking of the business ventures he started while he was president, with his business address given as State House, Dar es Salaam.

These are the things that the papers in Dar, once again relishing another season of Ben-bashing, having been serving up.

They have also pointed out the obvious: That the Riz Khans of this world, in town for a couple of nights, are in no way capable of knowing what the real problems of a country are.

But if he meant, as he seemed to want to mean, that his betrayal was against the journalistic profession, then he falsely accused himself.

The fact is, Mkapa has never been a journalist, which explains his very uneasy relations with members of the fraternity.

In my dictionary, a journalist is one who, once upon a time, stood quaking in his boots before the news desk, with his notebook in his hip pocket, watching that ferocious beast they euphemistically call the news editor and wondering whether he should hand in his story now or wait till the look on the beast’s face became less ferocious.

This, Mkapa never did. Wherever he was posted, he was the Resident Chief Censor, in charge of ensuring nothing got printed that would spoil Julius Nyerere’s appetite.

Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political commentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam. jenerali@gmail.com