By ELSIE EYAKUZE

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Two weeks of rain into the final quarter of the year and miraculously the electricity has stayed on, for the most part, in the city of Dar es Salaam.

This is no small feat: My previous attempts to talk about this might not have stressed the achievement quite enough. We have a national grid, which seems to be made up of patches of new bits and very tattered old bits, and then we have subnational grids and power selling and buying deals with neighbouring countries.

Our massive potential for solar never seems to get fully exploited yet we have private-public partnerships and contracts with electricity generators that nobody is allowed to look at, because: Corruption.

We are here

Still, we make it work. The cautious optimist in me, suggests that we celebrate every flickering moment of power-saving light we can hoard because it is those little incremental steps that matter.

Observing two weeks of comparatively (for Dar) little disruption in electricity despite the rain, made me quiz my stance on heavy-handed governance.

The last time the city went dark, a power employee deemed responsible lost his job and I am ambivalent about this. Not that I would advocate a return to the iron-clad employment terms of civil service that seemed to encourage impunity and discourage incentive. Not at all. I just think he was a scapegoat and a victim of public relations for a questionable management.

The real issue here is trouble distinguishing between actual constructive reforms and a slide into autocratic mediocrity.

It is an open secret that the speed and fickleness of the high-visibility public office hiring and firing process is paralysing civil service.

The reward system seems chaotic, the promised end to corruption project has gone awry and we have economic policies in place that have clearly never been anywhere near actual economists. What is happening here is that we’re focusing on the things and not the people.

Constructive reforms are about the bigger picture—and in the case of a country or even a city like Dar, that means prioritising the health of the system, the collective if you will. And, sorry to break it to you, but that is definitely politics.

And this is how I do away with the ambiguity. Can autocracy have its merits? No, not really, for it is a finite thing and history is littered with demagogues whose names we have forgotten or ground into the dust. Back to the over-arching metaphor:

The real achievement for Tanzania will be to keep the lights on in 20, 30 years having converted to renewables and changes in thinking through subsequent governments. It will not be achieved by the constant and hysterical firing of civil servants.

Perhaps it is time we the people challenged ourselves to thinking of our systems and leaders as the people who can maintain and uphold them. Let’s put service back into public.

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