By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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It happened around Arusha, in a small village centre that has built a reputation for hosting events like this one but is now looking like it’s outdoing itself.

The Training Centre for Development Cooperation (TCDC) was set up back in the 1960s as a joint training resource for the governments of Denmark and Tanzania, which trained volunteers from Denmark and their colleagues from the host country in matters development with a special rural bias, and it has gone on to become a tertiary institute awarding degrees, diplomas and certificates in all manner of disciplines, as well as organising youth leadership workcamps that draw tens of youngsters from all over to learn, sing and dance and socialise.

Now, this past week the centre did what few people could have imagined when it hosted four retired heads of state and government and witnessed as they interacted with young people from all over Africa to discuss the intractable issues, including poverty, bad governance, youth unemployment, climate change and terrorism.

Read: ULIMWENGU: Guide to good governance: First, do no harm, the rest will follow

In organising this conference, which brought together more than 160 participants, the TCDC worked with the Institute for Security Studies and the Centre for Strategic Litigation, based in Zanzibar.

What sets this activity apart is that the retired leaders, President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone; President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegne of Ethiopia and President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania dedicated two days to make the young representatives — who were the majority — about issues that should be associated with the older cohort of African leaders.

In my estimation, they did not stint or hold back in describing the problems they left behind when they retired, but rather displayed a willingness to look at those issues dispassionately — especially when they themselves might have been taken as being part of the problems. The exchanges had a ring of honesty to them, even a degree of mea culpas.

At some stage, they all went out to Arusha town and met with the representatives of local youth in various fields of entrepreneurship, including artisanal production, agriculture and digital programming and production.

The elderly gentlemen looked enthused by what they saw as a can-do spirit among young people, who are not only clamouring for the government to do something about joblessness but are also willing to try to shore themselves up by their efforts, with government creating the requisite enabling conditions.

In a relaxed atmosphere, it looks like the retired heads find renewed energy from engaging with real people, a far cry from the inhibiting protocolary straightjackets they are made to wear when in office.

By reconnecting with young people not of their families they reinvent vibes they lost a long time while “enslaved” by officialdom. Here, in these spaces, they get re-humanised.

Read: ULIMWENGU: Greatest danger is when liberty is nibbled away in bits by men

In the various engagements during the conference dubbed Africa Drive for Democracy (D4D), it was noted that the democracy promise felt in the 1990s had all but evaporated, giving rise to more intolerant governance practices on the continent, manifested by illegalities in electoral processes, arrests of opponents, proscription of political activities and muzzling of media and voices of protest.

Voices from the conference called for the re-energisation of the spirit of democratic engagement with Africans to give them a say in the running the affairs of their countries and lives. There is an imperative to do away with despotic tendencies that have re-emerged, including the resurgence of the spectre of military coups.

One participant opined that military coups were the outcome of undemocratic practices of so-called civilian rulers, who adopt military means to keep their people subservient and unheard while their resources are appropriated, and their state machineries become instruments of their oppression.

It is nothing less than a call for a revolution, although this is nothing more than a reawakening, harking back to the 1990s, when it had seemed that a new wind of change was blowing across the African continent.

To quote Deus Rweyemamu of CSL, “Africa does can generate its own formula for democratisation. We do not need a template imported in this continent and be taught how to become democratic…” It is in the quest of just that, the freedom we must have in the search for appropriate pathways to democratic governance systems, that such initiatives as the Usa River Conference must become regular features of our undertakings, around the continent, but also in our different countries.

Each one of our countries has a posse of retired leaders who served their countries or communities at various stages of their lives. Some of them are still around and lucid. They can be utilised as teachers, mentors, advisers and generally as sources of lived experience.
Some of them can now see what they could not see while in office. Let them tell us what they see now, at every level.