In South Africa, which suffers from a surprising anti-African xenophobia problem, Africa Day is celebrated with gusto — at least by the media. This year’s celebrations were eclipsed by the Jacob Zuma Spear of Indecency Scandal.

For any of you who might have missed the story, an artist named Brett Murray, who has been critical of the ANC’s decline into corruption and venality, painted a portrait of Jacob Zuma with nudity involved.

Murray was protesting President Zuma’s personal antics that have brought shame, in his opinion, upon the Office of the President of South Africa and on South Africa as a nation. So he decided to hit Zuma where a proud Zulu man was most likely to feel it. The ANC’s reaction was embarrassingly hysterical, considering this is a nation with a fine and long tradition of artistic protest.

It was interesting to find out what cows South Africans apparently hold sacred; you can lean a lot about a nation from where their tender spots are. Although it nearly cancelled Africa Day, in the end South Africa did itself proud, I thought, by using the celebrations to highlight the xenophobia issue in public.
So it was a bit of a disappointment to return from the Rainbow Nation to Dar es Salaam in the same week that a number of people in Zanzibar decided it was a good idea to burn churches.

There is nothing quite like the scent of that Umoja spirit going up in flames. A couple of years ago, a wave of religiously inclined nationalism gave pyromaniacs an excuse to start torching bars where alcohol was being served. It seems that now we’re moving on to places of worship. This is incendiary business.

Incendiary, but not surprising. Zanzibar has probably never been quiet a day in its life — the Isles are rife with complexities, subtleties and histories that refuse to leave the place. It is occupied quite strongly by a past that would take a miracle to exorcise.

The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar is often lauded by pan-Africanists as an example of their beautiful vision in practice. The truth is more prosaic than that, depending on which one of Nyerere’s contemporaries consents to give you their answer to the “Why did we unite?” question. Some will feed you a delightful story of cultural and linguistic affinities, historical consonance, co-operation and indeed pan-Africanism in practice. Some put it down to Cold War politics and Nyerere’s fear that Zanzibar could become his Cuba. The only thing I am sure of is that it was a top-down decision that took advantage of our post-colonial fervour to create a situation that we the citizens have never been encouraged to examine too closely.

Yet the only constant is change, and our current brand of democracy demands that things be examined closely. Far too much of the real discussion about Zanzibar and Tanganyika is taking place in the shadowy underworld where men in short-sleeved suits make non-transparent decisions.

This in spite of the fact that Zanzibari nationalists have been unsubtle about their push for independence for a very long time now.

It is probable that if we had a referendum right this minute, Zanzibaris would overwhelmingly vote to dissolve the Union — thereby slaughtering our most sacred of all political cows and skewering CCM right through its Unionist heart.

The visual metaphor for the Union was coined long ago, with Tanganyika cast as a spouse perpetually on the verge of being jilted by Zanzibar. Tanganyika: It is true that rejection can be horribly painful, humiliating. In this case supremely inconvenient, and complicated. There might be a security risk our government is not telling us about, some covetousness of Zanzibari assets such as tourist dollars perhaps, and the highly anticipated oil and gas revenue. Even put all together, these reasons do not add up to a credible argument for continuing to support the Union blindly against a rising tide of exasperation on both sides.

When we get to burning places of worship, the window of opportunity for reasonable negotiation starts to shut down. If this Union is to have a hope of surviving the generation that crafted it, it might be time to recruit the new generation to the cause — using reason and information rather than propaganda, secrecy and bullying.

In keeping with the reformist impetus of our times, I would like to see the Union question reversed and I suspect a number of us would be happy to discuss matters with a new perspective.

Rather than listing the impenetrable reasons why the Union should remain sacred, I am opting for some rational profanity in asking: Why should we keep it? We can’t avoid that question forever, the answer will be crucial, especially with the EAC trying to give birth to itself now.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]