Election: Tale of the three wise monkeys in Tanzanian politics

Dar es Salaam-based political and social commentator

There exists in Kiswahili a saying that he who does not know death should behold the grave. For a long time, I have thought that this is an inadequate source of instruction in the true representation of the phenomenon of death, because for someone truly ignorant of death may not learn another thing in the matter by simply looking at a grave.

In some graves that I saw in some Latin American countries — some in Africa, too — graves are very ornate, with literally little structures resembling small villas covering the tomb. For the unwary, these little villas could be taken for little residences for small people.

But the point about the saying is that far from actually viewing the graves you walk past in your village, one should always be reminded of things that may happen to one that one is not too careful about, such as death and its significance, something to be avoided for as long as is possible. The grave in that Kiswahili saying is a warning of consequences that may result out of our actions.

Such actions could take many forms, such as speeding or drunken driving; carelessness with one’s spending; excessive promiscuity, and many others.

And, though I choose to talk of that particular Kiswahili saying, I know many African languages do have similar sayings to warn their people about the dangers waiting on them if they behave in certain unsavory or reckless ways.

Such a warning would come in handy right now, as we watch the steady deterioration of the political management of Tanzania, especially the electoral processes.

Tanzania has just concluded what government officials have called “elections”, but which to me is anything but, and I will explain why.

What we witnessed this past week is no way a new phenomenon, but rather something that has gone on in our electoral cycles for a long time, although this time round there may have been hope (against hope) that things would be run a bit differently, mainly because the people were inclined to give President Samia Suluhu Hassan a benefit of the doubt over her so-called “4Rs”, which include such things as “reconciliation” but which are not reflected in the actions of the country’s rulership.

Chaotic

In this so-called election, everything that could go wrong was made to go wrong, deliberately. The first wrong was placing the elections under a government ministry run by the President of the republic, the ministry responsible for regional government and local government, which is run by Samia, assisted by her son-in-law, who is minister of state in her ministry.

Read: Big puzzle of Tanzania’s two sets of election rules - The EastAfrican

So, she was in effect the one running the elections in which her candidates were competing against the opposition candidates. It was foolhardy for them to believe there would be a fair game but they decided to chance it..

From the get-go, issues arose. The registration of would-be voters was so chaotic that it was not clear what verification was being done to ensure only legitimate voters were registered as all one was required to do was to state a name and address, no more.

School registries

Then reports started coming out that underage pupils were being registered off school registries, and eventually local officials were doing whatever they wanted, even closing their offices to avoid receiving complaints over irregularities.

Listening to some of the complaints regarding the nonchalance of these officials one gets the impression that many of them were bent on getting the people so angry as to take the law into their hands, with a view to forcing brutal police intervention and the total collapse of the whole exercise.

It looked like a game designed by children to see who could imagine a funnier trick, like when it came to look like most opposition candidates could not fill in forms properly — and were therefore disqualified — while ruling —party forms were perfectly completed, a laughable prospect.

Even when opposition candidates’ numbers had been whittled down sensitively, electoral officials still allowed classical rigging tactics, such as bringing in stuffed ballot boxes, arriving already marked, a really silly thing to do, but an indicator of the levels of impunity we have reached.

At the height of this folly and shame, death was inevitable, and a few lives were lost, one of them at the hands of a prison warder who was somehow, for some reason, reportedly in the polling process.

So, after the non-elections of five years ago (attributed to John Magufuli), we have walked willy-nilly into another non-election, but the ruling party is likely to declare the lie of a hollow victory.

Now, my question is: Why do we have to go through this rigmarole, when we now know there is no useful purpose served by these charades except fouling up our national psychology by the brutalization of our collective conscience?

The grave I alluded to in the Kiswahili proverb at the start of this piece is what is happening right now in neighbouring Mozambique.

Is there a way Tanzanian authorities can learn from that object lesson, or have they all become the Three Wise Monkeys?

Continued next week.