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Public Dialogue on Un-Silencing African History

May 25, 2016, 9:50 pm
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Join Soma in  Commemorating Africa Day with a Public Dialogue

Date: Saturday, 28th May, 2016
Time: 1000hrs – 1300hrs
Venue: Soma Book Café
TOPIC: “UN-SILENCING AFRICAN HISTORY: A DISCUSSION ON JACQUES DEPELCHIN’S BOOK— SILENCES IN AFRICAN HISTORY Published By Mkuki na Nyota
MAIN SPEAKER: PROF. WAMBA DIA WAMBA, a renowned Historian and Scholar.
The dialogue intends to bring out intergenerational perspectives on ‘academic violence; collective intellectual; culpable erasure; and deliberate omission of African history by scholars’ and engage young on the ‘complex linkages between historical knowledge and our collective freedom’.
The scope of the discussions is threefold
  •  To make sense of the relevance of Silence in African History today: what is silenced, why and why should we care? This is in the context as well that this seminal book was about to be shredded by its publisher—because it is a ‘slow moving item’
  • The agency of today’s youth—what do they know that inform their actions? From what sources? Is it enough to help us chart a liberated course for the future of the continent?
  • What makes a writer of Jacques Depelchin’s caliber? Are they celebrated and recreated beyond their generation? Under what conditions?
In brief, Prof. Jacques Depelchin analyzes in depth the influence of capitalism on the continent, in relation to various historical events through the centuries. He castigates those whose only vision of Africa is through the eyes of colonialism, and systematically erodes misconceptions about Africa and the nature of the Black man which have taken on the status of history.
Free Books available to all participants—courtesy of the author [you may wish to donate a small amount of money to facilitate postage to schools and regional libraries]. For those who wish to have a brief look at the book prior the day of the event you can drop by Soma and get your copy for Free.
For more information contact: 0712568699 – Jasper Kido; 0673014071 – Paulina; 0718484142 – Lilian.
Directions to Soma: You take your 2nd right – as if coming from Morocco to Mwenge just before the Bayport building (previously the AAR junction). But if you are coming from Victoria/ Mwenge heading wards Posta, it is your 1st left past the Victoria bus station. Thereafter you’d take your 1st left, soon after you finish the Sunrise Children School, few steps ahead then you take another left (you will see a road sign – Mlingotini Close). The last house on the right is Soma.
Kindly share with your network and observe time.
Karibu sana!
Jasper "Kido" Sabuni
Programme Manager 
E&D Readership and Development Agency (SOMA)
M: +255-712-568699/ +255-673-014071
ADDRESS: Mlingotini Close, Plot Number 53 Regent Street - Mikocheni A, Dar es Salaam

"You give a little but when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give." - Khalil Gibran (THE PROPHET)
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Rais Magufuli amemwelewaje Profesa Mkumbo?

June 3, 2016, 6:03 am
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Rais Magufuli amemwelewaje Profesa Mkumbo?

Chambi Chachage

“Hapa Kasi Tu!” – Tangazo la Vodacom la Tanzania 4G

Profesa wa Saikolojia ya Elimu, Kitila Mkumbo, amemwagiwa sifa kemkem na Rais wetu, Dakta John Magufuli. Tukio hili la aina yake lilitokea katika viwanja vya Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam tarehe 2 Juni 2016. Ni jambo linalostahili pongezi pale kazi ya kiuwanazuoni inaponukuliwa na hivyo kuzingatiwa na watawala na watunga sera.

Katika hotuba hiyo iliyojaa vijembe dhidi ya Wabunge waliotolewa Bungeni majuzi kufuatia sakata la kung’ang’ania Bunge lijadili sakata la kurudishwa nyumbani kwa baadhi ya wanafunzi wa Chuo Kikuu cha Dodoma (UDOM), Rais Magufuli anasema:

 “Nataka nizungumze hapa hadharani. Unajua pamekuwa na wanasiasa wengine wana maneno. Wanataka tupeleke watu, wakachukue Digrii, mafelia. Sijui kwa sababu wanasiasa hawa ni mafelia? Ukiangalia kwenye ripoti iliyoandikwa na Profesa Mkumbo, mwanachama mzuri wa ACT, alizungumza wanafunzi wasizidi 1,800 ambao wangeweza wakaenda kwenye special training, hatukumsikiliza. Tumepeleka 7,802. Wengine ni Divisheni 4. Wako wengini Divisheni 3. Na wachache sana Divisheni 1 na Divisheni 2 – kwenda Chuo Kikuu cha UDOM.”
Kuhusu kilichopeleka Profesa Mkumbo kutosikilizwa, Rais anatanabahisha:

 “Nimezungumza na Profesa Kikula. Kasema alilazimishwa. Angefanyaje? Afukuzwe Chuo? Wanafunzi pale wamekaa. Ukweli hawana qualifications za kwenda kuchukua hata Diploma. Kwa sheria tulizojiwekea kama nchi, ukimaliza Form 4, ukipata Divisheni 1 au 2 unaenda Form 5 au Form 6. Au unaweza ukaenda kuchukua Certificate. Ukimaliza kuchukua Certificate utaenda kuchukua Diploma. Certificate ni miaka miwili. Diploma ni mwaka mmoja. Tiyari ni miaka mitatu. Ni hiyo hiyo. Lakini cha ajabu zaidi, wale wanafunzi wanasoma pale Diploma, kwenye  vyuo vya ualimu vile kumi havina wanafunzi. Nenda Kleruu. Nenda Butimba. Nenda wapi.  Havina wanafunzi wa kutosha. Na baadaye nao, walipoona shida shida pale wakaanza mwongozo wa mgomo mgomo, ikanisaidia mimi kujua kuna nini pale. Unajua kuna migomo mingine ya haki haki, kuna migomo mingine inasaidia kuondolewa tu. Ndipo nikaja nikajua qualifications zilivyo. Nikasema hawa watu lazima waondoke. Na nilikuwa nasubiri Chuo Kikuu cha Dodoma nao wagome, wote wangeondoka! Ni lazima tujenge principles za kujenga heshima ya nchi yetu. Nimeshukuru wale vijana wameondoka. Wanasiasa hao hao, ati hawa vijana wamekosa pa kulala, wamefanya nini. Nonsense. Taifa letu tuliweke mbele kwanza, siasa zije nyuma. Na ndiyo maana mimi namsifia hapa Profesa Mkumbo pamoja ya kwamba ni wa ACT na mimi ni CCM, kwa sababu alitoa mwongozo mzuri. Ifike mahali Watanzania tukubali ukweli. Tuache siasa kwenye masuala ya msingi.”
Swali la kujiuliza hapa ni: Je, Profesa Kikula hakuzingatia kitu chochote alichosema Profesa Mkumbo kwa sababu alishinikizwa na “wakubwa” waliokuwa katika Serikali ya Awamu ya Nne ya Rais Mstaafu Kikwete? Wadadisi wa mambo tumepata fursa ya kumhoji kwa undani Profesa Mkumbo leo kuhusu ripoti hiyo waliyoiwasilisha mwezi Septemba 2014. Majibu tuliyoyapata yanatufanya tubaki na maswali mengi kichwani.

Mosi, kwa hakika timu ya Profesa Mkumbo iligundua kwamba mwaka 2014 UDOM ilikuwa na rasilimali – yaani walimu, maabara, madarasa na fedha – zinazotosha kudahili wanafunzi 1080 tu. Lakini pia ilisisitiza kwamba kama UDOM inataka kudahili seti nyingi zaidi ya idadi hiyo, basi itabidi ziendane na uwiano wa vipindi vya ufundishaji vitakavyokuwa vinafanyika kwa siku. Kwa maana hiyo, kama ikitaka kudahili seti mbili – yaani maradufu – ili wawe wanafunzi 2160 basi ingebidi kuwe na vipindi viwili kwa siku. Kanuni hii ya ukokotoaji iliwafanya wahitimishe kwamba itabidi UDOM iongeze rasilimali maradufu, au hata mara tatu, kwa kadri ya idadi ya wanafunzi itakaotaka kuwadahili. Kwa mantiki hiyo, tunaweza kusema ingehitajika kuongeza rasilimali takribani mara saba ili kuwadahili wanafunzi wapatao elfu 7.

Pili, timu ya Profesa Mkumbo iligundua kwamba kulikuwa na maabara manne ya sayansi ambayo ujenzi wake ulikuwa bado haujakamilika. Hivyo, wakapendekeza kwamba ujenzi uharakishwe. Kwa maana nyingine, tunaweza kusema kuongezeka kwa rasilimali hizi kungeweza kuiwezesha UDOM kuongeza idadi ya wanafunzi.

Tatu, akina Profesa Mkumbo waligundua kwamba walimu waliokuwepo wakati huo – yaani 171 – wanatosha kufundisha tu wanafunzi wapya 1,080 kwa uwiano wa 1: 6. Hivyo  walipendekeza waongezwe kwa kuwa walikuwa wanafundisha wanafunzi wengine pia. Lakini kwa mantiki hiyo hiyo, tunaweza kusema bado ingebidi UDOM iongeze rasimali watu ili kukidhi hitaji la kuongeza zaidi udahili wa wanafunzi hao. 

Je, hakuna chochote kilichozingatiwa miezi mitatu baadaye? Chama cha Wafanyakazi wa Elimu ya Juu (THTU) Tawi la UDOM kinadai hiki ndicho hasa kilichotokea:

 “Kuanzia Novemba 2014, Chuo Kikuu cha Dodoma kilianza kupokea wanafunzi wa kusomea stashahada maalum ya diploma ya Elimu, Sayansi, Hisabati na Tehama (DE-SMICT). Lengo kubwa la programu hii maalum ni kutimiza azma ya serikali kupunguza ama kuondoa kabisa tatizo la walimu wa sayansi katika shule za sekondari nchini. Serikali iliamua kuwaleta wanafunzi hawa Chuo Kikuu cha Dodoma (UDOM) badala ya ku[wa]peleka kwenye vyuo vya ualimu ikiamini kwamba UDOM kuna miundombinu ya kutosha hasa majengo na [rasilimali watu] ya kutosha kuweza kuhifadhi wanafunzi hao. Menejimenti na jumuiya nzima ya UDOM iliona ni heshima kupewa jukumu hili na kulipokea kwa mikono miwili. Kukubaliwa na kupokelewa jukumu hili UDOM ililazimika kujipanga upya kimkakati, kimfumo pamoja na kufanya mabadiliko kadha wa kadha katika utendaji wake wa kila siku ili kuweza kuhimili jukumu hili kubwa la kitaifa. Mojawapo ya hatua zilizochukuliwa ilikuwa kuunda Kikosi Kazi (Steering Committee-SC) cha kushauri namna ya kukabili jukumu hili.”

THTU kinaendelea kusisitiza kwamba kabla “ya kuanza kufundisha, SC ilipendekeza mikakati, mifumo na mabadiliko yaliyokuwa ya msingi ili kukabili swala hili. Changamoto kubwa, ilibainika ni, ufundishaji wa hawa vijana. Masuala mengine yahusuyo malazi na malezi kwa ujumla wake yaliandaliwa ingawa hayakuwa na changamoto kubwa kama suala la UFUNDISHAJI. Suala la ufundishaji lilihitaji jicho la pekee kwani vijana hawa waliopokelewa ndiyo kwanza wamemaliza kidato cha nne, hivyo bado ni wadogo kwa kiasi fulani na pia hawakupaswa kufundishwa kama wenzao wanaosomea masomo ya shahada na kuendelea.”

Kuhusu udahili wa awali, THTU inasema: “Vijana takriban 2000 walipokelewa, wakafundishwa na (semester) [muhula] wa kwanza ukamalizika vizuri bila migogoro mikubwa.” Kama idadi hii ni sahihi, basi tofauti yake na kilichoshauriwa na akina Profesa Mkumbo ni wanafunzi 920. Lakini kama rasilimali ziliongezeka katika kipindi hicho cha miezi mitatu, je, tunaweza kuhitimisha hawakumsikiliza Profesa?
 
Na, je, huu mfumo wao wa kuwagawa haushahibiani na lile pendekezo la Profesa Mkumbo: “Masomo yote ya UALIMU yawe na wanafunzi 120 katika mkondo mmoja”; “Masomo yote ya SAYANSI ASILIA yawe na wanafunzi 80 kwa mkondo mmoja”; “Masomo yote ya TEHAMA yawe na wanafunzi 60 kwa mkondo mmoja”?

Kwa mujibu wa THTU, tatizo lilianza hivi: “Kutokana na ufanisi uliopatikana katika mwaka wa masomo 2014/15, Serikali na UDOM waliamua kuleta tena wanafunzi wengine kwa muhula wa 2015/16. Idadi ya hawa wanafunzi ni takriban 6000. Kulingana na idadi hii kuwa kubwa mno, upatikanaji wa waalimu wa sayansi wanaoweza kuenea/kutosha mikondo yote iliyogawanywa ulishindikana.”

Lakini, je, Profesa Mkumbo alisema haiwezekani kudahili wanafunzi 6000? Au alisema ukitaka kudahili wanafunzi wengi inabidi uongeze rasilimali kadri unavyowaongeza, yaani, kwa uwiano stahiki? THTU inadai kwamba jitihada zifuatazo za kuiongezea UDOM uwezo zilifanyika ila zikagonga mwamba:

“Ili kuhakikisha kuwa wanafunzi hawarudi nyumbani wala kwenda barabararani, uongozi wa CNMS [Koleji ya Sayansi Kavu na Hisabati] ulijitahidi kuushirikisha uongozi wa chuo na kuomba msaada kila palipoonekana kuhitajika msaada huo. Baadhi ya maswala muhimu yaliyotakiwa kushuhulikiwa ni kuwaongezea uwezo wa kupata waalimu wa ziada, kupata sehemu za kufundishia na kupata vifaa vya maabara. Hata tunapoandika hivi sasa, DVC-PFA, pamoja na kupokea nyaraka mbali mbali zinazomwomba aagize vifaa na madawa ya maabara (laboratory equipments and reagents) hajanunua hata kitu kimoja. Wanafunzi wamefundishwa bila kupewa mazoezi ya vitendo yanayokidhi mahitaji kwa sababu za kiburi cha DVC-PFA. Katika jitihada za kutafuta waalimu wa ziada, DVC-ACR amekataa katakata kutoa mwongozo wa kimaandishi ama ushauri wowote utakaowasaidia viongozi wa CNMS kuboresha hali ya ufundishaji.”

 Jumuiya ya Wanataaluuma wa Chuo Kikuu cha Dodoma (UDOMASA) nayo inadai:

“Mgogoro huu umepotoshwa kutokana na ukweli kwamba [walimu] wanalazimika kufundisha historia ya [sayansi] badala ya sayansi kwa vitendo.Ukosefu wa nafasi na vifaa vya maabara ni tatizo kubwa ambalo limelalamikiwa kwa muda mrefu lakini hoja inayoonekana zaidi ni malipo ya waalimu. Mfano katika Chuo cha Sayansi Asilia na Mahesabu kinachohusika na masomo ya Fizikia, Kemia, Baolojia na Hesabu maabara zake hazina vifaa vya kutosha kukidhi mahitaji ya ufundishaji pamoja na koleji husika kutuma maombi karibu kila mwaka.”

Katika mazingira haya, ni vigumu kwa wadadisi wa mambo kuamini kwamba wanafunzi waliorudishwa nyumbani wamerudishwa kwa sababu akina Profesa Kikula hawakumsikiliza Profesa Mkumbo kuhusu kudahili wanafunzi 1080. Tunachoona ni kwamba Serikali haikusikiliza ushauri wake kuhusu kuongeza rasilimali za kutosha.
Matokeo yake wanaodaiwa kuwa “wanafunzi hewa” wanatumbuliwa hata kabla Waziri wa Elimu hajajiridhisha kikamilifu. Kama umakini mkubwa wa kujiridhisha umefanyika, kwa nini Rais Magufuli amesema maneno haya jana: “Ninafahamu Profesa Ndalichako anapitia ili orodha ya vijana wa UDOM waliofaulu, Divisheni 1 na Divisheni 2, tutahakikisha tunawetengenezea mazingira ya kwenda kusoma. Waliofeli wakatafute mbinu nyingine za kujiunga na vyuo vyenye saizi yao”? 

Hata kama kuna waliomo na wasiokuwemo, waliofeli na waliofaulu, ni pedagojia gani hiyo inayofundisha kusimanga wanafunzi hadharani kuwa ni “vilaza”? Hivi Saikolojia ya Elimu aliyoibobea Profesa Mkumbo inasema nini kuhusu hili? Ni udhaifu kwa Serikali kukiri kosa na kuomba msamaha? Ni nini hasa kimepelekea uharaka huu wa kuwarudisha nyumbani vijana kana kwamba walijidahili wenyewe?

Je, hizi ni zama za hapa kazi tu au hapa kasi tu?
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What does Digital Culture say about Land Grabs?

June 9, 2016, 2:39 am
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What does Digital Culture have to do with Land Grabs?

Chambi Chachage

“We are dealing with a massive loss of habitat” – Saskia Sassen

For the tenth time in a decade, global champions of digital culture have conferenced in Berlin. Known as Re: Publica, the conference “has grown from a cozy blogger meeting with 700 participants in 2007” into nearly 10 thousands. As a member of #AfricanBlogging interested in land rights, one keynote was of particular interest.

How on earth, I wondered, was Professor Saskia Sassen delivering a keynote on "What is behind the new Migrations: A Massive Loss of Habitat" to a packed audience full of ‘netizens’? What would they find so interesting about what hardly affect their ‘cyberspace’? It was only after listening that I came to realize why land as habitat should matter to anyone who inhabits any part of our globalizing world.

After noting that we are familiar with war refugees and migrants, she notes that there is third type of migrating subjects. To make them visible one has ask the question: “Why are they moving? There is no war where they are coming from.” One of the causes for this, according to her research, is the “making” of “dead land, dead water.”

 This deadening goes hand in hand with the expansion of mining, land grabs and cities to force people out of their habitat. For her, the “pretty” language of climate change is not adequate to capture it. Unlike those who claim that“land grab vocabulary, with its connotations of ‘illegality’,” distorts “understanding of investment”, Sassen states:

“And we are talking of people who have been in that land for centuries…but they don’t have the papers, they don’t have the instruments to show that this is my land. So, they can be thrown out. The estimate is: Every year, three million…. The main argument that I want to make is: They are invisible to the eye of the law….”

Such ‘legal blind spots’ enables us to look beyond the law. As we noted in 2009, legal discourses on land have been used to render such people “wavamizi”, a Swahili term that literarily means “invaders”, to justify their eviction. We also noted in 2010 that:

“It is tempting to conclude, alongside fellow strong critics of land grab such as the Land Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU) and ILC, that land grab implies accumulation of land holdings through illegal and/or illegitimate means or simply ‘means deliberately and illegally taking away someone else‘s land rights’…. But this conclusion has to be qualified as there are incidences whereby land acquisitions in the light of the domestic policy frameworks and legal systems are sanctioned. As such there are at least two typologies of land grabs, that is, illegal and legal – or more appropriately, legalized – land grabs. In the case of Tanzania, land grabs, especially those of  ‘village land’, are legally sanctioned through procedures for land acquisition.”
By noting the ‘legality’ of land grabs, Sassen thus helps us to see their subtle impact:

“Now land grabs have long existed. The United States use a lot of land in Kenya, for instance, to raise cattle because cattle is quite destructive, we know that. Kenya has vast stretches of dead land thank you to the United States…using that to grow cattle, same thing as Central America – lot of dead land. So, we have been killing land for a while but there is so much of it. It is shrinking now…. Here are some figures [From 2006 to 2010: 220 million hectares of land in Africa, Latin America, Cambodia, Ukraine etc. bought/leased by rich government, firms, financial firms]. The estimate now is that there are over 300 million hectares of land that has been bought.”

In her words, such figures indicate that the “land is now more valued than the people or activities on it.” Hence “what we measure as development”, she argues, “is a massive expulsion.” It is “the making of surplus population.” Sassen elaborates:

“There are about 100 firms…and about 15 governments that does include the United States but also includes Saudi Arabia and China etcetera…who are buying land mostly…to develop plantation agriculture…and you know plantation agriculture is a bit destructive of land, right, it does not enable land to have earth, to have a long life. Smallholder agriculture knows how to keep that land growing for millennia. Plantations, no way – that is not the plot. It is pesticides and fertilizers, you know, to get huge – to get it growing fast and it all has to look beautiful…it is a lot of chemicals and stuff like that. Now what happens here is that smallholders, and you know this, they don’t necessarily have documents that says this is my land, I have been living here, my family has for centuries …they are easily thrown out…”

Although she acknowledges that the figures are the highest in Africa, Sassen also notes that they are also growing elsewhere. What is so revealing is the way her examples captures the link between the Global North and the Global North:

“This is about Europe now. Land grabs in Europe…. The sons and daughters of former farmers in France, given the bad job situation (this is something that happened 2 or 3 years ago), decides that ‘maybe the best bet for me is to go back to the countryside and buy some land and some very specialized farming….’ Guess what? No land for sale. It has been mostly bought up by large corporates. Saudi Arabia has more or less bought up – and the Qatari – Bosnia.... Last example… A nice Swedish firm…. has bought a vast stretch of land in Northern England….”

For keen observer, such dynamics explains why these Euro-American entities are public-private partners of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT): Monsanto; Royal Norwegian Embassy, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation; United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Clinton Development Initiative, Stiching IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative, Syngenta, Nestlé, International AG, UK’s Department for International Development (DFID)etcetera.
 
In regard to biofuel, Sassen argues that “growing crops that are not going to be for eating, so, you have no constraints on the amount of pesticide…poisons…you are making that land dead.” She thus decries the tendency of moving on to develop another plantation after twenty years or so after degrading the previous one. As for water grabs, she cites the cases of Nestlé and Coca Cola managing to “exhaust two underground water tables in particular areas of India” thus causing deprivation. 

So, what does digital culture have to do with all this? I think in this age of ‘Google Earth’and ‘Big Data’, our champions of bridging the digital divide can be helpful in providing empirical evidence on the scale of such grabs. Doing so will help those who are not so visible to counter the claim that“Land grab fears have been exaggerated.” 
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Mwalimu Nyerere Intellectual Festival:14-16/6/2016

June 9, 2016, 8:41 pm
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Matumizi ya Urathi wa Mwalimu Nyerere:17/6/2016

June 13, 2016, 12:30 am
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Bajeti ya Serikali na Mipango ya Wapinzani

June 15, 2016, 1:33 am
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Bajeti ya Serikali na Mipango ya Wapinzani

Chambi Chachage

“Ni viwanda vya aina ipi hasa tunavyovikusudia?” – Rais John Magufuli

Tunajenga nyumba moja sasa tunagombania fito za nini? Swali hilo litokanalo na msemo maarufu nchini Tanzania linaweza kutumika kuelezea ukakasi uliojitokeza kuhusu Bajeti ya Serikali. Wabunge machachari waliozuiwa kuendelea na vikao vya Bunge la Bajeti wameamua kutafuta vilinge vingine. Huko nako wapo waliozuiwa.

Wadadisi wa mambo tunaamini ni haki ya Kikatiba kwa mtu yeyote kujadili masuala yoyote yaliyo muhimu kwa Taifa. Wasiwasi wetu ni kuwa ushabiki wetu wa kisiasa kuhusu sintofahamu inayoendelea kati ya Serikali na baadhi ya wapinzani inaweza kutufanya tukose utulivu wa kuchambua ni nini hasa wanachopingana kuhusu bajeti. 

Hivyo basi, tumeamua kuchukua fursa hii kuupitia ‘Uchambuzi wa Bajeti Ya Serikali 2016/2017’ uliopangwa kutolewa kwa Umma na Kiongozi wa Chama cha ACT-Wazalendo, Zitto Kabwe, katika kongamano lao lililozuiwa kufanyika Jumapili ya tarehe 12 Juni 2016. Lakini kwa kuwa tunaamini kuwa mtazamo wa kiuchumi wa Waziri wa Fedha, Dakta Philip Mpango, una ushawishi mkubwa kibajeti basi uhakiki wetu hauna budi kurejea na kulinganisha taarifa nyingine muhimu za wizara yake.

Katika uhakiki wetu, uliojikita kwenye sekta za kilimo na viwanda, hoja yetu kuu ni kwamba kuna ‘miingiliano tata’ na ‘migongano hewa’ kati ya mipango ya maendeleo ya Serikali iliyotumika kuandaa bajeti na makusudio ya uchambuzi wa wapinzani wanaojitanabahisha kama wazalendo wanaofuata ‘Ujamaa wa Kidemokrasia’.

Uchambuzi wa Kiongozi wa wazalendo hao, kwa mfano, unakubaliana na Serikali kuhusu kujenga viwanda. Tena unaipongeza “sana” bajeti yake ya sasa kwa kulenga  “kuondoa changamoto ya miundombinu kwa kiwango kikubwa sana.” Lakini unadai kwamba: “Miundombinu inaweza kujengwa lakini ikawa haina watu wa kuitumia wala bidhaa za kusafirisha kwa sababu hakuna vivutio vya kuanzisha viwanda pia.”

Pamoja na kujaribu kuihuisha misingi ya Azimio la Arusha kuhusu sekta ya Umma kupitia Azimio la Tabora, wazalendo hao hawatofautiani sana na Serikali  kuhusu nafasi nyeti/tete ya sekta binafsi. “Ikumbukwe kuwa Serikali haianzishi viwanda”, uchambuzi wao unasisitiza, “bali inajenga mazingira mazuri ya wawekezaji kuanzisha viwanda.” Hivyo, unadai kwamba bajeti hii ya Serikali “haijaweka hivyo vivutio vya kuanzisha viwanda na ime­minya uwezo wa walaji kutumia kwa kudhibiti matumizi na pia kutoza kodi nyingi zinazopunguza uwezo wa kutumia bidhaa na huduma.”

Njozi ya wazalendo hao ni kuona wananchi wengi wakiwa na ajira zenye tija. Ila wanajua “viwanda vinachangia asilimia 20 ya ajira zote rasmi nchini na kwamba theluthi mbili ya Watanzania wameajiriwa na sekta isiyo rasmi.” Hivyo, wanaona “juhudi za kuongeza uzalishaji viwandani ni muhimu sana ili kuwaondoa Watanzania wengi kutoka sekta isiyo rasmi na kuwaingiza kwenye sekta rasmi.” Ndiyo maana kiitikadi hawaoni shida kuipima Serikali kwa “kutazama hatua mbalimbali za kisera [za] kuwezesha sekta binafsi kufungua viwanda vingi zaidi nchini na kuajiri watu wengi.’

Tathmini yao inawafanya wadhani kwamba “Serikali ilipaswa kuja na Sera mahususi za kufikisha asilimia 10 au zaidi ukuaji wa uzalishaji viwandani.” Ili kufanikisha hilo wanadai “Serikali haina budi ku­kaa na wenye viwanda na kupata mwafaka wa namna bora ya kuweka sera mahususi zitazopelekea uwekezaji mkubwa wa wenye mitaji katika viwanda na kuongeza uzalishaji.” Yaani hawajaridhika na maneno haya ya Dakta Mpango: “Bajeti hii imezingatia mawazo na mapendekezo ya wadau mbali mbali wakiwemo wenye viwanda, wafanyabiashara na wengine wengi”? Wanataka ‘manahodha wa viwanda’ wawe na sauti zaidi? Mtazamo wa kiuchumi wa Kiongozi wao usiopingana dhahiri na ‘dhana ya kibepari’ ya mapinduzi ya viwanda yatokanayo na mapinduzi ya kilimo umepelekea uchambuzi wao pia udai kwamba:

“Kwa Uchumi wa Tanzania, ujenzi wa Sekta ya Viwanda hauwezi kufanikiwa bila kukua kwa sekta ya kilimo. Kilimo ndio sekta Kiongozi katika kutokomeza umasikini kwani inachangia theluthi moja ya Pato la Taifa na kuajiri theluthi mbili ya Watanzania wote. Bajeti ya kwanza ya Serikali ya Awamu ya Tano imeshindwa kufungamanisha Sekta ya Kilimo na ndoto ya maendeleo ya Viwanda. Ushahidi wa kisayansi unaotokana na Taarifa za Serikali yenyewe unaonyesha kuwa hakuna mahusiano kati ya mipango ya maendeleo ya viwanda na mipango ya maendeleo ya wananchi. (Uk. 5).

‘Dongo’ hilo ni zito hasa ukizingatia kuwa katika Hotuba yake ya Kufungua Bunge ambapo alimsifia Kiongozi huyo kwa ukomavu wa kisiasa, Rais alinena haya:

“Sura ya kwanza ya viwanda tunavyovikusudia ni vile ambavyo sehemu kubwa ya malighafi yake itatoka ndani, hususan kweye sekta za kilimo, mifugo, uvuvi, na madini – na maliasili nyingine. Viwanda vya aina hii vitatupa fursa ya kujenga mfumo wa uzalishaji ndani ya nchi uliofungamana na kushikamana. Viwanda vya aina hii vitahitaji na kutegemea malighafi toka kwa wazalishaji wa sekta nilizozitaja, na kwa kufanya hivyo wazalishaji hao watakuwa na soko la uhakika humu humu ndani ya nchi.” 

Eneo mojawapo ambalo Bajeti kuu imejaribu kuzingatia alichosema Rais ni hili lilipo katika hotuba ya Dakta Mpango:

“Kutoza Ushuru wa Forodha wa asilimia 10 badala ya asilimia 0 kwenye mafuta ghafi ya kula (crude edible oil) yanayotambulika katika HS Code 1511.10.00 kwa mwaka mmoja. Hatua hii inalenga katika kuhamasisha kilimo cha mbegu za mafuta hapa nchini na kukuza viwanda vya kutengeneza mafuta ya kula. Aidha, Wizara ya Viwanda, Biashara na Uwekezaji imeandaa mkakati maalum wa kuendeleza viwanda vya kuzalisha mafuta yanayotokana na mbegu zinazozalishwa hapa nchini na kutumia fursa [ya] soko kubwa lililopo katika Jumuiya ya Afrika Mashariki ambapo Tanzania inayo nafasi ya kuweza kuongeza uzalishaji wa mbegu za mafuta” (Uk. 87).

Mpango wa Maendeleo Wa Miaka Mitano unapopelekea sasa kinachodaiwa kuwa ni asilimia 1 tu ya Bajeti ya Maendeleo iende kwenye kilimo, je, ni kwa sababu ‘vipanga’ waliouandaa hawaelewi muingiliano wake na viwanda? Je, ni kwa sababu huko serikalini kuna ‘vilaza’ wa uchumi wa “viwanda vya kusindika mazao ya kilimo (agroprocessing industries)” ambavyo uchambuzi wa wazalendo hao unavipigia chapuo?

Serikali ‘sikivu’ ya Rais Magufuli inajua fika inachotaka kukifanya kiuchumi hata kama kuna dalili zinazoonesha kwamba haielewi kikamilifu inakoelekea na athari zake kwa undani. Kama wadadisi tulivyowahi kugusia hapo awali kuhusu ‘Dakta Mpango na Hatma ya Kifedha, Kibajeti na Kiuchumi’, njozi yake imejikita katika ujenzi wa mkusanyiko wa viwanda vilivyojikita katika kile ambacho ‘wachumi wa kiliberali’ wanakiona ni fursa ambazo uchumi wa nchi/jamii fulani unazo kuzidi washindani wake.
 
Ukiirejea taratibu ‘Taarifa ya Hali ya Uchumi 2015 na Mpango wa Maendeleo wa Taifa 2016/17’aliyoiwasilisha Bungeni tarehe 8 Juni 2016, kwa mfano, utakutana na mkakati wa “kuanzisha kongane za viwanda (Industrial Clusters) za kuongeza thamani ya mazao ya kilimo....” Hilo limejikita katika dhana ya ‘Minyororo ya kuongeza Thamani (Value Chains)’. Na ndiyo maana hotuba yake ya ‘Makadirio ya Mapato na Matumizi ya Wizara ya Fedha na Mipango kwa Mwaka 2016/17’inasema:

“Serikali hadi sasa imeipatia Benki ya Maendeleo ya Kilimo Tanzania mtaji wa shilingi bilioni 60. Aidha, katika hatua za awali, benki imeainisha minyororo 14 ya thamani ya mazao ya kilimo katika sekta ndogo ndogo nane itakayopewa kipaumbele katika kutoa mikopo kwa kuanzia. Sekta hizo ni za uzalishaji wa nafaka; mifugo; ufugaji wa samaki, kilimo cha matunda, maua, mbogamboga, na viungo; mazao ya viwanda hasa miwa na korosho; mbegu za uzalishaji mafuta ya kula; na mazao ya misitu hasa ufugaji wa nyuki na mazao yake… kwa mwaka 2016/17, Benki imepanga kuendelea kutoa mikopo kwa angalau minyororo 14 ya thamani (agricultural value chains) itakayofanyiwa tathmini yakinifu kama iliyoanishwa kwenye mpango kazi wa kwanza wa 2016-2020” (Uk 27 & 53).

Suala la kilimo kwenye bajeti na mipango ya Serikali linazidi kutazamwa kwa jicho la kibiashara/kiwekezaji. Ndiyo maana katika hotuba hiyo hiyo Dakta Mpango anatujulisha kwamba madhumuni makuu “ya kuanzishwa benki hii ni kusaidia upatikanaji, utoshelezi na usalama wa chakula endelevu nchini na kusaidia katika kuleta mapinduzi ya kilimo kutoka kilimo cha kujikimu kwenda kilimo cha biashara ili kuchangia kwenye ukuaji wa uchumi na kupunguza umaskini.” Picha hii inaakisi maneno haya yaliyopo katika ‘Mpango wa Maendeleo wa Taifa wa Mwaka 2016/17’:

“Mradi [wa Kuboresha Mazingira ya Uwekezaji na Biashara] unalenga kuboresha mazingira ya uwekezaji na biashara nchini. Katika mwaka 2016/17 zimetengwa shilingi bilioni 1.227 fedha za ndani kwa ajili ya: kuendelea kutafuta fursa nafuu za biashara na masoko kwa bidhaa za kilimo na viwandani kupitia majadiliano baina ya nchi na nchi, kikanda na kimataifa” (Uk. 92).
 Usuli huo unaweza kutusaidia kuelewa ni kwa nini Dakta Mpango alisema haya Bungeni: “Bajeti hii pia inalenga kujenga mazingira mazuri ya kufanya biashara na kuwekeza ili kuvutia ushiriki wa wawekezaji wa ndani na nje katika kuendeleza viwanda na kilimo.” Hakika mpango wa Serikali ya Magufuli siyo kujenga lile Taifa la wakulima na wafanyakazi. Ni wa kujenga hili Taifa la wafanyabiashara na wawekezaji.

Viwanda vilikuwa viwe vya wafanyakazi na kilimo kiwe cha wakulima enzi hizo za Ujamaa. Ila enzi hizi za Uliberali viwanda vinatakiwa kuwa vya wawekezaji na kilimo kuwa cha wafanyabiashara. Kama hatuamini hebu tutafakari haya maneno ya Dakta Mpango wakati anawasilisha bajeti Bungeni: “Mheshimiwa Spika, azma kuu ya Serikali ni kuimarisha sekta ya kilimo, mifugo na uvuvi kwa mtazamo wa kibiashara, kukuza viwanda na kuongeza thamani ya mazao yatokanayo na sekta hii.”

Dakta Mpango anaonekana amechoshwa sana na tija ndogo na kipato kidogo katika kilimo. Sasa anatoa wito kwamba watu watumie “nguvu” na “ubunifu” wao “katika kilimo cha mazao ya thamani kubwa.” Ndiyo maana anataka “mapinduzi ya kilimo kutoka kilimo cha kijungujiko (subsistence farming) kwenda kilimo cha kibiashara.”

Je, mapinduzi hayo yanawezekana bila kuondoa idadi kubwa ya wakulima kwenye ardhi/mashamba yao ili kuwapisha wenzao wachache wanaoonekana kuwa wabunifu zaidi na wenye mtazamo wa kibiashara/kijasiriamali? Kama ni kweli kilimo kinaajiri zaidi ya asilimia 70 nchini kama Dakta Mpango anavyodai, je, lengo hasa la mipango na bajeti ya Serikali ni kuhakikisha watu wote hawa wanabakia kwenye sekta hiyo?

Cha kushangaza ni kwamba swali hili la msingi katika stadi za maendeleo ya uchumi  haliguswi au linapotezewa tu. Kwa mfano, Kiongozi wa ACT-Wazalendo anasema: “Kwa sisi wachumi tunatambua kuwa ili kupunguza umasikini wa Tanzania kwa zaidi ya nusu ilihitajika sekta ya Kilimo kukua kwa kati ya asilimia 8 na 10 kwa mwaka. Kwa ukuaji huu tulionao sasa, maana yake itachukua miaka mingi sana watanzania kuondoka kwenye dimbwi la umasikini. Baadhi ya mazao yanayotarajiwa kuzalisha malighafi za viwanda uzalishaji wake umeporomoka kwa kiwango cha kutisha.”

Rai hiyo ya Wazalendo haiiambii Serikali inawezaje kukuza sekta kwa ‘mwendokasi’ huo bila hata kuwa na mbadala kwa wakulima watakoachwa. Inachoambulia kupewa ni mapendekezo yanayolenga “kumwezesha mkulima kubakia na sehemu kubwa ya mapato yake na kuvutia wananchi wengi kujishu­ghulisha na uzalishaji katika kilimo.” 

Ombi letu wadadisi ni kujibiwa hili tu: Tanzania ya viwanda ni Tanzania ya kilimo? 
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Wanawake Katika Ukombozi-Women in Liberation

June 15, 2016, 9:52 am
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Katiba Mpya Kuubadili Mfumo Dhalimu Uliopo?

June 20, 2016, 12:45 pm
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Tuitazame Katiba Mpya kama Chombo cha kuubadili Mfumo Dhalimu uliopo

Richard Mbunda

(Makala haya yalitolewa katika gazeti la Mwananchi katika ulingo wa Siasa mwaka 2014 wakati mchakato wa uandishi wa katiba mpya unaendelea lakini haikuwekwa katika mtandao. Ni vyema sasa tukaiweka katika mtandao ili iwe rejea ya baadaye)

Mchakato wa kuandika katiba mpya katika nchi yoyote hugubikwa na mivutano inayoashiria kuwepo kwa maslahi ya makundi mbalimbali katika nchi husika. Kundi lolote lililo na maslahi linatambua kuwa, kulala wakati wa uandishi wa katiba ni sawa na ule usemi wa ‘cheka na nyani uvune mabua’. Tunapaswa kutambua kuwa, mivutano hii haina mantiki hasi, kwa kuwa uwepo wa maslahi yanayokinzana kutaifanya nchi kupata katiba nzuri kwa sababu mambo ya hovyo hovyo ni lazima yatapigiwa kelele na kuchujwa.
 Hata hivyo, hapana budi kuwepo kwa uwiano wa maslahi ya vikundi na maslahi ya taifa ili katiba isitumike kutetea maslahi binafsi ya watu wachache au vikundi fulani. Kwa mantiki hiyo basi, uandishi wa katiba unapaswa kuzingatia utaifa zaidi kuliko maslahi ya vikundi.

Matumaini ya Katiba Mpya kwa Makundi Mbalimbali

Wadau wa katiba ya muungano wamekuwa na matumaini mbalimbali. Kwa mfano, katika hotuba yake aliyoitoa kwenye uzinduzi wa Bunge Maalum la Katiba, Rais [Mstaafu]  Kikwete alitanabaisha kuwa kuna makundi yanayodhani katiba mpya, na hasa katika mapendekezo yake ya mabadiliko ya muundo wa Muungano, yangewarahishia kushinda uchaguzi na kushika madaraka ya nchi. Kwa vyama vya siasa, ambavyo malengo yake makuu ni kushika madaraka ya nchi hilo ni tumaini sahihi kwao na wanapaswa kulizingatia ili kulinda umuhimu na uhai wa vyama vyao. Kwa maana hiyo, vyama vya siasa vina haki ya kupigania kuwekwa kwa mifumo sahihi ya kiutawala na usimamizi ili pawepo na ushindani wa haki wakati wa uchaguzi.
Katika mijadala ya katiba, ndani ya Bunge Maalum na hata katika majukwaa tumesikia matumaini ya pande mbili za Muungano katika katiba mpya. Kwa upande wa Zanzibar, tumesikia matakwa yao, kuwa wanataka ushiriki katika medani za kimataifa kama vile kujiunga na Jumuiya ya Nchi za Kiislam, kukopa kimataifa na kudhibiti biashara za kimataifa. Ingawa pia wapo wale wanaodai mamlaka kamili ya Zanzibar katika muungano wa mkataba, madai ambayo, kama yakizingatiwa, yatauweka muungano njia panda.

Katiba mpya imewapa pia watanganyika matumaini ya kufufuliwa kwa Tanganyika yao ili iweze kutetea maslahi yao ndani ya muungano. Wakati huohuo Wazanzibari wangependa Tanganyika ifufuliwe ili isiendelee kuvaa koti la serikali ya  Jamhuri ya Muungano na kujinufaisha na nafasi hiyo. Hivyo basi, kwa baadhi ya makundi, katiba mpya itakuwa na tija tu kama muundo wa serikali tatu kama ulivyopendekezwa na Tume ya Jaji Warioba utazingatiwa. Kwa mtazamo wangu, tusijibane katika fikra hizo, bali tuangalie ni jinsi gani katiba itaweka mazingira ya kuubomoa mfumo dhalimu uliopo.
Matumaini ya Watanzania wa Kawaida

Matarajio ya wananchi wa kawaida, ambalo ndiyo kundi kubwa nchini yamekuwa tofauti na wanasiasa wetu. Takwimu za Tume ya Mabadiliko ya Katiba zinaonesha kuwa maoni ya wananchi wengi yalilenga zaidi masuala ya utawala bora, matumizi ya rasilimali na maisha yao ya kila siku kuliko hata miundo ya muungano ambayo wanasiasa wanaipigania. Wananchi wanakerwa na mfumo uliopo ambao hauna uwajibikaji kwa viongozi na raia. Badala ya kufanya kazi kwa bidii na kupata mapato halali, watu wengi wamekuwa wakiishi kwa ujanja ujanja tu! 
Wakati katika ngazi za juu kuna ufisadi wa kutisha, usemi wa ‘kila mbuzi hula kutokana na urefu wa kamba yake’ umekuwa halali kwa watumishi wa Serikali ambao wametumia nafasi zao kuomba rushwa ndogo ndogo kwa wananchi. Hizi rushwa ndogo ndogo zimekuwa kero kubwa kwa wananchi kwa kuwa zinamkamua maskini huyu hata kile kidogo alichonacho.

Vivyo hivyo, wakati Tanzania imejaliwa utajiri mkubwa wa rasilimali kama vile madini, misitu, mbuga za wanyama na gesi, rasilimali hizi zinaonekana kutokumsaidia mtanzania. Watu waliopewa dhamana ya kusimamia rasilimali hizo wametuangusha kwa kujali maslahi yao binafsi. Matokeo yake ni kuwa raia wa kawaida ameachwa katika maisha yasiyotabirika huku Serikali ikiendelea kuongeza kodi katika bidhaa anazozitumia.
 Tatizo ni Mfumo au Viongozi Wetu?

Mjadala umeibuka kwa muda mrefu sasa juu ya nini kikwazo kikubwa cha maendeleo yetu kama taifa. Kwa mujibu wa baadhi ya wachambuzi mfumo uliopo ndio kikwazo kikubwa kwa nchi yetu kupiga hatua. Lakini kwa upande mwingine kuna wanaoamini kuwa tatizo letu kubwa ni uongozi.

Katika moja ya makala zake za wazi, M.M. Mwanakijiji anatuaminisha kuwa adui mkubwa wa maendeleo yetu ni mfumo haramu uliotengenezwa na utawala wa kifisadi. Kwa mujibu wa Mwanakijiji, “mfumo huu una mchanganyiko wa mifumo midogo midogo ya kisiasa, kiuchumi, na kisheria ambayo msingi wake ni ubinafsi, kutokuwajibika, kulindana, utawala wa hofu, kubebana na kuvumiliana kwa kadri ya kwamba wanufaikaji ni kikundi cha watu wachache walio katika utawala na wale wanaohusiana nao kwa karibu.” 
Kutokana na mrengo huu wa fikra, wakati tunatafuta mchawi wa maendeleo yetu tusianze kushughulika na mtu mmoja mmoja bali tuungalie mfumo huu. Kwa maneno mengine, kiongozi yeyote atakayeingia kufanya kazi katika mfumo huu, hawezi kuleta mabadiliko ya kweli.

Mrengo huu wa fikra kama unavyodadavuliwa na ndugu Mwanakijiji unashawishi kwa kiasi kikubwa. Lakini bado unaibua changamoto kadhaa za kifikra. Kwa mfano, je tumeshafanya udadisi wa kutosha kujua kuwa mfumo huu ulianzia wapi na umeota mzizi lini nchini Tanzania? Je, mfumo huu ulikuwepo hata wakati wa Baba wa Taifa Mwalimu Nyerere? Kwa ajili ya kuibua mjadala zaidi, ningependa kusema bayana kuwa ubinafsi, kutowajibika, kulindana, utawala wa hofu, na kubebana haukuzaliwa na Tanzania. Sidhani kama waasisi wetu walikuwa na utamaduni huu!
Hii ina maana kuwa, na ningependa kumuaminisha na ndugu Mwanakijiji, kuna uhusiano mkubwa kati ya uongozi na mfumo uliopo. Kwa mfano, katiba yetu imempa Rais wa nchi madaraka makubwa sana.  Katika kifungu cha 36 (1) kwa kuzingatia katiba, Rais ana mamlaka ya kuanzisha au kuifuta taasisi ambayo anaona itasaidia au kudhoofisha utendaji wa serikali yake.  Kifungu cha 36 (2) kinampa Rais mamlaka ya kufanya uteuzi wa viongozi waandamizi katika kuendesha taasisi mbalimbali ikiwemo zinazohusika na utungwaji wa sera. Wakati huo tukumbuke kuwa Rais anapoingia madarakani anaenda kutekeleza sera zake kama alivyopewa ridhaa na wapiga kura ambazo kimsingi zinaweza zikashabihiana na mfumo uliopo au zikaubomoa kabisa. Uanzishwaji au ufutwaji wa Taasisi pamoja na uteuzi ni baadhi ya silaha muhimu anazoweza kuzitumia Rais kuleta mabadiliko ya kimfumo.
Kwa mujibu wa Mwanakijiji chama kilichopo madarakani ndio chanzo cha kuendelea kwa mfumo huu dhalimu. Na kwa maoni yake, tunaweza kuondoa mfumo huu kwa kuking’oa chama hiki madarakani na kutoa nafasi kwa vyama vingine.  Kazi kubwa ya uchaguzi imekuwa kusaidia mabadiliko haya katika nchi nyingi. Uingereza inatupa mfano mzuri, ambapo, ingawa wao hawana katiba iliyoandikwa, lakini wamekuwa wakiuondoa utawala usiowafaa kupitia uchaguzi kwa ufanisi mkubwa. Lakini, je kama tatizo ni mfumo na sio viongozi, utasemaje ukikiondoa chama fulani utapata suluhisho? Hayawezi kutokea kama ya Rais Frederick Chiluba wa Zambia?
Kwa maoni yangu,vita hivi vinapaswa kupiganwa kila kona. Mosi, tunahitaji uwepo wa taasisi muhimu kikatiba. Tume ya Jaji Warioba walifanya kazi nzuri sana kutengeneza mifumo ya kiuwajibikaji ambayo wachambuzi wengi wanaziangalia kama chachu za kuondoa huu mfumo dhalimu. Hata hivyo, maswali mengi yameulizwa kuhusu kukosekana kwa TAKUKURU katika Rasimu ya katiba. Taasisi kama hizo zilitakiwa kupewa meno ili ziweze kudhibiti utamaduni huu wa rushwa ndogo ndogo zinazowakosesha haki raia.
Pili, viongozi wanaochaguliwa wanapaswa kuwa wenye nia thabiti ya kuliendeleza taifa na wanaouchukia  mfumo huu dhalimu. Viongozi ambao watakuwa wasikivu wa kilio cha wananchi na walio tayari kuleta mabadiliko katika jamii. Tatu, tunahitaji kuweka misingi ya uwajibikaji katika sheria zetu. Sheria hizo zizingatie pia mazingira ya kisiasa yanayoheshimu ushindani wa haki na zinazowajali wananchi kwa ujumla.
Hatuna budi pia kukubali kuwa sisi wenyewe kama raia wa Tanzania ni kikwazo kikubwa cha kupambana na mfumo huu dhalimu. Tumekuwa tukishabikia ufisadi bila aibu na pengine, kwa utamaduni wetu mbaya wa kuishi kiujanja ujanja, tumekuwa tukihamasisha uvunjaji wa sheria ili kukidhi maslahi yetu binafsi. Hivyo basi, nafasi ya wananchi ni kubwa sana katika kubomoa mfumo huu kwa kuwa ndio wanaochagua viongozi na ndio wanaoweza kushinikiza uwepo wa taasisi za kiuwajibikaji. Mjadala na kutokukubaliana kuhusu muundo wa muungano kisibeze jitihada ya kuundoa mfumo huu dhalimu.
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Good/Bad Muslim => Conciliatory/Hostile Islam?

June 28, 2016, 11:41 pm
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As we mourn the loss of lives of our fellow humans in Istanbul once again we ask ourselves heart-wrenching questions. Below is an attempt from Professor Mbogoni to answer these soul-searching queries. Far below are some tweets that reflects our divided opinion about what Professor Mamdani once posed in terms of the 'dichotomy' of 'Good Muslim, Bad Muslim'?

I pray that your journey through Istanbul’s Ataturk Int’l Airport will have no mishap. That said, I could not resist to respond to your email much as I have tried to stay out of any dialogue to do with Islam as “a religion of peace” vs “radical Islam” as an essentially terroristic religion. Here is my take about the quandary we are in and why.

In my book entitled *The Cross vs The Crescent* (Mkuki na Nyota, 2004), I share the view by Taha Muhammad Taha, the late Sudanese cleric and Islamic scholar, that the Qur’an has two messages, one which is conciliatory and another which is hostile to nonbelievers. These two positions are generally synonymous and reflective of the revelations given to Muhammad in Mecca (the conciliatory/Islam as a religion of peace verses) vs. those revealed in Medina (non-conciliatory to the infidels, verses which are used to justify radical Islam).
The tweets that you shared reflect this dichotomy of the Qur’anic revelations, i.e. tweets that condemn and emphasize on the non-conciliatory nature if Islam vs. those that emphasize Islam being a religion of peace. It is interesting to note from the names of the tweeters that those of Christian persuasion subscribe to the former position while the Muslims subscribe to the later position. Why is this?

First, you will never, and repeat, never hear a Muslim accept the idea of two messages in the Qur’anic revelations, one of peace and one of warfare. Taha Muhammad Taha paid with his life for adamantly maintaining that this was the case. Worse, no Muslim will dare criticize the Qur’an or the Prophet Muhammad. If you don’t believe me, find out what happened to Mama Sophia Kawawa.

Second, in the Western world (and probably other parts) it scares the hell out of many people to think and let alone visualize a scenario that Islam is at war against Christianity. Yet, how many people know about the Islamic division of the world into Dar-al-Islam and Dar-al-Harb and that when Muslims cannot successfully wage war against the infidels they must abide their time?

Third, as my compatriot Charles Makakala is wont of saying, it depends from what vantage point you view things regarding the violence perpetrated in the name of Islam. Those who disclaim terrorism and its perpetrators as un-Islamic and insist that Islam is a religion of peace subscribe to the Meccan conciliatory stance of the Qur’an vs those who claim what they are doing is in the name of Islam and legitimize their actions by the non-conciliatory revelations of the Qur’an which emphasize violence against the infidels.
I don't care how many Muslims condemn the #Istanbul Attacks! I want 2 know how many Muslims condemn their Prophet 4 encouraging these acts.

*Attack on a Muslim country* "Muslims are terrorists. We need to stop Islam." Nice logic people. #PrayForTurkey#Istanbul

#Istanbul Another attack from the "religion of peace"...

how many more attacks on Muslim countries is it gonna take to make people realize that terrorism has no religion #Istanbul

Immigration will bring this here. You can't extend religious freedom to a religion tht doesn't reciprocate #istanbul

A message to everyone who utilize religion to kill innocent people .... No religion justifies killing ~ #Istanbul

Can we stop pretending yet that the world doesn't have a radical Islam problem? #Istanbul

#Istanbul Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.We condemn this act of brutality. 

All these people saying terrorism has no religion. Except 99.9% of the acts committed are in name of Islam. #Istanbul


We will keep saying Islam is not responsible, and this will keep happening all over the world. #Istanbul

Our hearts go out to the victims of this vicious attack on the innocents. The enemies of humanity are enemies of #Islam, Period. #Istanbul
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Storytelling and Children focused Family event

July 2, 2016, 10:14 am
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Live Poetry Featuring Zuhura the African Lioness

July 5, 2016, 1:03 pm
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Ten Years After: Remembering Chachage (1955-2006)

July 8, 2016, 11:41 pm
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As we commemorate the life and times of Chachage Seithy Loth Chachage (8 January 1955 - 9 July 2006) let us recall what he once said on matters that were close to his heart and mind:

"I believe, democracy has to make sense of the interest of the contending groups. It has to be linked to the whole question of restructuring the social relations so that individuals and organisations are able to pose the questions within the context of control of resources and questions of social and political emancipation more sharply. What multi-party politics are doing is to reduce politics to the number of parties and the number of votes. It is for this reason that such politics are elitist, since their assumption is that people do not and are incapable of thinking, and therefore, they must be represented. People are incapable of making their own history, it is only the parties and the state which are capable of doing so. Here the attempt is to even deny the existence of politics outside the parties. Emancipation politics require that one recognises the other sites of politics such as the factory, the farm, the household, the street, the village, the school, etc. They require the involvement of all the people in resisting state arbitrariness and all forms of domination and exploitation. Is it possible to think beyond current party politics? Is it possible for parties which are organically linked to the working people to emerge? What mode of politics will make such a possibility a reality? These are some of the questions which remain hanging given the current political liberalisation" - Chachage's 'Some Reflection on the Limits of Multi-Party Democracy in Africa' in 1993

"For the publishing industry to regain its glory in Tanzania, it needs to abandon the view that it is a specialised concern and uphold the banner of public criticism. This means, it has to be the means, as Oruka puts it, for which the ordinary men and women can expression the fact that they are hungry or jobless. It has to be the means through which corruption, rhetorics and hypocrisy are exposed and condemned. Within this process of public criticism, problems (for example) of the various industries can be exposed, debated and dealt with. It is within the same process that it will be possible for all teachers to decide democratically what should become a textbook or what type of textbook is needed, and hence free textbooks from institutions" -  Chachage on 'The Trouble with the Publishing Industry in Tanzania' in 1989

"Capitalism has been developing at a fast rate in the urban areas and it has done so at the expense of the countryside - this is a law of capitalism in general. Consequently, further development of agricultural enterprises has been constrained by the rapid capitalist accumulation in the towns in terms of drawing labour, capital, raw materials and food from the countryside" - Chachage on 'The Development of Urban Capitalism in Tanzania' in 1983

"It is suggested here that our knowledge can only be as good as the questions we ask. Historical knowledge which whose content represents an intervention in the current social reality as part of a theoretical weapon in current struggles, which is in dire need, is the one which analyses possibilities of social transformations and helps social actors to conceptualise theoretical canons for the transformation of the status quo or for its forced maintenance" - Chachage's 'Some Remarks on Ellen M. Wood's Talk on 'The Limits of Capitalism' in 1999

"What this amounts to is that, contrary to the current myth of a diminished role of the state, what is required to deal with the problem facing our country is a strong developmental state, which is at the same time democratic. That is, the challenge for us is how to emerge with development policies that will result in the building of a state-society nexus that is developmental, democratic, and socially inclusive.  By developmental is meant a state that is capable of facilitating and promoting economic growth while at the same time protecting national interests. Democratic means a state-society relationship that is based on popular control by the majority of those who are poor and marginalised. And socially inclusive means pursuing social policies that aim at provision of equal and equitable entitlements to productive and reproductive resources" - Chachage on 'Why is Tanzania Still Poor Forty Years After Independence?' in 2003
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Miaka Kumi Baadaye: Itikeli ya Chachage (1955-2006)

July 9, 2016, 1:07 am
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"Maishani mwangu nimejifunza kuwa mvumilivu, kutafuta ukweli - japo kwa kiwango changu na ujinga wangu, na kutamani kufanya yaliyo haki.... Jaala yetu imekuwa moja. Na tuwatakie heri wajao yasiwapate haya....Siku yangu ya kufa ijapo, mawazo yangu ya mwisho yatakuwa juu yenu nyie, wala msinililie. Hakuna sababu. Nikumbukeni daima." - Sudi ya Yohana - C.S.L Chachage (1981: 99): Dar es Salaam University Press
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Jipu Kuu Kutumbuliwa na Gamba Gumu Kuvuliwa?

July 21, 2016, 5:43 pm
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Jipu Kuu 

Kuna jipu na majipu, matabibu hutujulisha
Lipo lilo kama upupu, huwasha kwa bashasha! 
Ukubwae wa kikapu, hutuvimbia kama kasha
Kuu hili la Majipu, lini tatumbuliwa Asha?

Lishaiva hilo jipu, mbona bado twajipasha?
Au hadi twanguke pu, ndo twache kulilisha?
Hatuuchoki huu utupu, wauchekao Watasha?
Kuu hili la Majipu, lini tatumbuliwa Asha?

E Mtumbua Majipu, twaona rasha rasha
Sasa situmie diripu, wasiseme la hasha!
Libane kama tiripu, litoboke bila kubisha
Kuu hili la Majipu, lini tatumbuliwa Asha?

Uchungu wa vijipu, asiyeujua Washawasha
Muwashwa wa Kishapu, utungu wamtosha!
 Jipu Kuu la Majipu, lioshwe kama Muosha
Kuu hili la Majipu, lini tatumbuliwa Asha?

© Malenga Mdadisi

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Jipu Hilo Jipu Gani?

Jipu Hilo jipu gani
Jipu lisilo na haiba
Jipu lisilo utani
Wala homa nasaba

Jipu liko ndani
Sistimu hukuna uhaba
Jipu limejaa uvundo usoni
Jipu lazima litumbuliwe

Bara na pwani
Mashariki kusini
Magharibi kaskazini
Mtumbuaji ashike pini
Huruma asiweke moyoni
Apasue jipu pwaaaa

Usaha uondoe nukhsani
Taifa letu adhimu
Lifurahie neema ya Mola mwenye Imani
Alotupa dhahabu na madini
Mito, mabonde, na mengi milimani
Hala Hala Watanzania, 
Shangilia awamu yenye nidhamu

© Leila Sheikh
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Can Magufuli Control His State Apparatuses?

July 30, 2016, 4:59 am
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Can Magufuli Control His State Apparatuses?

Chambi Chachage


I am scared. What my President said in Singida has left me with goose pimples. The Citizen has not helped with this headline: 'Magufuli relaxes political rally ban, warns Chadema.' Nor Daily News with 'JPM Advises CHADEMA to drop defiance day move.'

What I heard through the video clip of the speech and read on the social media comes out more strongly. It is forceful. The President of Tanzania did not mince any words. As clear as crystal are the parameters that he has 'set' for the opposition parties to operate.

Of course, as 'usual', he was talking 'off the top of his head'. Hence such charged statements are prone to multiple interpretations and misinterpretations. Yet one can hardly doubt that he literarily made himself a prey to constitutional lawyers who would be quick to argue he has breached the very Constitution he is sworn to uphold.

Note, for instance, how the Leader of the Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo) party, Zitto Kabwe, has interpreted Magufuli's clarification: "The President says he has not interdicted Members of Parliament and Ward Councillors from holding meetings "IN THEIR CONSTITUENTS'. First of all, the President has no mandate to allow or disallow the functions of Members of Parliament and Ward Councillors. This is the mandate of the CONSTITUTION and the law of the land."

"What is shocking", the ACT-Wazalendo Leader further notes, "is the Presidential directive that Members of Parliament have no mandate to hold meetings outside their constituents." For him and his party, this "means that even political leaders who are not Member of Parliament would not be allowed to hold political rallies." They thus hold their ground: "This is UNACCEPTABLE."

Rhetorically, the lawyer of CHADEMA, Tundu Lissu, who is on the record accusing Magufuli for being a 'petty dictator', queries if his political statements are indeed coming from the ones who have been advocating for national unity? Tellingly, he also argues that the strength of the President's argument does not stem from lucidity but from the power of the instruments of the state that he controls.

This brings us to Louis Althusser who, lucidly, attempted to make sense of how such powerful instruments operate. He aptly noted that the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA), such as the police and the court let alone the army and the prison, functions by violence in a contrast to Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA), like educational institutions and political parties, that function by ideology.

However, he observed that in practise there is a thin line between the two hence his clarification that "every State Apparatus, whether Repressive or Ideological, 'functions' both by violence and by ideology, but with one very important distinction which makes it imperative not to confuse" them. "This", Althusser convincingly pointed out, "is the fact that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning secondarily by ideology."

So, what does this have to do with President Magufuli? It simply tells us when you are as popular as him, your best ally in retaining the people on your side is to primarily focus on ideology. This mean your ally in pushing for your agenda for transformation is, relatively, an ideological state apparatus such as the party he is now chairing and the schools and universities his government owns.

Any attempt to rely to much on repression through the repressive state apparatuses will not only alienate him from the leading opposition party but, ultimately, from the very people who are still enjoying the honeymoon of the new presidency. After all, when you are on record stating that the the opposition parties are in a state of lethargy, why expend so much energy to control their movement?

Experts on scenario-buildings have presented plausible trajectories that Magufuli's presidency can take. It is not yet too late to pick the best possible outcome(s). For Aidan Eyakuze it is this definitely not this paternalistic one: "'Father Knows Best' posture may produce an initially popular benevolent authoritarianism in the short term. But without a deep sense of self-awareness and a healthy dose of moderation on the part of the President, it can turn into bitter despotism." It is surely this: “We are on this journey together.”

Sabatho Nyamsenda's scenario is analogical if historical: "The rise of Magufuli may be likened to that of Louis–Napoleon Bonaparte, who ruled France between 1848 and 1870."Its deeper irony is that Mwalimu Nyerere whose presidency is now popularly likened to that of Magufuli once said we do not need an African Napoleon.

For us, the bumpy road to dictatorial hell can be paved with good developmental intentions hence a call to democratize development. 
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Magufuli Atamuunga Mkono Kikwete Kugombea AU?

July 31, 2016, 10:51 pm
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Makala yaliyoandikwa kwenye Gazeti mmoja nchini Botswana na kuwasilishwa kwetu na rafiki kutoka Uganda yamechochea mjadala kuhusu hatma ya Uchaguzi wa Mwenyekiti wa Kamisheni ya 'Umoja wa Afrika (AU)' uliosogezwa hadi mwakani kufuatia 'kura kutotosha'. Tukumbuke kwamba Botswana ni nchi mojawapo iliyokuwa na mgombea wa nafasi hiyo, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, ambayo kwa sasa inashikiliwa na Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma wa Afrika Kusini. Lakini tukumbuke kwamba uhusiano wa Rais wa Botswana, Ian Khama, na AU umekuwa unatiliwa mashaka na baadhi ya wadadisi wa mambo. Uganda nayo ilikuwa na mgombea wake, Specioza Wandira Kazibwe, ambaye (alikuwa) 'anaungwa mkono' na Serikali ya Tanzania. Blogu ya Udadisi inauwasilisha uchambuzi ufuatao wa kimuktadha uliofanywa na Mwanazuoni Dastan Kweka ili kutusaidia kuelewa nafasi ya Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete kukikwaa kiti hicho na hatma ya Diplomasia ya Tanzania katika Nchi za Maziwa Makuu, Afrika Ya Mashariki na Kusini:

Ili tuelewe chimbuko la huu wasiwasi wa kama Rais (Magufuli) atamuunga mkono Rais Mstaafu (Kikwete) katika kuwania nafasi ya Mwenyekiti wa Kamisheni ya Umoja wa Afrika, AU, (kama itatokea), ni vema tukaangalia ni namna gani Rais (Magufuli) ameshirikiana na Rais Mwingine Mstaafu (Mkapa) katika jukumu lake la usuluhishi (facilitator) wa mgogoro wa Burundi. 

Baada ya Rais Mstaafu (Mkapa) kuteuliwa na Jumuiya ya Afrika ya Mashariki kuwa 'muwezeshaji' wa juhudi za kutatua mgogoro wa Burundi, alianza kuzunguka katika ukanda huu kuonana na wadau mbalimbali ambao aliona ni muhimu katika kufanikisha mkutano wa kwanza (Tukumbuke kuwa ule uliokua umepangwa Desemba (2015) kule Uganda ulikuwa wa 'uzinduzi wa mazungumzo', na uliopangwa mwezi wa Februari na baadaey Machi (2016) haukufanyika. Hivyo basi, baada ya mzunguko, Rais Mkapa alimalizia kwa kuonana na Rais Magufuli na baada ya mazungumzo yao aliandika kwenye ukurasa wake wa twitter kuhusu 'kuruhusiwa' kufanya mkutano wa kwanza, kama inavyoonekana hapa chini:


Ni vema kukumbuka kuwa  kipindi Rais Mkapa anasema alikuwa amepata ruhusa (na uungwaji mkono?), Rais Magufuli alikuwa ametoka Rwanda mapema mwezi huo ambako alishiriki katika maadhimisho ya kumbukumbu ya mauaji ya kimbari ya Rwanda (Tarehe 07/04/2016). Pia ni vema kukumbuka kuwa, wiki moja tu baada ya Rais Magufuli kutoka Rwanda, Rais Pierre Nkurunziza wa Burundi alituma ujumbe maalumu kwa Rais Magufuli. Mjumbe maalumu "alimueleza Rais Magufuli kwamba ametumwa kuleta barua hiyo pamoja na shukrani za dhati kwa Tanzania ambayo ni rafiki, jirani na ndugu wa kweli wa Burundi kwa ushirikiano mzuri inaoupata" (msisitizo wangu). 

Jambo ambalo lilikuwa la wazi katika ujumbe maalumu uliotumwa na Rais Nkurunziza na ambalo halikuandikwa na gazeti nililolinukuu hapo juu ni kuwa Rais Nkurunziza alikua na hofu na hatua ya Rais Magufuli kufanya safari yake ya kwanza nje ya nchi kwa kwenda Rwanda, ukizingatia uhasimu wa muda mrefu baina ya nchi hizo mbili. Hivyo lengo hasa lilikuwa ni kuikumbusha Tanzania kuhusu uhusiano wake na Burundi na hasa kwa Burundi/Nkurunziza kuonesha nia yake ya kuendelea kuimarisha mahusiano hayo. Mbali na ujumbe huo maalumu, uhusiano baina ya Tanzania na Rwanda umezidi kuimarika na matokeo yake, kwa upande mwingine, uhusiano baina ya Tanzania na Burundi umeendelea kudorora. Rais Magufuli amenukuliwa katika vyanzo mbalimbali akimuita Rais Kagame 'ndugu yangu, kaka yangu' n.k. 

Pia, ni vema kuweka wazi kuwa, mazungumzo ya kwanza yahusuyo mgogoro wa Burundi yaliyofanyika mwezi wa 5 mwaka huu, yalifanyika katika muktadha huu wa kuimarika kwa mahusiano baina ya Rwanda na Tanzania na 'kutelekezwa' kwa mahusiano baina ya Tanzania na Burundi. Athari ya hatua hii, kwa mtazamo wangu ni kuwa Rais Mkapa, ambaye anaitwa 'muwezeshaji' (facilitator), huku Rais Museveni akiwa 'mpatanishi' (Mediator), ni kuwa ingawa Rais Mkapa amefanikiwa kufanya mikutano miwili mpaka sasa (Mmoja Mei na Mwingine Julai), amefanya hivyo katika wakati ambao Tanzania ina ushawishi mdogo sana kwa Burundi na haishangazi kuwa inamuwia vigumu sana kupiga hatua maana, kuna mantiki kufikiri kuwa, Nkurunziza siyo msikivu kwa Tanzania kama ilivyokuwa kabla ya mabadiliko niliyoyaeleza kwenye aya zilizotangulia. Kuna taarifa za kichambuzi kuwa Burundi ilipoona Tanzania 'imeitelekeza', ilizigeukia Angola, Afrika ya Kusini na China na Urusi (kwenye Umoja wa Mataifa-UN), katika mkakati wa kusukuma ajenda zake katika ngazi mbalimbali. 

Maswali ya msingi ya kujiuliza na ambayo yanaweza kutusaidia kuelewa chimbuko la fununu za kama Rais (Magufuli) 'atamuunga' mkono Rais Mstaafu (Kikwete), ni je, kama Rais (Magufuli) alimruhusu muwezeshaji wa utatuzi wa mgogoro wa Burundi (Mkapa) kuendelea na hatua za kuandaa mikutano, hakujua kuwa kuendelea na juhudi zake za kuimarisha mahusiano yake na Rwanda tena kwa kasi ya ajabu, kungekuwa na madhara fulani, hasa hasi, dhidi ya juhudi za 'muwezeshaji'? Na je, kama alijua hivyo, ile ya 'green light' ambayo Rais Mkapa aliipata, ilikuwa ni uungwaji mkono wa roho moja au ilikua ni 'kafanye unavyoweza'? Nafikiri uzoefu huu unaweza kuwa ndio chimbuko la msingi sana la wasiwasi iwapo Rais (Magufuli) atamuunga mkono Rais mstaafu (Kikwete) iwapo atawania nafasi ya Mwenyekiti wa Kamisheni ya Umoja wa Afrika (AUC). Na hivyo basi, kutokumuunga huko mkono, kama kukitokea, kimantiki, hakutatokea waziwazi bali katika mazingira kama haya niliyoyaeleza. 

Jambo jingine ambalo siyo la kusahau ni kuwa, tangu Rais (Magufuli) aingie madarakani, ameonekana kuweka mkazo zaidi katika diplomasia ya kiuchumi katika ukanda huu. Hata hivyo, zaidi zaidi anaonekana kuwa Rais ambaye anaangalia zaidi ndani (inward looking) kuliko kuangalia kote kote. Mpaka sasa hajahudhuria kikao chochote cha SADC, AU au cha ICGLR. kuna maswali mengi iwapo anaipa diplomasia ya bara zima (continent-wide diplomacy) umuhimu katika kufanikisha ajenda zake. Kwa mantiki hii, inawezekana pia asione umuhimu mkubwa sana katika 'kumuunga' mkono Rais Kikwete. 

Rais Magufuli anaonekana kuwa na nakisi ya uelewa wa mambo ya diplomasia. Ukaribu wake na Rwanda unaibua maswali mengi kuhusu mustakabali wa diplomasia ya nchi yetu dhidi ya Burundi, DRC na Kenya. Kikwete ni mjuzi katika hili. Tayari Rais Kikwete anaonekana kupata majukumu mengi kimataifa kuliko hata Rais Mkapa alipostaafu. Kwa Rais anayeonekana kupenda umaarufu kama Magufuli, kumuunga mkono Kikwete katika adhma hiyo ni kuchagua (na kukubali) kuendelea kuishi katika kivuli cha umahiri wa diplomasia ya mtangulizi wake kwa kipindi cha miaka 4/5 ijayo - mpaka 2020/2021, na hata baada ya hapo. 

Ngoja tuone. 
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Reforming Makerere: Mamdani's Dream Deferred?

August 1, 2016, 8:06 pm
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Reforming Makerere: Mamdani's Dream Deferred?

Chambi Chachage


This is one of those embarrassing moments when a writer ought to declare his 'conflict of interests' at the outset. My reading of Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire's Decolonising Makerere: On Mamdani’s Failed Experiment is colored by my personal and public interactions with the intellectual he is critiquing and his students at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR). Putting these camps into conversation would enable one to see why compelling as they are, most criticisms in the cited critique are confounding.

Our problem starts with Mwesigire's conflation of Mamdani's conceptions of colonialism and neoliberalism as well as treating the institute as if it is the embodiment of the university. Let us start with the latter. He writes: "Mamdani has said that the fate of Makerere affects him personally – commenting that “as a product of Makerere…I should also play my part in this reform process” – and in 2010, he got his opportunity to play this role when [he] was appointed director of....MISR." The verdict on the 'Nyanzi Affair' is then used as the basis of concluding that "Decolonizing Makerere" is "Mamdani's Failed Experiment." Hence we are told "Makerere’s march to become an inferior replica of an Anglo-American university in the name of “excellence” continues, led by Mamdani."

Now let us revisit the 'text of talk' that informed the piece Mwesigire cited and see if Mamdani had such a big dream and role. In a section entitled 'Decolonization', Mamdani aptly argues about the centrality of both research and producing researchers in making a university independent. The most important lesson they learned in the first six months, he pointed out, was the need to deepen their understanding of what it means to do so. "We could start a PhD program at MISR and borrow the curriculum from Columbia or Harvard", he further noted, but argued that they "would then be a satellite station of Columbia or Harvard...." This, he noted, left them with these questions: "What should we teach, at this time and in this place? What should be the content of our curriculum?"

Yet Mwesigire claims that Mamdani said "that a university becomes independent only if it is research-based, in combination with teaching."  If that were the case, so many a university in Africa would be decolonized! What Mamdani actually did was to revisit the "protracted" search for an answer on how to come up with a decolonized curriculum. This was hardly a case of a Savior of Makerere who knew exactly how to decolonize its teaching.

Here is snapshot of what they went through:"We began by holding a brainstorming session with colleagues in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Addis Ababa University and the University of Western Cape. In 2011, we held five workshops under an umbrella title: Contemporary Debates. The idea was to invite scholars from around the world; not just from the Western world, but from the entire scholarly world, including China, India, and Africa." 

In doing so, their dream was to get a new "curriculum global in content but crafted from a Ugandan, East African and African perspective." Thus, for Mamdani there is no way decolonizing the university could only be about doing research and producing researchers as those are neutral processes. In fact, he insists that the "question of perspective is important because research is not about finding answers to preset questions but about formulating new questions in response to both the evergreen flow of life and ongoing debates in and around the academy" as the "answer you get depends on the question you ask and the question you ask depends on who you are, where you are, and the dilemmas." How then can Mwesigire miss this apt point that implies that colonized questions tend to yield colonial answers in un-decolonized research settings?

Without presenting any analysis of the content of the curriculum that came out of that lengthy process or even the list of courses that is freely available on MISR's official website, Mwesigire jumps to this conclusion: "The PhD programme could also be critiqued from a decolonial perspective. Mamdani shied away from decolonising the structure and form of the university, and MISR’s PhD followed disciplinary modes developed in Western universities. Generally, Makerere remains a mimic of British and US universities aspiring towards their definition of excellence." There goes the conflation.

For sure - and to be fair to Mwesigire - the painful process of decolonization that Frantz Fanon eloquently unpacked on the eve of independence has not been fully achieved at Makerere in general and MISR in particular. However, intellectual honesty demands that we also deal fairly with Mamdani by providing evidence, if any, of his allegedly shying away from decolonizing MISR's PhD program.

Probably no one is a better candidate to 'vouch' for Mamdani than Sabatho Nyamsenda who is among those Mwesigire refers to as "dissenting Makerere students." In a debate we had on our network of 'Wanazuoni: Tanzania's Intellectuals', in 2015, I argued that, historically, the inspiration behind the new MISR was not 'purely' from African institutions. Nyamsenda's rebuttal was categorical if ironical: "MISR haifuati mfumo wa kimarekani. Nitajie inter-disciplinary PhD huko Marekani. Wamarekani wenyewe wanakuja kujifunza toka kwetu. Hiyo inter-disciplinarity inatokana na mapambano ya wanafunzi na UDSM miaka ya 1960. Iliundwa kamati maalum ya kufuta disciplines UDSM na kulikuwa na [midahalo] mikali juu ya hili. Fuatilia mijadala hiyo, nyaraka zipo; na wapambanaji wenyewe akina Hirji, Shivji, Visram, wapo. Inspiration imetoka UDSM sio Columbia." What he meant, if my truncated translation would do him justice, is that the inspiration came from the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) where Mamdani once taught rather than Columbia where he has been teaching and even Americans come to learn from them at MISR.

Elsewhere, Nyamsenda basked in the success of student struggles in shaping the curriculum when I cited this statement from Mamdani as a proof  that there are also influences other than African: "We agreed that nothing less than the development of a process of endogenous knowledge creation, including a full-time, coursework-based, inter-disciplinary PhD program, would do... Though we started with this ambition, the tendency was to borrow the curriculum from the Western academy – wherever each of us had just taught or graduated from – as a turnkey project. So students in the MISR doctoral program were supposed to take two courses in theory, Western Political Thought, Plato to Marx in their first year and another titled Contemporary Western Political Thought in their second year. At the same time, The Muqaddimah was to be read in a third course titled Major Debates in the Study of Africa. It is the students who began to ask whether we could redesign the theory courses so they are less West-centric and more a response to the needs of this time and this place. It is in this context that we began reading The Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun, first in a study group in 2011 and then in a PhD seminar in 2012."

So, what happened between 2015, when Nyamsenda affirmed the  ongoing decolonizing process, and 2016 when he asserts, just like Mwesigire, that MISR's PhD Program is highly Americanized? 

Could it be that the personalization of the decolonization struggles between strong (academic/activist) personalities - the Mamdanis, Nyanzis, Nyamsendas and Naimasiahs - at MISR has drawn the Mwesigire towards picking sides at the expense of capturing the nuances? As we pointed out in Misery at MISR: Looking Beyond Mamdani and Nyanzi, it is important to go to the crux of the matter.

By invoking phrases such as "the Mamdani experiment" and "the one-man vision at Makerere", Mwesigire is even closing the door that the revolutionary 'troika' of 'dissident' MISR students have been attempting to open for the sake of 'survivors justice' in this diagnosis: "Therefore, while the MISR project was established as anti-neoliberal, anti-colonial, enough thought and reflection did not seem to have gone into the institutional set-up to house this dream."

Don't you think deep down, in his intellectual core, Mamdani would not agree more with his students? After all, he is the one who argued that, institutionally, "the starting point of the critique of neoliberalism in higher education is to recognize that a university is not a business corporation but a place for scholarly pursuit. Its objective is to maximize scholarship, not profits. It is true that no one who lives in this world, even those with otherworldly pursuits like religious organizations, can afford to be blind to financial constraints and that a university is no exception to this rule. But if scholarship is indeed our core mission, then we must be prepared to subordinate all other considerations, including the financial, to the pursuit of scholarship. To forget this would be to lose our way."

Lest we forget, Langston Hughes thus remind us, rhetorically:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
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Tone la Mwisho - The Last Drop

August 13, 2016, 9:18 pm
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Reading Khanga, Exploring Academia

August 21, 2016, 8:42 pm
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Reading Khanga, Exploring Academia

Diana Kamara

With excitement I picked a topic on “Reading Khanga as a Historical Source”. History, whom I have met a few times, seen here and there is becoming a familiar figure. I can listen, laugh or even ask him when he permits. But when I want to talk, he wants evidence. He says if he had let everybody talk he would have died in infancy. He survives on evidence. It has to be his story.

I said “Mwanamke hupigwa kwa upande wa khanga”(A woman is beaten by a piece of khanga). He replied: “Can it be verified or revisited?” It is not just evidence, terms and conditions apply as well. The evidence has to be weaved into arguments and may be then he will listen, depending also on this patron’s mood.

I am struggling, not just with evidence and argument, but also with Objectivity. He works in the discipline office, he trains you to distance yourself from yourself. And if you try to bypass your non-academic memory and thus become a big time professor, then people can listen to the memory of that young woman. He assures you they will love how you turned frustration into inspiration. You will be a living monument, book after book, and conference after conference, until you shake hands with the Marx, Hobbes and any of your favorites men of letters and historians, in print. If you want to have a conversation with yourself, don’t be loud – and use holidays, not school time.

Yet I thought I was writing about my womanhood and the femininity and masculinity around me. Of that khanga we used as a curtain in the village house, I may not be able to speak about it now. It is the gap I have found in the studies on khanga that I am supposed to focus on even if the literature confines it to embodiment. As a friend recently reminded me, I claim to come to the Academy have come to write stories my mother can read. Stories are for verandas, he insists; if trends allow, they will be archived, it is the new truth I found. Objectivity says I should grow out of my mother’s khanga.

After navigating Postmodernism, Long Durée, Marxism and all their cousins, holidays are coming.  How am I going to tell my mother the story of khanga? Of my grandmother whom I know partly from her photos and somehow connected to through the khanga? She did not feel as distant until I read that I am not also connected to other women’s struggles here but also to the whole of the Swahili coast, the Indian Ocean World and even the Dutch who produced early khanga. I am now connected to people from the late 19th century who will never reconnect with me.

Academics are busy reading people as problems and reading each other as debates. I am on that path now of reading, historicizing and trying to ask the right questions about khanga. My memory is not even of the native informant; it is that of the research assistant. Now I am not sure whose essay this is, those who have felt something for khanga and written about it or I who claim to be the legitimate heir apparent of khanga stories. It is funny that we read Machiavelli’s hopes as concrete program and I cannot even share a bit of my memory. Or when I do, I declare almost with embarrassment that it is my own voice.

After that we say: “subaltern this, marginalized that!” Bear with me, I am learning; I am not the ‘minority’. That term comes with political and economic or even social marginalization. I feel like to raise my voice for the sake of my memories is attempting to sail alone while others have big vessels and have accumulated the knowledge to challenge the sea.  No wonder during my holidays a year ago my aunt told me:

“You should be grateful, when you finished high school while some of your colleagues were dropping out pregnant. Truly, many of your peers from University are married, but don’t you know how men can get when you are educated? You go and read at peace while thanking God for all he has done to you. But bring us good news before you finish. The way I see you, it will be a Muzungu.”
 
These readings are probably adding to my frustrations. This will not reach a psychiatry level because it is not under ‘nervous conditions’. The Swahili are cosmopolitan people, so the books read. When I tried speaking my parents’ language, they said I am Mswahili because of the heavy accent. There is a man who was looking for some degree of belonging in relation to my parents’ ‘tribe’– and supposedly mine too – to propose. The ‘interview’ included these prerequisites: if I could speak the Haya language, cook matoke and knew my clan name given that I was born and raised in Dar es Salaam. Once a young man from my neighborhood whistled to me, one dadatold him (for me too to hear) “Her caliber are men from Masaki/Oysterbay” i.e. Uzunguni. But Keko for me is Uswahilini. Our parents may speak ‘vernacular’ to us, but we played in Kiswahili with friends, listened to Radio Tanzania and English was the ‘Math’ of primary school where all subjects were in Kiswahili.

What rubs salt to my wounds is that the scholars I choose to blend in with in the humanistic traditions don’t have me in mind when they write about the Swahili. It is as if they have turned the binoculars upside down. For them, Swahili is Muslim and patriarchal; Zanzibar and Mombasa.

So, here I am, hanging out with besties in Dar and following a bit of trends on Insta. I am just trying to see how I slot in the ‘grey areas’ I found about khanga while Nita is swearing at her mother that Ambindwile is not the father of Chimwemwe’s baby. Yet all along, I was reading so as to connect with my friends and our mothers; and the few times we have bought each other khanga in turns. 

And here I am claiming to be in a humanities college. Have we imagined these humans too much that they reflect theory? Are humans are in the same direction but in different lanes which command different road safety instructions? Or what is social about this science that will deprive me of the social life that I have longed for the whole year?
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A Bright or Bleak Future for the Opposition?

September 3, 2016, 6:39 pm
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A Bright or Bleak Future for the Opposition in Tanzania?

Chambi Chachage

“Indeedall dictatorships are basically weak; because the means they apply ingovernance make them inherently unstable” – Mwalimu Julius Nyerere

Tanzanians appear united about the positive outcomes of the postponement of nationwide marches that were slated for September 1st. It diffused the political tension that reached its peak with arrests of some politicians. However, we seem divided on its implication on the future of opposition politics in our country.
First, there are those who believe that the ‘Party of Democracy and Development’ (CHADEMA) bluffed and got discredited by failing to go ahead with the protest.  Its ‘United Front for Protesting Dictatorship in Tanzania (UKUTA)’, they think, crumbled. Ironically, this acronym is a Kiswahili word that stands for ‘The Wall’.

Postponing to October 1st, such critics feel, is another game of bluff. The wall has fallen. And the little credibility left is lost. Gone is CHADEMA’s golden chance to redeem itself after discrediting its anti-corruption credentials by nominating, as its presidential candidate, someone it had aptly branded ‘the face of corruption’.
 
CHADEMA’s ally in the ‘Coalition of the People’s Constitution’ (UKAWA), Civic United Front (CUF), is also facing a crisis of legitimacy. Its former chairperson, Professor Ibrahim Lipumba wants to be reinstated. Ironically, he resigned in 2015 after these opposition parties nominated a former Prime Minister, Edward Lowassa, who had defected from the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM).

Julius Mtatiro, CUF’s interim chairperson, has publicly accused a relatively new party known as Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo) for colluding with Professor Lipumba and the “system” to destabilize it. Evasively, the co-founder of ACT-Wazalendo, Professor Kitila Mkumbo, has dismissed the allegations by arguing that “the first step in solving a problem is to attribute its cause internally” but once you start “attributing it externally you're close to failing to solving it” as “you have absolutely no control of the external forces”.
 
UKAWA is in shambles. No wonder it hardly supported CHADEMA’s UKUTA. As we have noted elsewhere, we had been there before. The rise and fall of leading opposition parties in Tanzania is almost cyclic. There was a time the National Convention for Construction and Reform (NCCR-Mageuzi) led the pack, now it is a shadow of its past glories. Then CUF came up. Now CHADEMA is on the brink.
 
One wonders whether this is now the moment for ACT-Wazalendo to seize the day. Curiously, on August 3rd, its leader, Zitto Kabwe, penned an article entitled: Will the real Opposition emerge under Magufuli’s repressive CCM?“The author and his colleagues, like the former CHADEMA Secretary General, Wilbrod Slaa,” he reminisces therein, “used the parliament to legitimise opposition politics by raising corruption scandals and holding the government to account.” He then reiterates that the “opposition in general and CHADEMA in particular lost the platform during the 2015 elections and literally handed it to the CCM candidate.”

But for him, there was an ‘outlier’ in the opposition – his party. “Other parties like ACT Wazalendo”, he asserts, “had a more clear agenda on anti-corruption but its voice wasn’t heard in the campaign dominated by two candidates.” Noting that “many people have started to write obituaries for the opposition”, he calls “for the rise of real opposition politics.” By this, he means: “One-agenda politics must pave way for issues-based politics.” In other words, CHADEMA is thus no longer, or not (yet), ‘real’. Why? Because his “real opposition will have to engage in providing a critical analysis of the regime and offer an alternative policy.” 
As if the main opposition party was not engaging in issues-based politics before we are told that: “Issues like budget management will be critical as signs are out there that the fifth phase government will have more adverse audit opinion than any other before.” Another issue is “Tax revenues”, which he alleges, “are still at the levels of the previous administration.” One is left wondering what then were those alternative budget speeches by the shadow minister for finance all about?

Lest I put words on one’s mouth let’s revisit these concluding remarks of his that have galvanized our pragmatic ‘twiterati’: “These are the issues the opposition must bring up. Well-articulated issues backed by expert evidence. Critical analysis of data and of government actions and reactions. The era of scandal-raising politics is over; the regime has co-opted it. Only politics of solutions can support the opposition now. The steady slide towards repression must be fought vehemently. But if the opposition does not articulate issues affecting the day-to-day lives of people, the repression will be supported by people. A coalition of likeminded people who have credentials to fight against corruption and articulate developmental politics must emerge and take up the ideological bankruptcy existing in the country now. Lack of issues and business as usual weaken the opposition and discredit most of our moves, including the recent UKUTA operation.” As we have noted, he wrote this way before September 1st.
When our inquisitive mind queried whether these remarks are “Analogous to the call for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to be 'service delivery' CSOs and not of 'Advocacy' CSOs?” Rakesh Rajani (@rakeshrajani) twitted: “@Udadisi‪ I don't read @zittokabwe as saying either/or, but that scandal mongering will not help people achieve aspirations #IdeasKwanza.” For him, “critique and exposure are necessary, but insufficient”, so, “practical ideas for change [are] needed too.”

Rakesh Rajani is clearly speaking from his vantage point as a leading proponent of the ‘Theory of Change’, a ‘toolkit’ he attempted to apply in Tanzania while founding and heading the now famous CSOs known as Twaweza. One cannot help but notice that the key opposition party that has his like-minded people is ACT-Wazalendo. After all, both Professor Kitila Mkumbo and Honorable Zitto Kabwe have consulted for Twaweza as the latter’s public declaration of wealth attest.
Moreover, Rakesh Rajani who is now based at the Ford Foundation in New York was also instrumental in organizing Zitto Kabwe’s discussions on political issues with Tanzanians in the United States of America. This is a trip that also saw the icon of ACT-Wazalendo spend some time at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) of governance. One can also get a glimpse of what he was learning in the ‘Executive Education’ program on ‘Rethinking Financial Inclusion (RFI): Smart Design for Policy and Practice’ by skimming the books on Portfolios of the Poor and Poor Economics that he attached in this tweet: “Offering solutions to Risk Question posed by top notch researchers of the world. ‪#SocialSecurity‪#Harvard‪#RFI.”
Such is the context that enables one to see how technocratic approaches to politics are shaped. It is not by accident that we are seeing the meeting of the minds between those who started as activists and shifted to being pragmatists. Now, for them, change primarily comes through roundtables and not the streets.
Yes, in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) with Kigoma Municipal Council under ACT-Wazalendo’s leadership that recently saw the Executive Director of Twaweza, Aidan Eyakuze (who is also a Steering Committee Member of OGP), come together withthe Member of Parliament for Kigoma Urban, Zitto Kabwe, alongside the ever versatile Professor Kitila Mkumbo and others stakeholders to develop an action plan for implementing OGP’s pilot program in the municipality.
Not everyone is ready to openly look at all these ‘interlocking’ engagements akin to ‘interlocking directorates’ and unpack their pros and cons. But if we set aside our vested interests, we can fathom why, in these times of UKUTA, a leader of an opposition party that appear as the ‘new kid on the block’ would be bold enough to state that: “Once our modus operandi changes and we start tackling issues and articulate them, the real opposition will emerge, stronger and ready to govern.” 
Governing, not marching, seems to be the buzzword for the new opposition. Little wonder Zitto Kabwe informs us elsewhere that: “The opposition governs more than 20 local government authorities [LGAs] in the country. Service delivery to the people in these LGAs [is] CRITICAL.” Tellingly, Edward Lowassa is also on the record claiming that their CHADEMA has graduated from being an activist party to one organizing to be governing. The governance prize they are all aiming for, of course, is the very state they are all complaining is ‘undoing’ democracy. 
Even our leading critic of the neoliberal discourse of ‘good governance’ vis-à-vis ‘good leadership’, Issa Shivji (@IssaShivji) seems mesmerized by our new breed of pragmatic politicians. “Politics”, he affirms, must prioritize and strategize as it “embrace/articulate burning concerns of the masses”. Whither his ‘organize’, ‘mobilize’ and ‘agitate’? Or ‘populism’ can now hand ‘power’ on a silver platter?

I am still convinced that the activist politics of protest and whistleblowing are still very crucial, not least because the state apparatuses want to dictate the war against corruption, that is, make all of us fight or cheer it in their own terms. We have seen it recently with the agile move to stop prosecuting three CCM’s Members of Parliament. It is visible in the handling of the Lugumi scandal that is purported to be as sensitive to matters of‘national security’ as that of Meremeta. When one of the repressive state apparatuses ‘asks’ ‪@JamiiForumsto give it names of anonymous whistleblowers, we should know 'scandal mongering' still matters.
Hence it is premature, if not irresponsible, to affirm that “the era of scandal-raising politics is over” just because “the regime has co-opted it.” Why would any opposition anywhere in the world be ready to dance to a populist tune of the regime’s orchestra conductor while it is well known that the ‘powers that be’ even if ‘progressive’ do or cover almost anything to protect a ‘ruler’ from falling? 
Like ‘Castle Black’ in the ‘Game of Thrones’, CHADEMA’s wall might have been breached. But this should not be a sufficient reason to radically change its own modus operandi that has shaken the building blocks for ‘dictatorship’. In a way, theanticipated show of force by repressive state apparatuses and recurring counterstatements from ideological state apparatuses are indicators of how responsive our ‘governors’ are to criticism. When they feel its pinch they listen.
Quantifying the number of democratic ideals that have been preserved this way could help us see why it is still imperative to appeal to the inner core of the good-hearted ‘leaders’ of our country. Their conscience cannot let them sleep at night without looking at the mirror to see whether what the opposition is protesting in them is indeed true. So, there are ‘changes’ to be achieved the UKAWA way. And as 'crazy' as UKUTA may appear to the ‘pragmatic’ in us, there are democratic ‘spaces’ we owe it for 'safeguarding' even if we just take democracy for granted.
Democracy, as Mwalimu Nyerere would remind us, “is an attitude of the mind” worth keeping.
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