Huduma reads you all!

[Huduma]

I have been assisting my students to get their PhDs and Masters through practical research methods lessons.

Am particularly interested in two research papers.

The first one was on government bureaucracy and my interest is in asking whether the old tradional model of government still fits the knowledge society of today.

The other one was on Learning Organization and here am interested to know how many in Africa know of this new concept or are still learning and teaching Organizational Learning.

Again I sob a lot everytime I see that most of the knowledge I come across is not in the African language-Kiswahili. And wondering about that kind of leaders who expect chicken to come out of nothing or even worse still, out of rotten eggs!

I don't shed a tear, though, on the overthrow of the Mauritanian student of democracy for his hasty and misguided decision to sack someone over the radio. That was something possible in the age of communism and ujamaa, not today though!

 

[Pundit]

Your questions would prove better at soliciting meaningful responses if the context is clearly revealed.

Are you talking in the context of the global economy or Tanzania? For the former a case can be made that not only the old government model is inadequate for the emerging knowledge society, but also that the entire idea of Nationhood and sovereignty as originally designed in the Westphalia Treaty of 1648 is defunct.

Two recent phenomenon, namely Corporatocracy on the business end and the International Relation concept of "Responsibility To Protect" are poised to further erode the absoluteness of sovereignty, Nationhood and models if not role of governments.

Corporatocracy in it's current form has been despised by advocateds of the so called developing countries since the days of LORNHO, Tiny Rowland and Robert McNamara.

The concept of "Responsibility To Protect" envisages an international community that will be empowered to step in and prevent grotesque crimes against humanity such as the Rwandan genocide. It has been noted that to a large extent the international community could have prevented the genocide, but chose not to partially due to the bureaucracy you wish to address and further examine.In the movie "Hotel Rwanda" there is a scene in which a UN deployed Canadian colonel assigns the lack of response from the international community being due to the fact that a Rwandan is "less than a nigger" in being African, and presumably the powers that be did not want to go through the bureaucracy and politics of intervention. the current Rwandan President is on record to periodically blast France for it's complicity which contributed to the possibility of escalated violence in the 1994 genocide. This case points out the failure of a modern model of governance to deal with a genocide partly incited by the media along tribal lines.

When talking about Tanzania, first and foremost we do not have a knowledge society worth the name to speak of and therefore the presumptious premise of the argument flatfoots the continuation of discussion in that line.The percentage of Tanzanians reading newspapers regularly is les than 3, of which a big chunk can be discounted as not having anything to do with anything against the status quo, primarily because they are the status quo.

Again I sob a lot everytime I see that most of the knowledge I come across is not in the African language-Kiswahili. And wondering about that kind of leaders who expect chicken to come out of nothing or even worse still, out of rotten eggs!

You make direct and not necessarily explained, if qualified, relations between "The African language", Kiswahili, the theory of conservation of mass-energy and false expectations, would you care to elaborate?

Do you directly associate the trend of cultural globalization with the lack of quality leadership? If so why single out that particular cause in the wake of a host of issues?

On Mauritania, do you abandon a principle as central as the rule of law over details? What precedent and loop holes does this open for someone with a bank of clever lawyery churning suits?

Sources

The Lonrho Connections: A Multinational and Its Politics in Africa by Suzanne Cronje; Margaret Laing; Gillian Cronje

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, Phillip Gourevitch

Reuters: Rwanda's Kagame blasts France over genocide
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07654809.htm