Mfikishieni Kikwete hii report juu ya hali halisi ya Tanzania
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Wacha1
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- Dec 21, 2009
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The truth about Tanzania
1. Causes for traumacauses for trauma are oppression, violence and psychological, physical and sexualabuse. We will pass along them all. First of all let us discuss oppression. In tanzaniai can see four levels of oppression. The first three will be discussed here. The fourthwill be taken up in the cause-effect chain. The three levels of oppression are 1.government; 2. Religion; 3. Culture.1.1 oppression by the governmentthe people of tanzania are under firm control of the government. The apparatus isfar reaching into society with a government leader on district, division, ward, village,hamlet and street level. It controls the movements of people and keeps an eye outfor people who are walking ‘out of the party line'. The government does not likecriticism and airing your grievances or criticism can lead to losing your job, house,freedom or life, depending on the gravity of your ‘crime'. People are scared to talkabout anything that relates to the government or politics, it is an absolute taboo.besides this zero-tolerance for criticism there is zero-tolerance for anything that mightbreach the peace.tanzania is known as a peaceful country, a description which according to meit absolutely does not deserve. It is true there is no widespread violent conflict in thiscountry; this however is a far stretch from it being peaceful. But according to thegovernment and the tanzanians you meet on the streets, they live in a peacefulcountry. And people do anything and are forced to do anything to prevent anyconflict, even verbal. This means that there are never arguments between people;everybody always agrees with everybody, there are no discussions or debates andno one will ever criticize or blame anybody. People can do terrible things to otherpeople this will not lead to any conflict, because the peace has to be preserved,always, no matter the consequence.analysing the actions of the government i am more and more convinced thatthey follow a poverty-strategy in stead of an anti-poverty strategy. It shows in lastyear's budget and this year's budget proposal, which are written to benefit the richand lack any sign of trying to reduce the burden of the poor. The kilimo kwanza(agriculture first) strategy is written for businesses and large scale farmers, but thereis no mention in the document how they plan to get the subsistence farmers out ofpoverty. Mkukuta i (national strategy on growth and poverty reduction i) finishedin 2010 and has for a large part not been implemented. A shortage of budget leads toa reduction in investment in development, not in curtailing the enormous overhead ofthe government.the majority of people in tanzania are poorer now than just afterindependence 50 years ago. The government works in english, a language 80% ofthe tanzanians do not master as they only speak their tribal language and kiswahili.people cannot read what the government writes, so people are unaware of theirrights and the duties of their government. Any attempt by the opposition to addressthe fact that people are unnecessarily poor ends in a, sometimes violent, breakdownof peaceful protests with the accusation that the opposition is breaching the peaceand has a pro-violence agenda.the people in tanzania are unnecessarily poor because tanzania is a veryrich country. It is one of the top gold producing countries in africa (since every reportseems to state a different rank, this is unclear). It has diamantes, metals, minerals, oiland gas. Tanzania is endowed with fertile soils, nature, wildlife, lakes and rivers andis located near an ocean. Tanzania has everything a country could wish for. There isfor billions of dollars in and on the ground. Where is all that money?almost all raw materials have been sold off to foreign companies by topleaders of the government. For decades large amounts of gold, diamantes, minerals,etc. Are dragged out of this country due to some sleazy, under the table million dollardeals this small group of top leaders have made with these foreigners. Tanzania itselfgets a very small amount of all this richness they own. The amount of tax on thelabourers for these companies far exceeds the income of the resources.this is not all, a large part of the budget disappears in the samepockets; money for healthcare, money for education, money for roads, water, etc. Ontop of that every government official or highly placed civil servant gets his or hersalary topped up with allowances for writing reports, supervising, sitting in a meeting,attending a training or workshop or just because they are important. Further on, theallowance they receive for going to a village for one day is the same as the minimummonthly wage of the private sector. Every week you find another article in thenewspaper how millions of dollars have disappeared in a certain sector. Here wecome to why a government would keep its citizens deliberately in poverty: To protectcurrent and future corruption.what do you need as a government to make sure you can keep going like this:1) an uneducated and ignorant citizenry; 2) a citizenry who is so occupied by tryingto stay alive they do not have time to engage themselves in finding out what thegovernment is doing; 3) a citizenry that is too scared to ask any questions or criticizetheir government; 4) as government working in a language people do notunderstand; and, 5) forcefully (even with bullets if necessary) stop all criticism of theopposition in order to win the next election. All this has convinced me that thegovernment is deliberately keeping the people in poverty making sure they stayuneducated and ignorant and are too scared to criticize, air their grievances or givetheir opinion, in order for the government to be able to go on uninterrupted withstealing the money of the citizens of tanzania.1.2
oppression by religion
in tanzania are two major religions: Islam and christianity. When i talk aboutreligious oppression i am not talking about the religions itself. A religion is meant tosupport people and give them hope. However, the way religion is misused inchurches and mosques is what leads to oppression; it is the messages which arespread by these institutions. People are being told that god or allah controls theirevery movement. Everything that happens, good or bad is god's or allah's doing. Inrwanda i asked once a poor man who worked as a guard and housekeeper in thehouse i lived if he did not want to try to get out of poverty. He told me: "god hasdecided i have to be poor, so that is what i have to be."people are made absolutely powerless because apparently they have no sayin how their lives will be, god or allah decides. On top of that in lushoto, where themajority is islamic the women have been told they are not allowed to get out of theirhouses or are allowed to receive visitors. This means these women will never be selfsufficient.they are not allowed to go to the market or hospital when they or theirchildren are sick. Setting up a business is impossible because they cannot leave thehouse and customers cannot come to her. They are only allowed to go to theirvegetable garden (shamba) to provide food for the household.what the two religions have in common is the immense pressure they put onwomen to have as many children as possible. Children these women do not want tohave and they are not capable of taking care of. Family planning methods are notallowed, only spreading children with the help of ‘natural' methods is acceptable. Notonly leads this to generations of children nobody wants and are not able to take careof, the prohibition on the use of condoms means that aids can freely spread around.in mkukuta ii is written that the government wants to reduce the fertility rate from5.9 to 5.7 in 2015. They have made faith based organisations in charge of familyplanning. The amount of unwanted children will not reduce in the coming generationif it is up to the government and the church/mosque.1.3
oppression by culture
in most countries culture is considered a description of what the majority of peoplevoluntarily do in terms of eating, habits, arts, expressions, etc. However in tanzaniaculture is a whole different concept. Culture is seen as a set of rules, unwritten laws,people have to obey by. There are rules for everything and then really everything:what you do, see, eat, dress, cook, how to behave and everything else that you canthink of. Nothing is voluntarily, the saying here is: "you have to do it, because it is ourculture". There is enormous pressure to do exactly as the rules prescribe. You canask any tanzanian what is your culture and they will all come with the same(standard) answer: "tanzania is a poor but very peaceful country. Tanzanians arevery nice and polite people. We have respect for important and older people. We takecare of each other and share everything. Tanzanians love children and these childrenare raised in extended families."this all sounds very nice and on the surface it does look like this. However,under the surface there is a lot going on that gives a complete different picture of theculture that exists in tanzania. I have already explained that tanzania is not a poorcountry, nor is it peaceful as will become more clear in the paragraphs to come.before explaining the rest let us first take a side step into communication, as much ofa culture originates in the way people communicate. In tanzania, as in most africancountries, there is a lack of communication skills. This originates, in my opinion, fromthe school system in which the teacher talks and the children listen. There is nointeraction between the two.in addition, the teacher feels him/herself all knowing and does not allowcriticism, opinions, questions or any other expression of him/her not being able togive a clear explanation. Violating this rule can lead to being punished with a stick.asking questions is something you try to avoid in any case because people herebelieve that asking questions is an expression of being stupid, so the other childrenwill laugh about your stupidity. The only thing you are allowed to do is listening. Asparents are brought up the same way, you see this same pattern in families andcommunities. Children are not allowed to voice their questions or opinions, anyexpression can lead to being beaten. But also adults refrain from expressing theiropinions or asking questions since they have never learned to do this. On top of that,as we read above, you have to keep the peace and expressing your opinion can leadto a disagreement or conflict, which has to be avoided at all cost.people are nice and polite. Yes they are, because they will never express anydisagreement because they have never learned to do that and you have to be niceotherwise you can start a conflict. People never have an argument here, nobody everdisagrees, nobody ever questions other people's motives or behaviour, because theycannot and are not allowed to. So, everybody is nice and polite. This also means thatpeople do not know each other; they never talk about anything relevant. People callthemselves best friends but have no idea about the occupation, interest andsometimes even the name of the other person. Normally you are nice to people youlike, in tanzania you do not even know who you like because you do not know eachother, you are just nice to everybody, even the ones you probably do not likebecause he or she has done something bad to you. However, you are not allowed tovoice your grievance, so you play nice and polite; that is the rule.having respect for older and important people. This is an interesting concept.first an explanation of older and important people: Older people is everybody who isolder than you: Brother, niece, aunt, parent, grandparent, and any other person whowas born before you, important people are people with important jobs (governmentofficials, businessmen, police, doctors, etc.) and white people. Having respect forsomebody means in other cultures that you treat that person with respect, it is aboutyour attitude and behaviour towards that person. I got confused in tanzania becausethe people they claim they have respect for are being lied at, robbed, beaten or evenkilled just like any other person.what is going on? Having respect for somebody in tanzania means you say‘shikamoo', and that is it. This is how you express your respect. It has nothing to dowith what we understand with the word respect. According to the tanzanians ‘we'(foreigners) have no respect for other people because we do not have an equivalentin english for the word ‘shikamoo'. What does ‘shikamoo' mean? It appears that youuse the word for people you are scared of. It is a way of establishing the powerrelationship. When you say ‘shikamoo' to somebody you tell that person: ‘i am lessthan you, you have power over me, i will do everything you ask me to do.' a lot ofcultural practices are based in this concept and leads to poverty on household andnational level. We will come back to that.‘we take care of each other'. Up till now i have not been able to determinewhat they mean by that. As you will read in the next paragraphs you can only cometo the opposite conclusion: That they do not take care of each other because they donot care about each other. My guess is that it is related to another rule in this culture:you have to share everything. People share everything not because they want to, butbecause they have to. This means if one person in a family has a salary he/she hasto share it with their extended family, ending up paying for the school fees ofnephews and nieces. This sounds nice but it prevents this person and his/herhousehold from getting out of poverty and, in addition, no middle class can developwhich is essential for an economy. In tanzania there are very rich and very poorpeople, there is hardly any middle class and this cultural rule is one of the reasons forthat.if you are one of the younger members of a family it gets worse. Not only doyou have to share also the ‘shikamoo'-principle works for you. This means any olderrelative can demand you to do or give something. This leads among other things thatchildren of older relatives are being made the responsibility of the younger membersof a family. Sometimes it is contribution for expenses but it can go as far as thatchildren are placed in the house. Many stories go around of older relatives producingmore and more children and placing these children in the households of theiryounger siblings or cousins. Here we end up by children being taking care of by theextended family. Yes, but not they want to but because they have to. Very oftenthese households already have too many children for their limited budget and theyreceive an extra burden by being forced to take care of children of older relatives.these unwanted children run a great risk of being abused or killed.tanzanians loving children is expressed only by the fact that they have lots ofchildren. According to the people that is how you show love for children. People inthe us and europe do not love children because they only have a few. However,expression of real love is completely absent. Children are treated as third-classcitizens; they are being yelled at, beaten, raped and murdered. They have absoluteno value until the time they start earning a living. Love is a concept that is unknown topeople as they have never learned to love, it is something you are supposed to learnwhen you are a child. For generations children are being treated this way, so parentsfrom now do not know anything different then the way they were brought up. The ruleis you have to love children, meaning: Put as many children as possible into thisworld.concluding we can say that what on the surface looks like a nice culture isactually a culture prison. People have to obey by these rules whether they can affordto or not. There are a lot of cultural and traditional practices that result in theoppression of women and children. This paragraph is by far not the complete pictureof the strain that is weighing on people, put on them by the government,church/mosque and themselves. Themselves: Because this culture is what theythemselves have created. This is a prison they have built with their own hands andkeeps into existence by their own choice.1.4 violencethe amount of violence in tanzania is rising at alarming rates. We can identifyseveral categories: Violence by the state, mob justice, gender based violence,violence against minorities, witchcraft, conflicts about land and human rightsviolations. Let us pass along all of them, one by one. Violence by the state is verybroad. In former paragraphs we can already read the psychological and physicalharm done to people due to oppression, control and the poverty strategy thegovernment is pursuing. In addition, we see more and more police violence,authorized by the state. Violence against the opposition is displayed by forcefullybreaking up peaceful demonstrations. Violence against suspects of crimes resultingin suspects being shot at in stead of arrested. Violence against pastoralists wherebycattle is relocated by the police in non-grazing zones and people are charged hugebribes to receive a part of their livestock back. The rest stays in possession of thepolice officers. Harassment of citizens by for instance the traffic police, wherebycitizens are demanded to pay bribes for whatever the police officer has come up with.mob justice is a common theme in newspapers whereby citizens take the lawinto their own hands and beat up or kill suspects of crimes. If this is instigated by thefact that the police and justice system are inadequate and corrupt, or if it is just givingpeople an excuse to release an already existing rage is not clear.the reports on gender based violence (gbv) are slowly giving a morecomplete picture of the situation prevailing in tanzania. The amount of femalegenital mutilation (fgm) is shockingly high up to 80% of girls and women in a certainarea being mutilated. 25% of 18 year old girls are pregnant or already have a child.this is the top of the iceberg as we do not know how many under age girls werebribed into having sex with or were raped by paedophiles, as not all of them havebecome pregnant. It gives a very grim picture. In addition there is a culture ofoppression of women and girls that prevents them from having an education, receiveproper healthcare resulting in a higher number of maternal deaths, becomingeconomically independent or be free from any form of violence.violence against minority groups is widespread and somehow acceptable intanzanian culture as most minority groups are seen as less human. People withalbinism are mutilated and killed as according to traditional believes their body partsmake you rich. Old women are killed after being accused of being a witch. Disabledchildren are locked up in houses and neglected and abused as they are born underthe influence of the devil, according to a traditional believe.in the past witchcraft was mainly used for traditional healing, howevernowadays their practices have moved to the more lucrative business of aiding andinflicting bodily harm or death of people. As this goes by distance nobody is everresponsible and the practice can continue with impunity.conflicts about land are becoming more violent. As the livelihoods of agrowing number of people are threatened by the lack of poverty reduction, people aregetting more and more desperate to protect the little bit they have. As tensions arerising the way people deal with conflicts becomes more violent. Destruction ofproperty and inflicting bodily harm becomes more apparent.human rights violations are widespread. As mentioned before the rights ofwomen, children and minority groups are violated on a large scale. In addition thereis human trafficking, forceful evictions, the violation on the right to basic needs,development, justice, freedom of speech, freedom of joining or supporting oppositionpolitical parties, the right to life, the right to self-determination, and so on and so on.the list is endless.1.5
psychological, physical and sexual abuse
the most accepted forms of violence in tanzania have not been mentioned yet andwill be discussed here: Domestic and community violence. Domestic violence has itsorigin in three areas. The first area is the lack of communication skills. Since peopleare not able to express their feelings verbally this often leads to the use of violenceas expression form. As a result wives and children are often beaten by husband andfather, but children are also beaten by their mothers. Teaching children goodbehaviour is not by means of explanations but by verbal and physical abuse for badbehaviour.secondly, people have more children than they can afford. Women arepressed to put as many children as possible in the world by their husband, societyand church or mosque. However, these households do not have the money to caterfor all these children. Children are expensive and most rural households have no or avery small income. This leads to enormous pressure to keep the family alive and payall the bills. This pressure leads to tension, frustration and anger and is expressed bypsychological and physical abuse of children. The abuse is even worse for childrengrowing up with guardians not being their biological parents, to the point of beingkilled. This is a rising trend in tanzania.thirdly, the tanzanian view on women and children: Women are perceived as1) sex object; 2) children producers; and 3) domestic worker. They are second classcitizens with no rights. Even women themselves see themselves as stupid anddeserve to be beaten. Children are perceived as third class citizens and haveabsolutely no rights. They are worthless until they start making money and are beingtold so. As a result the number of women and girls being raped rises at an alarmingrate in the households in tanzania. As domestic violence has a great potential forrecurrence in the next generation, as nobody knows what is ‘normal', this is a viciouscycle going on already for decades and will only increase in future generations.community violence is domestic violence spread out into the community.since the same norms and values as within the households are shared in thecommunity also the violence against women and children spreads out into thevillages and living areas. Children are being beaten by any relative, communitymember or teacher if they decide it needs to be punished. Girls are at great risk beingraped by paedophiles in the extended family, community and school. Thepsychological abuse of diminishing women and children to lesser human beings isportrayed all around.
2. Behaviour of people
what follows are descriptions of negative and destructive behaviour noticeable intanzania.2.1 lyingin most countries people lie for two reasons: 1) to prevent being accused of anywrong doing; 2) to gain something. Not in tanzania. Lying is a way of live, a meansof communication. People lie about everything. Most of the time you wonder why theywere lying in the first place because they did not gain anything out of it, on thecontrary they just made other people being angry at them. The most reasonableexplanation seems to be that they say what they think you want to hear. People liketo hear nice stories and expect you to tell them nice things, they do not want to hearthat you refuse to do something or any other message they do not want to receive. Inaddition, telling people what they want to hear prevents you from entering into aconflict.many people have already told me if you want to become the president oftanzania you have to tell people that they will become rich, have water, electricity,jobs, etc. Etc. If you tell people they have to work hard you will never becomepresident. It is amazing because everybody is complaining that politicians are lying,but is that not what they expect from them? Then there are people who take it to thenext level and promise people, mostly women, they will do something for them forpayment. These women pay and nothing ever happens. These conmen can easily goabout their business because nobody is allowed to complain because that mightcreate a conflict.2.2 jealousypeople are very jealous in tanzania. But not in a good way. They do not think: ‘i wantthat too, so i work hard to achieve the same.' no, it is a destructive jealousy thatcauses people to destroy other people's properties or life. Stories are numerous ofwomen destroying the new businesses of other women. Cooperation between peopleis almost impossible in tanzania because people are afraid that the other personmight gain more out of the cooperation than they will.2.3 discriminationdiscrimination is rampant in tanzania. Everybody who is not a healthy adult malefrom a certain tribe is being discriminated. The worst affected groups are womenwithout children, people with albinism, people infected with hiv/aids, disabledpeople and homosexuals. However, discrimination extents also to: Children, women,people from other tribes, non-africans and members of a family where somewhere inthe past a mixed marriage took place.2.4 feelings of being a victimin tanzania, but also in other african countries, most visible by men have the feelingthey are a victim. Women show this in a lesser extent but it is certainly not absent.this is demonstrated in the fact that men are never to be blamed for anything.whatever bad thing they have done, it is never their fault: They were forced by otherpeople, god or circumstances out of their control. Unfortunately the whole societyaids men in this feeling by giving excuses as why men did what they did. Forinstance, last year the fact that men are waiting outside schools to bribe girls for sexwas prominent in the news. Not only blamed everybody (including the president) thegirls for this practice, no it got worse. Men could not help themselves because theywere attracted by the colours of the school uniforms, and wives of these men wereadvised to wear clothes in the same colours as the uniforms.this feeling of being a victim leads to another phenomenon i have never seenon such a large scale as here in tanzania: Begging. Everybody begs in tanzaniaoor people, rich people and extremely rich people. People are the victim of ‘our'involvement in their affairs that made ‘us' rich, starting with colonialism, and now theyfeel it is their right to receive what ‘we' have. They demand your money, clothes, bag,and payment of their hospital bill, lunch, dinner or whatever else they can think of.here in lushoto people are very angry that the tourists (mostly backpackers) whocome here only pay for their own meals and not give the people of lushoto a meal.2.5 lazinessif you ask women why tanzanians are poor one of the first answers you get islaziness. Men are capable to sit the whole day, every day on a bench doingabsolutely nothing. I have asked some of these sometimes very young men how theyare able to sit on a bench or hang around a bar drinking konyagi or beer every day.according to them there is nothing to do. Amazing because i look around and i seeso many things that can be done. There are plots laying idle, holes in the roads,garbage everywhere and grandma's who could really use some assistance carryingheavy bags from the market to their houses. However, in tanzania people do nothingfor free. If you want them to do something you have to pay. Unfortunately theprospect of receiving money if they do something for you is no guarantee they willshow up. They might prefer to stay in bed or sit in a bar.quite a number of people who do have a job portray the same attitude. Theyalways complain they have too much work, but are actually rarely in the office. If youenter an office in tanzania you have to tell the person ‘pole ya kazi': Sorry you havework. Work is something you have to avoid at all cost in tanzania. This problem ispartly created due to some strange idea people have here that people in the us andeurope do not do anything but receive huge salaries. According to tanzanians ‘we'have machines doing the work and ‘we' sit the whole day watching these machinesand at the end of the month ‘we' receive amazingly high salaries for that. Tanzanianswant that too. It is very unfair that they have to work for little money while ‘we' receivelarge amounts of money by doing nothing.2.6 egocentrism and egoismthe people in tanzania are very egocentric and egoistic. Egocentric means peoplethink they are the centre of the universe. This is shown in the fact that they perceivethat what other people do or not do has something to do with them. If a person hasnot been greeted on the street he/she is very upset and thinks that the other persondoes not like him/her. It also results in the demand that other people look after them.they expect other people to feed them, take care of him/her or his/her family. Therest of the world exists to take care of you.egoism means that you take whatever you need regardless the consequences.the most extreme forms of egoism in tanzania are the large scale and widespreadcorruption, which goes literally over dead bodies, and rape of women and children.especially men take whatever they need or desire regardless. Whether that leads todeath of people, unwanted pregnancies or spreading of the hiv virus is not relevant;they have a right to have their needs fulfilled.2.7 irresponsibilityegocentrism and egoism leads to irresponsibility. Since women as young girls wereforced to take care of younger siblings and (a part of) the household they have beentaught some sense of responsibility. However, boys do not get these tasks and thisleads to a complete absence of responsibility in adult men. They drink the householdmoney, do not take any action as to take care of or provide food for their wives andchildren and leave the payments of school fees and other expenses to their wives.although there are exceptions, this is a widespread phenomenon. The lack ofresponsibility is also shown in the figures of traffic accidents. Men use the roads asracetracks for their own pleasure, taking over when it is not possible and when thesituation gets complicated they accelerate in stead of slowing down; a recipe fordisaster.
3. The cause-effect chain
let us put together what we have so far:causes of trauma:·oppression by the government (peace enforcement and poverty strategy)·oppression by religion·oppression by culture·violence·psychological, physical and sexual abusebehaviour of people:·lying·jealousy·discrimination·feelings of being a victim·laziness·egocentrism and egoism·irresponsibilitylooking at the list of behaviour we can conclude they are all the result of the list ofcauses of trauma. Let us try to unravel this cause-effect chain. As you can see thereare three levels of oppression: Government, church/mosque and society (culturaloppression). All this oppression and control leads to the fact that people do not havea free will, own opinion, own preferences or choice. Everything is preconceived inrules, and people have to walk a path that is prescribed by others. People have thefeeling they have absolutely no control over their own lives because they keep beingtold that the government, god or allah determines their lives. People feel completelypowerless and this leads to depression and apathy.people get angry at and are jealous of other people who were able to escapethis depressive stage, or where never in this stage because they were never poor inthe first place, and have achieved something they can only dream of. In addition,humiliating other people (discrimination) is a tool often used to make you feel better.due to the complete lack of efforts of the government to relieve people from theburden of extreme poverty their situation seems hopeless and never-ending. Theyare trapped in a vicious cycle they cannot break because they themselves have builtwith their culture high walls which makes an escape impossible.this situation is in existence for generations now as a result of thedetermination by all layers of oppression that women need to give birth to as manychildren as possible. Poverty is being transferred to the next generation and the next.the children born will have a lack of healthcare and education leading to poor healthand being doomed to engage in subsistence farming. This causes enormousfrustrations, anger and hatred visible in the rising amount of violence towards:women, children, minority groups, marginalised groups, suspects of crimes andadversaries in conflicts.the psychological, physical and sexual abuse of children combined withemotional neglect has serious consequences. First of all, consistently beatingchildren for their opinions, views, ideas and questions has as effect that as an adultpeople perceive any opposition towards their comments as a personal attack. This isvery visible in politics where any criticism from people on policy ends in anaccusation of it being a personal attack. Many parliamentarian discussions areending in this kind of useless battles about why this mp was attacking that mp (or thepresident or a minister).secondly, all this violence in a child's life ends often in a generation long spiralof violence as people have not learned to resolve their conflicts differently, or haveany reference as to what is ‘normal'. Thirdly, all this violence, oppression and controlfeeds the feeling of being a victim. People grow the idea that the whole world isagainst them. Even after becoming a perpetrator the feeling that he/she is a victimpersists. Fourthly, the lack of time mothers have to spend with their children leads toa lack of upbringing. Nothing is being taught, the child only receives punishments. Achild needs to learn responsibility, respect others, sharing, cooperation and caring forothers. If this is only taught in a negative way, children will refuse to learn or only do itunder pressure. Hence, the enormous pressure from culture on adults to behave likethis. Unfortunately it has never become a characteristic of people so it is only byappearance not by heart.fifthly, the emotional neglect of parents has as consequence that emotionallychildren do not grow up. Adults are emotionally still in a child stage. When you areborn you are extremely egocentric, you need to be otherwise you will not survive.you demand by screaming that the people around you feed you, clean you and payattention to you. Till the age of 4/5 years children think they are the centre of theuniverse. And other people are there to fulfil their needs. It is the job of parents toteach them that this is not the case.parents have to teach their children that they are not the only one in the worldand that there are other people with needs, wishes and feelings. By giving childrenpositive attention and love children learn to respect others, not to hurt others andbehave socially. Emotional attention also teaches children to love other people, carefor other people, trust other people and make friends, meaning really connect withother people. Unfortunately this does not happen so the adult population of tanzaniabehaves like 5 year old children. They are egocentric, irresponsible, asocial, are notcapable of imagining what other people feel, are not capable of making friends, loveand care for others or really connect with other people.sixthly, lying is a survival technique a child learns to please its parents.making sure that parents only hear what they want to hear prevents punishment.herewith, the circle is closed: The causes of trauma lead to the behaviour observedwhich in its turn leads to the causes, to behaviour, etc. It is a spiral which becomeslonger and stronger every generation.this analysis is by far not extensive. The effects of abuse and neglect arenumerous and complicated. Symptoms vary and include continuous fear, identitycrisis, lack of initiative, feeling dirty, sleep disorders, eating disorders, lack ofconfidence, feeling powerless, feeling less human, never feeling safe, nightmares,depression, feeling angry and being suicidal. The extend and intense of symptoms ofpost traumatic stress disorder varies per person and most plays out inside theheads of the victims, not observable to the outside world. Although numerous booksare written about ptsd, the effect it has when a large segment of a society suffersfrom it is unknown to me. I fear the worst.what is the end result of all this?
1.a population locked up in a prison of oppression and control;
2.a population in poverty feeling completely powerless to change anything abouttheir situation;
3.a society that shows all signs of a traumatised population;
4.women who feel worthless to such an extent it becomes almost unbeatable;
5.a population completely filled up with anger, hatred and frustration;
6.a population who's only means known to them to release this anger, hatredand frustration is the use of violence;
7.a population that not only not feels connected to each other but even hateseach other;
8.a government which is getting richer on the expense of its citizens;
9.a government that does not show any sign of responsibility.this is not the end of it since we have not discussed yet the fourth layer ofoppression that in the past 50 years maybe unintentionally but nonetheless hasreinforced the spiral, and with that has made it even more complicated to break it. Weare talking about development aid. What has development aid contributed to thissituation?
1.with the help of donors the same government has been able to stay in powerfor 50 years and has without complications been able to execute their povertystrategy;
2.since ngos are doing the work of the government (build schools andhospitals, implement health and economic programme's) the government hasbeen enabled to do absolutely nothing and pocket the money which wasmeant for these projects and programmes;
3.because in the world of development cooperation culture is elevated to ahigher, untouchable level never to be changed, the culture of oppression,control and all harmful cultural and traditional practices have been allowed tostay in place and develop. For 50 years now ‘we' have allowed that the rightsof women and children are grossly violated every day of their lives;
4.with all ‘our' foreign aid ‘we' have explicitly and implicitly told the tanzanianpeople that they need ‘us' to solve their problems and lift them out of poverty;5.de population has been made even more powerless than they already were,since apparently even their government is not capable of solving the problems;6.de citizens of tanzania are now patiently waiting till these foreigners take theirresponsibility and lift them out of poverty.before we go to the solutions let me clarify something first. The above reasoninggives explanations as to why people behave the way they behave, these are notexcuses. There is never an excuse for abuse and rape of women and children.never. It is unacceptable behaviour. Even though you might have grown up as avictim of abuse it is your own choice to continue the spiral or stop it. Being rude,asocial, corrupt, a liar or egoist is your own choice. It does not cost anything tobehave differently; being poor, as is the excuse given here for bad behaviour, is not avalid excuse.people are locked up in a culture they created themselves. It is they who put all thispressure on themselves; they have built this prison and maintain it. It would help if ‘we' wouldstop romanticising the african culture. The african culture is not a mature culture; it is createdand designed by people with an emotional level of a 5 year old. Therefore this whole cultureis full of child games. Games to establish who is more important, games to establish who hasmore power, games to establish who has control over who, games to humiliate people. Wesee destructive jealousy, ostracising people, discrimination, beatings, doing what ever youwant regardless the consequences, egoism, egocentrism, playing the victim. It is all childishbehaviour. This is a destructive culture, not a mature culture designed to empower anddevelop people.
4. Solutions
the cause-effect chain ultimately leads to people feeling powerless and worthlessand results in depression and apathy. This brings us to the answer of the questionwhy development aid is not working. As you can conclude from the above people aretrying to survive on 2 levels:1.material (water, sanitation, health, education, food, etc); and2.psychological.up till now most actors in development aid have only focused on the material level.but as has been made clear above, it is the psychological level that keeps people inpoverty. No matter how much you invest in the material level, it will never get peopleout of poverty. Even worse the more you invest in the material level the lower thepsychological level becomes. This is one step forward, three steps back.what is the way forward?first of all, all budget support should stop immediately. At the moment this feeds thepockets of an immature, greedy elite and prevents the government from everbecoming responsible. In stead a group of responsible uners (with the emphasise onresponsible) should take over the functions of the government and get things back ontrack, in the meanwhile build the capacity of responsible tanzanians who are able totake over after a few years. This may sound as colonialism and non-democratic (asthe tanzanians are chosen by the un in stead of the people) but i like to call thiscommon sense. We need a rigorous and forceful eradication of corruption and have agovernment who knows how to lead a country.all contracts with foreign companies now owning all natural resources oftanzania should be shredded and new contracts in which the tanzanian peopleactually gain from living on a ‘gold mine have to be drawn. In addition, all offshorebank accounts of current and previous top leaders should be broken open and themoney returned to the government coffers. This should easily fill up the gap the cut inbudget support leaves behind for the coming years.secondly, all actors in development cooperation should leave the country. Asat the moment they are part of the problem it is necessary to take a break. All actorsshould go back to the drawing table and look closely at the causes of poverty andstart designing projects and programmes that actually address these causes. But forall these new efforts to be effective it is necessary that that there is an enablingenvironment, hence the implementation of the first action of addressing thegovernment issue.
a new paradigm
.there is a need for a rigorous change in the concept of development cooperation.for more than 60 years development aid was based on a romantic picture of theafrican culture, drawn by anthropologists and others who did not realise what theywere looking at. It is important to shift our ideas about the people, we should movefrom seeing them as victims to looking at them as actors in the process that keepsthem in poverty. That opens up the opportunity to address the psychological level. Asit is the psychological level that prevents people from getting out of poverty, that iswere the focus should be.what is needed is a complete cultural and behavioural change. The violence,oppression and control have to stop. People have to learn to communicate, deal withconflicts peacefully and respect the rights of women and children, among otherthings. People need to feel in control again over their own lives, they need selfconfidenceand respect, and people need to live in a safe environment free fromviolence. Only then will they be able to use the opportunities, tools and means whichare available in an effective way to improve their lives.
Kwa hiyo uliyoandika yana base kutokana na exp yako ya Uganda na Rwanda?
Report has some substance and truth, only that it lacks analytic research, one could label it subjective....for example to say Tanzanians lie....I mean honestly that is very subjective
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