Rutashubanyuma
JF-Expert Member
- Sep 24, 2010
- 219,470
- 911,174
In any school of management there is a general assumption that after ten years in management one begins to lose his mojo, altogether, but do not tell it to president Kikwete who in 2005 vying for presidency made an indelible mark for himself after he conceitedly equated 17 years in public service with productivity! Little did the naïve voters queried him of what the wanton years in public service had done to his predecessor in Benjamin Mkapa. At that time the public had seen enough of a decade in power of Mkapa administration and they did not like it despite a cynical depression of official inflation data. If there was any historical lesson in politics from the Mkapa years then; it remains, if you decide to overestimate the quality of years in public service please do that at your own peril. The trading off of quantity of public service to the potentiality of quality in the same seems stupendous and fallacious.
Ex-president Mkapa had come from an inner circle of Nyerere and from that Mkapa had almost three decades in national limelight galloping from one cabinet position to another but his ten years in power were abysmal to say the least whereof rampant official graft seemed to have acquired a new status under his watch. Paradoxically Mkapa of 1995 had made hyperbolical claims that he had toured the whole country only to realize people were fed up with grand graft and he promised a new dawn where transparency and truthfulness were new weapons of mass destruction against the scourge! At the commencement of his first term Mkapa proclaimed his poverty stature following the release of his wealth acquisition report and his minions were quick to replicate that deceitful move only for Mkapa and his brigade reneging to repeat that historical feat no sooner after they had parted company with power ten years later! Institutional checks and balances were so eroded that no governance watchdog had the guts to take Mkapa and his closest lieutenants by their horns following illegal amassing of public wealth during their decadent tenure. Today, Mkapa and his closest allies that include "who is who" in Kikwete inner circle seems to have gotten away with looting of public coffers!
The enduring lesson there remains longevity in public service may engrave the status quo but was of little value against reforming of what is wrong with our public service today. When Kikwete became the president in 2005 he enjoyed a popular support partially a gratitude of the fact that the opposition had featured one of the weakest presidential pretenders they could possibly puke. But president Kikwete failed to rally the nation for a higher calling when he viewed the moral dilemmas we were facing could be resolved through his personal micromanagement skills! Out of this, Kikwete attempted with little success to build an aura of personality cult similar to Nyerere's! Where Nyerere's invincibility arose from subduing colonial power and building a nation out of colonial ashes, Kikwete was a blue eyed boy who did not know where to etch his legacy. Nyerere's staying in power was partially a credit to his immense intellect, altruism and possibly that character shaped by his religious belief while Kikwete's attempt to emulate that had no bearing from the individual himself, at all. Even the imitation of the initial abbreviations J.K where to Nyerere lucidly stood for Julius Kambarage but for Kikwete nobody cares what they are meant for.
From the Mwinyi tenure where Kikwete cut his political teeth there is very little one can discern whether Kikwete had learnt anything, at all. Where Mwinyi; despite his academic underachievement, at least he had a vision to liberalize economy in order to cope with gripping challenges ensuing from the Nyerere's years of a closed society. Mwinyi earned for himself Mr. Rukhsa as a result of his endeavours. Kikwete's both terms were marred by a bloated ministerial cabinet and instead of trimming it down Kikwete maintained an oversize government that is notorious for official graft and least known for public service delivery. Kikwete more than his predecessors has rewarded loyalty and sacrificed productivity and no wonder all economic indicators are depicting this nation on an economic abseil never witnessed in our short post-colonial era!
How will political historians remember Kikwete? Well, he is a bold politician who flimsily attempted to fill in the oversize boots left behind by Nyerere, and nothing more.
