Idimi
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 18, 2007
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Analysis: Are our academicians a let down?
NKWAZI MHANGO NKUZI
WHEN I look at our cabinet lining and even the parliament and other top dogs of Tanzania and Africa in general, I find myself muffled, and even appalled. Africa has her bigger share of the most corrupt academicians on the planet. It is the leading continent on earth that has the most backward looking regimes in power.
If we examine Tanzania, for example, the picture is so grim. The current cabinet consists of many educated figures; there are professors, doctors and others who theoretically sadly know what education really is and mean. It is a multifarious congregation of underutilized talents and knowledge.
Looking at what I shall call deplorable and white elephant-like shining certificates these guys say they have attained, one would expect them to perform mutatis-mutandis in concordance with what their certificates show and tell. But do they perform as they are expected? Sadly a big NAY! They lack credibility. Spare me. I mean academics in political capacities who fail others in their fields by carrying impracticable policies based on self serving.
This appalls beyond imagination. Shall the current cabinet be compared to the first one shortly after independence; one will find that the latter, if anything, is, but a termite hill compared to the mountain under Mwalimu Nyerere.
When the two governments are clinically examined, it becomes evident that the first one was clinically fit while the latter is diseased and possessed. The achievements of the former still resonate even at present thirty years down the line. Instead of filling in the holes the pugilistic Nyerere era left, they are ripping-off everything and are trying to quote and copy everything from the former without any success! They conspicuously have nothing to add save to reduce! This translates into loss making and corrupt outfit or sort of thing instead of being an academic exemplary one.
On almost all rostra everybody is chest beating to toe the line Nyerere way. Behind the curtains, hell, what a let down! Our academics are messed up with and immersed in corruption. If we can openly ask them, aren?t they backward looking elites? If not why then don?t they have any in-put equivalent, or closer to, or much more advanced than Nyerere?s?
When did it start to rain on us? History has it that we had a handful educated people on the day we attained our independence. This lack of educated people badly disturbed the founder of the nation, Mwl. JK Nyerere so much that he declare war on ignorance.
At the beginning our chief foe was ignorance contrary to the present whereby the arch enemy seems to be rotten elites who are plundering our resources. This is an evident reminder that either our education system needs to be reviewed and overhauled or we are undergoing academic bankruptcy, so to speak.
If you look at how corruption is becoming sine qua non, tolerated and defended, you will agree with me that there is a very huge problem. Go to all nitty-gritty as far as accountability and performance are concerned in our country. You will be astounded as I am. Behind almost every table there is an educated person. On the top of every ministry, department and other institutions, there are educated guys. But when you look at their performances you doubt the merit and legality of their certificates.
My palaver today singles out some of the elites from whom the root of our pell-mell state originates. They are politicians turned ones. They are held accountable because the policies they make are the ones that have brought all this purgatory we are in.
At one time when I was on vacation, one old man asked me what I was aspiring to become after my studies. By then I remember I was in O? Level.
I told him I would like to become president! This left him in stitches! He then asked me. Like Mwalimu Nyerere? I answered in the affirmative.
He then said. I am sorry for you. Don?t you see the way the gentleman is becoming skinner and skinner because those he gave education have turned against him?
He added: ?By the way, what is wrong with education? When I look at how we?re robbed; and compare the present leadership with our chiefdoms, I conclude that modern education is about learning how to rip-off uneducated mass!?
His demagogue did not impress me. But again it struck my heart and hurt my feelings. His observations have hunted me since then.
It gets worse when I see the way our people are crying and weeping due to corruption and selfishness. Indeed it is surreal! How will they stop crying and weeping if at all what they thought would be the way forward is shibboleth?
How will they not complain if sheer shilly-shally is the order of the day in high circles of power?
To do away from the miseries the people used to face under colonial rule, they invested heavily in education, hoping to reap the benefits. Every family took kids to school so as to see the light. Here stranded we are now. Those we heartedly and fully supported to emancipate us are the same guys who are stabbing us in the navel!
Go and ask who is behind all these stinking corrupt practices. All of them are educated guys who shamelessly prey on us! They believe they will get away with it always. Because they are groggily fighting heaven and earth to keep us gloomed and brainwashed for ever.
Mtwa Mkwawa and Mirambo with their rudimentary weapons gave Germany the heck. Is there any African country that can face off with them presently?
Though with a poor hurdy-gurdy, one musician put it that, ?usomi wa mtu hauondoi upumbavu? wake literally meanig education does not stamp out one?s folly!
The late Abeid Karume, the first president of Zanzibar was not among the elite of the time. But he built Michenzani flats which since then have never been revamped nor given a worthy face lift. Doctors stepped into his shoes after his passing away. What did they do to realize his dreams? Nothing! Salmin Amour knows well what I mean. Dr. Ghalib Bilal can nicely ponder about it if he cares. If Karume happens to come to life again today and takes the trouble of going through the list of the mumbo jumbos and dilly dollies that sat on his chair, he will indeed slap someone and spit in his face!
Who is practically educated between Mzee Karume and these elites of our time? Karume was not a self seeker or a lame duck. He did whatever he thought to be right independently and without doubts.
Mzee Edwin Mtei, the renowned governor of the Bank of Tanzania (BoT), is a moderate educated person compared to the current one. Go and inspect their books and see what everyone did. You will find an astounding difference like heaven and crust.
Going back to our academicians, they must be told point blank that they have to go to make way for ably and competent people who can nicely use their education for the good of this nation.
The government has to listen to our legitimate grievances and work on them instead of using so-called elites to feed us with empty promises. Our people are brave enough to tell us how they feel about and evaluate us. We thus need to be brave enough to listen to them as we accomplish goals or pack and jump into water. And when facing this reality, our failed kit and caboodle of elites, should never go gaga. They too should not wait for the hoi polloi to try their ways of securing answers. It will be a catastrophe. Take a leaf.
This is how we look at them. Vox populi vox Dei.
Let?s take the bull by its horn and demand explanations.
nkwazigatsha@yahoo.com
Source: This Day, 29/10/2007
Tuendelee kumkoma nyani giladi.
