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Tanzania: Corruption Makes Tanzania and Kenya 'Siamese Twins
By K"oyoo Nick, 24 May 2014
Opinion
IF you think that Tanzania and Kenya are so different, I have got news for you. The two countries are Siamese twins - tied at the hip by the singular malaise of corruption.
External Payments Ac- count by the Bank of Tanzania and the Anglo Leasing scam payments in Kenya are the latest schemes that truly enable these two East African countries to enjoy their joint hip bone relationship.
In both schemes, money running into millions of dollars is being or has already been paid out in doggy settlement schemes that cannot pass the test of transparency.
The sad part in both cases is that it is the governments of the people that seem to be pushing through these payments. One does not need to be a lawyer to see that where public interest has been trampled upon, paying out large sums of money to satisfy the ravenous demands of shadowy business figure is as outrageous as it can be.
One would imagine that Attorneys General Judge Fredrick Werema of Tanzania and Prof Githu Muigai of Kenya would be on the side of the public interest. These may be the cases of the huge payments that boggle the mind but let's turn the wheel to that epitome of security - the police.
The Tanzanian and Kenyan police forces, and by extension their Ugandan colleagues, are supposed to provide security for all. The motto of the Tanzania police is security of the citizens and their property, while that of their Kenyan counterparts is service to all. In Uganda the motto is to serve and protect.
It sounds incredible that, with such high-sounding and moral intent, these police forces are apparently rotten to the core. Two stories have happened in the space of three months in the jurisdiction of the Kinondoni police and both of them involved theft.
In the first case, an office was broken into and equipment, including, computers, television, printers and cellphones, stolen. In the initial investigation, the security guard had disappeared and left his uniform and keys to the gates in a manner that clearly led to his trail as the leading suspect.
In a search led by the police and the security company that employed him, the guard was found six weeks later lying in hospital with a broken leg.
The police then interrogated him and he confessed to the burglary together with naming his accomplices, and went even further to name how the stolen goods were disposed of and to whom, as a consequence of which he bought for himself a motorcycle, which had caused the accident that landed him in hospital with a broken leg.
It looked fairly straight- forward until the police called the owner of the office and demanded cash before the security guard-turned-burglar would be taken to court. 'Are you a citizen,' came the question. Are you in the country legally? Do you have the correct papers?
Have you provided the investigators with transport? In the second story yet another person we know narrated how their relative was arrested by policemen who claimed that he had caused a road traffic accident.
He was riding a motor- cycle with a form four leaver who was helping him in his carpentry shop at Tegeta in Dar es Salaam. The suspects were locked up for three days before their relatives knew that they were in police custody. But it is what followed that sounded like a playback of a scene from a Hollywood movie called "the wrong suspect."
The police wrote a statement that said the man had robbed a grocery while armed with a shotgun. The complainant had allegedly identified the suspect and the matter was 'not bailable.' The police went on to claim that cash and goods stolen were in the range of Tsh 278,000 or thereabouts.
Interestingly enough, while the offence was deemed serious on the penal code with no room for bail, the police approached the relatives of the carpenter and said they were willing to "make the case disappear" if they were ready to compensate the complainant and take care of 'our interest.'
The amount required to 'make the case disappear" was Tsh 7m. As you read this piece the suspect has already been arraigned in the Kindondoni Court in Dar es Salaam and the prosecutor is once again saying, 'You need to sort out the magistrate with Tsh 5m to have the charges dismissed.
The race towards justice for all in both Tanzania and Kenya is still a dream far from being attained despite all the good intentions in Vision 2030 and Big Results Now.
The columnist , a media consultant and researcher, is a regular commentator on East African issues with interests in media development in the region.
allAfrica.com: Tanzania: Corruption Makes Tanzania and Kenya 'Siamese Twins
By K"oyoo Nick, 24 May 2014
Opinion
IF you think that Tanzania and Kenya are so different, I have got news for you. The two countries are Siamese twins - tied at the hip by the singular malaise of corruption.
External Payments Ac- count by the Bank of Tanzania and the Anglo Leasing scam payments in Kenya are the latest schemes that truly enable these two East African countries to enjoy their joint hip bone relationship.
In both schemes, money running into millions of dollars is being or has already been paid out in doggy settlement schemes that cannot pass the test of transparency.
The sad part in both cases is that it is the governments of the people that seem to be pushing through these payments. One does not need to be a lawyer to see that where public interest has been trampled upon, paying out large sums of money to satisfy the ravenous demands of shadowy business figure is as outrageous as it can be.
One would imagine that Attorneys General Judge Fredrick Werema of Tanzania and Prof Githu Muigai of Kenya would be on the side of the public interest. These may be the cases of the huge payments that boggle the mind but let's turn the wheel to that epitome of security - the police.
The Tanzanian and Kenyan police forces, and by extension their Ugandan colleagues, are supposed to provide security for all. The motto of the Tanzania police is security of the citizens and their property, while that of their Kenyan counterparts is service to all. In Uganda the motto is to serve and protect.
It sounds incredible that, with such high-sounding and moral intent, these police forces are apparently rotten to the core. Two stories have happened in the space of three months in the jurisdiction of the Kinondoni police and both of them involved theft.
In the first case, an office was broken into and equipment, including, computers, television, printers and cellphones, stolen. In the initial investigation, the security guard had disappeared and left his uniform and keys to the gates in a manner that clearly led to his trail as the leading suspect.
In a search led by the police and the security company that employed him, the guard was found six weeks later lying in hospital with a broken leg.
The police then interrogated him and he confessed to the burglary together with naming his accomplices, and went even further to name how the stolen goods were disposed of and to whom, as a consequence of which he bought for himself a motorcycle, which had caused the accident that landed him in hospital with a broken leg.
It looked fairly straight- forward until the police called the owner of the office and demanded cash before the security guard-turned-burglar would be taken to court. 'Are you a citizen,' came the question. Are you in the country legally? Do you have the correct papers?
Have you provided the investigators with transport? In the second story yet another person we know narrated how their relative was arrested by policemen who claimed that he had caused a road traffic accident.
He was riding a motor- cycle with a form four leaver who was helping him in his carpentry shop at Tegeta in Dar es Salaam. The suspects were locked up for three days before their relatives knew that they were in police custody. But it is what followed that sounded like a playback of a scene from a Hollywood movie called "the wrong suspect."
The police wrote a statement that said the man had robbed a grocery while armed with a shotgun. The complainant had allegedly identified the suspect and the matter was 'not bailable.' The police went on to claim that cash and goods stolen were in the range of Tsh 278,000 or thereabouts.
Interestingly enough, while the offence was deemed serious on the penal code with no room for bail, the police approached the relatives of the carpenter and said they were willing to "make the case disappear" if they were ready to compensate the complainant and take care of 'our interest.'
The amount required to 'make the case disappear" was Tsh 7m. As you read this piece the suspect has already been arraigned in the Kindondoni Court in Dar es Salaam and the prosecutor is once again saying, 'You need to sort out the magistrate with Tsh 5m to have the charges dismissed.
The race towards justice for all in both Tanzania and Kenya is still a dream far from being attained despite all the good intentions in Vision 2030 and Big Results Now.
The columnist , a media consultant and researcher, is a regular commentator on East African issues with interests in media development in the region.
allAfrica.com: Tanzania: Corruption Makes Tanzania and Kenya 'Siamese Twins
