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Magufuli’s a dictator, Eritrea’s a Gulag... How elites warp reality
By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi | Saturday, July 2 2016
In Summary
Another day, you’re going about your business and then notice a stranger wagging a finger at you and saying “You must be so and so,” before pointing out something you wrote how much they liked or hated it. Or someone may tell you, “I have just read your article in today’s paper. Can you write about this other topic next week?”
Last week was no different. I wrote about strongmen and strong institutions and governments that are effective and those that are not quite so effective.
READ: Strongmen or strong institutions? Obama just didn’t get it, did he?
A reader suggested I “continue on the same line next week” and “write about the progress in strengthening institutions across Africa.” He threw in an example.
Kenya has a law, he said, that requires appointments to state institutions to be vetted by parliament. That, he added, “allowed us to get a Chief Justice who was no one’s puppet.” I promised to do what I could. It is a tall order, though. Sustained institution-building in Africa is often conspicuous by its absence.
The reactions I treasure most come loaded with new information that gives me pause for thought and leaves me better able to argue my case next time.
Lately I received two from longstanding correspondents, both hawk-eyed observers of society around them. One was reacting to my argument that in John Pombe Magufuli (JPM), Tanzanians got the leader they had clamoured for as they looked forward to the post-Kikwete era.
The other was emphasising his view that the Tanzanians who are uncomfortable with “Bulldozer” Magufuli are educated urbanites leading the sort of lives in which one is able to imagine a government with checks and balances that in mature democracies imposes limits on solo decision making by leaders. He also had things to say about Eritrea, usually portrayed as Africa’s ultimate Gulag.
Apparently, unlike town folk, rural Tanzanians “can’t have enough of the Bulldozer. They would love to clone him and send him to each mkoa and district.”
For the opposition parties, by taking on the thieving elite in government, the party, and their business accomplices, JPM has stolen their clothes and is fast turning them into an irrelevance; they cannot forgive him for cleaning the Augean stables of Tanzanian corruption.
They now run the real risk of sounding as if they stand together with the thieves to whom JPM is so robustly applying cha mtema kuni (the punishment they deserve). The loud, navel-gazing elite with their privileged access to local and foreign media tend to drown out the satisfied purring of the much large society.
So why can’t rural folk have enough of JPM? My other correspondent came in handy. In the dying days of the Kikwete presidency, he said, “the clamour for a ‘dictator’” characterised “discussions throughout the country.” And “the people who led this movement were opposition leaders. The same thing was again popularised by the same people during last year’s general election as they sought to paint CCM as incapable of producing a ‘dictator’ to get things done.”
And now that they are castigating JPM for his “dictatorship,” the opposition are “no longer trusted” because “they have failed to comprehend the enormity of their choices and decisions last year.”
Worse for them, “unlike anti-corruption messages that resonate well with voters, the abstract notions of democracy and human rights are and were never high on the list of things Tanzanians wanted their new president to deal with.” Many are apparently “perplexed as to what exactly the opposition are going on about.”
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com
By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi | Saturday, July 2 2016
In Summary
- The loud, navel-gazing elite with their privileged access to local and foreign media tend to drown out the satisfied purring of the much large society.
Another day, you’re going about your business and then notice a stranger wagging a finger at you and saying “You must be so and so,” before pointing out something you wrote how much they liked or hated it. Or someone may tell you, “I have just read your article in today’s paper. Can you write about this other topic next week?”
Last week was no different. I wrote about strongmen and strong institutions and governments that are effective and those that are not quite so effective.
READ: Strongmen or strong institutions? Obama just didn’t get it, did he?
A reader suggested I “continue on the same line next week” and “write about the progress in strengthening institutions across Africa.” He threw in an example.
Kenya has a law, he said, that requires appointments to state institutions to be vetted by parliament. That, he added, “allowed us to get a Chief Justice who was no one’s puppet.” I promised to do what I could. It is a tall order, though. Sustained institution-building in Africa is often conspicuous by its absence.
The reactions I treasure most come loaded with new information that gives me pause for thought and leaves me better able to argue my case next time.
Lately I received two from longstanding correspondents, both hawk-eyed observers of society around them. One was reacting to my argument that in John Pombe Magufuli (JPM), Tanzanians got the leader they had clamoured for as they looked forward to the post-Kikwete era.
The other was emphasising his view that the Tanzanians who are uncomfortable with “Bulldozer” Magufuli are educated urbanites leading the sort of lives in which one is able to imagine a government with checks and balances that in mature democracies imposes limits on solo decision making by leaders. He also had things to say about Eritrea, usually portrayed as Africa’s ultimate Gulag.
Apparently, unlike town folk, rural Tanzanians “can’t have enough of the Bulldozer. They would love to clone him and send him to each mkoa and district.”
For the opposition parties, by taking on the thieving elite in government, the party, and their business accomplices, JPM has stolen their clothes and is fast turning them into an irrelevance; they cannot forgive him for cleaning the Augean stables of Tanzanian corruption.
They now run the real risk of sounding as if they stand together with the thieves to whom JPM is so robustly applying cha mtema kuni (the punishment they deserve). The loud, navel-gazing elite with their privileged access to local and foreign media tend to drown out the satisfied purring of the much large society.
So why can’t rural folk have enough of JPM? My other correspondent came in handy. In the dying days of the Kikwete presidency, he said, “the clamour for a ‘dictator’” characterised “discussions throughout the country.” And “the people who led this movement were opposition leaders. The same thing was again popularised by the same people during last year’s general election as they sought to paint CCM as incapable of producing a ‘dictator’ to get things done.”
And now that they are castigating JPM for his “dictatorship,” the opposition are “no longer trusted” because “they have failed to comprehend the enormity of their choices and decisions last year.”
Worse for them, “unlike anti-corruption messages that resonate well with voters, the abstract notions of democracy and human rights are and were never high on the list of things Tanzanians wanted their new president to deal with.” Many are apparently “perplexed as to what exactly the opposition are going on about.”
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com
