Aspiration of a Nation

Exactly fifty one days before Tanganyika obtained her independence from British colonialists, Mwalimu, quoting Abraham Linkoln, said, “I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty, where despotism can be taken pure, without the base of alloy of hypocrisy.” That day, 18th of October, 1961, Mwalimu presented the principles upon which Tanganyika’s — and later Tanzania’s — citizenship shall base. He fervently advocated for a nation that embraces all races indifferent to ideologies or religion to which people subscribed. He championed for the glorification of human beings, that “as a nation we began by declaring that all men are created equal.” Fifty years on we reflect back and deservedly pride ourselves for having come a long way.

‘Uhuru na Umoja’ — Freedom and Unity. Uhuru na Umoja remain Tanzania’s fundamental principles we aspire to hold onto. We have achieved peace that other nations will envy. When general elections have instigated hatredness and have turned citizens into refugees within their countries, we have and expect our elections to be peaceful. That, “In Tanzania, it was more than one hundred tribal units which lost their freedom; it was one nation that regained it;” reinforces our commitment to glorifying human beings over our individual differences and which we had no really choice determining. We are peaceful and our freedom, despite its shortages, cannot be underestimated.

We rightly pride ourselves for the good things we have achieved over all these years. I want to celebrate Tanzania’s fiftieth birthday not by the number of years of our independence, but by the values we can identify with, and by the opportunities we have created for our people, and by the level of economic and social freedoms our people enjoy and by the absence of discontinuity of these freedoms with passage of time.

Absence of crimes; economic freedom; a nation that constantly seeks knowledge, rule of law and justice; absence of monopolistic elements in the political arena; freedom of expression; and hard-work that pays are some of the things we need to be looking at as we match for the next years. These are values that once assimilated, we will not afford to lose, but fight for their continued prevalence. They are values that we all will identify with.

In Tanzania, everyone can engage in some form of economic activity without the state interfering. These economic activities do not pay as they should. The steady effort put in various economic activities must enable for gains that pay. The citizen who is unendowed with understanding the forces at play that hinder a rewarding yield from his work must be assisted. The mandated body that can help lift the all-trying citizen in Tanzania is the government. Writing in The Idea of Justice, Amarty Sen, says, “The institutions and rules are, of course, very important in influencing what happens, and they are part and parcel of the actual world as well, but the realized actuality goes well beyond the organizational picture, and includes the lives that people manage — or do not manage — to live.” A government that cannot devise plans that can smartly and efficiently find a way to improve the gains of the citizen who engages in an economic activity fails him and betrays its mandated duty.

I understand that it is unfortunate that there are many things that have been imposed upon us; our ‘forms of government, the type of economic activity — if any’ and our education system. We have unwillingly found ourselves in this circumstance. I also understand that it is an immensely challenging task to merge the ‘good’ parts of an alien civilization that was imposed upon us with our own civilization, we must be determined to achieve “the freedoms that we actually have to choose between different kinds of lives.”

We should not succumb to strings attached with the cooperation other nations offer us. Like there is no justification to the support of one nation to another nation to oppress other nations, there is no justification for using economic (or military) power to impose values that the Tanzanian people can not identify with or are not ready to embrace. It is both a distortion if not total destruction of a community’s dynamism but also an unjust disregard of a nation’s independence and right to determine her future.

The leasing or issuance of fertile land to non-Tanzanian wealth nationals supported or unsupported by wealth cooperate firms on the proposition and/or pretense of establishing clinical centers, schools, ‘address(ing) Tanzania’s protein deficiency problems’, or training the locals to farm modernly and technologically is really untimely and against the will of an ill-informed and less exposed (and mostly uneducated) citizen. It is an act of distortion of the dynamics of a community that is grappling with finding solutions to its most pressing problems. It is an insult to the independence and right to determine the use of the local’s land for economic activities s/he can genuinely devise. It ignores the right and independence of one to determine her/his future. It is a solution imposed upon her/him and one s/he cannot identify with and hence s/he cannot sustain for long. The local must be let to experiment things, and upon her/his desire s/he will seek or discover suitable methods to supplement her/his own.

On the issue of justice and rule of law, I would like to use Mwalimu’s words, which I cannot put any better, during a speech he issued during the opening of the Department of Law of the University College of Dar es Salaam on the 20th of October, 1961:

“An essential part of our national philosophy must be a legal profession of great integrity which not only knows the formalities of law but must also understand the basic philosophy which underlies our society. Our lawyers and our Judiciary must, in other words, not only appreciate that law is paramount in our society, they must also understand the philosophy of that law. It is essential in a democratic society which believes in the equality of all of its citizens that every individual should be subject to the law. Further, it is of paramount importance that the execution of the law should be without fear or favour. Our Judiciary at every level must be independent of the executive arm of the State. Real freedom requires that any citizen feels confident that his case will be impartially judged, even if it is a case against the Prime Minister [President] himself.”

In conclusion, we must improve, discover and defend values we can identify with.

Happy Independence Day!