I wish to share with you this article that was published on the Daily Times a few days before Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) elected their presidential aspirant in May 2005.
Since it is just a few months before a year is gone since the general elections, it is a good time to reflect on our previous thoughts and ideas.
Here, we go…
Bahati Mbaya and the Presidential Elections
Tanzania, our country, is heading towards yet another general election. This year, things would be somehow different taking into consideration the fact that only those electorates registered in the permanent voters’ register would be casting their ballots. A big step ahead towards democracy, I believe, thanks to the Third Phase Government? Or is it the pressure from outside? I’m not sure which is which.
I will be discussing what we call in Kiswahili ‘Bahati Mbaya’, that is Bad luck in English. This expression is normally used to excuse oneself or somebody else or a group of people from bearing responsibility for something that did not go well, even if the results of the act were fatal.
I will give a few examples to show how this word is normally used in our day-to-day life.
John is a driver; he rides a daladala (commuter bus) that plies between Kariakoo and Gongo la Mboto in the City of Dar es Salaam. He was arguing with one passenger over the increase in bus fare from 150/- to 250/- after the passenger threatened not to pay the new bus fare because the ticket he was offered still showed the old fare, 150/-.
While the argument was on, the red lights at the Tazara traffic lights came on and John was not aware that the green lights had turned off, he kept riding on. By the time his vehicle was about to finish crossing the Tazara junction, another vehicle that was traveling from Buguruni towards Chang’ombe crashed onto John’s daladala on its tail. John lost control and crashed onto another vehicle that was parked on the roadside.
It was a fatal accident. The four tightly packed passengers at the back of the daladala died. Several others were badly injured. And to this day, John would always say ‘Ilikuwa ni bahati mbaya’, that is, ‘It was shear bad luck’ and nothing else.
Mama Saidi was washing some clothes for her family. Her one-and-a-half years old toddler was playing nearby. There were three buckets, all full of water, their covers had been taken off and were lying on the floor. While going on with her task, she smelled the beans that were on the cooking pot burning, she rushed into the kitchen to add some more water onto the pot full of beans leaving behind her beloved Saidi who continued playing close to the place her mother had been washing the clothes.
Mama Saidi stayed in the house for less than five minutes, upon coming back, she found Saidi having turned into one of the buckets that were there with his legs hanging on top and his head submerged in water. He had died of suffocation from the water. That was the end of the journey of his young and tender life.
To this day, Mama Saidi would say: ‘Kwa bahati mbaya alitumbukia kwenye ndoo iliyojaa maji, basi akafariki, hakuwa ridhiki’, that is, ‘It was out of bad luck that he died in a bucket full of water, could be God did not plan that he stays with us long’.
Maulidi and Abel are editors in one local publishing company. The company specializes in book publishing. They were working on one manuscript. They edited the manuscript, proofread it and were satisfied that it was ready to go to print.
By the time the book came out, some illustrations in the book were dislocated, there were several spelling mistakes and worse still the title of the book was not right. The book was disqualified and could not be taken to market in the state it was in. It was to be pulped, that is, be torn into pieces and the editing and proof reading had to start from one. The company had to incur a loss of 10 million shillings.
This is what Maulidi and Abel told their boss, ‘Ilikuwa bahati mbaya hatukuona makosa yale, kwa kweli yalitupita’, that is, ‘It was bad luck that mistakes skipped our eyes’.
We could give thousands of examples at which people end saying ‘It was bahati mbaya’.
What I really want to say here, at least my conviction, there is nothing like ‘bahati mbaya’, in fact it does not exist. Human beings created the expression in order to give themselves some excuses over what they have done, so that they would be forgiven and would not be taken to task. Or rather boldly, for every act on which one is responsible, whenever the outcomes are negative, one ought be held responsible and be punished accordingly, but in order to escape from the punishment, people hide themselves behind what they have christened as ‘bahati mbaya’.
If, in our first example, John had been more careful, the accident would not have occurred. Since he did not cause the accident on purpose, then he must have caused it due to carelessness or better negligence.
The same applies to Mama Saidi in the second example and to the two editors in the third example. Bahati mbaya does not exist, something is either done on purpose, with the full intention and knowledge of the consequences, or it is done carelessly and negligently. There is no the middle way when it comes to human acts, on which people are responsible. Under this understanding, people are always to be held responsible for the outcomes of their deeds.
Since we are going into elections, the general elections, to elect someone who would head the Fourth Phase Government, people who would represent us in Parliament and those who would be leading us in the district, municipal or city councils, there would be no ‘tulimchagua huyu kwa bahati mbaya’, that is, ‘we elected this fellow by bad luck’.
We, the voters, would be held responsible for the kind of leader we are going to put into power at any level: a councilor, an MP, or a President. We should understand that we would be casting our ballots after having listened and attended the election campaigns. That is if we are going to elevate a corrupt person to power, so that he or she governs the country with his or her selfishness, we would have no one to blame but ourselves. We would be responsible for it.
There is widespread word that the media is the fourth pillar in any state, that is, when that media is free enough to conduct its affairs under the principles of responsible freedom. Corruption is a big problem, especially in poor countries like ours. The media is powerful. Anyone who can buy the media and have its support can find himself or herself being elevated to the highest office in the country, however evil that person might be.
We want the media to be hard on the aspirants for the various seats to be contested in the elections. We want actors in the media to be critical when conducting interviews with the aspirants, digging into the statements and arguments made by the aspirants.
Recently, President Benjamin Mkapa was delivering a speech. He said something that was very special and that entails a lot of thinking. It is close to impossible for a politician to make such a critical statement as this: “There is no free development, any achievement has a price, an expense that has to be made available, ask the aspirants, whenever they talk of bringing you development, ask them where would the price, expenses of bringing about development come from?”
This argument, as I said earlier entails a lot of thinking. We normally hear politicians, particularly during election campaigns giving us lots of promises, and we would swallow them as if they were sweets, without questioning them a single bit. They would tell us that they would bring us water, and we would not question who would bear the costs of bringing the tap water to the front of our doors. They would promise us to bring us roads, good, tarmac roads and we would not ask them where is the money going to come? The list is endless… schools, dispensaries, medicine, and food.
The media has to be our mouthpiece; it has to pose these questions before the ‘waheshimiwa sana wagombea’, where would the money for the grand projects they promise us come from? Where? Who would bear the costs or running and maintaining them? Not that we are afraid of bearing the costs ourselves, what we want is a person or a team that would organize our resources and commit them to our own development not to their stomachs.
The media should not say: “Ilikuwa bahati mbaya, hatukukumbuka kuuliza maswali haya!” That is, “It was bad luck, we forgot to ask about these questions!”
And, I’ve been following the big promises being made by those CCM members who want to succeed President Mkapa. Each one of them tells us that he wants to continue the successes registered by the Third Phase Government under Mkapa. All of them keep saying the same thing. And, of course, no one has forgotten to capitalize on the Late Father of the Nation, Julius Nyerere.
But, and this for me is a big but, President Mkapa never thought of changing the constitution in order to extend his period in office. As far as I am concerned, I have not heard any CCM aspirant promising not to temper with the country’s constitution in order to extend his time in office. We want them to make the promise, and the media has to quote them in bold letters and make the promise known to the whole world.
There would be no turning back the clock. By the time we install a new president in office, he would be there to stay for five years, and possibly for ten years, whether he will be a selfish monkey or a good person. No bahati mbaya, no bad luck, we would all be responsible. So, dear fellow country men and women, eligible electorates, this is the matter we should handle very carefully and seriously. Let’s not commit any mistake, this is the time to scrutinize every detail carefully, and seriously.
Let me know of your opinions.
Ciao!
I have always wondered (or am I amazed? No, that does not fit what I want to express, may be Am I made to be surprised?) and tried to search for answers that don’t seem to be available anywhere near me.
Why is it that some politicians keep changing parties? Today they are in this party. Tomorrow they are in another party. Day after tomorrow they are yet in another party. Why? Why have a situation like this? Unfortunate enough, it is mostly those politicians on the Opposition Camp who defect into the Ruling Party. I say the trend of defecting into the ruling party is an unfortunate situation because we all know that the opposition camp in the country, Tanzania, is still very weak. This can be verified against end of last year’s general elections results.
In my opinion, those who are already in opposition have the task of strengthening this camp. They can do this by making real commitments to the camp. I believe the opposition camp has principles for which they stand to defend and fight for. I wish to convince myself that those who are in this camp have throughly convinced themselves that the values and principles for which they fight are worthy fighting for. If they are in opposition for sake of being a member of a certain political party, then such mentality will cause the opposition to always remain weak.
I understand that it is an individual’s right to choose where one wants to express his or her political interests and opinions. It is for this reason that one joins one or other political party. I believe this is the reason that made Dr Kaborou, Tambwe Hiza and others to defect from their former political parties into the ruling party.
It is basically for that same reason that they decided to join opposition political parties. They joined them after having convinced themselves that they really wanted to fight for the principles and values for which the parties they joined were committed to fight for. This is where I find it hard to link matters. When a person decides to defect from one camp to another, does it mean that he or she ceases to believe in what he or she once believed in? Are these values and principles temporary, that is, today these values and principles have meaning and give one reason to fight for them and then the next day they lose their meaning?
I just wonder. What could be happening? In the recent past, a politician of high calibre, Mzee Luteni Makamba, who is now the secretary general of the ruling CCM, was quoted as saying that Mr Ngawaiya and Tambwe Hiza defected from their respective parties, TLP and CUF, because of their ‘hunger’ (njaa). However, Mzee Makamba, in the following editions of those tabloids denied having said that. He even inquired from Mr Ngawaiya how much the building he owns at Manzese area is worth of. He received the reply that the building is worthy some 800 million shillings. This is quite a lot in Tanzanian standards.
But what made such men as Ngawaiya really defect from their former political parties? This is a big question. Unless they come out and say it very openly and genuinely, we might never know the truth. We will end up doing some guess work. Is it possible that the CCM does use some form of terror against those prominent politicians, blacmailing them with some frauds these people have committed in the background of building up their fortunes? Could it be that they were really not committed to the goals, principles and values of the opposition side? Is this a sign of immaturity?
I leave this open for anyone to contribute.
Ciao!
