Article/ Feature
13/October/2010
Nyerere’s Public Ethics, Misplaced Heritage?
By: Clarence KIPOBOTA (Advocate)*
The clouds are herald of rain. That is, lots of indicators already show a displacement of the Late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s ways to public morals, in politics and other aspects of national survival.
It is, indeed, difficult to trace the lost point so that we can invest energy to rectify the situation. All what is certain for now is, social justice, rule of law and more importantly good governance principles are at stake.
May be Mwalimu’s philosophy, which mainly advocated for people centered powers, was hard to grasp for its followers; may be his legacy was not recorded well; may be what he said was for that particular time?
Today, it is ten plus one year of his going away. The nation still grieves especially common and poor people. They remember that, the begotten father loved the poor than the rich men because the poor are defenseless.
Amazingly, the politicians too, each one of them quotes him, use him as benchmark for political, social and economic ethics. But it is difficult to find anyone of them preaching the Mwalimu’s ethical guidelines in a more practical way. His legacy is somewhere misplaced.
The common, poor and people who are deprived of their political, social and economic freedom remember Mwalimu because they are still prisoners of their freedom. The root cause is poor governance, which is attributed by lack of patriotism and selfishness.
The Ujamaa Policy of 1967 aimed at trying to address all these. As Mwalimu himself noted in 1960s, man’s existence in society involves an inevitable and inescapable conflict – a conflict of his/her own desires. For every individual really wants two things, freedom to pursue his own interests and his inclinations. That is selfishness as opposed to equality.
To Mwalimu, the idea of society is based on human equality in which everyone enjoys the national cake and status. In this way, there must be limits set by public ethics or laws to limit private interests against public desire. Possibly this is why during his era, little was heard about Mafisadi. They feared the system as it was working austerely.
Today, poor governance haunts this spirit. It is increasingly seen as heart-attack and effective deterrence of individual and country development. Abuse of public office is at great height. The heritage is misplaced somewhere. This is notwithstanding current efforts to salvage the situation.
The said Ujamaa Policy was affirmed on 26 January 1967 under what was called the Arusha Declaration on Socialism and Self-Relience. This was the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU)’s creed, which aimed at building a socialist state. It laid down several principles, which were widely used as public ethics for all Tanzanians especially the public leaders.
Every citizen or public leader was obliged to believe that, all human beings are equal and have the same right to dignity and respect. Other entitlements including the right to freedom of expression, movement, religion, and social justice were later one embodied in the constitution of Tanzania following the firth constitutional amendment in 1984.
Principal aim number nine was to see the government eradicating all types of exploitation, intimidation, discrimination, bribery and corruption. Indeed, in 1971, 1979 and 1984 the government passed and improved the laws in order to curb corruptions and misuse of public powers.
No politician dared to seize public money for private use because Mwalimu himself was at front line supervising the implementation of the laws. To save the government by then was a sacrifice and not a pride for financial gain to the detriment of poor people. This was the standard set. But nowadays, politics is one of the most paying offices. Everyone is for it.
Today, apart from degraded patriotism, our sovereignty is endangered by a love of investment money, grants and loans from abroad. Much as Mwalimu believed that it is miraculous to develop without money, he insisted that the country can generate money from its own local sources including taxation. The interest was to have a final say in our own national agenda.
During his time, the enterprises of foreign investors were encouraged but with a caution that, if a total control of our economy is left to them, then they would take the profits away from Tanzania. This is why the focus was actually on the need of self-reliance than dependence of loans, grants and so on from the outsiders.
In fact, donor dependence in most of African countries has incapacitated the leaders to think of new local sources of income for economic survival. Sometimes, the greed need of investment money is for the detriment of the local communities. We have heard of Maasai in Loliondo, pastoralists and farmers in different parts of the country challenging the land grabbing and evictions from their traditional lands in favour of investors.
All these occur because we have neglected Mwalimu’s ethics, which viewed communities as main players in development process.
As for this, the TANU’s creed emphasized that, we should not lessen efforts to get money we really need, but it is more appropriate for us to spend time in the villages showing the people how to bring about development through their own efforts, rather than going on so many long and expensive journeys abroad in search of development money.
All these have to do with good governance, to mobilize local resource and use the same in a wise manner. At the moment, the heralds show that we have missed this ethical point.
Well, then, where to trace the lost point? May be it could not be possible to retrieve Ujamaa under the current globalization context in which, capitalism rules the world. But, the creeds set by TANU as public ethics could be maintained, of course, basing on the political will.
The first thing could be to have good, patriotic and bold leaders like Mwalimu Nyerere, who feared no one when it came to issues of public interests.
The second thing is to avoid a manipulation of businessmen and rich people in the electro process because; a well-fed man cannot easily understand when someone says he/she is hungry. That is, if one is brought into power by the wish of few rich men, he/she will be blind of the hunger facing the majority poor.
Moreover, today, the politics is one of the very expensive businesses. A poor man cannot stand to contest the rich because he could not print banners, manipulate media and pay for round trips to seek supporters. It is a riches’ game, who do not care of the poor people’s needs apart from the assurance of the pursuit of their businesses.
Without going back in a more practical ways to trace the Mwalimu Nyerere’s public ethics guidelines, we will continue to starve and dying on the side of elegantly smelling Tanzania, while only few continue to flourish for the interest of themselves, families and close friends.
It is time to rethink and think of poor Tanzanians. This is how we can remember the begotten father of the nation, the Late Mwalimu Nyerere. We want Mwalimu to continue living with us forever by appreciating his love to us.
We have yet another opportunity to try the change and that is the 31 of October 2010. Let us use wisely this noble opportunity to vote for good leaders who can emancipate us from this stack.
* Clarence KIPOBOTA holds Bachelor of Laws Degree (LL.B (Hons)), Masters of Community Economic Development (Msc. CED) and Certificates in Human Rights and UN Treaty Monitoring Bodies. He is an Advocate of the High Court of Tanzania, currently working as Legal Consultant with LEGAL AND DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS LIMITED (LEDECO). He is also Human Rights Activist. Email: kipobota@yahoo.com Tel: +255 762776281/ +255 222700695.
