Article/ Feature
20/May/2011
We starve in middle of plenty because we are poor
By: Clarence KIPOBOTA (Advocate)*
An evaluation assignment by the Foundation for Civil Society took me to several ‘marginalized’ districts and regions of Tanzania Mainland. The districts included Newala, Mbozi and Bariadi.
I could see plenty of resources along the way including wildlife, water sources, mountains, thick forests, very fertile soil and of course, a good number of health persons; but most of them with vivid misery appearances. A simple psychological test could tell that the dream for their future holds no hope. Evidently, they are wretched by poverty.
While I was in Masasi, I saw a girl, who was apparently thirteen years. The young land was selling boiled maize to her customers along the Bar at Masasi. She had a child hooked at her back crying for something. The girl was busy attending her customers. One male customer started to touch her buttocks. She could not resist because same person contributes to her petty business.
Certainly, she does not know if that behavior amounts into sexual harassment under the penal laws of Tanzania. All what she needs is money for her wellbeing. The wild justice of most of African countries shows that a poor person ‘has no rights’ and could not enforce dignity.
One piece of her maize is sold at a price of one hundred Tanzanian shillings. Probably at the end of the day, she could collect one thousand shillings for herself, the child and other members of her family.
On my way to Mbozi district from Mbeya urban, I boarded a small car. Beside me sat a young girl with her mother. My interaction with them unfolded what the mother had in her mind. She told me that her daughter aged nine years was raped by the chips seller. The case could not move further from Mloo ward police station of Mbozi because chips seller’s uncle is twisting the case because he has financial muscles. She was trying to go to report it to the higher levels after securing some monies for transport fare.
Millions of Tanzanians and Africans do face lots of problems because of poverty. Poverty denies them of the confidence to defend for their dignity and rights because they are hungry and uneducated with very limited options for alternative livelihood.
It is the same challenge that exposes women, children and other vulnerable groups in a disgraceful situation. The geographical settings, cultural norms and socio-economic backgrounds hard stress them into tomb or problems. Again, because of their vulnerability, the stance of poverty becomes magnified. But why are we poor? Why do we starve in the middle of plenty?
It is obviously that there is nothing which witlessly drives African countries like poverty. It has been very hard to knob to break. In fact, the situation I saw proves that no war against it would fight it in a near future.
As it is shown earlier on, Tanzania is endowed with almost everything which could be driving forces for economic development and poverty eradication. However, from economic point of view, the abundance of resources that we have are not essentially an aspect for or of development.
Development, being one of the economic attributes usually depends on how one makes effort to exploit nature and not what nature can provide for him or her. From this argument then, we are poor because we have poor and unorganized strategies of extracting our needs from the abundance surrounding us. Having plenty in hands does not necessarily guarantee for the better.
A better understanding of why this is a case can be well responded by revisiting the history of our nation.
The Arabs, German and English who dominated us some decades ago, induced us to believe that the little we had in terms of human resource and skills can not suffice our independence on production. Then, they are the one who knew better than everyone of us.
The post independence era has never been a removal of the said hangover. The mental slavery still haunt our ability to think, put priorities for ourselves, extract of minerals for our benefit and believe that local investors can do better than the foreigners. We have hired aliens to think and act for us. This is because we are physically and mentally poor; therefore economically poor as well.
The history of Tanzania shows that the country has been in constant struggles against poverty from first day of our independence. The first strategy was that, the plenty that we have, should be controlled by the government. Clause (h) of the TANU’s Decree of 1967 indicated that, in order to ensure economic justice, the state must have effective control over the major means of production.
In fact, this was a rightful decision for that particular time because it was one step forward towards mental emancipation from colonial hangovers. But as we conceived this, we overlooked the fact that mental slavery was not only connected to dependence of commands from colonialists, but also from any person or authority which inhibits individuals from free thinking and capacity to utilize what he or she has around.
Today, we have some of leaders who still think that people living in rural settings should not be consulted because they are not educated. In this way, they even enter into agreement with foreign companies to invest in the village lands without informed consent of the village government. The situation of Loliondo Game Controlled Area could give a good illustration.
The current struggle of economic survival goes so bad. Land grabbing and alienations push local communities away from their lands. The aliens are favored by both legal and policy frameworks.
Any attempt of indigenous occupants to fight for their lands and resources back or at least sharing the profit, is gunned down by ‘almighty’ powers. The laws are there to justice the means and ends. We lost our people by guns to protect the aliens who share nothing significant to local development. Recent scenarios of Tarime could tell. It is a pure struggle of economic survival.
The local communities do not have stronger voices to speak out their hearts and problems. In this way, the killings of their relatives are easily justified. An ‘almighty’ alien has to be protected by all costs even if it is to the detriment our own people. The love of investment money outweighs the interest of the local communities.
Probably the ignorance of technical-knowhow is a reason of our exclusion from direct enjoyment of the right to extract the nature.
But who is to be blamed? What strategies are there to ensure that the resources we have are for Tanzanians and should be utilized by the same? Until when will our country continue hiring foreign ‘experts’ in our mines, plantations, highway constructions, even selling of local coconuts and tomatoes in the foreign supermarkets placed in Tanzania?
Without proper response to all these, we will continue to witness huge flocks of foreigners who comes for resources and not love of Tanzanians.
Be the case as it would be, this incapacity to exploit the plenty that we have is not caused by the financial status. That is, lack of capital to use good technologies. We could have used limited resources to produce while we forge workable strategies to have technology at our own hand. Other countries have used this strategy.
When the Rural Rapid Appraisal philosophy was introduced in Asia in 1980s, it was seen as a nightmare. It was not easy to believe that a person who has nothing (capital) can give something. That concern is actually justifiable. As Latin proverb says, “Nemo dat qui non abet,” that is, he who has not, cannot give. So the the question of how to raise capital from empty pockets is what estranges the minds of our leaders. This is why small scale miners are not allowed to own mining site.
A good question here should be what strategies do we have to ensure that the local people have competitive capital in the current market? Many Tanzanians are hard working and good planners, but do not have capital to implement what they have in minds. Saving from their produce is almost impossible. Banks have strings, very difficult for them to adhere to; in fact, they lack entrepreneurship skills to risk their assets if any.
The remaining option, may be, is to fundraise from donors. But it is also cumbersome to them. They have to know English and fill those complicated forms. Their level of literacy is very low. Therefore, they hardly get funds from these people.
A few who are educated, say the civil engineers, are lucky ones. However, when a bid to develop certain place is announced to the bidders, they are incapable of becoming highest bidders. The Chinese, South Africans and Japanese always win. The local engineers become servants who are lowly paid.
Moreover, there is elites’ betrayal to guide the villagers. All graduate even from Sokoine University of Agriculture are locked themselves in the cities some of them teaching tuitions. There is no one to guide the villagers what to plant and how to manage the farms and livestock.
During the first bunch of the Five-Year Development Plan of 1960s and 1970s of Tanzania, the government proclaimed that hard work was the key to development. The plan emphasized that, we should not lessen efforts to look for money we really need; but, it should be more appropriate for us to spend time in the villages showing people how to bring about development through their efforts, rather than spending most of time searching for money from abroad.
The reality of this has remained. It is very unfortunate that poverty in Tanzania and most of African countries is sought to be eradicated in the full air conditioned rooms in posh hotels of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi or Kampala rather than using same money to sit round the tree with the people to whom these discussions are all about.
This brings feeling of rejection to most of residents in rural areas. As such, the youths quite agriculture and migrate in the cities to try their uncertainties. At the cities, they join criminals to start fishing things from the passerby. Girls join hawkers to sell their bodies to johns. Eventually, a number of so called ‘street children’ increases and, of course, we create a dented future nation.
The most important solution to all these problems should be capacity building to our people plus returning of resources (means of production) to the hands of citizens. The Tanzania’s Community Development Policy of 1996 quotes Mwalimu Julius Nyerere as saying that, true development is development of the people, not things.
There is no easy way that we can employ to free ourselves from starving, apart from building faith on ourselves, that we can exploit our nature ourselves. Above all, we need to emancipate ourselves from poor mentality which eventually makes us poor. We are capable of enriching ourselves from the plenty that we have.
Otherwise, the plenty that we have shall always be the garden of flowers for bees’ honey ingredients which benefit the aliens while of people watching and dying. Let us cherish local investors, local communities. It is time to awake and work for the interest of Tanzanians first. It is just too much to hear plans and plans every time. Where are the results?
* 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment