Magufuli, the president Tanzanians love and loathe

One of the greatest benefits of travelling is that one gets a more realistic view of a country from the people who are truly experiencing it.

Unlike the media where one is a non-engaged participant, talking with the rank and file in a foreign city involves questioning opinions and seeking clarification of positions, impossible in a newspaper column or social media platform.

I therefore never visit a country without engaging taxi drivers, chatty pub attendants and fellow joggers. By the end of several chats, my information on the state of that nation is usually complete. It was in this spirit that my visit to Arusha last week gave me unusual but amazingly conflicted insights into the new government of John Pombe Magufuli.

Now, I have always loved Tanzanians with their easy manner and lavish politeness. Nothing discloses to me how rude we Kenyans’ social interactions are until I cross the border and I have to consciously put on my tafadhali hat. If there is one integration flop, it is Kenyans’ failure to absorb polite conduct. In my previous visits, I found Tanzanians reluctant to criticise their government especially to outsiders, particularly Kenyans, who they consider too brash and noisy. It was therefore a surprise to engage for more than four hours with two totally differentiated views of the new Tanzania. One very critical and the other effusively positive. On my trip from the airport, the gentleman who taxied me was totally anti-Magufuli. He did not have a single positive thing to say about the new President despite my giving him many examples of the freshness that Magufuli had brought with his anti-waste and anti-corruption crusade. This gentleman and a couple of pub attendants I hobnobbed with later identified three major challenges with Magufuli.

On the one hand they felt that the President had replaced institutional leadership with personal decree-ship. Decisions on important questions, including economic issues like budgeting, taxation and resource allocation, were made directly by the President ignoring constitutional institutions. The Cabinet appeared not to exist and orders were made by the President directly to junior officers thus unduly interfering with institutional responsibility and accountability.

Secondly, they were concerned about the dwindling space for social and political rights. Several politicians critical of government had been warned of serious consequences with fiery Chadema MP Godbless Lema cooling it in jail for criticising the President. The recently passed media laws that gave government overwhelming power over private media were alarming. Just the week before, a newspaper that had reported what is widely believed, that President Kikwete had been stopped at the airport when leaving the country was threatened with proscription and many social media commentators were facing trial for comments deemed unlawful by the new administration. On the corruption war, the President’s opponents’ view was that it was largely a smokescreen, directed only at specific persons and not intended to kill overall corruption. These views were in stark contrast to the cab driver with whom I spent two hours on the way back to the airport.

To the latter, John Pombe was the best thing that had happened to Tanzania. His fight against corruption had sent many cartel owners into panic mode. The small man who was the victim of daily bribe demands from the police and public officers could now breath fresh air as the bribe collectors were scared of the Magufuli clampdown. On the shrinking space for human rights, his view was that this was a small price to pay if the country was left more united and graft free.

In his view, endless politicking between elections was harmful to nationhood and denied the government the chance to effectively carry out its programmes. What pleased me is that even Magufuli’s detractors agreed that while he may be mistaken, he meant well for Tanzania, and that he needed to be given space to achieve his objectives. Waangwana, hawa Watanzania.