Several women have mentioned corruption and the “unbearable” cost of living as their most serious concerns as Tanzania Mainland readies to mark 50 years of Independence.
The women, ranging from housewives to professionals and those in business, said corruption and the high cost of living coupled by massive unemployment were taking this otherwise peaceful nation in the wrong direction.
“Corruption is a very big problem in our society. For us women especially, one cannot get even ante-natal service without having to bribe in one way or the other. It is a very big problem given that mothers are the ones that bring into the world new life that society finally boasts about as the sons and daughters of the land,” said Ernestia Chaula (20), who is a stay at home married woman.
The mother of one child, Ms Chaula said the cost of staple foodstuffs had recently shot to all time highs making many families unable to afford basic needs, which was what most Tanzanians wanted, she emphasized. Tanzania, she said, was by and large, still very much a peaceful country but leaders were not quite accountable to the people.
“When seeking votes, they come to us but once in power, leaders forget the people altogether,” she said. Her views were echoed by Pastor Imelder Sanga (43), who said today’s leaders have forgotten the nation’s motto of “love, peace and unity” and many have instead embraced the inferior biases of gender, tribal and religious discrimination.
She prays that such leaders stop their biases as a nation divided can never flourish, she said. “To know that economic times are hard, one has just got to look at the quality of life today. People can hardly afford one meal a day. That cannot be in a country that God has blessed with almost everything,” she said and added: “It sometimes seems like there is no central authority.
Every shopkeeper hikes prices at will.” No country can have peace if the people do not
live on the hope of a better tomorrow. “Yes, we can say there is peace but there are quite disturbing signs on the horizons,” said the mother of three grown up children. Ms Nasphat Hamis Balige (39) said prices of essential foodstuffs were no longer predictable “and that hurts.”
If she were to meet the President, the mother of three would urge him to be firm in taking tough decisions on behalf of the nation, she said. Multilevel Marketing Executive, Ms Joyce Sevelin Ng’ombo (48) was very bitter about the selfishness of officials both from the ruling party and the government. “These people behave as if they are the only ones who deserve to have the good things in life,” she said.
She said she had been trying hard to invest in areas that would make life easy for all Tanzanians but met with an impenetrable wall of bureaucracy to the point that she had come to believe that this country “belongs to all in theory only” but in reality, “it has its owners,” she said. If she were to meet the President, she said, she would pour her heart out to him about the evils of grand corruption and the direction this country was headed.
“Failure to act on accusations of grand corruption is a very serious weakness on the part of the government,” she said. She would tell the President, she said, to learn from Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who used to take firm action and everybody saw that steps had been taken. Mwalimu had no other weapon except that he “genuinely took the interests of the people and the nation at heart,” she said.
She was bitter that the Richmond ghost still haunted the nation almost six years after the President genuinely wanted to solve a crippling power crisis, which he inherited. “The Richmond scandal issued out of the President’s genuine desire to solve a crippling power generation crisis. We all thought Richmond had followed all the legal requirements to be awarded the tender but it has since transpired that they did not.”
“So the big question is: How did they land the tender in the first place?” she asked. That was why, she said, she had since come to appreciate the benefits of the multiparty system of democracy. “You know we grew up under single party democracy and for a long time, we came to believe that that was the best and only way for running a decent democratic nation.”
“At first, I did not like multiparty politics but as days went by and opposition parties helped to point to the weaknesses of the ruling party, I too woke up from my slumber. The system is a challenge for the ruling party not to go into sleep mode,” she said. Like all the other women, she also decried the difficult economic times.
Hotelier, Ms Hawa Hamidu (23), married with one child also had the same cry about how difficult life had become. She said employment was also a kind of mockery as wages were too small. No ordinary worker can claim to earn a living wage, she said. However, she had not been touched by corruption, she said.
“But there are just too many petty criminals in Dar es Salaam. We now live in constant fear of being jumped or mugged by thieves at home, on the streets and even at bus stations,” she said. She was also of the opinion that Dar es Salaam was full of too many beggars, “which is shameful especially in the eyes of foreigners,” she added.
She called on more streets in Dar es Salaam to be paved to release congestion on the few traditionally jammed streets. If she were to meet the President, she said, she would urge him to find a way to reduce the number of vehicles on Dar es Salaam streets as vehicles “were too many.”
She was thankful that there was now a Government of National Unity in Zanzibar “otherwise many of us had come to associate multiparty politics with heightened insecurity and violation of human rights,” she said. Owing to the chaos that once characterized politics in Zanzibar, many people had reached the conclusion that they did not want to cast their votes any more “because it was useless if the outcome was death and rape.”
Ms Hamidu also said provision of education in Tanzania was taking on a clear class structure, which was lamentable. “In most government schools, children go through the seven years of primary education without knowing how to read and write.” Therefore, for children to access quality education that depends on the financial ability of the parents or guardians to send them to private schools, which she equated to a hatchery of selfishness.
However, women should also change and engage in whatever income generation activities. “They should not just stay at home but work. If you work, you will get money, she said. Nevertheless, women need to be empowered and if empowered, “Yes, we can”,” she said.
In last Tuesday’s issue, we inadvertently mentioned Ms Jackline Simon as a standard III pupil at Wisdom Pre and Primary School. The fact is Ms Jackline Simon is a Standard VI student. The error and inconvenience is highly regretted.
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