Comment
We are probably all too used to the Latin expression, Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.
The other day I got interested in knowing how we would say, I make, therefore I am. I googled it, and what I found was, Conficio ergo sum, or Fabrico ergo sum.
Although neither of these two seem to be official
translations, still they convey the sense that our very being as humans
is closely linked to our ability to make, to create, to fabricate, to
manufacture.
What triggered my sudden interest in this whole thing was a remark that a colleague made recently in a Dar restaurant.
“Oh, great, these were made here!” the man
exclaimed, and when I looked up to see the cause of his excitement, I
saw he was holding a small cylindrical container of toothpicks.
Toothpicks!
Sadly, that is the Tanzania of today, where tiny bids of timber used to widen the gap between your teeth can be celebrated.
A far cry from when the country had so many basic factories making clothes, shoes, hoes, ploughs, machetes, even machine tools.
Yes, the ego of one Julius Nyerere was not above
setting up an automotive factory in Kibaha to manufacture military
trucks called “Nyumbu,” as ugly as the wildebeest it was named after — no doubt meant to frighten the enemy.
That from that high, we’ve come to this low, is
testimony to the unthinking of our rulers who, in order to please their
masters in London and Washington, gave away value they could never dream
of creating, in the name of neo-liberal ideologies they hardly
understood but slavishly served.
They set up what they called the Public Sector
Reform Commission, ostensibly to look into the management, financial and
economic viability of these industries with a view to rationalising
what could be rationalised and getting rid of what had to be got rid of.
Due to some inexplicable linguistic twist, those
entrusted with this task took “reform” to mean “sell or trash,” and
within a short period, even the most lucrative factories were given away
for a song. They threw away the baby, and kept its bathwater to drink.
That is how Tanzania came to be without a single
hoe-making factory — 80 per cent of the people are agriculturalists —
and that’s how we came to be importers of everything, from bulldozers to
needles. Ours has become a nothing-making society.
So when, recently, two academics from two friendly
countries took turns to lambast Tanzania’s leadership for being
irresponsible, everyone took note.
Speaking at a seminar on poverty reduction, the
Chinese and Vietnamese delegates asked some serious questions, basically
wondering how Tanzania expected to end poverty without the most basic
industrial production.
The Vietnamese expert queried the wisdom of
exporting raw cashew, for instance, when Tanzania had in the past a few
cashew-decorticating factories.
For his part, the Chinese wondered how people could afford rising food prices, pointing out that in the two years since his last visit to the country, the price of rice had increased twofold.
To rub it in, he said that his country, which produced no
cashew, had to import the nuts from other countries — he did not use the
word “stupid” — such as Tanzania, so why had Tanzania allowed its
factories to die?
For his part, the Chinese wondered how people could afford rising food prices, pointing out that in the two years since his last visit to the country, the price of rice had increased twofold.
These two spoke with refreshing sincerity, and the
beauty of it all was that they delivered their stinging indictments in
the presence of the head of state himself, speaking into the horse’s
ear, as it were.
Whether their views will be heeded is another matter, of course.
The irony won’t be missed, of course, that apart
from Vietnam, whose industries feed on our cashew nuts, China also reaps
rich dividends from our stupid mistakes, and both are telling us that
without necessarily thanking us for our favours.
Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of
the Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political commentator and civil society
activist based in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com
No comments:
Post a Comment