By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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In the byzantine world of Tanzanian politics, twists and turns come at furious paces, sometimes running into each other, the more to confuse any interested observer.

The fact of having decisions made not following any recognisable principle, but rather obeying personal interests and unruly whims of the moment, does make for a lightheaded atmosphere wherein changes are so frequent that you no longer know who is going and who is coming, in an ever-revolving musical-chairs circus.

Since President Samia Suluhu Hassan took the reins of state a little over three years ago, the country has known such frequent changes that one is justified to wonder whether there is any proper thought invested in the deciding processes.

For instance, in that period we have had three ministers responsible for diplomatic relations, which makes one wonder how foreign policy planning is done.

Then the general cluelessness pervasive in our government structures and processes that speak to the disorganization within state offices casts doubt on the seriousness of the main people in charge.

Read: OBBO: Tanzania at it again, but needs to learn to make more noise

Sure, the minister who said elections do not have to be won by the candidates voted for but rather they are decided by those who do the tallying of the votes and those who make the declaration of the results, got the sack, but we are not sure why: Was he given the boot because what he stood for is reprehensible, obnoxious and dangerous for/to the sanity of our political system, or was he thrown under the bus because it is simply impolitic to say these things in public?

I ask this question because this was not the first time this young man was saying what he said; he has actually been saying the same thing a number of times, crowing about his ability to score soccer goals with his hands a la Maradona.

So, why were no steps taken against him before, and why is he being chastised now? Is there a new sensitivity that was absent before?

But that is not the end of the story: Immediately after the young minister running his mouth was shown the door, two state companies under his ministry issued paid ads in the daily papers thanking him for the good work he had done with them. The whole leadership of the two companies— the boards of directors and management—were sent home in one fell swoop.

Because no reasons were given for Samia’s action, it was left to the chattering classes to surmise and speculate: some opined that it was “impolitic” – that word again—to issue a laudatory statement praising the former minister when he had been fired by his boss, who is also your boss.

Okay, okay, that is well understood, because it is almost like these subaltern officials were finding fault with Samia’s actions by aligning themselves with their former minister after he had been cashiered.

But that was only one half of the story of ministerial sacking, for there was another young minister who got the boot at exactly the same time but had nothing to do with the braggadocio about stealing elections; so, what was his sacking about?

As usual in a space where investigative journalism is all but dead — basically because state officials prefer a media-less country—the rumour mills go into overdrive, and the social media have a field day, because they do not have to worry about gatekeepers.

So, the story goes around that this latter young minister at Foreign Affairs, who has sizeable ambitions to have a shot at the top job when the time comes – an all too credible “accusation”—has not been doing too much to assure Samia that he will not oppose her when it comes to the crunch and does not even bother to show too overt signs of deference to her. And Samia will not like that, and she will strike out like mad.

All this could have amounted to no more than light entertainment, except that it is taking place in a Tanzania that has morphed from an “Ujamaa” polity of the Nyerere years—anyone remember that period? —to political gangsterism.

Even as I write, reports persist of people being disappeared and hurt, with no proper explanation as to who is behind these abductions. To make it worse, we are beginning another electoral cycle, and our electoral seasons tend to be mad spaces during which ordinarily rational people divest themselves of their rationality and descend into the abyss of violence and cruelty.

Last Thursday, a rumour made the rounds suggesting a vocal regional governor had been hospitalised for what was termed “poisoning".

There was no way of verifying that, but that would not be the first time “poisoning” has been mentioned in Tanzanian politics. Famously, the late John Magufuli himself claimed, when he was president, that he had been “poisoned” when he was minister for infrastructure, even suggesting it had been done by his colleagues!

These claims may not have substance, but what is clear is that the politics of the erstwhile land of “Ujamaa” is poisoned and acquiring more and more byzantine traits by the day.