By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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It looks like the “centre cannot hold”, and “the falcon cannot hear the falconer”, to borrow a phrase all my readers must have come across in those timeless lines from W.B. Yeats, but for the time being, be sure, there is no Second Coming; it is only about our tribulations as Tanzanians and the way in which indeed the falcon is refusing to hear the falconer.

Who is the falcon and who the falconer? In my pedestrian mind, the falcon is the servant you send out to accomplish tasks on your behalf. It could be a servant , an employee, an agent, an emissary, a commissioned agent or such other actor on one’s behalf.

So, when it is said that the falcon cannot hear the falconer, it means there is a breakdown in communication between the principal and the subaltern.

In our public structures we have created bodies and institutions and handed them the tasks to perform to ensure the smooth accomplishment of the tasks that we think are important in our lives as a nation, and we expect those bodies and institutions to at least work for us, and not for anyone else.

Read: ULIMWENGU: Who is this raining on Samia’s parade? We can only but guess

Now it looks like our falcons — who are supposed to be skilled hunters —are no longer listening to us, and maybe they are listening to someone else. But whom?

A few weeks ago, the newly-elected chair of the national bar association sounded the alarm, saying that too many Tanzanians had got into the bad habit of turning up missing.

He gave the names of alleged victims, , which ran into tens. The national batonier informed the public that the bar association had formed a committee to investigate the alleged disappearances. The way that committee is made up gives hope that something worth waiting for is in the offing.

Last Thursday, the leader of the main opposition party in the country took up the same issue, and called for the government of President Samia Suluhu Hassan to take action on these complaints. He even presented to the press family members of some of the alleged disappeared. Some of the disappeared, to be sure, were members of his own party, but others had no known party affiliation.

At the same time this was going on, thousands of Maasai herdsmen and women in Arusha region were camping out in the winter cold, waiting for Samia to come and listen to their grievances, which include forced evictions from their ancestral land and the “cancellation” of their villages. (Did you ever hear of this, that whole villages can be “cancelled” ? It is an innovation that Samia’s government can take credit for).

They later complained that authorities had made sure that they would get no essentials such as water and food. It was a dangerous stalemate, full of ominous possibilities.

By the time this is in print, the government may have found a denouement of the crisis and maybe stood down on some of its cavalier decisions, I do not know.

Read: ULIMWENGU: In erstwhile land of Mwalimu and Ujamaa, byzantinism rules

Whatever may have happened between now (as I write) and when you read this, there is a problem that is firmly installed at the centre of our governance structures that I am sure will still be with us into next week, so it ought to be spoken to:

Our government somehow thinks it owns its people, not the other way round. Ministers, provincial governors, district bigwigs, down to the most insignificant petty official at the very end of the line, think they own us. Ministers even forget that their appellation “Minister” means “Servant”.

It is a cultural issue that is going to torture us for some time, because we have not come to grips with the very basic notions of what we are about, and in a sense, we are stood on our heads.

Otherwise, tell me, someone, how Samia can be saying things like she has decided to be a “deaf frog” so she doesn’t hear what her people are saying. Really?

I thought a leader is someone who has the ability to hear what his/her people are saying before they verbalise it, the ability to read their body language, and to decipher nuances and euphemisms.

If a “leader” cannot muster those skills, then anyone from the hoi polio will be a leader, because all you need is to keep mouthing words you do not mean — do not even understand yourself—and giving promises you know you cannot keep.

We are in a bad way. Within two months our people will be required to go to the polls to elect local government officials, and next year at this time again, they will be required to go through the general elections, to elect the president and vice-president, legislators and district aldermen.

In all these, shall we be voting for deaf frogs? So that they go somewhere and “bring us development” as we have always been told?

Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: [email protected]