Ah, these ministers! Stage fright? Ignorance? It is Zanzibar, not Zimbabwe

The Tanzanian social media is currently abuzz with the performance of a deputy minister (of education, no less) who apparently told a conference in South Africa that his country came about as a union between the islands of Pemba and Zimbabwe and that the union was formed in the year 110964, or something close to that.

I’m using the word “apparently” because though I saw something that purported to be a recording of the minister’s statement on YouTube, I have no way of vouching for the veracity of the clip, knowing all too well that tricks can be played with these newfangled electronics.

Still, I do not get it as to why there is so much talk about this gaffe attributed to the minister, unless you are Robert Mugabe and you are wondering whether your country has been annexed by Tanzania without your knowledge, which would added more than a little fuel onto the dispute over a certain lake separating Tanzania and Malawi.

People could even start seeing clear expansionist tendencies in a country that would jump over another—Zambia — in order to annex a third country, and see how it would be much easier by comparison just to grab a little lake right at its border.

We do not seem likely to get into a diplomatic wrangle over the minister’s misspeech largely because, I believe, those who heard him and those who have been watching him on the web will realise that we have officials who are capable of the most fantastical statements, which they make on a regular basis at home, mostly unnoticed. The external exposure of such inanities is what renders those statements dramatic. Otherwise we have them by the basketful.

For, you do not need to know much to be a minister because it may not be your erudition that recommended you for the job in the first place. You might have been an ardent for the party and your boss during the last election. You may have contributed generously to the war chest that eventually bought your party the election in the vote bazaar, which now seems to have gone completely atomic. Or you may have an auntie who knows people who know people who know people who make such appointments.

We may never know, however, why said minister went to the pain of describing how the United Republic came about, in what sounded like a Civics class for second graders. One would have thought, wouldn’t one, that all those delegates listening to our special minister would know something about Tanzania. But maybe the minister suspected that some of them might owe their positions to considerations such as he himself owed his to. Believe me, our country does not hold the African record for ignorance among ministerial ranks.

But maybe it’s not all about ignorance; I put it down to stage fright and the disconcerting psychological pressures the uninitiated come under when they stand before strange audiences and are compelled to deliver their pieces with the unhelpful aid of the accursed power-points.

Whatever happened to the good old days when you could just stand before the audience, close your eyes so you do not see the mocking faces, and spit out hellfire and pieces of hot charcoal without necessarily worrying about whether anybody understood you? It used to work wonders; it even got some people elected to positions of leadership in the organisations they had thus abused. As they used to say, if you cannot dazzle them with your brilliance, bamboozle them with your bullshit.

I know that our minister’s young peers will jeer and berate him for “embarrassing the nation.” But they need not feel that way because it is a long time since we ceased being embarrassed by our mediocre performance, in every undertaking.

At least we should remember that this particular minister when back home and going about his daily ministerial duties, is famous for closing down schools that are not up to scratch. I do not know whether he has such powers, but he does order them to close. It is true.