Are you for us or against us? All this war talk is reducing politics to testosterone

This past weekend has seen the launch of the major opposition parties’ election campaigns. Fiery invective has always lurked underneath the thin veneer of politeness and humour that Kiswahili gives to most political statements.

This year though, it looks like the men and women taking the podium are done with that. The saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.” Those of us who were hoping for declamations that had the ring of truth, or at least passion, are getting all that and more than we bargained for.

There is a martial tone creeping into much of our political rhetoric. At its basest, it is starting to sound like everyone who has publicly chosen a side is declaring that those who are not with them must be against them.

That’s what bothers me about the nuts and bolts of electoral representative democracy. What’s with all the war metaphors, the constant reference to a fight? Of course there is a country at stake but at the end of the day, the fight doesn’t seem to be between us so much as against a common enemy: This unsatisfactory situation we’re all wallowing in.

The war metaphor seems farfetched and perhaps a touch too appealing to all the many young men, bristling with testosterone, whom we have in our midst.
The campaigns and counter-campaigns so far have had certain things in common: A modern celebrity-concert slickness, a lot of podium time spent either denigrating rival camps or introducing supporting cast members in the drama, and fundamentally similar manifestos.

The problems faced by the majority of the population are well-known, old hat. Poverty, lack of services, growing apathy, corruption. Frankly the only promise that holds any appeal is the promise of change... which means that everybody is promising the same thing: Change.

Change is tricky business, though. In order to frame the discussion, references have to be made to the contribution of previous administrations to the current situation — not a discussion the ruling party’s candidate can approach easily.

Meanwhile, the opposition can flog the Establishment at will for its failures and past performance, while making grand statements about its own ability to work miracles.

I wonder how; at the end of the day, the instruments of the state will remain the same and it will be instructive to see how the inertia of doing things the same way they have always been done can be overcome.

Somewhere in these political campaigns, the question of ideology has been obscured. Pragmatists may ask: Who needs an intellectual exercise when there are wells to be dug and maternity wards to be improved?

A dangerous argument; without a framework on which to hang your worldview and proposed actions, what is to prevent you from lurching opportunistically from one great-sounding if impossible-to-execute campaign promise to the next?

As it is, the professional malcontents have pointed out the wish-list quality of this year’s manifestos. Besides, without ideology, the alternative is politics of personality, a trap that Tanzania is firmly caught in now.

We talk about development mostly in economic terms but I think of it in political terms: Everything comes down to our relations of power.

The one form of change that I would like to hear promised is that of building a stronger polity that can withstand the ravages of political competition, one that is impersonal and strong in its institutions, one that can function decently at the very basic levels with little regard for which party gets into power.

The media is doing what it can to remain neutral, or at least keep out of trouble with the authorities by playing favourites. Campaigns to get people to vote have come down to beseeching citizens to consider the evidence before them and make a rational choice based on fact.

Ha! Nice try. Considering the environment that has been generated by our politics of personality, that train has left the station. Politics is seeping into the most casual of conversations, and there is far too much pressure to declare loyalties as though loyalty to the republic were no longer good enough.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]