It is rather normal in an African setting to hear complaints raised against government authorities about enforced disappearances of individuals hostile to the ruling elites of the country. To borrow a hackneyed expression from my occupation, if it’s a case of dog-bites-man, we say there is no news there.
But when it becomes man-bites-dog, then that is huge news. The logic in that adage is quite simple: Man-on-dog does not happen, and if it does, then it becomes newsworthy. This is what is happening in the Tanzanian setting because, in all the happenings that have been reported in the country, one stands out as fitting the man-bites-dog metaphor.
