Image of a peaceful, polite country is a con: Tanzania is a complicated place

There is much to enjoy about Tanzania’s image outside of its borders. It is a beautiful country (but then again, which part of Africa isn’t beautiful?) full of waving coconut palm fronds and “authentic” Swahili culture and friendly people.

In short, it is the perfect setting for our favourite con, that of getting away with all sorts of shenanigans because we’re generally charming about it.

Which makes it interesting to watch us struggle to uphold this image in these somewhat unpredictable times.

Maybe it is perverse, but I have been wondering what it takes to tarnish the image of a country or for that matter that of a leader.

This is not an idle occupation. In the case of leaders, dubious ones abound, which is why we are always so focused on the question of what makes a good one. Sure, let’s pretend that the stories of great leaders keep us inspired and motivated like talismans against the worst of human nature.

In actuality, most of us want to know what made vegetarians like Adolf Hitler tick and whether anyone in our vicinity is displaying similar traits.

Image is everything

In the case of a nation, this image business is very serious indeed. Take those advertisements that countries put on international news stations to convince investors and tourists alike that they are a good destination.

It boggles my mind, the idea of marketing a country like so much fish, but it is one of the more amusing aspects of the cutthroat competition that comes with globalisation.

Besides which, I can understand it on the basis that there are a lot of countries out there and perhaps it is okay to help the world remember how to differentiate your Togolese from your Tanzanians.

If there is one natural resource that we have exploited for both internal and external political purposes, it is our image. Internally speaking, there has been a lot to say lately.

We have invested very heavily and bought into the idea of peace at any cost. It might sound odd to phrase it that way — at any cost — but that’s the nature of the deal. While discontents have been piling up and internal strife is starting to take on a disconcertingly violent edge, we have found coping mechanisms to convince ourselves we can survive these times.

On the one hand, we have been externalising some of the problem, shipping it offshore so that we can maintain our fiction of ourselves as decent folk.

This happens particularly in situations involving terrorism, something that we never thought we would deal with directly. So we tell ourselves it must be perpetrated by a foreigner and start looking accusingly at countries north of the Sahel while increasing our efforts to catch and oust illegal immigrants who have done nothing more criminal than test the theory of a world without borders.

But there is only so much we can blame on scapegoats — very little, in fact.

The rest of what is giving us collective anxiety at the moment is firmly in the hands of Tanzanians. Oh, we’ve been bad lately and a few people who should know better have been downright rotten.

Still, because it is all happening in Kiswahili, we’ve managed to keep this from tarnishing our precious reputation abroad haven’t we?

Recently, two British citizens were attacked with acid in Zanzibar. From the outside, the crime seems incomprehensible, horrific and terrifyingly unpredictable. The tone of reportage on Tanzania is changing.

I can literally hear journalists, academics and assorted social commentators pause in their tracks to ask, “Who are these people?” We’re no longer following the script, and now the spillover has affected one of our most sacred institutions: Tourism.

Nothing motivates like money; the threat of losing tourist dollars over our increasingly precarious reputation is daunting. In my opinion, this is a constructive development. Nations, especially African nations, are not tame.

Zanzibar is comprised of much more than a colourful history and pristine beaches. Tanzania too is complicated.

By bursting the bubble of crazy-talk about so-called peace and unity we can start to work on the important stuff, such as a realistic assessment of what’s going on. And maybe even what can realistically be done about it.

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