| Is Corruption a result of moral Decay or Moral Willingness? |
 |
 |
As the debate on what has been the root cause of corruption in Tanzania roars on, there have been various opinions on whether corruption in Tanzania is a result of moral decadence or just a moral willing people behind the shadow of moral decay to perpetrate their ill intended motives. Mr Jenerali Ulimwengu, a seasonist journalist, media entrepreneur, social commentator and longtime activists and former public servant shares his perspectives in what describes as an anthology of how we slowly by slowly got where we are
According to Mr Ulimwengu,
Tanzania is stuck, socially, politically and economically and unless
something is urgently done addressing the root causes of corruption, the
nation is headed for disaster.
Speaking at an Anti-Corruption
public dialogue organized by Agenda Participation 2000 at the Blue Pearl
Hotel, Ubungo Plaza in Dar es Salaam, Mr Ulimwengu said: “I’m not
worried about the bribing act, especially that which takes place
between two people, the giver and the receiver. What worries me most is
the level of moral decay one sees today in Tanzania and amongst
Tanzanians. It is catastrophic. We will sooner than later head for a
down fall,” Mr Ulimwengu says.
He said the moral decay was such that even religious leaders who used to serve as our saviours and moral custodians in the past are presently incapable of playing that role!
In the past, he said, there was always hope that religious leaders could be approached to help solve the problem, starting with their own followers in churches and mosques.
However, things have changed quite considerably. “Religious leaders whom we have always looked up to for assistance are equally affected! They are riding in the same bandwagon of moral decay,” said Ulimwengu.
In 2011 many people died, and many continue to, due to their mass decision to travel to Loliondo in quest for cure for a variety of their illnesses. They were all provided medicine, served through a plastic cup by one, Reverend Ambilikile.
“This belief in solving all medical problems through ‘ONE CUP FITS ALL’ is not only strange but very dangerous! But the government is responsible for the mess,” he said.
Ulimwengu argued that it was through government leaders in the form of ministers who encouraged the people to travel to Loliondo. “We all saw, through the media, their pictures as they drank from the famous plastic cup. We can all recall how they explained the government’s plans to ensure that the people travelled to Loliondo with ease; how they were dealing with the problem of congestions…”
How Moral Decay started at Family level
He said the moral decay started at family level, with the child who would say, without batting an eyelid that two times two was 15, and adults, of all the people, would believe him without question!
In a replica of sorts, the parents would play their own corruption game. The father stole money at his place of work, placed it in a box on top of the cupboard back home, and the mother would steal it from the box and hide it somewhere in the house.
“In a word, she repackaged the loot! And down the academic road, the boy would remind his mother that the mathematic exams were around the corner and that his teacher had actually reminded him about that sum of 200,000/- for ‘facilitating his successes in the exams and the mother will promptly provide him with the required money without raising questions!” Ulimwengu said sending the audience into laughter.
“This is not a laughing matter. It is a very serious situation. That is where we have reached, morally, as a nation and we ought to feel ashamed for this! “We have reached a situation which is described by the British as “the tragedy of the commons,” he said.
He said Tanzanians had reached a point where they no longer trusted one another, adding that the petty traders or mobile street hawkers were the most intelligent people because they placed their faith in the wares they carried around on their hands, and if you wanted it as customer, you had to pay for it, and the man would give you the product!
Ulimwengu explained that our moral decay had reduced us into believers of free things. “We no longer believe in earning our living through our own sweat and as a consequence we are inclined towards stealing from the ‘common man’ and looting public money through corrupt under dealings. Mr Ulimwengu suggests that Tanzanians have become ill minded and focusing on quick shortcuts to make money.
“We believe that in order to get money, one should simply buy a coke, and he will get rich! We are using discoveries by Bill Gates and Steve Job, through their computers and Ipad products respectively in searching for the best witchdoctor in the world and not for educational purposes!
Our mental faculties have been destroyed in the same way HIV/aids does to a human being’s body, namely reduction of the body’s ability to defend itself against opportunistic diseases.
Consider the following. If you go to the DRC (the Democratic Republic of Congo), there is at least one thing you know and that is soldiers and policemen in that country will demand money from you for any service rendered.
If you go to Rwanda, they don’t want your money, but papers. Your papers must be in order; there is no beating about the bush.
But what happens in Tanzania? It is very funny! They don’t know what they want. It is confusion. That is why Tanzanians are susceptible to any gullibility under the sun. It is really not clear whether this has got anything to do with our kind of education or a result of poor socialization and lack of adherence to social morals!” Ulimwengu said.
But one thing is clear. We were once a nation of people who loved one another and pursued the policy of Ujamaa and Self-Reliance. But we have since abandoned the policy and our children in schools are sitting on the floor!
And any act of forgetting one’s mobile phone is done so at one’s own peril. What is more, we have become a nation, known the world over, for killing albinos…why? Because we link their bodies to wealth! Therefore we are killing them because we can get rich.
We no longer collect taxes for the government, but for ourselves. And those who don’t pay taxes are considered very intelligent people!
All this is happening because we have privatized the state! In a word, we are not different from Greece which is now a begging nation which is now bankrupt. In my view Greece is bankrupt because the people in that country started helping themselves on the state’s property a long time ago in the same way we have been doing in Tanzania. The result is that people in Greece are richer than their government for the simple reason that they have not been paying their taxes!
Our public servants don’t view themselves as public servants of the people but ‘public bosses’ intimidating citizens and paying less consideration to social service needs of the citizens who pay them.
Some of us look back with nostalgia in those days when almost everybody in the world wanted to hear what a Tanzanian would say about something that had just taken place.
We were then very much sought after for comments because of what we were then, an upright people. Whatever we said in international arena during those days was nothing but spot-on, solid to be emulated by rest in the world.
And that is how we had become political liberators of others in the continent and the world over. We set the agenda for the continent. Unfortunately that is no longer the case. We are currently a source of shame in the circles of international arena and all because of the moral decay we have plunged ourselves into, Mr Ulimwengu says.
Mr Ulimwengus’s views are echoed by a combo of members of the clergy and moral theology like Bishop Dr Methodius Kilain who at one point suggested that issues of morality and morals should be now considered as a matter of national interest and engrained in the new national constitution. The minimum standards of which should be the basis for defining what being a Tanzanian means and determining who our leaders should be in the future.
Others however think corruption is a matter of personal choice and those using the rubric of moral decay to loot public funds are just making an ‘informed deliberate choice’, hiding behind the cover of morality and to advance their personal ego. So the debate goes on and on!
He said the moral decay was such that even religious leaders who used to serve as our saviours and moral custodians in the past are presently incapable of playing that role!
In the past, he said, there was always hope that religious leaders could be approached to help solve the problem, starting with their own followers in churches and mosques.
However, things have changed quite considerably. “Religious leaders whom we have always looked up to for assistance are equally affected! They are riding in the same bandwagon of moral decay,” said Ulimwengu.
In 2011 many people died, and many continue to, due to their mass decision to travel to Loliondo in quest for cure for a variety of their illnesses. They were all provided medicine, served through a plastic cup by one, Reverend Ambilikile.
“This belief in solving all medical problems through ‘ONE CUP FITS ALL’ is not only strange but very dangerous! But the government is responsible for the mess,” he said.
Ulimwengu argued that it was through government leaders in the form of ministers who encouraged the people to travel to Loliondo. “We all saw, through the media, their pictures as they drank from the famous plastic cup. We can all recall how they explained the government’s plans to ensure that the people travelled to Loliondo with ease; how they were dealing with the problem of congestions…”
How Moral Decay started at Family level
He said the moral decay started at family level, with the child who would say, without batting an eyelid that two times two was 15, and adults, of all the people, would believe him without question!
In a replica of sorts, the parents would play their own corruption game. The father stole money at his place of work, placed it in a box on top of the cupboard back home, and the mother would steal it from the box and hide it somewhere in the house.
“In a word, she repackaged the loot! And down the academic road, the boy would remind his mother that the mathematic exams were around the corner and that his teacher had actually reminded him about that sum of 200,000/- for ‘facilitating his successes in the exams and the mother will promptly provide him with the required money without raising questions!” Ulimwengu said sending the audience into laughter.
“This is not a laughing matter. It is a very serious situation. That is where we have reached, morally, as a nation and we ought to feel ashamed for this! “We have reached a situation which is described by the British as “the tragedy of the commons,” he said.
He said Tanzanians had reached a point where they no longer trusted one another, adding that the petty traders or mobile street hawkers were the most intelligent people because they placed their faith in the wares they carried around on their hands, and if you wanted it as customer, you had to pay for it, and the man would give you the product!
Ulimwengu explained that our moral decay had reduced us into believers of free things. “We no longer believe in earning our living through our own sweat and as a consequence we are inclined towards stealing from the ‘common man’ and looting public money through corrupt under dealings. Mr Ulimwengu suggests that Tanzanians have become ill minded and focusing on quick shortcuts to make money.
“We believe that in order to get money, one should simply buy a coke, and he will get rich! We are using discoveries by Bill Gates and Steve Job, through their computers and Ipad products respectively in searching for the best witchdoctor in the world and not for educational purposes!
Our mental faculties have been destroyed in the same way HIV/aids does to a human being’s body, namely reduction of the body’s ability to defend itself against opportunistic diseases.
Consider the following. If you go to the DRC (the Democratic Republic of Congo), there is at least one thing you know and that is soldiers and policemen in that country will demand money from you for any service rendered.
If you go to Rwanda, they don’t want your money, but papers. Your papers must be in order; there is no beating about the bush.
But what happens in Tanzania? It is very funny! They don’t know what they want. It is confusion. That is why Tanzanians are susceptible to any gullibility under the sun. It is really not clear whether this has got anything to do with our kind of education or a result of poor socialization and lack of adherence to social morals!” Ulimwengu said.
But one thing is clear. We were once a nation of people who loved one another and pursued the policy of Ujamaa and Self-Reliance. But we have since abandoned the policy and our children in schools are sitting on the floor!
And any act of forgetting one’s mobile phone is done so at one’s own peril. What is more, we have become a nation, known the world over, for killing albinos…why? Because we link their bodies to wealth! Therefore we are killing them because we can get rich.
We no longer collect taxes for the government, but for ourselves. And those who don’t pay taxes are considered very intelligent people!
All this is happening because we have privatized the state! In a word, we are not different from Greece which is now a begging nation which is now bankrupt. In my view Greece is bankrupt because the people in that country started helping themselves on the state’s property a long time ago in the same way we have been doing in Tanzania. The result is that people in Greece are richer than their government for the simple reason that they have not been paying their taxes!
Our public servants don’t view themselves as public servants of the people but ‘public bosses’ intimidating citizens and paying less consideration to social service needs of the citizens who pay them.
Some of us look back with nostalgia in those days when almost everybody in the world wanted to hear what a Tanzanian would say about something that had just taken place.
We were then very much sought after for comments because of what we were then, an upright people. Whatever we said in international arena during those days was nothing but spot-on, solid to be emulated by rest in the world.
And that is how we had become political liberators of others in the continent and the world over. We set the agenda for the continent. Unfortunately that is no longer the case. We are currently a source of shame in the circles of international arena and all because of the moral decay we have plunged ourselves into, Mr Ulimwengu says.
Mr Ulimwengus’s views are echoed by a combo of members of the clergy and moral theology like Bishop Dr Methodius Kilain who at one point suggested that issues of morality and morals should be now considered as a matter of national interest and engrained in the new national constitution. The minimum standards of which should be the basis for defining what being a Tanzanian means and determining who our leaders should be in the future.
Others however think corruption is a matter of personal choice and those using the rubric of moral decay to loot public funds are just making an ‘informed deliberate choice’, hiding behind the cover of morality and to advance their personal ego. So the debate goes on and on!
No comments:
Post a Comment