SOME years back, Prof Anna Tibaijuka was being whispered about as a possible candidate for the Tanzanian presidency.
On
Monday in a nationally televised address, President Jakaya Kiwete
sacked her from his Cabinet, following a $1 million cash sum that she
allegedly took from a businessman implicated in an energy scandal that
has riveted Tanzania in recent months.
Tibaijuka, a former
high-flying United Nations official, had in a spirited defence said the
money was a donation to a school for which she was the main fundraiser.
But
said Kikwete: “We have spoken to Tibaijuka and she told us she received
the money as a donation for her school; but we asked ourselves: if the
money was for the school, why was it transferred to her personal
account?
“No matter what the reason was, it went against public
leadership ethics; so we asked her to step aside so we can appoint
someone else to take her position.” It would appear that she was a
sacrificial lamb, with the country’s prime minister and energy minister
also strongly linked to the scandal. Last week, the country’s Attorney
General resigned, another victim of the controversy.
The former
energy minister last year stepped down in a different energy scandal, as
did the then prime minister, with the industry a minefield despite the a
crippling energy deficit.
The bulk of Kikwete’s address was
devoted to addressing the scandal where $120 million was taken from an
escrow account, paid to an energy firm and then siphoned off by senior
officials into offshore back accounts.
The fallout threatens to tar his legacy, as he prepares to step down in
2015.
Many Tanzanian watchers would have seen the recent chain of
events as further evidence that the country is firm on corruption. The
East African country occupies a unique position in the perceptions of
many, held in high esteem in Africa due to its support for many
liberation struggles, while welcoming both the West and China, with
little of the tensions seen in neighbouring countries such as Uganda and
Kenya.
Big on national unity
US president
Barack Obama and good-as-new Chinese president Xi Jinping both visited
the country last year, a vindication of the smart and
all-embracing diplomacy it has employed throughout its post-independence
history, including the Cold War years.
It is a country that
proudly emphasises its national unity, borne of its experiment with
socialism. The economic argument was lost, but the social unit remains
strong, premised on a safety-first approach, and protecting the
stability that investors so crave.
Is it a cohesive peace? Many debate this—the Fragile States Index ranks it at a rather high 65th position out of 178 countries (number 178 is most stable), but the fact is that it is a system that works.
Regionally,
it tussles for geopolitical supremacy mainly with Kenya, with which it
maintains an uneasy but essential relationship, both being members of
the East African Community (EAC) bloc. Even over this Tanzania is split,
being also a member of the Southern African Development Community
(SADC).
But it has notably been a donor darling despite the type
of transgressions with taxpayer cash—both its own and others— that have
seen many other countries such as Malawi swiftly shorn of benefactor
support. A third of its budget is currently funded by donors.
A land of crooks
Yet the statistics would suggest that it compares favourably with other regional corruption “rogues”.
In the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index released recently
by Transparency International, the country placed 119th out of 175
countries surveyed, while Kenya was 145th and Uganda 142nd. In another poll by Gallup, Tanzanians were the most worried in Africa about corruption, with nine out of ten citing graft as their top concern.
The
same poll also showed the country has seen the largest swing in
corruption perception over the last seven years—in 2007 only 68% rated
graft as a big concern, in 2014 this rose to 90%. The media, despite
being seen as half-controlled, still earned a higher rating that the
national government.
The corruption trade-off
So,
why doesn’t graft in Tanzania make the news internationally? One word,
stability. The country has over the decades afforded a predictable
political and commercial environment to investors, a crucial anchor for
snapping up commercial deals, as Kenya and Somalia would testify.
Nothing appeals to the investors like predictability of policy, as the latest Mo Ibrahim survey noted,
something that Zambia is slowly coming to learn as mining majors
threaten to exit over ever-changing revenue sharing policy. Call us
names, accuse of labour malpractices, but stick to exisiting policy and
we’ll lap it up, has been the creed for foreign investors.
With
this in mind, donors have been more lenient with what they see as a
model country by the region’s turbulent standards. But it would seem the
marriage is strained: it is notable that Kikwete’s wielding of the axe
has coincided with the withholding in October of nearly half a billion
dollars in aid by major donors as Japan, the UK, African Development
Bank and the World Bank.
Even they have their elastic limit when it comes to patience, it would seem.Mail & Guardian Africa
No comments:
Post a Comment