“May you live through interesting times” has long been said to be a Chinese curse, but I doubt it. For one thing, witnessing interesting times should not always represent a malediction, for some interesting times can actually be worth experiencing.
All the same, I see where Confucius, or someone like that, might have had reason to prefer a calm and idyllic life wherein one is bothered only by the mundane issues of being and letting be, no more.
This is the space where you are not bothered about what Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is saying to US President Joe Biden, nor what asset ElonMusk is acquiring next. And a lot more.
Being and letting be can mean a lot in our situations where one does not even know how one is doing and how one’s interests are taken care of by those who are charged with taking care of them.
So, last week a political party called Chadema — the main opposition party — wants to hold a demonstrating to condemn and mourn the spate of kidnappings, torture and killings carried out in Tanzania for some time now.
The police force says Chadema is not allowed to do that. What does that mean? Does it mean the police know that this party is planning a demonstration to condemn the crimes that the police should be busy trying to stop but have failed to stop, and they are still forbidding the condemnation of those crimes? Interesting.
So, the police deploy trucks to the spots identified by the party as staring points for the demos, and their cars spend a good part of the day moving from one spot to the other making sure they are covering the indicated spaces, while at the same time they are going from one to the other of Chadema’s leaders’ houses to pick up and detain their leaders.
Read: Tanzania arrests opposition leaders to thwart protest
All of this is in the furtherance of a programme of nipping in the bud of an activity that the police should have encouraged, because it is basically in line with what the police themselves should be doing, namely seeking the eradication of these crimes, which have become too commonplace recently.
At the end of the day, a demonstration which had been organised by a political party to condemn these crimes morphed into a demonstration of the police to show how much they dislike anyone who tries to help them to shine a light on crimes which they, the police, should be demonstrating to condemn. Interesting, no?
Hard on the heels of this kind of bizarre display — and to add onto the interesting stories piling up on our national psyche—Tundu Lissu reappears at a press conference in Dar es Salaam, and declares that he now has solid information regarding who was involved in an assassination attempt on him seven years ago, and which crime the very police had failed to investigate thus far.
You will no doubt recall this incident, when a leading member of the opposition in Parliament was attacked in broad daylight in a government compound, sprayed with bullets and left for dead.
Like a Phoenix, he rose from the ashes, and has become the nemesis of Samia’s government, prosecuting it at every turn and showing it for the bumbling, corrupted and nepotistic outfit it has allegedly become.
A new development at this recent press conference is that Lissu this time round mentioned a senior government official who led the attack on him seven years ago: A man who was then a regional governor for one of the areas, who travelled to Dodoma with the team of killers to coordinate this particular hit, ordered by John Pombe Magufuli.
Secrets have a way of revealing themselves, and this is no different. An investigator in a mobile company in Dar es Salaam was doing his job routines when he stumbled on a case where the government was demanding, and getting, information on political opponents, including Lissu, when the government wanted to track him because Magufuli had decided for him to die.
Read: Chadema demands judicial inquiry into abductions, killings
The investigator called the practice up and the mobile phone company cashiered him for insolence and endangering the interests of the company.
Now all these issues recently surfaced in London when that former employee had to be paid large sums of money to hush-hush. Now the beans have been spilt, the whole murderous conspiracy is in the open, and Lissu is on Cloud Nine.
As for the former governor, who is alleged to have directed the hit on Lissu, he is still very much around, Samia seemingly unable to rid herself of him; he has been made governor for another area.
Lissu has now briefed his attorneys and wants them to file a number of cases in London, and says those responsible include the mobile phone company, the government of Tanzania, and the former governor who led the thugs who left him with a bad limp but, surprisingly, alive to talk about it.
Indefatigable and tenacious in everything he engages, Lissu is going to savor this case every minute of the way, and it may open the eyes of many people here, in the region and in the whole wide world. Interesting, no?
Watch this space.
Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: [email protected]
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