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| Mkapa leaving power 'because he is short' |
| August 29, 2005 |
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President Ben Mkapa is stepping down at the end of October, obeying Tanzania's constitution that limits the head of state's terms to two. So last week good old Mkapa visited Kampala to bid his farewells. One of the good things the visit proved, is that Kampala hasn't lost its sense of humour. Whoever thought of getting Mkapa to address a Uganda Parliament that only a few days back accepted money in order to abolish term limits and make it possible for President Yoweri Museveni to become president-for-life, takes the August Red Nose Prize. Mkapa's speech in Parliament, as several commentators have observed, was the ultimate irony. A correspondent tells me that because Uganda has never had a president who left office democratically after defeat at elections, or lawfully after the end of his term, MPs and politicians were overwhelmed by Mkapa. Half the story On which note, we should digress a little, if we are to understand this story better. One of my sisters was a graduate student in Australia some years ago. When she was done, she went to, of all places, Taiwan to teach English. What happened is an experience you have all heard about. In the town where she was, she was the only black person. Many people there had never seen a black person in real life. There were traffic accidents as motorists slowed to stare at her; both adults and children came up and touched her to see if the black "paint" could rub off; they tagged at her hair and, indeed, some dogs barked at her. The same thing still happens in remote parts of Africa when a mzungu shows up. It gets quite hectic if he is also driving, because then you have a village which has never seen a car or a white man, so it is a two-in-one as a result of which the crowd that gathers to behold him gets very big. Of course, unlike the fellows in Taiwan, our villagers don't touch the mzungu. They keep a safe suspicious distance, viewing him as a witch who will chase away the rains and bring famine. So, I gather from my source, that Mkapa received a mix of the treatment that my sister got in Taiwan, and the mzungu can expect in rural Africa. Apparently an opposition MP who couldn't understand why Mkapa, a president from next door, should respect the constitution while Museveni, who lived in exile in the same country, pushed for a presidential monarchy, told a colleague that it had something to do with height. Mkapa is short. The man who begun it all and lent his authority to establishing the current Tanzanian constitution with its term limits, was the legendary Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Nyerere was a diminutive man. His successor Hassan Mwinyi, was actually shorter than him. Then Mkapa, is about the same height as Mwinyi. Well, the only problem with that is that Nelson Mandela is a tall man. And indeed, former Kenya president Daniel arap Moi. My correspondent tells me that several school headmasters applied to the Speaker of Parliament Edward Sekandi, asking if they could bring their students "to see how a president who leaves power after 10 years looks like". I gather Sekandi would have been happy to let the students come, but he couldn't because over 200 schools had sent in requests. There was simply no space for that many people. Different blood colour? I couldn't help feel sorry for veteran opposition and DP leader Paul Ssemogerere. Word has it that he's making a desperate bid to ensure that the sheets in which Mkapa slept are not washed; the chair in which he sat isn't cleaned; and the grounds on which he walked aren't swept, in the hope that some of his "democratic dust" could rub off on Museveni and his NRM-O colleagues. Do you feel this story? Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
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