Term limits, succession, double standards Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete has said it is the people who should choose their leader, President Mugabe’s constant refrain
Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete has said it is the people who should choose their leader, President Mugabe’s constant refrain

Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete has said it is the people who should choose their leader, President Mugabe’s constant refrain

Hildegarde The Arena
AT the height of the Charleston church shooting tragedy last month, US President Barack Obama lost his cool during a podcast interview and did the unthinkable: using the ‘N-word’.

I have written about this before but there are some fundamental issues that the writer wants to raise.

“Nigger,” that racial epithet that appears in Mark Twain’s 19th century classic “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” more than 200 times and had to be expurgated in 2011 by Auburn University academic Dr Alan Gribben who argued: “We may applaud Twain’s ability as a prominent American literary realist to record the speech of a particular region during a specific historical era, but abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day readers. The n-word possessed, then as now, demeaning implications more vile than almost any insult than any insult that can be applied to other racial groups.”

Looking back, this writer says, the cold-blooded murder of the nine black worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina by white supremacist/terrorist Dylann Roof whose allegiances are to racist Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa is no different from the use of the “n-word”.

This is why Obama felt the revulsion and lost his cool. This is also why there was a major outcry about race relations not only in the United States, but across board.

But surprise, surprise! While Zimbabwe’s private media — the NewsDay and/or Daily News in particular never tire of denigrating the person of President Mugabe and others in Zanu-PF, and while they think that it is cool to write the untruth that Obama has snubbed President Mugabe over his tour of Ethiopia at the end of this month, they could however not see themselves standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the same Obama condemning the arbitrary killing of black people in the United States.

Their silence on the issue, has raised a number of eyebrows, and we are asking why they have become so embedded in an illegal regime change system to the extent of forgetting who they are, and that they are also their brothers’ keepers.

Has money whitewashed their conscience to such an extent, forgetting their history especially? And doing so while enjoying the fruits of bloody money!

Every black person anywhere was a potential target for this terrorist/racist shooting on that fateful day on June 17.

 

Term limits, succession, double standards

The hullabaloo that we have gone through regarding term limits and succession plans is another jarring area where we see a lot of double standards: do as I say and not as I do.

During the podcast interview by Obama an Associated Press statement caught this writer’s attention.

Right at the end of the “n-word” report, they reported on June 22: “With the campaign to replace him heating up, Obama said he thinks he would be a better candidate if he were running again, because although he’s slowed down a little bit, ‘I know what I’m doing and I’m fearless. I’ve screwed up. I’ve been in the barrel tumbling down Niagara Falls. And I emerged and I lived. And that’s always such a liberating feeling’,” he said.

Dear reader, do you see what I see that Barack Obama was opining to run again?

Does he feel robbed by the term limits set out in the American constitution?

Was he also undermining Hillary Clinton’s ability to win, considering that at the moment she seems to be the most favourite contender in his Democratic party?

And, what does this statement say about the double standards overtly and covertly displayed by the US administration against smaller nations regarding succession plans and term limits?

Part of the answer can be found in what is happening in Tanzania right now.

That great political party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (formerly Tanganyika African National Union – Tanu) is in the process of short-listing the presidential candidates for the October election.

The winner will take over from incumbent President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete who will step down after his two-year term as per the Tanzanian constitution.

There are a number of quotable quotes from President Kikwete including his remarks that the presidency is a stressful and thankless job: “After 10 years, you need to move on. It’s been 10 years since I came to this high profile office. I was very young, just 55. But what I can tell you about this job is that it is stressful and thankless.”

And this Monday he told a rally that he did not have a “favourite person” for the job he would soon vacate.

Instead, he called on supporters to “pick a person (out of the 38 candidates) who is a serious, competent and good leader to boost the country’s economic and social development,” a person who would also deal with the endemic corruption.

What this implies is that President Kikwete did not groom anyone to succeed him despite the fact that Chama Cha Mapinduzi has been in power since 1964.

But, no one is complaining.

What irony when compared to the Zimbabwean scenario.

President Mugabe has said time and again that it was not for him to choose his successor, because a leader must come from the people.

Chris Chivinge from the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation asked him the perennial question on his 91st birthday: “Your Excellency, the issue of succession always crops up, for some within and outside the party saying or feeling that you now have a choice of someone to take over when you choose to retire.”

President Mugabe answered in a surprised manner: “Have a choice? The party has a choice, not me. I don’t choose. I have said I don’t choose my successor, never.

“I will discuss, with others, yes, members of the Politburo, those I regard as wise people, who can we support… that’s how I operate. I don’t just do (it) on my own… A successor can come from any level of the party but usually the top levels, the Central Committee, the Politburo.

“It may not be either of the VPs, it’s up to the people who choose who they think, at the particular time is the most suitable candidate for the presidency, and they discuss the issue.

“That’s how it should be. I was not appointed successor by anyone. Our own tradition haisi yekuti nhaka yangu ichazogarwa nani, haisi nhaka yemunhuka iyi.” (Our tradition is not who shall inherit my position, because it does not belong to an individual.)

Are they the same difference: President Obama’s wishes, President Kikwete’s refusal to choose his favourite and President Mugabe’s never, never stance on appointing a successor?

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