Aid with strings attached

Over the years we have been hearing our politicians let off some hot air that Tanzania will only accept aid without strings attached. It was good for the media, but hardly practical. If you believe that then you will believe that the Roman ruler, Julius Caesar was born in Yombo Kijichi!

Aid has always been coming to our country with steel wire strings attached. The so-called aid is mostly here to provide employment and cushion the unemployment statistics of the aid giver. I have seen electricians from all those ‘developed countries’ come to teach us how to fix electric bulbs and impart all those ‘skills’ to the locals.

They are called expats and live the lives of kings and queens here. I see only the African mind being infected with even more sense of inferiority complex. Mzungu is always rich, riding shangingis, having a dozen servants and some other lies they present to us here.

But in a way they stimulate the local CD industry trade. Some expats have even build houses, or some semblance of that for their local chicks. And the local chicks hold tight once they get their mzungu .

Whatever his drunken idiosyncrasies here, he is also looked by local chicks like an air ticket for a trip to ‘majuu.’ The visit by expats to African countries could easily pass as a sex tourism paid for by their governments.

Personally I am dead against the idea of being given aid by some rich countries. So when I heard that the Dutch will stop giving aid to Bongo, I was not exactly offended. It is a blessing in disguise.

Why? You see I always insist that Tanzania should stop having this totally ridiculous idea that there are people out there who love us and are willing jump into bed with us - fasta.

That ‘aid’ goes straight into the pockets of the local mafia. This cushions our local political mafia from facing embarrassing questions like – where does the tax-payers money go? How do EPA and Richmond and Meremeta and Tangold happen while our rulers swear that our country is poor?

Aid money is used to cover those cracks. If there was no aid money we definitely would be at each other’s throats and we would demand a credible explanation for such impunity and abuse.

I can boldly say that Tanzania is at the process of being gang-raped by the international mafia – in the name of welcoming ‘investors’. I can also boldly say that this is with the collusion of the local political mafia.

Now the Dutch government is said to be infuriated by the ‘mistreatment’ of a Dutch businessman. See what I am talking about? Every Dutchman in Bongo becomes an untouchable. Special guys. Who else? The Brits, surely. And Barrack O’s guys.

The Finance Minister, Mustapha Mkulo and the Dutch Development Minister, Bert Koenders have been cagey about what really has been happening and which Dutch business prince has been mistreated by those ungrateful Tanzanians. But I thank them, anyway.

Mr. Koenders is said to have said; “Enough is enough” to the goings-on in the government. What could it mean? Enough is enough demands for hefty bribes from government officials?

Let lose the Tanzanian imagination. The Dutch business VIP would have asked to own the entire Tanga region for the Mkumbara furniture project and could have offered a $1 million bribe to government mandarins. Don’t wince – They all do. BAE offered bribes to government officials to buy a radar system at twice the price.

In Tanga the government officers could have said they wanted more – say, $10 million. The pissed off Dutchmen could have said: “Enough is enough, you greedy Tanzanians! Why sell your country for so much?”
No? If not, then what? The Dutch are relatively honest guys. Why not tell us what really happened?