We tend to go up slowly, but down fast..

by Suppiluliuma

No Explosive Change, Please, This is Tanzania, Bwana

Nairobi — After Tanesco subjected large swathes of Dar es Salaam to power cuts lasting anywhere from 48 to 72 hours a couple of weeks ago, rumours emerged of a protest march. Because there wasn't any real organisation behind the march, the day it was planned for came and went. Things fizzled out quietly.

These days, the most intense dialogue about the power crisis is found on Twitter feeds where people can get quite creative about insulting Tanesco and the government for ruining their day. In other words, business as usual in Dar-es-Salaam.

Every so often I stumble onto a massive debate about governance and whether Tanzania can consider itself a true democracy, or even a multiparty democracy for that matter. Sceptics tend to say that Tanzania doesn't qualify as a multiparty democracy, or even as a democracy for that matter, because we are still being ruled by the same party that came into power after independence. I hear time and time again that in order for Tanzania to really become democratic we have to witness a change in the political party in power.


More and more lately, the idea seems to be that this change should come about explosively. On the one side are the opposition parties that are pushing harder and harder for a chance to govern. On the other side are the masses of us who are frustrated and can't imagine change coming from within the system we are saddled with, so we call for radical change.

In these circumstances, arguing against the idea of explosive change seems like a fool's errand at best. At worst, you come across as an apologist for the state and for the party in power. But this is Tanzania, bwana. We march to the beat of a drummer only we seem to hear. For the past five or so years, the calls for "change" have been accelerating as we are continually impressed with how dismal our situation is by the opposition parties and other concerned friends of development. To be sure, they are right -- there are real and terrible consequences to our surprisingly ineffectual government. The difficult admission is that we have chosen this system mostly because it "works" for us.

It seems we are ambivalent patriots. In the build-up to the last election, I was surprised by how much voter apathy emerged in general, but particularly in the Blackberry class. Being Tanzanian, we are experts and very eloquent about what is wrong with the country, not to mention all of the things that we would do exactly right if we were actually in charge. However, actually voting is still seen as a futile exercise and a waste of time. Instead the ideal solution centres around putting an opposition party in power, or finding a benevolent despot who will guide us with a firm and steady hand into the bright and shining future.

This is a measure of how good we have it -- we think that we can afford our complacency. Tanzanians know that we don't have to take to the streets in order to effect change. We can and regularly do talk ourselves into it, however incremental it is.Multiparty politics have done us a world of good in the past decade: The political competition in Bunge is starting to weed out the weak, Zanzibar is coming along quietly as an experiment in power-sharing. We need not fear that Jay Kay will do anything ridiculous to try to stay in power indefinitely, like pretending not to know how old he really is. We can afford to anticipate a change in administration, and we can afford to let complaint be our main method of political action. But we shouldn't end there.

Since we are so full of latent opportunities and we can afford to do things the easy way, why don't we? It doesn't take that much effort to go from disparaging Tanesco on social media, to checking up on your MP's performance. We can afford to ignore those political parties that are trying to play a game of brinkmanship with the government since all they will do is drag us backwards into low-grade civil strife. We can afford to skip merrily past the potential benevolent despots who are waving at us from the sidelines, hoping we'll succumb to their reasoned arguments and their charm.

We can even get away with ignoring those who want a party change in the next three years because let's just admit it: This isn't a simple matter of picking between republicans and democrats the way that more mature democracies tweak policies around the edges while leaving their systems stable. If we're not even capable of getting ourselves organised around a national interest -- like unacceptable power rationing policies -- then perhaps we should simply embrace what we can do well. Such as talk and think and vote our way, mostly through parliament, into a better government. We're all informed dissenters, we can get somewhere on the strength of that.


East African

Shaggy awasili Zenj...

Tanzania's art deco ruin, the Majestic cinema, inspires restoration campaign

Every Friday they gather there, seven or eight elderly men in a ramshackle auditorium of cobwebs and broken chairs. Sitting under an open sky (the roof fell in long ago) they watch the flickering images of old films projected on to the wall.

"It's the Cinema Paradiso of Zanzibar," said Martin Mhando, director of the annual Zanzibar International Film Festival (Ziff), which takes place on the Tanzanian island next month. "Cinema Paradiso was heavenly compared to what's there."

This is the Majestic, one of Africa's first cinemas, an art deco gem from the 1920s that lost its lustre. Mhando is leading a campaign to restore the ruin to its former glory – vital, he says, because where Tanzania and its islands once had 53 cinemas, now there are only two.

The effort in Zanzibar's Stone Town is backed by the award-winning British film-maker Nick Broomfield, known for documentaries such as Biggie and Tupac, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, and Battle For Haditha.

Broomfield said he has been inspired by the diehards who keep the Majestic alive despite its decline.

Speaking from Los Angeles, he added: "Even though the cinema doesn't have a roof, people are using it and setting up their own projector. It probably has a lot of memories for them. It was the place where people went on dates and met their first girlfriends.

"Cinema is a shared experience. As a film-maker, the most wonderful thing about watching with a group of people is that you can tell which parts of the film are working and which aren't.

"It's a bonding thing, a way of holding a group or locality together. When I was growing up, everyone went to the cinema on Saturday morning to see the cartoons. It was social cohesion, and that's one of the exciting things that could happen with the Majestic in Zanzibar."

Broomfield will be running workshops at the Ziff and is set to shoot his next feature film in Tanzania.

"East African film-making is going to grow and become more important," he said. "The Majestic is a wonderful piece of architecture … In terms of the east African film-making community, the relevance of Zanzibar would be enshrined in the Majestic. It would be an encouragement for people to take cinema seriously. It would also be a fantastic venue for the Zanzibar International film festival."

The Royal Cinema Theatre, as it was originally known, was designed by Scottish architect John Sinclair, mixing Moroccan and Oriental-inspired styles. Renamed the Majestic a few years later it was destroyed by a fire in 1953. An art deco-themed replacement opened two years later, showing Indian and Hollywood releases such as The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston. Gone with the Wind, Jaws and Love Story were all big hits on Zanzibar.

The economic slump of the 1980s closed cinemas all over the country. The last of three on Zanzibar, Cine Afrique, recently closed and was converted into a supermarket. The Majestic itself is said to be under threat of being turned into an office block.

Mhando said the Ziff uses a cinema on nearby Pemba island but it does not run full-time. That leaves Tanzania with two multiplexes in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

"The economy got bad in the 1980s," Mhando said. "Tickets had cost $1-2, but we knew if it got to $3 the cinema economy would collapse and that's what happened. People could no longer afford to watch movies. Videos came along and they stayed inside. By 1996, all the cinemas were closed."

Despite this gloomy backdrop, the Ziff claims to be east Africa's biggest arts and film festival since launching 14 years ago. "At Ziff we have full houses of 1,500 people every night. So we started thinking about rebuilding the Majestic.

"I think if it was refurbished properly, people could go to movies there on a regular basis. It still has beautiful art deco."

Mhando hopes to make a cost assessment and raise funds so the Majestic can become a 200-seat multipurpose venue with space for corporate events, seminars and workshops along with a cafe.

Then, he hopes, the faithful who gather there each Friday will be joined by a new generation. "The old men still have their dreams of watching movies every week. They remember the old splendour of the Majestic and the moment of their youth. That's the relevance of cinema culture to them. Once you've been bitten by the bug, there's no escaping it."

• This article was amended on 3 June 2011. The original said: "That leaves Tanzania with two multiplexes in the capital, Dar es Salaam". This has been corrected.



Guardian.