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A Ugandan Mayor of New York and Tanzania link
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
What you need to know:
- I have confessed to you my personal romance with a Tanzanian lady, which did not end up as we would have liked.
- I do not know if I have told you of one of my most enduring memories of Dar es Salaam in 1965, when I first got there.
You know of my Tanzanian roots, academic, ancestral and emotional. They are all interwoven. I studied and taught in Dar es Salaam in the 1960s. I told you of my maternal grandmother, Hajara bint Ramadhan, born in “Mzizima”, somewhere between Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo. I have confessed to you my personal romance with a Tanzanian lady, which, through no fault of either of us, did not end up as we would have liked.
All this, quite understandably, left me deeply touched, and marked, with an indelible streak of affection for my southern neighbours. This shows in the irony that, whenever I am mistaken for being from “elsewhere”, the finger points at Tanzania. This is in spite of my sincerely professed love of Kenya, and my making a home, and a family, huku kwetu (here at home).
My Tanzanian “branding” is, of course, most obvious in my fanatical ardour for Kiswahili, all the way from the lafudhi (accent) to my preference for it in all public contexts. But all this, as you can guess, is a preamble to the pain, the agony and utter disillusionment that I, and, indeed, most of you East Africans, who valued and respected Tanzania’s role in our regional unity, are enduring in the face of what is going on there today.
I keep telling you I would rather not write about politics. But surely, gunshots and corpses on the streets of our major cities are not mila zetu na desturi zetu (our traditions and customs), as our Jumuiya Anthem has it. They certainly are not the manners and ethics (adili) of the Tanzania that raised me, and of which I would like to be eternally proud.
Memories of Dar es Salaam
I take this intensely personal approach to Tanzania’s current agony mainly because I know and believe that it is this strongly personal, social and humane ethos that made the Tanzania for which we have, up to now, had genuine respect and admiration. This is the utu (humaneness), the undugu/udugu (brotherhood and sisterhood), the ujamaa (familyhood), the uswahili/uungwana (swahiliness/civility) on which the founding parents endeavoured to build Tanzania.
I do not know if I have told you of one of my most enduring memories of Dar es Salaam in 1965, when I first got there. If you asked anyone, including police officers, for directions to any destination, the likelihood was that they would offer to “take” (escort) you there. Then, as you walked, your escort would engage you in a “gumzo” (banter or chat), signalling a genuine interest in you.
These were not imitations or borrowings from Marx, Mao or Chou-en-Lai, as the cynics would have us believe. Tanzanians did not learn their good manners from Germans, Arabs, Brits or Chinese. “Utu” and uungwana is what they had and it is what they wanted to build their new country on. The ideologues might have come in later and maybe distorted the vision with their misguided and highhanded theories and policies, but the ordinary Tanzanian remained recognizably a “ndugu”.
Indeed, now in retrospect, we may speculate that it was that lure of social accommodation that drew wide varieties of people to Tanzania. I have told you of myself and my grandma. Did you note that Rishi Sunak, the former British Prime Minister, had Tanzanian connections? So has the latest international political sensation, New York City Mayor-Elect, Zohran Mamdani. Though a Kampala-born Ugandan (like some people I know), His Worship’s grandparents could, I believe, also be traced to Tanzania.
Uncharacteristic violence
Mention of Mayor Mamdani could, of course, take us on another streak of personal memories and boasts. Yes, Zohran is the son of Mira Nair, the cineast, and my longtime Makerere colleague, Prof Mahmood Mamdani, current Chancellor of the Kampala International University (KIU). Moreover, the Mamdanis are, like me, friends of Kisumu County Governor, Prof Peter Anyang’-Nyong’o. The Mayor-Elect’s mother, Mira, famously directed Lupita Nyong’o in the film Queen of Katwe, in Kampala. Can I help the “name-dropping”? I told you some time ago that I had met several relatives of Barack Obama long before he became Senator and President.
But that is not the point. What strikes me is the close interconnectedness of our lives and fates in this global and ever-globalising village that is our world. Whatever happens in any corner of the planet may easily be found to have a direct relevance to you, wherever you are. What our Diaspora relatives achieve out there lifts our image and visibility, and what we do here impacts their image and their credibility.
This brings me to the most important point I would like to share with you today. What happens in Tanzania today is as much our business as it is that of the Tanzanians. Any significant event in Tanzania, or anywhere else in our region, impacts all of us, especially in the East African Community. We must, therefore, creatively and collectively work to find solutions, instead of pointing fingers (kunyosheana vidole). Our Jumuiya (EAC) Secretariat should have or proactively strengthen their Maridhiano (Reconciliation) arm.
Indeed, “maridhiano” is my parting word to our Tanzanian (Nyerere’s “Waswahili”) ndugus. Let us go back to our basic humanity, and “familyhood” and work together with sincerity to mend whatever might have been broken in the flare up of the recent, uncharacteristic violence.
It is not too late (hatujachelewa).
Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and literature. [email protected]
