Makwaia wa Kuhenga MY CONSCIENCE

The other day I boarded a private local airliner bound for an adjacent town. I reported, along with my colleague, on time – slightly more than hour before departure as regulations require. The tickets for both of us were confirmed Okayed, so had no worries. While I was checked in, my colleague was stuck. He was told the plane was “full”.

They now needed to negotiate with the pilot for him to agree so that my colleague could sit next to him! Eh! Bwana! As a way of putting pressure to bear on the ground staff of the airline, I said if my colleague cannot make the trip, I will have to stay behind too because our business was inter-related. Then came the message: a seat has been secured next to the pilot! The time came for us to board the plane. Among the passengers boarding the plane were hundreds of excited school children apparently getting their first feel of a plane ride.

I was told it was “free seating” – meaning one could take any seat. I could see my colleague heading towards the cockpit. But I could see that there was an empty seat next to me in the adjacent row! I beckoned the airhostess about the seat and my colleague was soon comfortably installed ready for the flight. At this point I began reflecting about the episode. If the tickets were okayed, and not ‘on request’, what happened? Were the staff of this private airline unaware of the position of the flight and the number of seats? On further reflection, I asked myself if this private airline would have behaved in the same manner had there been an alternative carrier flying the same route and elsewhere.

 It was at this juncture that I came to terms with the factor of the predominance of the private sector or private interests in this country at the expense of the public sector. Effectively, the national flag carrier, Air Tanzania is dead – right on its back! Killed, I want to submit, by a conspiracy of private interests allied to those in power and a sorry state of lack of vision by those in political power in this country today to appreciate the indispensability of the public sector or state run enterprises in economically strategic sectors such as the transport and communications sector. This is the thesis of this perspective today.

A hard look at the transport sector in this country provokes more questions than answers. Is it for the same reason of private interests gaining ground at all levels in this country that road transport has prevailed over railway transportation? If it was possible to run a comfortable railway network across the country starting from colonial days up to the first post independence days, why has the railway system in this country been as good as dead? If even colonial masters were able to have trains running from the east coast of Dar es Salaam all the way to Lake Tanganyika’s Kigoma in the west end of this country, what is preventing a free Tanzania, enjoying freedom and sovereignty half a century on? If someone was to suggest that it is private interests allied to the powers that be who are conspiring to make the railway from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma stay dead so that they could continue reaping money from hapless people with no alternative mode of transport except to board the buses? It is in the context of this wider picture that the death of Air Tanzania should be examined.

The questions really here are: if the Americans, the British and all the big boys of the world have never let their national flag carriers die, and these people are better seasoned in privatisation than poor, underdeveloped Tanzania, why is Tanzania letting its national flag carrier cold dead? Is it really an impossible task to turn Air Tanzania around? Why are Kenya Airways and the national airline in Uganda alive and kicking? Or is it true that our neighbours in Kenya are smarter than us – capable of killing our national airline via the backdoor of aligning with a seemingly private airline? Is it true that the East African Common Market has really mutually “common interests” beneficial to all? This is a wake-up call to those in policy and decision-making echelons of the Tanzanian state.

Unless they are willfully playing along in propping up private interests over public interests because they are individually benefiting, there is no reason why they should not move quickly to recapitalise Air Tanzania to re-assume its role as a national flag carrier.

Makwaia wa Kuhenga is a senior Tanzanian senior journalist and author makwaia@bol.co.tz