Tanzania needs live TV debate on General Elections

I saw a curious photograph the other day. My friend in England emailed it to me. It showed the British Prime Minister no less, David Cameron, standing in his kitchen, in front of a sink full of dirty cups and plates and saucers. Cameron was wearing a garment which looked to me like a backless dress, but my friend assured me it was an item called a pinafore, something which women fasten around themselves when they are toiling in the house.

 

I thought the picture of Cameron in his kitchen was extraordinary. Surely an illustrious man like him, one of the most powerful and most visible politicians in the world, has more on his plate than washing them?

 

There’s his country’s debt; there’s the fate of the British health service not to mention the question of Britain’s future membership of the European Union and terrorism and immigration figures. The list of problems is endless. (By the way when did you last hear a politician use the word ‘problem’? Politicians don’t encounter ‘problems’ these days. Oh no, problems are non-existent. Instead they ‘meet ‘challenges’).

 

So I asked my friend about the kitchen photo. His reply came back almost immediately.

 

He told me there is an election campaign running.

 

I still didn’t understand, so he spelt it out. Cameron’s spin doctors (yes, we are not the only culture with weird men who speak in riddles and charge a lot of money so they can predict your future and, at the same time, wreck that of your opponents) think that the Prime Minister’s image would be enhanced dramatically if he were to demonstrate that he too is capable in the home and that he is not averse to sharing the household tasks. In other words this is about the women’s vote. 

 

Did the episode in the kitchen do the trick? Well, we don’t know yet because the election has yet to take place. (It is scheduled for May 7, in three weeks). But it prompted the leader of the British opposition, Ed Miliband to allow himself to be pictured in his kitchen, which my friend said is smaller and less well-appointed than  Cameron’s.

 

Can you imagine this happening in Tanzania? We have an election coming off too. Ours is in October but could you see Edward Lowassa doing the dishes? Or any of the opposition parties reading to their children? Or doing some gardening? Or dusting the furniture? Or mending the a/c?

 

No, you couldn’t. Our politicians are jealous of their image. They appear to value their dignity. Their spin doctors would advise them, I am certain, that they must appear to be on the bridge, at the wheel, in other words in command of the ship, and not be seen in the galley.

 

But I have to say that our politicians are not so different from those in Britain and Europe and America. They all share a one-way relationship with the media. They are happy to have the newspapers convey their every word when they open a new shopping mall or visit a hospital or announce a new social initiative. Never will they shrink from a photo opportunity which will show them in a good light. 

 

But when it comes to answering tough questions, they act as if journalists are suffering from some terrible contagious disease. They change in an instant from politicians into Usain Bolt. They just don’t want to know.

 

There is, however, one marked difference. In most of the democratic world politicians can only run so far. They might be able to dodge a persistent newspaperman with a particularly incisive set of questions but they will never be able to evade the octopus-like embrace of the television camera.

 

Maybe it is time the politicians in Tanzania changed. Maybe it is time our political masters woke up to the realities of the world we share with them.

 

Maybe this October, during this next election campaign, will mark the moment when our bosses, our big men, realised that the world of politics has irrevocably changed.

 

Our neighbours in Kenya during the 2013 election bowed to the inevitable. All major candidates agreed to take part in a televised debate. They put themselves and their policies and their reputations up before the cameras and they faced a barrage of questions, some soft, but some as tough as ebony.

 

Were they telling the truth in front of the cameras? I don’t know. I doubt it because they were politicians and politicians never tell us the entire truth. Politicians deal in fractions of the legendary substance.

 

But I don’t think that matters in this case. What the televised debate achieved was something more precious. It made politicians, and democracy, accessible to anyone who had access to a TV set. It also stimulated a nationwide debate conducted electronically, on twitter, on email, on text, as well as in bars and coffee houses and market places.

 

In other words, democracy had scored a stunning victory even before the voters made their crosses on their ballot papers.

 

And this is where the press can play an important role. There is a rich seam of political capital to be mined after any such televised debate. By creating a genuine open forum, the public should be encouraged to send in their questions to TV and radio stations and to the print press.