TUTAFIKA: Imagining our Future - Tanzania

Two Questions about Our Future:

Faced with these old and new pressures, we must ask ourselves two important questions: Who are we?  Where are we going?

One possibility is that we ignore the important questions.  We might choose to hope for the best, do nothing and let the forces around us determine our fate. If so, Tanzania will struggle from crisis to crisis. Fewer of our growing demands on the state will be met, widening the gap between our expectations and the increasingly dismal reality we experience. The legitimacy of the state will be eroded, and only the fittest will survive, living by their wits. This is the Yale Yale story.

Or...

we could re-live our history of slavery and colonisation. We might choose to just watch as economic and political power is recaptured by a few, while most of us return to a new form of bondage and servitude. This is the story of the Mibaka Uchumi.

Or, we might choose to...

learn from the past and struggle to find new answers to our problems. We could take up the challenge and face up to the responsibility of shaping our own future. This is the story of Amka, Kumekucha!

We cannot predict the future, but we can imagine it. These three stories describe what might happen in Tanzania in the coming 30 years. Some events will be within our control; others will be unexpected. As you read each story, what do you feel? How might you prepare your family, or organisation, or village, or town or country to respond? What would you like to achieve in each story, and how will you achieve it? How might you prevent what you do not want to happen and encourage what you do?

Looking back in anger for someone to blame is futile.  Facing the future with fear can paralyse us. We must search inside and around us to find the answers to these questions. We need to learn to live with what is unpredictable while continuing to believe in our collective ability to create a better future for Tanzania.