This past week, I had the dubious fortune of confronting the combined force of the Funny, the Bizarre and the Plain Idiotic. And all culled from one daily newspaper in Dar.
First, the Funny: A gang of South African kidnappers holding a teenager hostage state their ransom, and it is in bitcoin worth some $123,000. Now, the bitcoin has been called a “protocoin,” a mystical currency that only the really initiated can appreciate, and one wonders whether the bandits had some knowledge about the kid’s parents and their savvy around the bitcoin.
Then the Bizarre: An armed militia group in the Congo is holding a number of Ugandan fishermen in Rukungiri district, demanding that they be given 10 boxes of bullets in exchange for the release of their hostages. Like, come take your fishermen but bring us some bullets because we intend to continue kidnapping people when we are done with this deal.
I thought to myself that the underworld was becoming creative. Would it not have been easier for the bandits down south to demand that they be paid in rand? Or in puula, so they could cross into Botswana and have a party? No, they wanted bitcoin, even though it may be difficult for them to translate it into usable cash with which to buy pap.
But, said I to myself, these must be some sophisticates who have gone crooked only because they need to make fast dough, which they shall invest by and by.
They know the real value of the bitcoin, and that, although it sometimes behaves like a yoyo, it is likely to stabilise at some stage and attain real value. Ask the Chinese.
The guys with the guns in the troubled so-called Democratic Republic may also have a point. Just think of it. This is an area where close to no government exists, and where it does exist, its currency is the bullet, because nothing gets done without someone being shot.
It would be beating around the bush (sic) to ask for cash as ransom, because there is precious little you could do with the worthless paper they call the national currency. The bullet will do everything for you — get you food, clothes, beer and women, and earn you respect into the bargain. So what the heck!
FYI
And then the Plain Idiotic: In a heated debate in the Tanzanian parliament, legislators are questioning the wisdom of the government’s plans to build a mammoth hydroelectric dam at the expense of a good chunk of the renowned Selous Game Reserve.
The environmental destruction this project is likely to cause includes the felling of some three million ancient trees and the obliteration of hitherto unverified flora and fauna.
At some juncture during the debate in which both ruling-party and opposition members are calling for at least the usual “impact assessment,” some junior minister gets up and tells them all that this project has already been decided upon, and there is no going back. So far so good, as we used to say as kids.
Then the minister offers a perspective that whoever was listening to him would not forget. “For your information,” he is quoted by the papers as saying, “the government will go on with the implementation of the project, whether you like it or not.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and then adds, “and those who are resisting the project will be jailed.”
This is a fatwa you might have expected to be delivered by a higher-ranking ayatollah, not by a junior minister, but there it is. The fact that no one higher than this middling official has come up to tell him to shut up, leaves one with the feeling that maybe this is policy.
It would not surprise me. Tanzanian officials have become so enamoured of issuing fiats, orders, prohibitions and ultimatums that one wonders whether there are any laws, rules or regulations left somewhere in the books for people to consult. All you hear is fatwa for this and fatwa for that.
Now, for the bandits in the south and the militias in the “Democratic Republic,” the way of the fatwa may be alluring, because that is the law of the jungle in which those hoodlums operate.
How have we come so close to joining the trinity of the Funny, the Bizarre and the Plain Idiotic?
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema
newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.com
Fatwa culture: Criticise the dam and you land in Tanzanian jail
