Calls for donors to cut aid to Tanzania are irresponsible

However, the president of the Tanganyika Law Society (TLS) and chief whip of the opposition CHADEMA party recently made a controversial call for a blanket boycott of Tanzania by the international community.

Donors must cut all aid to Tanzania and the international community of nations should slap a diplomatic and economic boycott on our country, he said.

The outspoken Singida East Member of Parliament went even further by urging the international community to treat Tanzania as "the skunk of the world" similar to the apartheid regime in South Africa once upon a time.

What Lissu's public appeal to Western donor countries really means is that there should be an international isolation of Tanzania.International isolation is usually a penalty applied by the international community or a powerful group of countries, like the United Nations, towards one nation, government or people group.

The same term may also refer to the state a country finds itself in after being shunned by the international community.International isolation is often the result of international sanctions against a specific country. Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, for example, ended up in a state of international isolation after decades of confrontation with the West.

We believe that Lissu's argument that Tanzania should be shunned by the rest of the world and hence effectively be allowed to 'fall off the map' because of concerns against the narrowing of democratic space in the country is ill-advised and outright irresponsible.Ordinary citizens of Tanzania -- not politicians -- will be hardest-hit by the political, diplomatic and economic isolation of the country as proposed by Lissu.

While we support calls for the respect of rule of law and the deepening of democracy and freedom of the press in Tanzania, we believe that, as a sovereign country, Tanzania must always look for homegrown solutions for its problems. We simply cannot run to foreigners to fix our own problems.

It is therefore a worrying trend to see leaders of a key political party in the country advocating for the use of the backward and imperialistic 'carrot-and-stick' aid. 

We believe that there is more avenue for expanding the democratic space in the country and this can and should be done through bipartisan national dialogue. Like other countries,  Tanzania faces challenges in its democratisation process. But, we certainly are not the skunk of the world.