Zanzibar will always be tied to the mainland ?

Can you imagine how a short-sighed man copes in a world without spectacles? For sure, he could get by, but he would surely get himself run over or mistake his wife for his mistress before he went blind.

But what about Zanzibar?

Could we do without Zanzibar? Just what is the point of that group of islands we call Unguja, physically so near to our shores, yet politically, socially, culturally so far?

Is Zanzibar a problem we would rather not have? John Magufuli seems to think so.

While he has been charging around the country, sacking officials here, there and everywhere, cancelling government funded breakfasts and generally imposing his bulldozer personality on us mainlanders.

He has quite blatantly turned his back against the little island that we can almost see from Dar es Salaam.

What has Magufuli got against Zanzibar? Does he believe the problems facing Zanzibar, its fragile relationship with us, are insoluble.

Is he secretly telling us that he no longer believes the Union is viable?

Now you may think my views precipitate and rash. And, of course, in this free society that we are fortunate to inhabit, you are entitled to call them rubbish. But I am only citing the evidence.

Take the hoohah over the October election results. What did Magufuli have to say?

I think his views, his public views that is, could probably be written on the back of a packet of cigarettes.

In other words, he said nothing. A cynic might argue that he said nothing because he knew that playing a waiting game could only be to his advantage.

Instead he launched the Bulldozer Roadshow and we all know what that has led to.

Now the election has been re-run with an overwhelming win for the CCM. But because the opposition refused to take part and indeed boycotted the poll, the result is dubious.

Yes, the donor governments have applauded the results and condemned those who refused to attend the party, but that declaration will not dislodge any coconuts in Stone Town.

The fact is that across the water, they are different.

Their history is different from ours. They are islanders, offshore people, and therefore their mindset, their priorities are different from ours.

They speak KiKiswahili, not like us city and village dwellers, but with a classical lilt on the tip of their tongues.

Yes, there is much we share. Religion is probably the most important and cannot and should be ignored.

Now I think we are at crossroads, a dangerous one too. This election result will undoubtedly inflame an already suppurating sore.

It will make the islanders think that they are even more isolated than before. It will reinforce their feelings of resentment.

The oil and gas fields around its waters are also fuelling the flames of resistance.

Perhaps the thought of so much hydrocarbon riches around its shores, is skewing their judgment. Perhaps they think that one day, maybe one day, the islands could stand on their own feet.

It all sounds rather attractive. The islands win their independence, their dignity, their rights to self determination. They are funded by oil and gas money.

And, as for our side of the bargain, we lose a troublesome neighbour whom we have never understood and never will.

Job done.

But changing the world for our benefit isn’t as simple. Perhaps Mr Magufuli knows this. And if he doesn’t, then he should.

The world is crumbling before our eyes. This week, the pressures on us have grown even more urgent.

The terrors of Brussels three days ago and of Paris four months back have crucially affected decision making.

And like the proverbial butterfly that flutters its wings in Beijing and causes an earthquake in Poland, so the events of this week in a faraway corner of a little country in Europe are already driving policy in our country.

So what does this mean for us and for Zanzibar?

It means that there we will always be tied to the islands. The last thing the West wants to see is an offshore island which has the potential to go rogue, to be taken over by extremists and to become a harbour and a base for everything that has to do with terrorism.

Now I am not saying that this is happening or will happen in the islands, but you will admit that across the water there is the potential to become frighteningly radicalised.

Just look at the ingredients: political isolation, voters who feel they have been marginalised, high unemployment, educational headaches, social unrest…

Put these together, light the touch paper and boom, you have a fire that will be difficult, even impossible to extinguish.

So that is why Mr Magufuli will be told, in no uncertain terms, by the West, to get moving and start talking to the opposition leaders who have been excluded ( or rather excluded themselves) from the political looney bin that is Zanzibar.

How is he going to achieve some sense of reconciliation?

It’s a big question. A couple of years ago the CCM could have offered the islands some form of guarantee that a hefty percentage of the revenue for oil and gas production would accrue to them.

And with reports that Tanzania and Uganda have signed a deal to build a pipeline from Tanga to the Ugandan fields, perhaps the negotiators around Museveni feel there is more to bargain with.

Unfortunately that is yesterday’s economics. Now it is too late because the price of hydrocarbons are no longer attractive and there seems little sign of a recovery, so Mr Magufuli may have to swallow his apprehensions and his prejudices if he doesn’t want to enter talks bearing an empty and worthless package.

He will have to dig deep and persuade his ideological bosses in the party hierarchy to come up with some political inducements.

Time, alas, is not on Magufuli’s side. The spectre conjured up in the heads of European leaders, that of an archipelago which is turning out terrorists, is scaring them rigid in Washington and London and Paris.

So the sooner the islands come in from the diplomatic cold the better we can all sleep in our beds.