A NEW initiative is being worked out by at least three ministries and two key government agencies, where the government is finalising an action plan to introduce constitutional and citizenship education from primary, secondary to vocational education.

The manner of organisation and delivery of the current programme suggests that it was worked out, indeed mooted and decided, at the departmental level, evidently in consultation with key interested parties.  It is a project that has been assured or promised substantial funding to be rolled out.

 A deputy permanent secretary unveiling the plan explained it as intended to further foster patriotism across the country. Definitely a good idea but one has to be reminded of the old adage that ‘wishes aren’t horses,’ so there has to be genuine indicators why patriotism is likely to be fostered. 

 Alternatively, one can unveil courses where students either sleep in class or just sit out the lessons. If presumably they will be made compulsory. As a matter of fact we always have a political education component or at times known as civics, not quite different.

 Preliminary information says that the planned curriculum was developed by the Legal Affairs ministry in collaboration with education stakeholders, ostensibly to instil a sense of national pride and responsibility among pupils and students. 

 Everything said about the programme is built upon this premise, whereas its wider logical validity or substance first needs to be demonstrated, for instance if one cites certain university campuses as hotbeds of opposition, is it for lack of such training? Is it true that training must start early, not youth pioneer groups?

 In the early 1970s after the issuing of the Party Guidelines, where the level of militancy in the ruling party, TANU, was raised to a higher level, secondary schools routinely used to allow students to attend class in proper TANU Youth League uniform as a substitute to school uniforms. 

 There was enthusiasm for political mobilisation for the future looked radiant, which is partially the case at present but only partially. Plenty of awareness on what constitutes civil rights and indeed community rights or participation is being conducted already, and it needs to succeed there; that success will definitely impress the younger people.

 There is an expression that ‘a hungry man is an angry man,’ so when a broad section of the youth start despairing about making it in life, they will definitely start revolving around those who want profound change, whatever their arguments. 

 The question really is how these young people are dissuaded from gravitating towards adventurism and thus fostering chaos, and here it is evident it is the 4Rs formulation, taken up as policy, that stands a good chance of solving the problem. 

 Detractors skip the need for reform, despite that it is vital   for social reconciliation so that multiparty politics doesn’t breed chaos, as usual.

 Those who think that education is a substitute for reform feel that all it well but there are some people who don’t understand, and the reason is that the idea that public sector dominance in economy spells disaster has never been accepted at higher levels of the ruling party. 

 Thus despite that the 4Rs were espoused by the leader of the party, initiatives are generated that clearly sidestep genuine reform into an overgrowth of indoctrination, always put at issue by reality. The Legal Affairs ministry would make a better contribution lining up workable reform initiatives that open up the economy and create massive new jobs, for a start.

 Even as interpreting this educational drive on its own was somewhat odd, as it hands too much on the power of education, a check on some developments of a think-tank sort of environment provided some helpful pointers, so to speak. 

 It was a declaration that the sweeping CCM victory in the midweek civic elections countrywide in the local government elections arose from its strategic use of young people in reaching out to their peers to highlight the achievements of the current authorities. There was an effort, credited with this astonishing success.

 A top secretariat official made the remarks over the while opening the 13th leadership training session at the Julius Nyerere Leadership School at Kibaha, where explicit signals were given as to this sort of strategy, not just mobilizing youth to drum up support for the party but to ensure the results are duly visible. 

 The training programme involves cadres from six southern African liberation movements – sort of rediscovering this role, as it were - and funded by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The liaisons and strategic convergence between the movements and their solid provider from the 1960s s are vivid.

 There were suggestions during the president’s visit to China slightly over a year ago (aside from the Forum of China-Africa Convention more recently) that relations between the two ruling parties be raised to a strategic level. 

 Again it isn’t easy to make head and tail what strategic ties imply, but when the party youth wing or youth generally are credited with 98 per cent win for the party in civic polls, the strategy dimension can be visualized. It require that the ruling party has first to secure the state, putting it beyond corruptible influences of non-liberation parties. 

 The good thing is that this would relate to higher economic design, not just being pursued for its own sake, that is, for influential individuals.

 Consolidating the one party ethos can indeed be a bulwark against chaos, on the premise that - as Mwalimu noted in ‘The Process of Liberation’ back in 1976  - political independence – or freedom to act of the ruling party – is put to good use, to accelerate economic consolidation,. 

 That is where Africa’s shift towards the eastern model is noticed, that Western countries tell them to accept formal democracy and all its trappings for its own sake, irrespective of where it may lead the country. 

 Still Africa has a battle on its hands, and let us hope that the new strategic ties with CPC will also help, to unravel just how Africa solves its unemployment and poverty crises, its workable path to prosperity, or it explodes.