Face to Face with a DC (and How to Help Him Become Transformational.)

When asked about his leadership philosophy, the great Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping – a transformational leader who made modern China what she is today – once remarked: it does not matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.

Many people are too consumed with their petty ideas about development but they never ask themselves a fundamental question – do they work? Many valuable hours are wasted debating about the merits or demerits of this or that idea. Should we adopt capitalism or socialism? Teach using English or Swahili? Align ourselves with the West or the East? But – again – does it work?

The other day I received a call asking: ‘What would you advise this District Commissioner to do to make a difference in his work?’ It’s an interesting question, one that I had put in a backburner for some time. It’s easier to be a critic, but it takes work to come up with answers.

After I had taken my sweet time, much to the annoyance of my interlocutor, I provided a list of things that I would focus on were I to be a DC. My solutions were based on three criteria: one, had to be transformative, two, should not require resources which the DC doesn’t already have, and, three, have a degree of novelty in them.

In a series of articles, I will dramatize my answers to elucidate what I was gearing at and why. Peradventure we can inspire someone to actually lead rather than occupying an office. After all, despite averaging about 6% GDP growth rate for two decades – quite impressive – our gains regarding poverty reduction have been 'modest'. So, in the Sheldonian style, we have to assume that all that has been done until now is wrong and rethink our leadership perspectives, priorities and practices.

My first grand solution is – to add value to land.

Mwalimu Nyerere, that great son of this land, opined that for a nation to develop it needs – among other things – land. Unfortunately, the great man was wrong in this aspect, and Tanzanians have swallowed that kasa – a deadly fallacy – hook, line and sinker and paid the price as a result.

While nations cannot exist without land, they do not need land to develop. A cursory look at nations at the top end of a global GDP per capita list – nations such as Luxembourg, Singapore, and UAE – is enough to disabuse us of our erroneous view. Similarly, history shows that cities as small as Venice, or nations as small as Portugal, acquired great wealth and controlled huge empires, their small sizes notwithstanding.

In the same vein, nations such as Brazil and China, despite possessing huge swathes of land, were still net food importers up to a few decades ago. Russia, whose size and population are 171 and 3 times that of South Korea respectively, has practically the same level of GDP as that of South Korea.

Nyerere’s misunderstanding of what entails economic growth is what led Lee Kuan Yew – the Singaporean Grandmaster – to interestingly comment that ‘that preacher’ – Nyerere – ‘didn't understand the economics of growth’. Very droll.

Last year I had a discussion with some land specialists. They, like many of us, hold a curious perspective that Tanzania doesn’t have enough land! That’s why we erupt, or are at least suspicious, when we hear that foreign investors have been given land for development: we would rather see that land remain idle than seeing a mzungu creating value out of it! Well, having witnessed first-hand how much land is lying undeveloped all-around Tanzania, it was my pleasure to point out that the emperor is naked.

These ‘experts’ divide land into different groups such as arable vs. non-arable lands and create scarcity out of those distinctions. That probably made sense in school, but ask the Israelis, who have turned a desert, or the Brazilians, who have turned the Cerrado, into highly productive farmlands – consequently turning both nations into global agricultural powerhouses – and see if they will not mock those old-fashioned ideas!

The Emirates chose to create an iconic tourist magnet in Dubai’s Palm Island out of the sea, while we – blessed with almost 1 million square kilometres of land – think we don’t have enough of it!

Isn’t this unimaginative view of land that made Russia sell Alaska to the US a century and a half ago? In US’s hands, that frozen problematic land returned what the US paid for it 100 times in only fifty years!

Mheshimiwa, having the right perspective of land is crucial for development. The fact that your district has sizable land is immaterial. Land is indeed a resource, but not when it is not producing. Someone has to till it. Build on it. Mine it. Add value to it. Therefore, what are your plans about that land? Your challenge is to lead your people to create great value out of their land. Remarkably, it’s possible to do that out of thin air. We will explain how to go about that next time as we continue with this series – mano a mano.

Deng Xiaoping’s cat doesn’t disappoint.

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