Some interesting news coming out of the continent today. The first concerns our immediate neighbor down south, that Swahili-speaking nation Tanzania. In the first place, the country started handing out it first COVID19 vaccines since the start of the pandemic. It was interesting to see the country’s health minister receive one of the first jabs in the country, after claiming in February that the country had no plans to receive COVID19 vaccines.
She was also an advocate for steam therapy and vegetable smoothies.
I’m not going to shit on the methodologies suggested (steam & veggies); my only issue was the fact that a whole government minister advocated for therapies whose efficacy they had not bothered to investigate. It just might be that steam therapy and the suggested veggies do indeed help with battling or forestalling COVID infections. The latter was actually quite popular in Kenya. I vividly recall how scarce and costly lemons and ginger became for most of 2020 following the first detected COVID case in Kenya.
On to the other news from the same country. Freeman Mbowe, the chairman of Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chadema (Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo [Party for Democracy and Progress]), was charged with terrorism.
This is the same party whose presidential candidate in the most recent elections, Tundu Lissu, was attacked by gunmen after leaving a parliamentary session in 2017. A total of 38 shots were fired into his car, 16 of which got him. Tundu termed the charges filed against Mbowe as “criminal lawfare”.
Up North, in Tunisia, the only democracy to emerge out of the Arab Spring, a coup is going on. It’s been termed as a constitutional coup, orchestrated by President Kais Saied, after he sacked the Prime Minister and dissolved parliament. The interesting bit about this news is that the Prime Minister was supposedly beaten up in the Palace until he agreed to resign. This events also took place in the presence of Egyptian security officials, demonstrating the foreign influence in Tunisia’s affairs.
67 Year Affair 