Sometime, say 3 years ago, my cousin's wife (a young lady with respectable job, private car, a couple of kids) came to me breathlessly telling me how I could get rich by enrolling in a certain scheme: you get a form, register and submit with money order of a certain amount, that is distributed to your predecessors up the chain.
"Lady," I said, "Don't you know that this is a pyramid scheme which is just another fraud?" I was remembering my days in Nigeria where I had swallowed line hook and sinker in that fatherland of scams.
"No, shem! This is different, The names of top shots like Mama X and Mama Y were some of the pioneers in this project" . She was calling it a project, Mama X and Mama Y were powerful persons in politics, and of high standing in society. Nevertheless, I just shook my head sadly telling her I can't see the future in the game, or logic of why I should get so much money without hard work.
Needless to say, the scheme did not run more than a week before it exploded into a lawsuit and the rich who had wanted to get richer quickly refunded those they had scammed so as to keep their names out, but some fingers were burnt alright.
There are two things here
1. Many persons look for any means of getting money for nothing - that explains several stories of bribe, pyramid games, going to witchdoctors, mushrooming churches that promise wealth to their followers (in the process licking their nickels) and the like.
2. Ordinary person feels it a justification if a leader--political, religious, doesn't matter--is in a thieving racket.
Which brings the point of corruption in high places. The latest news in Tanzania politics is that of one minister resigning after media revealed he was under investigation for corruption. He makes 4 the number of ministers who have bowed out in the space of 2 months. People are wondering aloud why the ministers who resigned in shame should continue being representatives of their constituencies, why they should continue holding positions in the ruling party and so forth.
(Footnote: The resignation took place on Sunday 20 April, the day when a politician-turned-gunman died peacefully pending verdict of his manslaughter case. )
Not long ago, there was Central Bank scam where millions of dollars were siphoned out of government coffers by bank officials colluding with outsiders who had set up fraudulent companies. Governor was fired.
Again, thanks to Internet, all frauds shall be exposed, so I can only see the ghost of Mwalimu Nyerere being functional, so much did the old man hate thieving politicians. Tanzanian Umma are very much behind the standings of Mwalimu, and it is Umma that shall cleanse the country of hypocrites who had thought themselves untouchable all along.
(WITCHCRAFT, NYERERE, FRAUD INVESTIGATION INTERNET have been subjects of my past posts)
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