Beyond Advocating for Change
Beyond Advocating for Change
Chambi
Chachage
“Decades
ago, as President of my country, I told Tanzanians that the choice before them
was to change or be changed. I was wrong. There was no choice. They had to
change, and would still BE changed” – Mwalimu Julius Nyerere
Change is
the only constant. A change is gonna come. The times they are a-changin’.
These three
are well-known catchphrases on change. My favorite, though, is this relatively
obscured one from Mwalimu Nyerere: “Africa’s
task is therefore to achieve a difficult balance between the conflicting and
complementary needs of change and stability.”
For him, this
apparent contradiction stemmed from the realization that “change causes
disturbance and thus upset stability.” Yet “positive change is impossible
without stability.” And yet “stability is itself impossible in Africa without
change.” Thus, change is dialectical.
How, for
instance, do you bring change in the education sector in a country that has
banned teenage mothers from resuming their studies in public schools? Do you
continue to militantly advocate for change under the hashtag #ArudiShule (‘May She
Get Back to School’)? Or, lest you step on the toes of the powers that be, you
humbly opt to start a private school for them?
Such a
dilemma reminds me of a touchy message
from a twitter friend, @AnnieTanzania,
that reads: “While your little sisters and brothers are awaiting your fight to improve the education system in the country yield results, they are asking you to
contribute the little you have so that they may at least get a desk to sit at
in school – thank you in advance on their behalf.”
I, for one,
hardly participates in philanthropy. Not because I strongly subscribe to the
critique of charity
capitalism as a way of making the giver feel good by contributing money
without changing the system that made it possible for people to need philanthropists
in the first place. But only because it often feels overwhelming with so much
and many more in need of aid.
As someone
who once sat on the dusty floor of a classroom because my primary school did not
have enough desks, I could not let this one pass. It also felt good when I saw the photos
of the schoolchildren receiving the desks. Yet I wondered how sustainable this
approach is given that I continued to see a lot of schools without enough desks
as I travel across the country.
One question
continued to haunt me: To what extent has all that you have been writing since
the times you worked as a Program Officer responsible for Policy Analysis and
Advocacy for an educational rights civic organization, HakiElimu, changed the actual situation in schools?
Frankly, I
do not know. How can I know whether an article I write brings books to my
little brothers and sisters in a school out there? Can Theory
of Change help me to measure the impact of my blogposts, if any? That is
why @AnnieTanzania’s
message was as touchy as it was itchy. It is as if she was telling me, ‘while you
are continuing to analyze and advocate for social change in our education system
that is gonna come in the near or distant future to make public schools have enough desks, why don’t
you also donate desks so schoolchildren sit on them right now'?
Maybe this
is exactly what my other twitter mate has opted to do about the plights of expectant
schoolchildren. @CarolNdosi
has come up with a ‘Leave No One Behind’ initiative to “build a vocational school for teenage mothers in Tanzania who are
banned from re-entry.” She has secured a site and is now soliciting our support
through GoFundMe and WezeshaSasa.
Does it mean she has given up on
the advocacy campaign to ensure that the girl child who has been ‘impregnated’
by known and unknown culprits goes back to public school if she may wish to do
so? And who said charity and advocacy should be mutually exclusive? In an
interesting article that @MabalaMakengeza has reinterpreted as satirical, @CarolNdosi elaborates:
Pragmatism, it seems, is the way to
go. Let me also indulge the philanthropists within by donating to that
initiative which @CarolNdosi
says is “specifically targeting those
who were sexually assaulted & forced into early marriages.” After all, this
seems to be the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic,
Timely) way of doing things. And a safe one too.
Radical
advocates would still ask Mwalimu: Does playing it safe changes or stabilizes the
status quo?
