Sex and corruption: The endless games of cat and mouse

What do the heated debates in the august House in Dodoma have to do with a campaign of ‘purifying’ Dar es Salaam of sex workers or secondary school head teachers being dismissed from their posts and earning demotions (before a temporary reversal was announced) in the process courtesy of an ‘immoral’ song?

On the surface of it, nothing! These three appear completely unrelated; one is politics, the other two seen to be about morality. Seen from a different perspective of economics, they offer insights on our priorities and how we view ourselves as a country.

The head teachers were dismissed from their posts and demoted in a space of a month since their alleged failures in preventing the transgressions in their schools.

For a country that views itself as both traditional and religious, hence conservative, this was a right call.

That, moral decay should be arrested at the earliest possible times lest it be left and thrive leading to the downfall of the country.

The campaigns of ‘purifying’ Dar es Salaam of sex workers are nothing new.

There have been attempts in the past which ended in failure for all sorts of reasons.

Again, in a traditional and religious country, the latest campaign in which some of those at the forefront of it have claimed that it was carefully planned out months before it was launched, is seen as another attempt of dealing with the ills of city life.

Sex work is an emotive issue in the country as such the ongoing campaign in Dar es Salaam has generated support from many sections of society.

Even those who have expressed concerns about that campaign have urged caution not based on the issue itself but are advocating focusing on what they consider to be the root causes of it.

A moral lens is comforting and uniting. Whether this is an illusion or not is beside the point.

Contrast these two issues with the debates in parliament and the actions taken against alleged perpetrators of financial improprieties.

In the latest round of sometimes bitter and heated debates in Dodoma, some MPs pointed out that previous parliaments dealt with mega corruption scandals before, with some dating back nearly three decades ago but those behind those scandals were, in some cases, never known to the public.

The losses and the theft are in no doubt, but not a single culprit in sight.

The country has lived through the trauma of these endless allegations of corruption and mega corruption scandals where not a single one of them was ever dealt with to the satisfaction of the public.

Question marks are left to linger for decades, haunting the country from time to time and eventually turning into conspiracy theories.

Imagine a time when the allegations of corruption or outright mega corruption scandals were dealt with the sense of urgency as witnessed by those head teachers or sex workers in Dar es Salaam.

The campaigns against sex workers in Dar es Salaam are about economics and have little to do with morals.

The hounded sex workers live on the margins of society. They are already victims of a society that has cast them out for all sorts of reasons.

With improved economic prospects, they would never be found in such poor establishments, they would have gone digital or relocated to other posh locations where they would not have been disturbed by the campaigns of ‘purifying’ the city.

In many ways, they are double victims struggling with a terrible hand life dealt them.

As a country, we do not take time to connect the failures and thieving of public officials with the terrible circumstances the rest of the country endures.

The amount of money lost to corruption are staggering to the point they could cause severe headaches and heartaches to ordinary people.

The inactions are familiar. Despite the uproar against this never ending theft and looting of public finances, our relationship with corruption is, to say the least, very complicated.

Those who make it in life through dipping their hands in public coffers or enriching themselves through their offices are viewed to have properly used the ‘opportunities’ life gave them.

Those who retire poor and struggling financially, are viewed as ‘fools’, who have no one to blame for their misfortunes in life but themselves.

As things stand, we are still trapped in the endless games of cat and mouse.