WHAT comes out of the mouth should not only be productive, but beneficial as well. Just being productive leaves room for evil emissions which, equally too, are products.
A bad thing is as much a product as a good thing is. That is why speakers, especially leaders, need to watch their mouth. What leaders say matter to the masses and is taken by the people as exemplary, and on occasions, a law or a code of conduct.
Therefore, utmost care is necessary before one opens one’s mouth to utter a word. The US President Barack Obama has appeared to be one of the most careful world leaders when he speaks after an offensive situation or act done to him or his nation that does not bode well with the standing of his nation or mankind generally.
When recently he, as they say, presented a humble front in Hangzhou, China, on his arrival there for a summit of Group of 20, after the Chinese security allegedly denied his press team to cover his arrival, he did it in a most diplomatic manner.
President Obama expressed his displeasure about the tiff with a diplomatic calm, proving he was indeed a world’s statesman and leader of one of the world’s superpowers.
The Chinese too reciprocated with admirable calm and the summit went on as planned. Obama was right when he implied that the host always ought to know the visitor has values they carry with them wherever they go.
“We don’t leave our values and our ideals behind when we take these trips,” Obama said. “It can cause some friction,” Obama said. But that was the – Chinese and Americans – the two superpowers’ problem and given their experience with international protocols, we can only relax at how they settled the matter and pushed it to the background of their mind as they discussed the main issue at hand. God knows when President John Pombe Joseph Magufuli will travel either to China or to the US.
As things are, JPM has hitherto not travelled abroad. Of course if crossing the Indian Ocean is travelling overseas, then recently the President went overseas when he visited Zanzibar or Tanzania Visiwani.
He did not leave our values behind and could not tolerate immersing the same values in the mud there on the isles. President JPM was surprised that even many months after the general elections, some leaders and eminent people, still harboured feelings of hate.
The president took the opportunity to sensitise the nation that there are eminent persons in the country who abuse our etiquettes and values to divide the nation. It was not only violent activities or outrageous remarks that could disrupt the nation’s peace.
Silent but misguided actions could also foment violence, hence hostility. The president took time to denounce it. As he addressed a rally on in Zanzibar, President Magufuli touched on a couple of topics, which he considered nationally divisive.
One of them was an act that had, as he considered, insulted a nation’s value. By our tradition and indeed the culture of mankind, the funeral of a member of the society is taken to be a peaceful occasion or a time to relegate individual differences to the background of the mind. Quarrels should be past time or put in a semblance of an amnesty for peace to truly prevail.
On several occasions, President Magufuli has said that in the post-elections time we should concentrate with building the nation, a task that needs union of the nation, not its fragmentation.
And unison needs peace and friendliness, not animosity. “Elections are over. Let us work together to build the nation. Now, it is time to work,” he has said to the people a couple of times and asked them to pray for him to make him succeed in his work. But after elections events occurred, which displayed with stunning clarity that there were presidential candidates and some aspirants to electoral posts who, almost a year later, still rankled with anger and fumed with hate because of their unsuccessful bid for the posts.
The president said he had been shocked when he saw at a funeral one presidential candidate in the previous general election snub an extended hand for greeting by a head of the state in Tanzania. That hostile act prompted him to express our value.
At such a sorry time for the community we share our pain regardless of which side of some social argument or a political tussle the deceased was on.
Displaying inimical signs is an unkind stance towards the whole community, an act not conducive to peace. When in distress the whole community needs unity for their strength, solidarity to inspire them on. Divisive words or deeds are merely ruinous manners which stand in the path to a peaceful coexistence.
Such an act is an unwise thing to do and so people will understand how grievous was the act of the would-be president of shunning a greeting from the leader of the state whose signature meant a trip abroad to save his life.
Is understandable how JPM felt to say what he said. Mention culture of a people. The greeting snub was totally shaming -- beneath our culture. It is courtesy for one to wash one’s dirty linen to home and display one’s jolly side in public despite one’s complaint against the establishment.