Ernest Mpinganjira
Nairobi
The vexed question of insecurity in Tanzania took centre stage again during election campaigns last week, with two main rival parties opting for diametrically opposed approaches to rein in runaway crime.
[align=right] Implied is an admission that security forces abet crime to supplement their meagre earnings.[/align] CUF Zanzibar presidential candidate Seif Shariff Hamad told the Press on Tuesday that the security forces are a burden to the Exchequer and must be trimmed to reflect the size of the economy.
Hamad had in mind Tanzania's two branches of security forces - the Tanzania People's Defence Forces (the army) and the police. Below the two are the paramilitary Field Force Unit (commonly known as Fanya Fujo Uone) and sungu sungu (village militia).
Tanzania has a combined force of between 700,000 and one million personnel. Despite its large size, the performance of the security force has always been wanting, especially in recent times, with some of its members being implicated in violent crimes.
The spectre of violent crime stalking the country and this year's general election has, therefore, given Tanzanians a rare opportunity to assess the performance of the security forces vis-‡-vis the festering social vice, which even now is still a taboo topic.
When Hamad broached the subject and touched off a national debate over the criminal-infested, inefficient and in his opinion bloated force, he elicited a swift response from CCM's Union presidential candidate, Jakaya Kikwete.
Kikwete, himself a retired lieutenant colonel in Tanzania People's Defence Forces (TPDF), said on Wednesday that he would opt for a larger, modern and better-resourced force.
Kikwete's party was early this year implicated in questionable procurement of military hardware from Belgium. The tender to build ammunitions manufacturing factories in Morogoro and Mwanza, resulted in a standoff between the two governments after the International Peace Service, an international non-governmental organisation, cast aspersions on Tanzania's sincerity and capability to control ammunitions produced locally from reaching the hands of criminals.
Whichever way the vote goes, a decision has to be made about external threat (terrorism) and the collapsed internal security network, which feeds rather than fights crime.
Against the backdrop of Hamad's and Kikwete's divergent views on security, a recent crime wave involving army personnel and police has made businesses and property vulnerable to armed robbery and white-collar crimes, which target banks and other financial institutions.
The entrenchment of violent crime came to the fore recently when a soldier with TPDF was gunned down in Dar es Salaam allegedly on a mission to commit a robbery. Two weeks ago, a cache of guns and ammunitions was impounded in Dar es Salaam, which Dar Regional Police Commander Alfred Tibaigana said had been acquired from the army and the police.
The implication of the security forces in crime came on the back of a daring daylight armed raid on a TPDF strong-room in Zanzibar during which soldiers' salaries were stolen. There were no arrests.
While the police later said the robbery was the work of Ugandan gangsters, suspicious wananchi believed that the robberies had the blessings of the police or the military. Since then, armed robberies have been almost a daily occurrence, with tourists and hotels being the targets.
Over the past six weeks, Dare es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital, administrative capital Dodoma, Morogoro, Arusha and the Indian Ocean islands of Zanzibar have been besieged by gangsters who have stolen property running into billions of shillings.
The increased crime has called into question the competence of the security forces to deal with escalating crime compared with the other member-states of the East African Community (EAC) - Kenya and Uganda- that are stepping up anti-crime campaigns through intelligence gathering.
Long used to explaining away runaway crime as the work of "nationals of neighbouring countries", the capability of Tanzania's poorly resourced security forces to deal with homegrown crime has come under the microscope as armed robbery in major towns keeps the security forces busy. But Dar and other coastal towns have been most affected. The myth of foreigners perpetrating crime was dispelled when the government admitted that its forces are complicit in violent crime targeting banks and big business.
Finance minister Basil Mramba is one of the high-ranking people in the CCM government who have no doubt about the complicity of the police and the army in the current crime wave.
He is on record expressing doubts about the ability of a special crime prevention police unit, code-named Chura, to tackle runaway crime. Mramba even called for its disbandment, blaming it for waning investor confidence and reduced revenue collection.
Attempts to tackle the problem by introducing national identity cards have been slow and fraught with graft.
It is generally believed that national identity cards would help the police track down criminals using the information on the Ids.
Aware of the significance of the cards, Zanzibar issued national IDs in June this year, but characteristic foot-dragging delayed the exercise on the Mainland. And going by the experience of the 10 years since the idea was first mooted, the plan could remain in abeyance for sometime to come.
A timeline has not been set for the exercise and it is highly unlikely that it will be top on the agenda of the next government, which comes into office in November.
When Zanzibar introduced national IDs in June, the Isles government said they were intended to control the influx of foreigners taking up locals' jobs, besides improving security.
Without national identification cards and a centralised databank to enable the police to use modern fingerprint technology to track down criminals, the laidback force attributes all armed robberies to Kenyan and Ugandan - and occasionally Somali - nationals.
But recent incidents suggest otherwise. Such was the case last month when armed gangsters raided a forex bureau on Dar es Salaam's India Street and stole Tsh105 million and US$300,000 in cash and traveller's cheques of unknown value.
The Dar es Salaam police boss linked the heist to Kenyans "because Tanzanians cannot steal." He based his evidence on a Kenyan passport that was found at the scene of the crime. It turned out that the forged passport had been planted.
This was a week before a woman he described as a "serial con woman" attempted to cheat the Bank of Baroda out of Tsh6 million. Such incidents are now common.

But to illustrate the extent of crime, the International Police (Interpol) two months ago traced more than 70 per cent of the 117,000 vehicles that were stolen in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) trading bloc since 2003 to Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Mwanza.
Given the divergent approaches parties want to use to tackle crime, it is clear that Tanzania is a major crime incubator.


http://allafrica.com/stories/200510090034.html

WE ARE STILL PAYING FOR SOME OF NEYRERE'S ECON0MY MISMANAGEMENT

But TZ need to keep its large army because of the insecurity surrounding us,Look at those Congolese who wouldnt stop fighting and we have more than 1 million refugees from the great lakes region and of course majority are from Congo



all they need is to upgrade their forces and modernise it