As it is usually perceived by different people who practice laws that the Laws are
there or created to protect or save the interest of the ruling class in any community.
This concept has been mainstreamed in different places where you find two groups
of people one with power and the other without power but claiming to have equal
rights before their laws and regulations that guide them. In executing these laws,
normally the group with higher power in favored while the other being oppressed.
In Tanzania for example this kind of circumstance is also prominent where recently
we have witnessed how the ruling class has been favored once it come that it has to
be hold responsible. We all know how those who were involved in EPA scandal are
being treated in the name of executing the cases against them. At one time our
president said that we are still doing investigations so that we become satisfied in
order to avoid ill-treating anyone involved in the scandal. The concept of evading illtreating
people charged with cases comes in place at a time we have people with
power in the country and it has not been observed when trying normal people in our
country. Not only that but also the Richmond scandal that involved different
governmental officials is a mysterious since these people has not being dealt and
they have been left in our government offices darkening them with their
misconducts. But this is not the case once it come to barefooted normal people in
the country where they are brutally treated if involved in any contravene. This
brings the sense of discrimination in our community, the act that separates us from
one another of which our father of nation Mwalimu did not allow it to mainstream
within our communities.
In his life, the friend of our late father of nation Mzee Nelson Mandela also faced the
same situation once he was in a condition in which a prefect and a normal African
student with the same offence but receiving different treatment as far as
punishment was concerned. A normal African student was brutally punished while
the prefect left free.
During his second year at Healdown School, Mandela was appointed as a prefect. A
prefect had different responsibilities and the newest prefect had the least desirable
duties. In the beginning, he supervised a group of student who worked as window
cleaners during their manual work time in the afternoon, and led them to different
windows each day. He soon graduated to next level of responsibility, which was
night duty. He says he had never had a problem in staying up all night, but during
one such night he was put in moral quandary that remained in his memory. They
had no toilets in their dormitories, but they had an outhouse that was about
hundred feet behind the residence.
On rainy evening, when student woke up in the mid night, they wouldn’t want to
trudge through the grass and mud to the outhouse. Instead, students would stand
on the veranda and urinate into the bushes. This practices, however was strictly
prohibited and against regulations and one job of the prefect was to take down the
names of the students who indulged it. One night, he was on duty when it was
pouring with rains and he caught quite few students perhaps fifteen or so – relieving
themselves from the veranda. Towards dawn he saw a chap come out, look both
ways and stand at one end of the veranda to urinate. He made his way over to him
and announced that he had been caught, whereupon he turned round and he
realized that he was a prefect. He was in predicament. In laws and philosophy, one
ask quis custodiet ipsos custode(who will guard the guardian themselves). If the
prefect does not obey the rules, how can the student be expected to obey? In
effect, the prefect was above the law because he was the laws, and one prefect was
not supposed to report another. He thought it was not fair to avoid reporting the
prefect and mark down the fifteen others, so he simply tore up his list and charged
no one. Can we do as Mzee Mandela did in those days? Probably yes as easy said
than done. Well I think if at all we fall what the Laws states, we will be at another
level in implementing them. If is that the case I argue our government to treat its
people equally without discrimination that separate one another.
William Nambiza
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