By Irfan Walji, Dar-es-Salaam
The role of the police in any community is to execute and implement the law and to make sure the law is abided by the habitants within the country, but have you noticed how Tanzanian law changes depending on the person involved or even the time of the day?!
Three weeks ago on a Monday morning I was heading towards Kenyatta Drive from Toure Drive. It was 7am and every commuter was hastening towards what earns them their bread and butter. During rush hour, two lanes of cars head towards Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road (on Kenyatta Drive) which is initiated by the traffic police stationed at the junction of Kenyatta Drive and Toure Drive and Kaunda Drive. Also, vehicles are not permitted to turn into Kenyatta Drive from Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road. To allow for this route, as I was driving, the police at that junction ordered me to take the second lane to get vehicles moving towards Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road. As I got close to the traffic lights, another police man stops me at the junction where Laibon Road meets Kenyatta Drive and starts shouting at me for driving on the wrong lane. As an individual who knows my rights and responsibilities, I asked him how I was breaking the law while there are so many vehicles ahead and behind me in the same situation and that this lane was started by the police who was at the previous junction. Apparently, asking was my mistake.
The police officer started writing a fine of Tshs 30,000 for driving on the wrong side of the road. I was not ready to accept the fine at that time because I only abided to the enforcers of the law. So I started collecting evidence on my phone by taking photos of how other cars were using the same road I was in but I was subject to a fine and they were not. This was another mistake I made according to the “police” – the same police officer then physically pushed me aside and started snatching my phone. I guarded my phone in my pocket firmly. That’s when another police officer came and forced the phone out of my hands and a third police officer cuffed my hands (who also racially discriminated against me)!
So here I was, at 7:30am on a Monday morning during rush hour, hand cuffed for an offence I did not commit. The options laid to me were: Pay the fine right there and then (with no receipt), or leave the car on the side of the road with the keys in custody of the “police” and go to the police station to make a statement and then head to court to fight the case. I was already getting late for work, so now I HAD TO accept that I indeed “broke the law” and should pay the fine, which I did out of harassment. As if by miracle, the handcuffs opened, my phone was returned to me, and I was on my way as if nothing had happened.
A few days later, the same police officer who wrote the fine stops me on the same road at the same time and hands me my receipt for the fine I paid. On that day I was on the same second lane and was not fined!!
Most of the offenders of the traffic law are vehicles with specific pattern of number plates; they may be red plates, they may be black plates, they may be yellow plates beginning with ST.. or SU.. and very few are actually private cars (with non-influential people in them). Of course, the vehicles with the white plates are exempt from all common sense and logic!
Just today it was raining and at the onset of rain, all traffic police controlling movement of vehicles at the Selander Bridge and Kinondoni junction walked into shade while they were dressed for the rain, letting all hell loose with bodabodas and bajajs scrambling like ants escaping a massacre.
So when is the law applicable? To whom is it applicable? What are we as citizens doing about it? Because as it stands, there are some who are above the law.
Cover image courtesy of UrbanAfrica.net.
