Bring back National Service, rescue our young people

Oh, the stories that they would tell. The [Tanzania] National Service was abolished long before my generation got the chance to join and travel the country. It is a shame since the National Service is probably as close as I might ever have got to public service.

I could never get enough of the recounting of adventures from veterans: The crazy hours, the weevil-infested bean stews, the sociopathic drill sergeants. It sounded like every classic 1980s army hit movie ever made, but with Tanzanian cast members. Of course I wanted to do National Service.
Except for the part where servicemen and servicewomen were expected to play with guns.

Imagine my excitement when the government recently mentioned in passing that the plans for reviving the National Service are almost completed. This is government-speak for: It could happen tomorrow, or it could happen never. Whenever the good day might come, I want to declare my support for the idea of National Service being resuscitated. I even have some recommendations for the Ministry of Defence about how they should go about it, since I know how much soldiers appreciate unsolicited advice from civilians.

National Service is a good idea for one primary reason: It could be the institution that gives Tanzanian youth practical skills as well as that sense of achievement and success that comes from hard, constructive work.

Let’s face it, the education system is nowhere close to offering them that opportunity. In theory, schools are meritocracies: You play the game right and do well, you get rewarded. You play the game poorly, you get penalised with bad grades and dubious employment prospects. In reality, the Tanzanian public education system is a finely honed machine that is designed to destroy all belief in the relationships between hard work, success and fair play. Too often graduates are cast out into the wilderness of adult life with partial skills, and the dawning horror that these may not be enough to conquer their world.

If they can’t get it in school, then where are young Tanzanians supposed to build their sense of mastery? It won’t happen in the formal labour market; employers are oddly reluctant to pay employees to finish growing into competent workers at their cost, so that’s not going to work.

Volunteer spirit

There is an adage that a mind is a terrible thing to waste, but in actual fact it is very hard to waste a mind. Tanzania enjoyed a very successful adult education programme in the 1970s that boosted the literacy rates of the whole country — not just school-age citizens. Which means that adult education is a perfectly viable mechanism through which to rectify some of the ills inflicted on young Tanzanians by our broken-down public education system.

Back in the day, National Service was one of the great equalising institutions along with employment by the government. We don’t have that kind of social engineering anymore. But National Service may well be the right mechanism to revive some of that cohesive and constructive energy. Here is where the military could really be useful to civilians — we need the discipline. Nobody can whip young adults into useful, fit and skilled people quite like the armed forces.

There are a lot of places that need help with civic projects: Pit latrines, school buildings, road clearance and other forms of hard labour. That’s what recruits could spend their time doing, and while they are there we could sneak in an adult literacy programme.

In fact, there is no reason why National Service should be restricted to people who are fresh out of school. The rest of us could explore our volunteer spirit by joining in to add to the physical labour corps. Imagine the possibilities, if you are one of the many who needs to reduce your weight through diet and exercise.
The less physically inclined could offer their expertise in whatever fields they know best. There must be hundreds if not thousands of retirees who would enjoy boring the camouflage paint off a young audience with their reminiscences.

The arguments in favour of National Service easily outweigh the arguments against it. One main concern is probably cost: Who will foot the bill? I say we slash the government’s car purchase budget and redirect the funds to National Service. The only people who would protest are politicians and as I have suggested before, they could always cycle to work to reduce our national bill for lifestyle diseases of the overfed public servant kind. Dar would be decongested, our public servants would get healthier and our unemployed youth would redirect their energies while relearning their Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.

So yes, let’s do this National Service thing. Except for the part with the guns.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report.