During her tour of Tanga region last week, President Samia Suluhu Hassan gave audience to a teenage girl with a dream to become President of Tanzania one day. It was the second time she was hosting such a guest in nearly as many years.
As was the case previously, the Head of State offered her seat to Ester Balua, a Form two student from Magila Secondary School in Muheza district. This followed a presentation in English at a public rally, in which Ester lauded President Samia’s achievements and declared her dream to occupy the country’s highest office.
The first time the President ‘let out’ the presidential chair briefly was in May 2023, when she met Georgina Magea, probably Tanzania’s youngest author at age eight.
It had been the child author’s long-held dream to meet President Samia physically, having only seen her in pictures and posters, according to her. That dream came true when the President was invited to inaugurate the digitalization of Azam TV’s transmissions.
After watching a video clip featuring Georgina, President Samia said she was wowed by the child’s writing prowess and her high long-term ambition to become President.
Georgina offered the Head of State complementary copies of her two books: One on Zanzibar and the other on environmental conservation. She has since published her third children’s book on her audience with President Samia.
The grade six pupil is also a high-caliber environmental activist, who was sponsored by the UN to represent Tanzanian children at the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29) at Baku, Azerbaijan last November.
As for Ester, last week’s “Lady President in waiting”, she addressed the President in fairly good English, a rarity for a ninth grader in shule ya kata.
Little wonder her navigation of the subject she chose, President Samia’s performance for the last four years, was not plain sailing. At least two guys in a WhatsApp group I’m in dismissed the job as a crammed script from a teacher.
A serious flaw in Ester’s narrative on the SGR and Julius Nyerere Hydropower projects is her (or the script writer’s) failure to credit them to the late President John Pombe Magufuli, who is on record wondering if they’d be completed in his absence.
Which is precisely President Samia’s laudable achievement: Picking up JPM’s flagship projects at tender stages and executing them in full.
At first, I was impressed by the teenager’s choice to use English in her presentation, but later I wondered why she did that. Was it to show off or the myth that speaking the King’s language is prestigious?
She actually underlined that she was attending a shule ya kata, not a private school. I thought the myth about inferiority of ward public schools was shot down long ago by exemplary performance by many such schools.
Nevertheless, everything said, Ester deserves praise for her confidence and public speaking skills. Even if her show was not entirely natural, it takes a measure of intelligence to reproduce that much stuff without losing track.
By the way, Magila is where Anglican missionaries built the first school in Tanganyika, more than a century ago.
One classroom from the school, named St. Mary’s Girls, is reported to be still intact and is being used by staff of Magila Mission Hospital.
Now you know Ester Balua is not from thin air!
The writer is a Media and Communication Consultant. amkumbwa@ymail.com
