When Afande Sele went on stage on this particular day, he probably didn’t have much to loose. All he wanted was to entertain and rock his fans. He was after all the reigning “Mfalme Wa Rhymes”. He was on top of his game. He probably had the confidence level of a lion.
I doubt whether it crossed his mind that one day he would want to be a musician turned into a politician. Those days are long gone. The “iconic” photo is now haunting him and his career. That day, on that stage, has ended up being a no trip to Harvard.
No matter what Afande Sele puts on today, to lots of people they still see him with his pants on his ankles, one of his hand holding his private areas and another hand holding a microphone, bare chested. It’s a ghost. It’s a haunting feeling that even a PR machinery of Olivia Pope [main character on TV series-Scandal] would have a hard time managing.
The photo you see above, got its groove back this week when, Afande Sele, alongside MP Zitto Kabwe announced before flashing cameras and microphones that he had joined ACT-Wazalendo from CHADEMA. Unlike Zitto, he decided to join ACT on his own accord. He wasn’t pushed aside. This time, however, it wasn’t CCM’s supporters and cadres that were throwing the jabs. It was people from CHADEMA. They wished him well…”Go…we didn’t like you anyway”
Whenever I look at the above photo or whenever I see comments and jokes made about it, I remember what I hear Mwalimu Julius Nyerere told a group of Canadians/Tanzanians in Ottawa when they asked him about dual citizenship. It was then a topic just as it is today. That was a couple of years before he passed away.
With his witty looks and smile, he told them, “no problem, go ahead…as long as you are not planning to run for office when you return to Tanzania. That will come up.” Nyerere knew what Afande Sele had no clue about when he allowed his emotions to take full control of him on that stage. Politics is a dirty game. It gets dirtier once you get in to “dance”.
