Sports & Culture Giggles: The Great Tanzanian Radio disaster: A nation held hostage by endless football banter

TANZANIA: IT is a glorious Monday morning, the kind where the sun gently kisses your window, birds chirp their approval of your day off and you’ve just devoured a breakfast so heavy it could single-handedly sink a fishing dhow.

You sink into your favourite chair, turn on the radio, expecting oh, naïve you some insightful news, a stimulating discussion on national affairs, or dare we dream, a hard hitting investigative piece that sends shivers up the spines of the high and mighty.

But no! Instead, your eardrums are assaulted by the unmistakable sounds of a heated football debate one so intense you’d think these guys were negotiating an M23 ceasefire rather than dissecting Yanga’s goalkeeper’s mysterious inability to stop penalties.

Is it witchcraft? Poor reflexes? A curse from a disgruntled ex? The theories flow faster than Mbagala’s daladalas at dawn.

And just when you think you’ve had enough, BOOM! In comes the jingle the same betting ad you’ve heard every seven minutes since sunrise. If you were hoping for a break, think again.

The radio waves have been hijacked by men (and, occasionally, women) whose vocal cords are powered by an invisible generator that never runs out of fuel.

Welcome to Tanzanian radio. Abandon all hope of balanced programming, O ye who listen here. (smile and shake your head resignedly). Along came veteran journalist Abdallah Idrissa Majura, a man at the end of his proverbial rope. If the recent annual news broadcasters conference in Dodoma was a football match, Majura was a striker who entered the field solo and scored hat-trick after hat-trick.

That is after beating all unprofessional radio programming defenders up to the colossal goalpost of absurdity that Tanzanian radio has become, firing truth bomb after truth bomb until the final whistle….

Majura’s issue was simply begging to know just what has gone wrong with our radio stations? Once upon a time, he said, radio was the people’s voice a meeting place for news, education, thought provoking discussion and, of course, some entertainment.

But in recent years, Majura charged vehemently, they appear to have turned many radio stations into an endless sport bar, where the beer may be imaginary, but the babble is boundless.

Most radio stations today are constant post-match analysts.

In their studios you have presenters who yammer so much, you start to wonder if they breathe through their ears!

These guys don’t take breaks. They don’t pause. They are just talking and talking and yelling, like their microphones have an aversion to silence.

And all this time they are swimming in the misconception pool that Tanzanian people only love and follow football, nothing else!

Presumably, to them there are no other issues facing the country.

No inflation. No potholes. No power outages. No corruption. No impending general elections. No nothing… It’s just football, football and more football all day, every day.

The same recycled arguments Simba fans bragging about CAF runs, Yanga fans flexing league dominance and both sides claiming eternal supremacy can get exhausting.

It is obvious that many radio presenters have effectively made their shows their own personal playgrounds, saying whatever random thought pops into their head with no editorial oversight whatsoever.

Now, you might ask, how is this insanity comes down to all of us? Well, call it public ignorance and misinformation.

Journalism is meant to inform the many, not to peddle them round the clock football theories dressed up as superstition and conspiracy.

Remember when radio stations would investigate, expose and expose briefly? Those days are as dead as dial-up internet.

Investigative journalism has officially been replaced by investigative football debates the kind of highstakes analysis.

That is a panel of five, (or even up to seven!) grown men, sweating under studio lights, spending an entire day debating whether a player’s new haircut is responsible for his sudden drop in form.

Because, obviously, the laws of physics and sports science don’t matter when a fade goes wrong.

As we speak the radio presenters are in a duel with social media gurus over who beats the other debating a latest geopolitical dilemma.

Well, since Aziz Ki has wed our very own Hamisa Mobetto; does he become Tanzanian, or do we send Hamisa on a oneway diplomatic mission to Ouagadougou?

ALSO READ: Yanga claim top seat, Aziz Ki hits hat trick

Will she be holding a Tanzanian passport, or will she be out there doing TikTok dances in a Burkinabé kaftan?

And why did the groom and bride had to change into different clothes ten times in five different functions of then same wedding of theirs?

And let’s not even get started on the latest “penaltygate” scandal three penalties in one half of the game, all favouring the same big club.

Was this a conspiracy, divine intervention, or just the referee repaying an M-Pesa debt live on television?

Kwa kweli, gone are the days when journalists were sharp, trained professionals, respected by society for their investigative prowess.

Nowadays all that you need is just a big voice, an even bigger opinion and the ability to argue without needing a breath of fresh air or.

At this rate, Tanzanians will wake up one day to find they have spent so much time bickering over VAR calls that they’ve forgotten to pay attention to sensitive national issues.

Who is to Blame?

Regulatory Authorities Hi, TCRA? Are you there? Because the radio waves have been commandeered and we need some serious help!

Radio Owners – It has just occurred to me that perhaps hiring actual journalists, as opposed to the loudest guy from the local pub, could be good for business.

Journalism Schools — Are we sure that universities aren’t just cranking out journalism degrees and giving them to us like flyers?

The Government — Maybe, instead of policing who wants to know where the ‘Kapu la Mama’ dough comes from, they could make sure journalism doesn’t become a circus.

The Public — Honestly, some of us enjoy this nonsense. If no one listened to them, these stations wouldn’t exist!

How to fix this radio mess? Enforce content diversity. Period!

This football-speak should be subject to some kind of law, requiring that for every hour of meaningless football talk there should be at least some actual, real, in-depth news.

Can you imagine that — a country where people are not aware of what’s going on in the world outside of which coach was just fired?

We have to put an end to the age of street-certified loudmouths hosting entire radio shows.

Train them properly, give them actual skills, and maybe just maybe we’ll get some quality reporting back. Setting up a media watchdog could also work.

Once you find something stupid, just fine those people every time they put something stupid on the air.

Just think of the national coffers if they fined every time a presenter talked for five minutes without putting a coherent sentence together!

We also need to train the public to see quality journalism.

That way if a radio presenter begins describing a football match as if it were a tragedy, listeners will know to change channels.

But we should also encourage real journalism.

Media houses can try launching their own excellence in journalism awards, mentorship programmes and training sessions to make sure their staff know that reporting real news is still something that happens in the world.

And at the end of the day, we should also hold media owners accountable.

A radio station is not better or safer for not having editors or trained journalists; it’s like a car without brakes, dangerous and in need of fixing urgently. It was the right thing for Majura to sound the alarm on.

Tanzanian radio has turned into an endless shouting match in which professionalism has gone on a permanent holiday.

If we continue down this road, the only thing we’ll be hearing on-air soon will be: “Breaking News: Azam SC’s team bus hits traffic now let’s talk about it for the next six hours!”

The time is right for authorities, media owners, journalists and the public to unite and take back our airwaves from this football-mad folly.

Unless in 2025 historians reveal that Tanzania liquidated journalism once and for all and turned radio into a perpetual sports bar argument. And we honestly deserve better than that.