by Josephat Seleman Hema from Tanzania

I would like to honestly admit that I was not so much into the political seminar before we attended it form 4th – 8th November 2019. I was though, a bit tired on my way from Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest trip with my friend El Pacific, another South-North Volunteer from the Democratic Republic of Congo. I was just happy that we were going to meet other volunteers whom we usually meet during seminars, and of course we were also happy to be in other German cities, the cities Braunschweig and Hannover.

What would the political seminar in Germany provide us? On the other side we really were excited to just find out the contents of the seminar, and of course to know a bit more about the German politics.But preliminary I had so much negatives opinions on the World’s politics and specifically in my Continent, Africa. Since the introduction of colonial political borders in Africa, there happened a great number of conflicts, selfish acts and corruption incidences. It feels that Africa was more separated than united.

Furthermore, I never thought that the so called ‘Democracy’ is the right thing in my continent. Well I don’t want to speak on behalf of the whole continent but I would simply say that the introduction of the so called Democracy in Africa has resulted into more harms than gains. The concept led to change of systems that affected all the earlier well established and well-functioning African leadership and governing structures. That was in my opinions and the reason as to why I gave up on making any follow-ups and involvement in politics.

The thoughts like “why would I bother to speak when no one listens and take my words seriously?”, “Why would I vote while my votes are deliberately misplaced?”, “why would I bother to give my opinions on the use of public funds while all the money goes to some few people’s pockets?” Would politics be the solutions to people’s challenges? Aren’t politicians who pass sickly capitalistic policies and destroy the World? And For me, I saw it as a more of a problem causer than a solutions. And so I was mad at politics and never gave any trouble to even think that I would be part of changes.

But that is not the solution. Merlin, who facilitated the seminar, said, “Even if you don’t have interests in politics, politics will still have interest in you”

I didn’t know that at last I would even wish the seminar to be a little bit longer. We had interesting discoveries, discussions and sharing from all parts of the World. Merlin had richness of knowledge, he could explain a lot of things through different perspectives from all over the World and that is the reason as to why the seminar was so interesting. I was glad that we were more open minded in our discussions, we were not tied in one direction of thought and we had freedom of expressing our thoughts no matter how they were.

We discussed so many ways we can employ to enact changes in the political grounds. I was glad that finally my spirit to influence even a little change in the political sphere of my country was revived. So through the motivated atmosphere at the seminar I changed my mentality and thought that maybe I can do something in my country, Tanzania. Sure I can, I will. No matter how little will it be.