It is difficult, in the African setting, to write honestly when you are dealing with a departed person, especially to cast what may be seen as aspersions about someone who has passed on and who occupied a prominent place in society such as that of the former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.
The tendency is almost always to look for something positive to say, and this is usually not such a hard task, for, whatever the faults of an individual, there surely has to be something good to say about them. It is the biographers who come later, distanced by time, and sometimes space, who get the latitude that frees them from niceties and polite discourse.
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