MP tweeting from custody in Tanzania. The easy part and the real challenge.

I’ve been communicating quite a bit with different people relating to Tanzania about the use of social media over the past few days.

Then suddenly, Zitto Kabwe, MP for Chadema, tweets from custody in Singida:

'Have just been arrested by police in Singida for ' holding a rally after 6pm'

It is awfully hard not to retweet a tweet like this, as it contains the most elementary ingredients of what news are made of.

The tweets go forth and back quickly, and soon the news from the event in a district town in central Tanzania have spread to the rest of the world in no time. Just check the Facebook comments here.

Lots of pole sana. It has even become the subject of debate between people across continents. Alafu - about an hour later the MP is out on self-bail:

'RCO just got an order from his RPC to let me off and report tomorrow. Self-bail.'

Back to my interest in how social media is applied in Tanzania, and how this is perceived in i.e. Europe, I have to conclude that to me this is no longer about the fascination of the raw facts that a Tanzanian MP tweets and facebooks straight from custody.

That is in fact the surprisingly easy part.

To me the real challenge lies in adressing the issues of why he ended up there, what will happen after and how the instant communication affects politics in a longer term perspective. Another, may be to keep focus on how the government goes about its cyberspace policies in the long term.

If interested in the Tanzanian government's take on the Internet, read along here.