A disturbing story at BBC World News details how Tanzanian President John Magufuli pardoned a father/son team of child rapists that had served thirteen years of a life sentence for the horrendous crime of violating “10 girls in 2003 aged between six and eight years who were pupils at a primary school in the Tanzanian city Dar es Salaam.”
“Kate McAlpine, director of the Arusha-based Community for Children Rights, told the BBC she was "horrified but unsurprised".
John Magufuli made the pardon in his independence day speech on Saturday.
Singer Nguza Viking, known as Babu Seya, and his son Johnson Nguza, known as Papii Kocha, were pardoned for raping 10 primary schoolgirls.
The president selected a group of prisoners to be released, who he said had corrected their behaviour.”
Ms. Alpine has every reason to doubt the President’s judgement on the rehabilitation of the men , as Magufuli signed an order last June banning pregnant girls from returning to school.
Victimized by the violence of men, their President would prevent these children from acquiring the one thing that has proven to improve the lives of impoverished women around the world - an education.
Which brings us back to Alabama.
Some there would argue that the crimes of Roy Moore are different in kind from those of Nguza Viking and his son, but isn’t the real difference the greater value we assign to the lives of our girls than some cultures that constrains men like Moore from taking merely what they want?
And to what extent will that value be diminished if the voters of Alabama, against all sense of propriety and norm, reward a would be child rapist with a Senate Seat?