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A video recently popped up on Twitter from Tanzania. It shows a guy ironing his shirt with a hot kettle. He doesn't have an iron. And the hashtag that goes along with it - #WhatWouldMagufuliDo. Magufili is the new president of Tanzania. NPR's Gregory Warner reports that behind this joke is a serious campaign.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: It's a tough life for a Tanzanian public official these days. No more driving your limousine to villages. No more flying first class to meetings in Europe. You can't even send a Christmas card on the taxpayer's dime. President John Magufuli, elected in November, has banned these things. He canceled the country's Independence Day celebrations, saying it would be shameful to spend millions of dollars on military parades in a country battling cholera. And Magufuli is pro-austerity big and small. He even restricted the amount of refreshments allowed at official meetings.
EMMANUEL MAKUNDI: There will be only juices and water and maybe some bananas to entertain themselves during the meeting. But the president says you can take your breakfast at home.
WARNER: Emmanuel Makundi is journalist for Radio France International Swahili service in Dar es Salaam. He says the new president is also cracking down on corruption, and Makundi has seen the biggest change in public hospitals.
So we sent a reporter to be the Muhimbili National Hospital in the capital. It's a 1,000-bed university teaching hospital that's supposed to be subsidized, except there's a catch because typically, patients say, if you'd come here before and asked for medication, you'd be directed to an outside shop to pay inflated prices, a kind of back-channel bribe to hospital staff.
MINA CORINEL: OK, my name is Mina. Yeah, I can see some changes.
WARNER: Mina Corinel is a patient here. She says the changes came since a certain president made a surprise visit to this hospital. He found patients sleeping on the floor and fired the hospital director. Since then, she says the doctors have been noticeably more attentive.
CORINEL: They are passing by every time to see if any one of the patients need medicine or injections - yeah, like that.
WARNER: In his previous government post, Magufuli was nicknamed the Bulldozer. And a few weeks ago, he arrested 20 officials whose only crime was showing up late to a meeting. That cheered people here, tired of lackluster civil servants. But intimidation tactics can go only so far. There is a direct link between public corruption and the low pay of civil servants, and that's across the board, from police stations to public hospitals. Dr. Billy Haonga is the president of the Tanzanian Medical Association. He says two years ago, doctors protested in the streets over low salaries. He says the average public doctor takes home just $6,000 a year.
BILLY HAONGA: It has been a complaint for so long. Doctors are paid very little. We expect perhaps they'll increase the budget next year.
WARNER: Those expectations mean that President Magufuli is trying to increase tax collection as well as shave costs. Political analyst Abdulkarim Atiki says he's hoping the changes stick. But reformers have come and gone in Tanzania before. He says the opposition party has already coined a phrase in Swahili for the presidential reforms.
ABDULKARIM ATIKI: Nguvu Ya Soda.
WARNER: Nguvu Ya Soda - the power of soda.
ATIKI: The power of the soda. The power of Coca-Cola (laughter).
WARNER: They're making a bet that Magufuli's reforming spirit will fizzle out like an open bottle of soda in the hot African sun. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.