Nairobi, April 13 -- Few things can deepen a meditation on the nature of the State and governance quite like a yearly invitation to hand over a share of one's alleged income in the form of taxation.

I remain some kind of leftist at heart, if we are stuck together in this late-stage capitalist hellscape, we might as well try to beef up our collective welfare by contributing to the communal kitty.

Share and share alike, right? I like the idea of taxes, imagine. My problem is the matter of redistribution, which is where I run face-first into the government of Tanzania's modus operandi. You'd think that with a fine political pedigree of Ujamaa and Pan-Africanism, we would have a solid grasp of this "sharing" thing, but alas.

Tanzania. We w...