After some months of silence central government
reappeared and disappeared in Loliondo. Then the Prime Minister appeared and
declared that the 1.500km2 belong to the Maasai and their coming generations
thereby reversing the threats and lies by the Minister of Natural Resources and
Tourism.
Long term FZS head comes out in support of the
Government and OBC.
The court case against Thomson Safaris is
ongoing, there’s still unity, but sinister old manager is back.
This dry season turned bad and grazing in
Serengeti NP was needed. Cows and people were arrested with strange charge
sheets.
After the
Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Khamis Kagasheki, had spent the
first part of 2013 issuing threatening and bizarre statements about the
Government’s intention of taking 1,500km2 of important grazing land for a
“wildlife corridor” and several protest delegations from Loliondo had visited
Dar es Salaam and Dodoma, the Prime Minister wrote a letter to the Arusha
Regional Commissioner on 30th May and everything went quiet. Kagasheki
had gone as far as calling the Maasai “landless” invaders of their own land,
and saying that they were being “given” land since the Government would not
take the whole of Loliondo Game Controlled Area (that in its totality is
village land). The Prime Minister, in contrast, did recognise that the land
does belong to the villages, but otherwise his letter wasn’t very promising
since the PM did not show an understanding of the importance of this land for
pastoralism. Nothing was ever heard from the Regional Commissioner about the
Prime Minister’s letter.
