Manyerere Jackton, who by now has written over twenty articles inciting against the Maasai of Loliondo as destructive “Kenyans” whose NGOs harass beneficial investors, has again written about me… Manyerere has earlier gone to the extreme of claiming that 70 percent of the population of Loliondo is “Kenyan” and published lists of names of supposed “Kenyans”. His latest piece was to, together with the two most corrupt persons in Loliondo, engage in defamation of the activist Maanda Ngoitiko, adding “fantasies” about how I would have worked for her NGO (I wish…). The occasion for the latest article is that the unbelievably incompetent, now ex-DC, Hashim Shaibu Mgandilwa must have got my first, and as advised, brief request for revocation of my prohibited immigrant status, to ex-minister Kitwanga, and then sent it to the anti-Loliondo “journalist”. The ex-DC was in social media sarcastically telling me “nimeskia unataka unataka ku revoke PI njoo nikusaidie” and shortly after did Manyerere Jackton email me my first letter requesting revocation, together with his rather juvenile comments ending with, “Finally, you will know who is the worst journalist and who is the worst mzungu!”. He would have had some more material with my more detailed request, but since he’s also lazy, maybe he doesn’t want it. In the recent article – that at least in the online version doesn’t even carry the “journalist’s” name – Manyerere claims that it’s “investigations” by the Jamhuri that have revealed my request for revocation…
It’s something of a mystery why the Jamhuri keeps
publishing extreme incitement against a specific ethnic and geographic group of
Tanzanians. Regarding Manyerere himself I’ve thought about different mental
disorders, but basically all I’ve consulted seem certain that he’s being paid
by OBC, the organiser of hunting for the highest levels of UAE society, and
that repeatedly has influenced the Tanzanian government to issue land grab
threats, and in 2009 also committing extrajudicial evictions, against the
Maasai of Loliondo. In any case, the most recent article is a lazy re-hash of
malicious fabrications, but also of simple errors, that Manyerere wrote after I
was illegally arrested in Loliondo for three days last year, without being
allowed to contact anyone. I published this blog post after the arrest.
Manyerere repeats the lazy error that I would have
been arrested at the non-existent “Onesmo” hotel while having dinner. It was
Honest guest house, but this is the smallest of the problems with the “article”.
Manyerere mentions the now fortunately ex-DC (transferred
to Kigamboni) as someone describing me as the main stakeholder endangering
Loliondo and the Serengeti, which sets the level…
Again the “journalist” makes a big issue about the
fact that I stayed at Oloip, the guest house belonging to ex-MP Timan whose
wife is the only Loliondo activist who’s actually born in Kenya, which makes
her irresistible to Manyerere. Though he has missed that she isn’t a CCM
councillor anymore, but since last year’s elections a Chadema councillor.
Manyerere repeats the lie that I would have been to a “secret meeting” in
Kirtalo together with Tina Timan, even though I made it very clear to him last
year that I have never met Tina, and that it was other people I saw in Kirtalo
while exercising my basic right of freedom of association.
Again Manyerere repeats his lie that I would be
fundraising and receiving “billions of money” from international organisations.
He does of course not care that the fact is that I’ve never fundraised a
shilling. Maybe he could specify exactly who on earth has given me money.
Though since he doesn’t have any limits (maybe I could make an amateur
diagnosis …) he is more than capable of writing about the dangerously white and
western Santa Claus showering me with money … The continued lies about money do
make it seem that those that are convinced Manyerere is being paid by OBC are
correct.
Other lies that I corrected already last year are also
repeated, like the absurd claim that I during my illegal arrest would have been
saying that I’d make sure Swedish aid to Tanzania is cut unless the Tanzanian government
stops harassing me. Manyerere knows very well that I would never say such a
thing, not least because I don’t have any such influence, but it’s the kind of
thing he likes to write. What I told the cowards at the police station – that
all except one, didn’t introduce themselves, DC included, but I recognised him
– was that they should arrest the managers of the foreign companies that are
endangering land rights – OBC with its constant threats against 1,500 square
kilometres, and the American Thomson Safaris with its rabid occupation of
12,617 acres of Maasai land. The person exposing the truth about these
companies is very obviously the wrong person to arrest. Either Manyerere did
make up these lies, or it was his unnamed cowardly sources. The “argument” I
got from those people at Loliondo police station was that “in no country in the world is a visitor allowed to talk politics with
people”, which shows the most frightening ignorance about basic rights like
freedom of expression and freedom of association.
I have been blogging about the land grabbing
“investors” in Loliondo for over six years, and the reason is that I came across the
issue and was showered with lies, and then grave harassment when I went to see
for myself. Since nobody else is doing it, I will do my best to continue as
long as necessary. Manyerere on the other hand, uses national newspaper space
to not only defame any activist speaking up against those “investors”, but also
to incite against the majority of the population of Loliondo. He’s a tool of
the most destructive neo-colonialism while I expose it and speak up against it.
This explains why he has to use the vulgar word mzungu, used in the street, but
hardly newspaper style, in the headline. The only real “fault” he can find on
me is my skin colour that he obsesses about while letting his anonymous sources
talk about “western countries” that through me want to destabilize Tanzania by
supporting Maasai land rights. The other Tanzanians that have to attack me for
my skin colour are those that are employed by land grabbing “investors”, and
those that enjoy the persecution of minority groups. “Mzungu” and “western” are
catchwords to rile up the unthinking or wilfully ignorant. Another such catchword
is of course the constantly used “Kenyans”.
Manyerere even fails, maybe knowingly, to mention the
real name of my blog, and instead claims that the website Just Conservation,
that has published some of my blog posts, would be mine. This is my blog: Viewfrom the Termite Mound. It’s the best place place to come for information about
land grabbing “investors” in Loliondo.
Susanna Nordlund
Currently visiting Kenya and hoping to be back in
Tanzania next year.
sannasus@hotmail.com
PS:
after I had published this blog post,
Manyerere sent me an email with a photo from my FB timeline attached. He
wrote. “You
will never win this war!!”
and I asked, “I
have over a thousand FB friends, and some work for OBC, like you.
That photo isn't confidential in any way. When do you consider that
you have "won the war"? When the Maasai have been evicted
from 1,500 km2 and OBC have exclusive hunting rights? Or 4,000 km2?
Or when the UAE flag is waving from every Tanzanian flag pole?”
I'm still waiting for a reply.
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