Poleni sana wanangoile
…
On 5th
August, the Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, Damas Ndumbaro, made a
most inflammatory statement totally ignoring rule of law, human rights, land
rights and common sense.
In this blog post:
Ndumbaro’s Criminally
Clueless and Dangerous Statement
Summary about
OBC and the Osero in Loliondo
First, please
sign this petition by Rainforest Rescue and the Oakland Institute against
eviction in Ngorongoro.
At a function in Dar es
Salaam, handing a certificate to a company investing in Maswa North, Ndumbaro,
Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, ordered the Tanzania Wildlife
Authority (TAWA) to within 60 days expel investors that have failed to prevent
poaching and to remove livestock from their hunting blocks! Apparently, the
minister has failed to notice that many hunting blocks are on village land
where, unlike poaching, pastoralism is a most legal and beneficial activity. Further,
Ndumbaro ignores the obvious and well-documented dangers of laying law
enforcement in the hands of private investors with their private interests,
friends, foes, and grudges. He also fails to understand that the hunting firms do not have legal capacity to execute what the minister wishes to
be executed, which can only be made reality through illegal means.
Tanzania has had its share of
worst experience with the hunting industry when the government is driven by
remote control by the hunting firms. Loliondo is a notable example where human
rights crime has been made common, where police force and rangers employed by
parastatals work for the investors, against local people, and against anything
resembling rule of law. For over a decade this blog has reported about how
police, rangers, even soldiers, district security committee and virtually all government
employees at the Ngorongoro District Council have been upholding a local police
state at the service of the “investors” Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC),
whose hunting block is more than the whole of Loliondo division and who lobby
the government to turn 1,500 km2 into a “protected area”, and Thomson Safaris
that claim 12,617 acres as their private nature refuge.
The Ndumbaro statement is an
attempt to normalize lawlessness in the hunting industry so that the hunting
concession can only remain valid if the investor is able to by his own means expel,
among others, the pastoral communities. While making reference to Ndumbaro’s call
for expulsion of pastoral people out of their ancestral territories and village
land Joseph Moses Oleshangay, lawyer from Ngorongoro says,
"Ndumbaro is perhaps the worst minister in
MNRT recent history. Kigwangalla had his ups and downs beside these unnecessary
showy games. He lacks the very basic principle of leadership, law (despite
allegedly being a lawyer) and worse of all humanity.”
It difficult to grasp the logic
behind the current proposal and therefore some questions remain
speculative. Could it be that some
company eager to commit crimes against villagers has requested Ndumbaro to
issue this ultimatum? Or has the minister been influenced by the endless debate
between international pro- and anti-trophy hunting academics, and others, who vociferously,
and quite dubiously, claim to have the best interests of rural Africans in mind?
In this debate, that I for mental health reasons don’t follow closely, I’ve
seen preventing poaching and maintaining “buffer zones” mentioned as some kind
of benefit provided by hunting companies. Those with such arguments can’t know
anything at all about Tanzania where “buffer zones” don’t exist as any kind of legal
land classification, but sadly often as an “excuse” for invasion of village
land and serious human rights crimes.
Instead, Ndumbaro could do
something about crime in the hunting industry against rural people (and this
also applies to the misleadingly called “non-consumptive” companies) and
against hunting regulations. At least in Loliondo there isn’t any monitoring at
all to ensure that the “legal” hunters aren’t the biggest poachers, and the
Tanzanian hunting industry is generally known for being most corrupt. Though
this isn’t made easier when after a brief moment of hope, President Samia, has
shown that she is indeed one and the same as Magufuli, under whose rule the
whole country was turned into a police state and almost all Loliondo activists
were silenced. Samia has even gone further than her predecessor, jailing
Chadema chairman Freeman Mbowe on bogus “terrorism” charges, together with several
other opposition politicians, and more keep being illegally arrested. If this
is the time that Tanzanians will finally stand up against tyranny, I hope
pastoralist activists will join the fight. Except for our friend Tundu Lissu, I
can’t even trust freedom fighters to include rural people whose rights are
trampled upon for the benefit of “investors”.
Let’s hope that Ndumbaro’s
crazy irresponsible statement doesn’t lead to anything at all and is soon
forgotten, but everyone who’s apparently asleep in Loliondo (I know that many
people are still too afraid to do anything, but others do seem uninterested, or worse) should wake up, and everyone who can assist with the case in the
East African Court of Justice must put this higher on their long list of
priorities.
I expect everyone to react
against Ndumbaro’s reckless words!
Summary
about OBC and the Osero in Loliondo
A summary
reminder of OBC dirty war to control 1,500 km2 of important grazing land, the
Osero, in Loliondo is necessary to illustrate the danger of Ndumbaro’s
statement. It’s been going on for years, sometimes erupting with massive human
rights crime, and the local police state that finally silenced almost all
activism continue in force. The current form of the threat is a proposal of
annexation to Ngorongoro Conservation Area and converting most of the Osero into
a no-go zone for people and livestock. There’s evidence that the new Ngorongoro
DC has already visited Thomson Safaris, so with all certainty he has visited OBC
as well.
All land in Loliondo is
village land per the Village Land Act No.5 of 1999, and more than the whole of
Loliondo is also a Game Controlled Area (of the old kind that doesn’t affect
human activities and can overlap with village land) where OBC, that organises
hunting for Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, has the hunting block. Stan Katabalo –
maybe Tanzania’s last investigative journalist – before passing away under
suspect circumstances, reported about how this hunting block was acquired in
the early 1990s in a corruption scandal remembered as Loliondogate. Sadly, few
Tanzanians seem interested in knowing what has happened since then.
In 2007-2008 the affected
villages were threatened by the DC at the time, Jowika Kasunga, into signing a
Memorandum of Understanding with OBC.
In the drought year 2009 the
Field Force Unit and OBC extrajudicially - ordered by the DC’s office after a
decision at regional level - evicted people and cattle from some 1,500 km2 of
dry season grazing land that serve as the core hunting area next to Serengeti
National Park. Hundreds of houses were burned, and thousands of cattle were
chased into an extreme drought area which did not have enough grass or water to
sustain them. 7-year old Nashipai Gume was lost in the chaos and has not been
found, ever since.
People eventually moved back,
and some leaders started participating in reconciliation ceremonies with OBC.
Soon enough, in 2010-2011, OBC
in its totality funded a draft district land use plan that proposed turning the
1,500 km2 Osero (bushland) into the new kind of Game Controlled Area that’s a
“protected” (not from hunting) area and can’t overlap with village land. This
plan, that would have allowed a more “legal” repeat of 2009, was strongly
rejected by Ngorongoro District Council.
In 2013, then Minister for
Natural Resources and Tourism, Khamis Kagasheki, made bizarre statements as if
all village land in Loliondo would have disappeared through magic, and the
people of Loliondo would be generously “gifted” with the land outside the 1,500
km2. This was nothing but a horribly twisted way of again trying to evict the
Maasai landowners from OBC’s core hunting area. There’s of course no way a
Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism would have the mandate for such a
trick of magic. After many mass meetings – where there was agreement to never
again enter any MoU with OBC - and protest delegations to Dar es Salaam and
Dodoma, the then Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda in a speech on 23rd September
the same year revoked Kagasheki’s threat and told the Maasai to continue their
lives as before this threat that through the loss of dry season grazing land
would have led to the destruction of livelihoods, environmental degradation and
increased conflict with neighbours.
Parts of the press – foremost
Manyerere Jackton in the Jamhuri newspaper – increased their incitement against
the Maasai of Loliondo as destructive, “Kenyan” and governed by corrupt NGOs.
OBC’s “friends” in Loliondo became more active in the harassment of those
speaking up against the “investors”, even though they themselves didn’t want
the new GCA that would be a protected area, and rely on others, the same people
they persecute, to stop it… With Lazaro Nyalandu as minister the focus was on
holding closed meetings trying to buy off local leaders, and there was sadly
some success in this.
Speaking up against OBC (and
against Thomson Safaris, the American tour operator claiming ownership of
12,617 acres, and that shares the same friends as OBC) had always been risky,
but the witch-hunt intensified with multiple arrests in July 2016. Four people
were charged with a truly demented “espionage and sabotage” case. Manyerere
Jackton has openly boasted about his direct involvement in the illegal arrests
of innocent people for the sake of intimidation.
In July 2016, Manyerere
Jackton wrote an “article” calling for PM Majaliwa to return the Kagasheki-style
threat. In November 2016 OBC sent out a “report” to the press calling for the
Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism to intervene against the destructive
Maasai. In mid-December 2016, the then Arusha RC Mrisho Gambo was tasked by the
PM with setting up a committee to “solve the conflict”, and on 25th
January 2017 the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Maghembe, in the
middle of the drought-stricken Osero, flanked by the most OBC-devoted
journalists, and ignoring the ongoing talks, made a declaration that the land
had to be taken before the end of March. In March 2017 Minister Maghembe
co-opted a Parliamentary Standing Committee, and then Loliondo leaders’ “only
ally”, RC Gambo’s, committee started marking “critical areas” while being met with
protests in every village. German development money that the standing committee
had been told was subject to the alienation of the 1,500 km2 was – after
protests by 600 women – not signed by the district chairman. On 21st
March 2017 a compromise proposal for a WMA (that had been rejected in Loliondo
for a decade and a half) was reached through voting by the RC’s committee, then
handed over to PM Majaliwa on 20th April, and a long wait to hear
the PM’s decision started.
While still waiting, on 13th
August 2017, an unexpected illegal eviction and arson operation was initiated
in the Oloosek area of Ololosokwan and then continued all the way to Piyaya.
Beatings, arrests of the victims, illegal seizing of cows, and blocking of
water sources followed. Women were raped by the rangers. Many, notably the
formerly serious MP, but not all leaders stayed strangely and disappointingly
silent. It was soon revealed that the illegal operation had been officially
ordered by the DC.
The DC and the Ministry of
Natural Resources and Tourism explained the illegal operation with that people
and cattle were entering Serengeti National Park too easily, while Minister
Maghembe lied that the land was already the “protected area” wanted by OBC and
others.
There was an interim stop
order by the government organ Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance
(CHRAGG), but the crimes continued unabated.
A case was filed by four
villages in the East African Court of Justice on 21st September
2017.
On 5th October 2017
the Kenyan opposition leader, Raila Odinga, (who had met with people from
Loliondo) told supporters that his friend Magufuli had promised him that all
involved in the operation in Loliondo would be fired.
In a cabinet reshuffle on 7th
October 2017 Maghembe was removed and Hamisi Kigwangalla appointed as new
minister of Natural Resources and Tourism.
Kigwangalla stopped the
operation on 26th October 2017, and then made it clear that OBC’s
hunting block would not be renewed, which he had already mentioned in Dodoma on
the 22nd. On 5th
November, he fired the Director of Wildlife and announced that rangers at
Klein’s gate that had been colluding with the investor would be transferred.
Kigwangalla emphasized that OBC would have left before January 2018. He talked
about the corruption syndicate at their service, reaching into his own
ministry, and claimed that OBC’s director, Mollel, wanted to bribe him, and
would be investigated for corruption. However, OBC never showed any signs of
leaving.
Kigwangalla announced in
social media that he on 13th November 2017 received a delegation
headed by the German ambassador and that the Germans were going to fund
community development projects in Loliondo, “in our quest to save the
Serengeti”. Alarm was raised in Loliondo that the district chairman would have
signed secretly, which some already had suspected.
On 6th December
2017, PM Majaliwa announced a vague, but terrifying decision to form a “special
authority” to manage the 1,500 km2 Osero. He also said that OBC would stay. Manyerere
Jackton celebrated the decision in the Jamhuri newspaper. Further information
and implementation of this “special authority” fortunately kept being delayed,
even if it was mentioned in Kigwangalla’s budget speech on 21st May
2018. The only additional information that was shared was that the land, per
Majaliwa’s plan, was to be put under the Ngorongoro Conservation Area
Authority.
Sheikh Mohammed, his crown
prince, and other royal guests visited Loliondo in March 2018, and Kigwangalla
welcomed them on Twitter. Earlier, in restricted access social media,
Kigwangalla had been saying that OBC weren’t a problem, but only the director,
Mollel, and that Loliondo, with the “new structure” needed more investors of
the kind.
Around 24th March
2018 a military camp was set up in Lopolun, near Wasso town, by the Tanzania
People’s Defence Force (JWTZ). Some were from the start worried that the aim
was to further intimidate those speaking up against the land alienation plans.
An ambitious report about
Loliondo and NCA, with massive media coverage (and some mistakes) was released
by the Oakland Institute on 10th May 2018, and Kigwangalla responded
by denying that any abuse had ever taken place, and threatening anyone involved
with the report. He went as far as in social media denying the existence of
people in Loliondo GCA.
In May-June 2018 there was an
intimidation campaign against the applicants in the case in the East African
Court of Justice, and silence became worse than ever.
From late June to late August
2018 there were several incidents of soldiers from the military camp set up in
Olopolun attacking and torturing people.
On 25th September
2018 the East African Court of Justice ordered interim measures restraining the
government from any evictions, burning of homesteads, or confiscating of
cattle, and from harassing or intimidating the applicants.
In November 2018 while OBC
were preparing their camp, reports started coming in that soldiers were
attacking people in wide areas around the camp, while all, absolutely all,
leaders and organisations stayed silent. Information was piecemeal, and after a
couple of days many people were telling that bomas had been burned in areas of
Kirtalo and Ololosokwan.
Beatings and seizing of cattle
continued in some areas, and on 21st December the soldiers descended
upon Leken in Kirtalo and burned 13 bomas to the ground, while the silence
continued. This was the lowest point in the Loliondo land struggle.
It was later revealed that a
visit by Mohammed VI of Morocco had been planned for the days before Christmas
2018, but that it was postponed.
In January 2019 innocent
people were again illegally arrested for the sole sake of intimidation, accused
of having met this blogger in Olpusimoru, Kenya, when they were in Tanzania and
I in Sweden.
Then RC Gambo on a Ngorongoro
visit spoke up about the burning of bomas, but in a very vague way, without
even mentioning the soldiers. After this, leaders that had excused their
silence with that the president must had ordered the attacks and the safety of
their families would be in danger if speaking up, started saying that OBC’s
Mollel had directly contracted the soldiers.
On 15th January 2019,
the president issued a somewhat promising statement against evictions of
pastoralists and cultivators, but which was later shown not to have been referring
to Loliondo or Ngorongoro in any way.
In February 2019, OBC’s
director Isaack Mollel was surprisingly, on the initiative of the RC,
reluctance by the police, and order by Minister Lugola, arrested for employing
foreign workers without permits, released on bail, and then caught by the
Prevention and Combatting of Corruption Bureau, and on 4th March
charged with economic crimes. Initially at least someone at PCCB showed some
interest in dealing with the massive corruption among government officials in Loliondo
working for OBC, since on 29th March, the former District Security
Officer Issa Ng’itu was added to the charges accused of having received over
ten million shillings and a Landcruiser Prado from Mollel. Preliminary hearings
in the criminal cases against Mollel kept being postponed, while Ng’itu was silently
released and promoted. In October 2019, Mollel’s lawyers announced that their
client had written to the Director of Public Prosecution to confess and pay
back the money. Mollel was released on 2nd October 2020, returned to
his job, and OBC went back to business as usual. Guesses about the reason for
Mollel’s infortune range from that Magufuli wanted to send a message to Kinana
(and by extension Membe) who is close to OBC since the early 1990s, to Mollel’s
clashes of egos with Kigwangalla and Gambo, or to that MP Olenasha would
finally have got something in return for his horrible silence during extreme
abuse.
In September 2019, the
Ngorongoro Chief Conservator Freddy Manongi announced a terrifying Multiple
Land Use Model review report with a zoning proposal for Ngorongoro Conservation
Area which included the annexation of the Lake Natron basin (including areas of
Longido and Monduli districts) and of the 1,500 km2 Osero in Loliondo and Sale
Divisions, proposing to designate most of the Osero to be a no-go zone for
pastoralists and livestock. This would of course cater almost perfectly to
OBC’s wishes. In NCA the zoning proposal is to squeeze people and livestock
into small, already populated areas without water or saltlicks.
There have been multiple protest
statements against the basically genocidal MLUM review proposal. Two statements
from all councillors of Ngorongoro District, but otherwise all statements,
except some from Lake Natron, have been made by different groups from Ngorongoro
division, while an ostrich strategy is practised in Loliondo. Different
delegations from Ngorongoro have travelled to see Kigwangalla and later
Ndumbaro, and the protests have led to promises from the Ministry of Natural
Resources and Tourism of doing the review afresh, in a “participatory manner”, but
then the ministry has returned the same genocidal proposal.
Reportedly, on 21st
November 2019 a group of MPs (not the Ngorongoro MP) together with people with
disabilities had made a “tourism study visit” to the OBC camp. Nobody seemed
interested in finding out more about this and nothing more has been found out.
The first days of March 2020,
it was revealed that the military camp in Lopolun was being made permanent with
funds from the NCAA.
PM Majaliwa visited Loliondo
during the 2020 election campaign and, assisted by MP Olenasha, said that the
Loliondo land conflict had been solved after Majaliwa’s intervention! Instead
of declaring the genocidal proposal scrapped, the PM talked about the very “participatory”
process. The PM could possibly be genuinely ignorant, even if nobody believes so,
but certainly not the MP.
On election day, Salula
Ngorisiolo was killed in Ngorongoro ward when police and rangers opened fire at those reacting against the shameless election theft that was going on all over
the country, and specifically where an opposition win was feared.
Sadly, there are now no less
than three ward councillors employed by OBC, the company (or whatever) that
befriend all district officials, turning Loliondo into a police state, funded
the draft district land use plan proposing turning the 1,500 km2 Osero into a
protected area to evict the Maasai landowners, and for whose benefit there have
been several mass arson operations and such terrible violence. This includes
OBC’s assistant director as the councillor for Ololosokwan that used to be at
the forefront of the land rights struggle.
In December 2020, Kigwangalla
was replaced by Ndumbaro who from the start was engaging in anti-pastoralist
talk, and then brought back an unethical hunting firm, earlier removed by
Kigwangalla, to Lake Natron GCA. Though in April and May 2021 two delegations
from Ngorongoro visited Ndumbaro who, like his predecessor, promised that the
MLUM review would be done afresh and in a “participatory” manner. Then Manongi and
the NCAA held a PR spectacle on parliamentary grounds and later brought
parliamentarians to Ngorongoro for “domestic tourism”.
On 4th June 2021,
Ndumbaro held the 2021-2022 financial year budget speech for the Ministry of
Natural Resources and Tourism, in which he mentioned that the NCAA was to
construct three entrance gates (for collecting fees from visitors) to Loliondo
Game Controlled Area (LGCA)! This budget speech was brought up with great
concern and sadness in a statement by all Ngorongoro councillors on 27th
June 2021. The councillors demanded that the ministry should immediately suspend
the implementation of the recommendation by the MLUM team of annexing areas of
Lake Natron and Loliondo.
The case in the East African
Court of Justice continues and is in its final stages. Despite of officially himself
having ordered the illegal invasion of village land in 2017, and despite of
being quoted about this in the statement from the ministry and in the OBC
friendly press, in December 2018 now former DC Rashid Mfaume Taka swore an
affidavit for the respondent (government side) in the case in the East African
Court of Justice claiming that the 2017 operation would only have taken place
inside Serengeti National Park! This wasn’t the respondent’s first lie. The
initial response by the state attorney was more in line with the lies by
Minister Maghembe during the illegal invasion talking about some “Wildlife
Conservation Area” or “Game Reserve” that just doesn’t exist. The outrageous
perjury is thoroughly proven as such by the respondents’ own documents, so
there’s no way that this case can be lost, other than through pure
carelessness, that I hope won’t be allowed by anyone.
And, as mentioned above, on 5th
August, Ndumbaro made a most irresponsible statement urging hunting companies
to engage in more violent crimes or be removed from their hunting blocks. We
can only hope it was loose talk that will be forgotten. Anyway, Ndumbaro must
be stopped!
Susanna
Nordlund is a working-class person based in Sweden who since 2010 has been
blogging about Loliondo (now increasingly also about NCA) and has her
fingerprints thoroughly registered with Immigration so that she will not be
able to enter Tanzania through any border crossing, ever again. She has never
worked for any NGO or intelligence service and hasn’t earned a shilling from
her Loliondo work. She can be reached at sannasus@hotmail.com
1 comment:
very good read!
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