The Maasai of Ngorongoro Conservation Area Finally Made the Government Backtrack - How Much of the Promises Has Been Implemented? Can Local Leaders Refrain from Losing the Momentum via Mindless Praise of the President? And How Can this Movement Be Kept Up and Spread to Other Areas Under Attack by the Tourism Cult?

 

After an escalated attack (it escalated sharply but started decades ago) since Samia Suluhu Hassan came into office in 2021 - with blocking of all permits for repairs, building materials and motorbikes, strangulation of social services, transfer of funds to Handeni district, harassment by rangers and a campaign of ethnic hatred against Maasai in media and in parliament, all to make the Maasai “relocate” to other people’s land - the Tanzanian government had to backtrack to some extent when the Maasai of Ngorongoro Conservation Area blocked the Serengeti-Ngorongoro road on 18^th August, making tourism vehicles come to a standstill, and then camped out in their thousands for five days waiting for a promised response by the panicked government.

 

As reported in the previous blog post (that mainly dealt with the lies surrounding GCAs in the brutal land theft in Loliondo and how there’s a threat of repeating the same in several areas of Tanzania) it had been found that all voters registration update/polling stations had been removed from Ngorongoro division (the same as Ngorongoro Conservation Area, NCA). Then, while waiting to hear from the government it was found that a government notice (GN) signed by the president’s son in law had delisted all villages in the division. The government, after panicking when the passage of tourism vehicles was blocked, made some bizarre and deeply worrying moves to backtrack from this. The villages are no longer delisted and there have been promises to stop the strangulation of social services (some limited implementation has been seen), and to stop the habitual harassment committed by rangers.

 

Sadly, local political leaders, instead of more strongly condemning the torture of the past years and pushing for a speedier and more radical change in government policy, seem to have lost the momentum by engaging in mindless praise of the president.

 

We now know what can make the government backtrack: to directly target tourism. How can this be used to regain the brutally and illegally stolen land that in 2022 was alienated from Loliondo/Sale (do not confuse this with Ngorongoro Division/NCA)?

 

In this blog post:

The disenfranchisement

The protests

The government’s response – backtracking at last, but in a bizarre and dangerous way

Limited implementation and local leaders losing the momentum

Remember the 2020 elections

The horrible UNESCO and IUCN

Brief NCA background

Loliondo

This blog post is very long, but still I forgot to add some important aspect that I was going to write about, and some I did not yet know about. 

At the end I have added updates.