2024, another
horrible year in Loliondo and Ngorongoro nears its end and for a change I’ll
write a – relatively - brief blog post. Blog posts have this year been far too
few and so lengthy that I fear nobody will read them. This is the result of
that I’m no longer hearing from some important voices and sometimes I must struggle to obtain basic
information that should be shared speedily all-over. This leads to uncertainty
and the need to hold off publishing, while there are new developments and the
unpublished blog posts become longer and longer. Tough the fault lies also with
my own strange sleepiness and lack of focus. I’m currently (at last) writing a
“How Not to Write about Loliondo”-post, which is quite straight-forward about
well-established events in the past that reporters, researchers and
organizations still seem to insist on getting wrong. The problems with that
post is finding the right tone and deciding how recent and significant the
misinformation must be to get included.
This brief
post will cover the uncertainty of recent news of two commissions set up by the
president concerning Ngorongoro. These commissions are the result of the best
news of the year 2024 – blocking of tourism traffic in Ngorongoro Conservation
Area (Ngorongoro Division of Ngorongoro District) on 18th August
2024, followed by several days of mass protest gathering. The blocking and protests
rattled the government to the extent of issuing promises (still hardly
implemented at all) of backtracking on the strangulation of social services to
make the Maasai relocate, and the reversal (implemented) of very recent and apparently
deranged delisting of the villages of NCA and disenfranchisement of all voters.
Fears are that the momentum from the protests has been lost when the government
has yet again been allowed to set up “commissions”, which is habitual behaviour
that’s never lead anywhere at all, if not to a worsening of the situation. In
Loliondo (Loliondo Division and part of Sale Division that form the old
Loliondo GCA) where in 2022, 1,502 km2 of grazing land was brutally
and illegally turned into a game reserve, there hasn’t been any such good news.
However, before and after a meeting with the president on 1st
December, reports were that this illegal “Pololeti Game Reserve” would be
included in the evaluation by the commissions, but the latest government
statement with details has totally left out Loliondo.
Now, on New Years Eve, there are reports of police harassment against residents from Loliondo and Sale Divisions that have spoken up about the exclusion of "Pololeti Game Reserve" from the commissions. Apparently there are letters summoning NGO people, some councillors, and individuals like former CCM district chairman Ndirango Laizer to the Ngorongoro Security Committee on 4th January.
In this blog post:
Loliondo
Loliondo and
the president’s commissions
Remember what
a GCA is and how such areas are threatened with game reserves
Ngorongoro
Conservation Area
NCA and the
president’s commission
Msomera and
elections
