by Ben Taylor

Controversy over new Tanzania Embassy in Israel
On May 9, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Dr Augustine Mahiga, commissioned Tanzania’s new Embassy in Israel. The event took place in Tel Aviv, attended by various dignitaries includ­ing Israel’s Minister for Justice, Ms Ayelet Shaked, ambassadors and Tanzanians living in Israel.

In his speech, Dr Mahiga named Israel as a role model country, which, he said, despite facing multiple challenges with some of its neighbour­ing countries, has made major development strides in various sectors. He also urged the government of Israel to follow Tanzania’s lead by opening its embassy in Tanzania.

Dr Mahiga thanked Israel for its two ministers paying recent state visits to Tanzania, namely Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman, who visited Tanzania in March, and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who visited in April.

For her part, Ms Shaked reassured Tanzania that her country was ready to cooperate with Tanzania in various sectors particularly in agriculture, technology and health.

However, the commissioning of the embassy did attract some critical commentary, with some analysts arguing that the move did not fit well with Tanzania’s long-standing support for the Palestinian cause.
Prof Bakari Mohamed of the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) said he strongly opposes the government’s move. “I totally disagree with the decision because I believe in the need for Tanzania to uphold principles of human dignity and self-determination. I don’t see any reason to sup­port diplomatic relations with a country violating the two,” he told The Citizen in an interview. He said he was disappointed with the country’s decision to re-establish diplomatic relationship with Israel because the country’s behaviour has changed since the last time Tanzania broke the relations in 1972.

Prof Gaudens Mpangala of Ruaha Catholic University (RUCU) con­curred, suggesting that Tanzania should continue upholding foreign policy sympathizing with the weak and the oppressed. He said Tanzania, under the first president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was right to break relations with Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians. “It is difficult to see why the government should make a U-turn and re-establish relations not only with Israel but also with Morocco before the issues that led to the break up in relations were addressed,” he said.

The government, however, argues that its solidarity with Palestine will not be affected by closer ties with Israel. President John Magufuli has said previously that Tanzania did a good job in supporting liberation movements in Africa and elsewhere and that it was time to focus on the country’s economic development

New Centre for Chinese Studies opened in Dar
Dr Mahiga also spoke at the launch of a new Centre for Chinese Studies (CCS) at the University of Dar es Salaam, describing the centre as an opportunity “for Tanzanians to learn how China advanced from a poor country to an economic powerhouse.”

The Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, Wang Ke, said the centre will play an important role in introducing Tanzanians to the Chinese way of life,” she said. “To better understand China, you need to be objective and independent in thinking. Only in this way you can present the real China to the people of Tanzania and other African countries.”
Wang further explained that the centre will enable Tanzanians to con­duct in-depth research on the relevance of China’s development experi­ence to Tanzania and Africa in general. “Development is the biggest challenge facing the world, and China’s experience in development may be helpful to African countries,” she said.

The CCS in Tanzania is the third such institute in Africa specialising in Chinese studies.

Dr Mahiga used the event to re-state Tanzania’s stance of “non-align­ment” in foreign affairs and “non-interference” in domestic affairs, explaining that this meant Tanzania “shall not forget the Palestinians,” and “shall not drop the issue of the Saharawians,” even while strength­ening ties with both Israel (see previous article) and Morocco (see earlier editions of TA).

Zimbabwe President Emerson Mnangagwa visits Tanzania
The new President of Zimbabwe, Emerson Mnangagwa visited Tanzania in June, his first such visit since taking over from President Mugabe late in 2017.

He was welcomed at the airport by President Magufuli, accompa­nied by other senior government officials including the Minister of Constitutional and Legal Affairs, Prof Palamagamba Kabudi, deputy minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Suzan Kolimba, and the heads of defence and security forces.

The two heads of state also discussed further cooperation in health, security, tradition, education, and sports.

According to President Magufuli, boosting ties especially in trade between the two countries would be a good way of encouraging and stimulating more development pacts. “Last year, trade between our two countries was at TSh 21.1 billion, up from TSh 18.3 bn in 2016. This is not enough… we need to make more efforts on this front,” said President Magufuli.

President Mnangagwa acknowledged the role that Tanzania played in his country’s independence struggle, including by visiting the Kaole Arts College in Bagamoyo, Coast region. The college had previously been a training college for liberation fighters from the southern part of Africa which Mnangagwa himself once attended.

by Ben Taylor

Who is Dr Herman Louise Verhofstadt?
The Economist rarely pays much attention to Tanzania – once or twice a year at best. So when they published not just one but two articles on President Magufuli in a single issue earlier this year, heads turned. The headlines are striking – “Tanzania’s rogue president – Democracy under assault” and “How to save Tanzania” – and the contents even more so. Tanzania is undergoing “a sickening lurch to despotism,” the paper writes, where “opposition politicians are being shot; activists and journalists are disappearing.” This is happening under “an authoritar­ian and erratic” President Magufuli, who is “fast transforming Tanzania … into one of Africa’s more brutal dictatorships”.

Criticism of President Magufuli’s government has been growing in Tanzania, but nobody on the international stage has previously gone nearly so far as the Economist articles. Given the number of people who have been arrested and charged with sedition or various cybercrime offences for expressing criticism of the government, it’s hardly surpris­ing that people are growing more careful what they say. Twaweza’s lat­est Sauti za Wananchi poll found that while 80% say citizens should be allowed to criticise the President, only 36% feel free to do so in practice. So these articles ruffled some feathers.

Including, apparently, the feathers of a Belgian health expert / social worker living and working in Tanzania, by the name of Dr Herman Louise Verhofstadt. He was so upset by the Economist’s writing that he published a response, the beautifully titled: “Facts The Economist Got Them Wrong on Magufuli”:

“Contrary to the fact deprived article, it is my candid observation that to objectively critique Magufuli’s presidency in the circumstances of the transformation he is doing for his people in Tanzania, requires the level of conscious that is unfortunately lacking in the current editorial team at the Economist.”

“In my stay here before and after his presidency, I have witnessed real transformation, his work is exemplary and fascinating one. Everybody here—may be just like what Theresa May is doing in London and what Trump is focusing in Washington, is aware that Tanzania is on the move towards pro-people development; something the Economist is unhappy for.”
It is possible that a Belgian social worker / health expert would feel support for Donald Trump, that his English would be so broken, and that he would express his support both for banning political rallies and preventing pregnant schoolgirls from returning to school after giving birth. But it seems unlikely.

It also seems unlikely that he would choose to do so on a blog that did not exist until that day, published by “a Senegalese journalist”, Sammi Addo, who has apparently no other online presence. Indeed, other that Dr Verhoftsadt’s article, everything else on the site has been copied and pasted from somewhere else – Bloomberg (US), Daily Nation (Kenya), ABC (Australia), etc.

It also seems very unlikely that Dr Herman Louise Verhofstadt would have no previous online presence at all himself, either.

However, despite such strong reasons for doubt, the blogpost was widely promoted and cited, including by the government-owned Daily News and HabariLeo newspapers. The latter translated and published almost the entire blogpost. And the official government spokesperson posted his support for the blog on an official twitter account.

But then, who should appear, from nowhere, but Dr Herman Louise Verhoftstadt himself, with a series of tweets, the first of which made his point clear:

“Greetings @TheEconomist, please ignore this fake news. I have never been to Africa, let alone Tanzania. In my 37 years of medical practice, my work has been around Europe and South East Asia. You need to have a very poorly performing government to come up with a lie like this.”

But something here doesn’t seem quite right either. The new Dr Herman Louise Verhofstadt has no more online presence than the previous one. And more particularly, his profile pic on twitter is a stock image from Getty, freely available to anyone with access to Google. There is no more reason to believe this to be genuine than the original blogpost.

Fake news vs fake news is the new reality, it seems, even in Tanzania.

Harbinder Singh Sethi and James Rugemalira kneel outside the courtroom

Two key suspects in the alleged corruption case around power generation contracts – popularly known as the “Escrow” case – have been arrested and charged in Dar es Salaam.

Harbinder Singh Sethi of Pan Africa Power Solutions Tanzania (PAP) and James Rugemalira of VIP Engineering and Marketing jointly face six charges of economic sabotage, forgery, impersonation, running a criminal syndicate, obtaining money by false pretence and causing loss of money to the government. This is the first time that the two, who were at the centre of one of the most high-profile scandals in Tanzania’s recent history, have appeared in court, almost three years after Parliament recommended their prosecution.

Their arrest is seen by many as a strong move by the government to bring to justice suspects implicated in mega scandals. It will also likely boost President John Magufuli’s scorecard on his pledge to combat corruption from the top. Donors and others have previously criticised what they perceived as government inaction on the case, including delaying some aid disbursements.

Mr Sethi and Mr Rugemalira were brought to the court on June 19th, under tight security. Mr Sethi knelt down and Mr Rugemalira squatted before they were led to the dock. They face economic sabotage charges relating to causing the government a loss of over USD $22m and TSh 309m. The suspects were denied bail.

Government prosecutors told the court that Mr Rugemalira, who owned a 30% stake in IPTL, and Sethi, the executive chairman of PAP, colluded with government officials in running an illegal syndicate with an intention of profiteering from their collusion. The prosecution accused Mr Sethi of forging a company registration certificate in October 2011 and lying that he was a Tanzanian resident living in Masaki area while knowing it was not true. Both the accused were said to have illegally withdrawn large sums of money from the escrow bank account.

Mr Sethi, who mostly lives in South Africa, was reportedly arrested at Julius Nyerere International Airport as he and his wife were about to fly out.

Mr Sethi and Mr Rugemalira were named in 2014 in Parliament as having overseen a plan which saw more than TSh 300bn transferred from an Escrow account held jointly by IPTL and the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) at the Bank of Tanzania (BoT). According to the investigations of the Tanzanian media, followed up by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, much of the money was shared around among a long list of high level politicians, government officials, judges and religious leaders, among others. The scandal led to the resignation of the then Attorney General, Fredrick Werema, and Energy and Minerals minister Sospeter Muhongo, while President Jakaya Kikwete fired the then Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development minister, Prof Anna Tibaijuka. Several other senior government officials in various ministries are facing charges over their role in facilitating the matter or receiving money from the escrow proceeds.

“For a long time now, people have been curious to know the progress of our investigation on the Tegeta escrow and IPTL scandals,” said Valentino Mlowola, Director General of the Prevention and Combatting of Corruption Bureau (PCCB). “I can announce today that the prime suspects … have been arrested and will be charged with economic sabotage and other related offences.”

“I want to sincerely thank the government for charging the two businessmen over the escrow scandal as recommended by Parliament,” said Mr Zitto Kabwe, the ACT-Wazalendo party leader and Kigoma Urban MP. Mr Kabwe chaired the Public Accounts Committee that investigated the case.

Following the arrests, one of those accused of receiving a portion of the funds, William Ngeleja, the former Minister of Energy and Minerals and the current MP for Segerea (CCM), said he would return to the government the TSh 40.4m he had received from Rugemalira. Ngeleja said he had accepted the money as a “donation” to support constituency development activities and had not at the time realised the money was connected with a scandal.

PCCB public relations officer Musa Misalaba said the bureau has all the details of how the IPTL account funds were disbursed, and will use all its tools of investigation to determine the extent of impropriety, if any. He said the investigations are covering all beneficiaries and others implicated in the scandal, irrespective of whether they are politicians, public servants, religious leaders, or similar, but he declined to disclose the names of the beneficiaries.

Those widely named as having received funds from Rugemalira include Prof Tibaijuka, and Andrew Chenge, former Attorney General and current MP for Bariadi West, who are both reported to have received TSh 1.6bn. Others said to have received smaller amounts include judges, religious leaders, and employees and board members of various public institutions including Tanesco, the tax authority (TRA) and the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC).
(The Citizen, The Guardian, Daily News, Mwananchi)

Preliminary digging and cleaning operations at Laetoli Site S. Photo Sofia Menconero http://www.paleoantropologia.it

Additional footprints belonging to a group of early humans have been uncovered in Laetoli, Tanzania, dating from 3.6 million years ago. The prints were made when five of our ancient ancestors walked across wet volcanic ash.

The 13 footprints were discovered by an international group of researchers, led by Sapienza University in Rome. The researchers believe that they belong to five members of Australopithecus afarensis – the pre-human species best known for the fossil skeleton, nicknamed ‘Lucy.’ Professor Giorgio Manzi, lead author of the study, said: “This novel evidence, taken as a whole with the previous findings, portrays several early hominins moving as a group through the landscape following a volcanic eruption and subsequent rainfall.”

“The footprints of one of the new individuals are astonishingly larger than anyone else’s in the group, suggesting that he was a large male member of the species,” he added.

Based on measurements of the length and width of the footprints, stride length and the angle of the gait, the male weighed around 48kg (100lbs) and measured about 5 foot 5 (165cm), while the lightest of the group only weighed 28.5kg.

Researchers say the footprints suggest that members of Australopithecus afarensis may have had a social arrangement of one dominant male mating with several females.

An earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale struck on September 10th in Kagera region, in the far north-west of the country. Reports vary on the precise extent of damage caused, but at least 19 people died as a result, and over 500 were injured, the majority in and around the town of Bukoba or in Missenyi District to the north. Over 2,000 buildings were destroyed and thousands more were damaged. Damage and deaths were also reported in neighbouring Uganda, though the effects of the quake there were smaller.

The Kagera regional commissioner, Major General Salum Kijuu, described the quake as a “major disaster. … We have never seen anything like this before … this is the first time in history that an earthquake has caused so much damage and loss of life in Tanzania.”

“Thousands of people who have been left homeless after this earthquake are being sheltered in schools, while we try to mobilise tents to accommodate them,” he added.

The government quickly established a response fund and encouraged public donations, with around TSh 5bn raised within four weeks. This includes contributions both from within and outside the country. Significant donations came were provided by the business and media tycoon, Reginald Mengi, (TSh 110m), the Chinese embassy in Dar es Salaam (TSh 100m), Mohamed Enterprises Limited (TSh 100m), Tanzania Breweries Limited (TSh 100m), and several oil marketing companies.

A particularly generous donation came from the government of India: TSh 545m. The Indian ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Sandeep Arya, read a message to President Magufuli from India’s Prime Minister Mahendra Modi. In the letter, Mr Modi said he and people in India “pray for patience among families which have lost their loved ones. We are assuring them that we are together with our friends in Tanzania especially during this hard time.”

There was criticism later in parliament that some aspects of the government’s response had been slow, with less than 20% of the funds raised having been spent by the end of October.

There were criticisms too of the country’s preparedness for such disasters. “The nation faces a huge problem with regard to disaster management funding and other challenges. Instead, we’re developing a culture of fund-raising even in areas that the government is required to pick the bill,” said Tanzania Human Right Defenders Coalition (THRDC) national coordinator, Mr Onesmo Olegurumwa. “The donated [funds] will help in addressing the immediate problems on the ground, but the government should now start to build its own capacity as well.”

President Magufuli also had to move quickly to prevent some from taking advantage of the quake. According to a statement from his office: “The President has revoked the appointment of Kagera Regional Administrative Secretary and Bukoba Municipal Council Executive Director after he learnt that the two opened a bank account which bears the same name as the one which was opened by the government.” The statement explained that they intended to use the account to collect money for their own benefit. (The Citizen, Daily News, The Guardian)