A proposal by President Kikwete to build a road through the Serengeti National Park has created a storm of protest amongst wildlife supporters around the world.

Map showing the proposed route (source African Wildlife Foundation www.awf.org/serengeti)

So much so that the New York Times, which rarely features Tanzania, has devoted a leading article (August 30) to the subject under the heading: The Wrong Road (Thank you Peg Snyder for sending this – Editor).

Extracts: ‘In late July, President Kikwete announced that his government intended to go ahead in 2012 with plans to build a highway running from Arusha …..to Musoma. No one disputes the economic value of developing highways in Tanzania. But this planned highway includes a potentially tragic pitfall: it cuts straight through the heart of the northern Serengeti, one of the greatest national parks on the planet.

It would bisect the route of the great migration, the annual movement of more than a million wildebeest and other herds. President Kikwete has promised that this would only be a gravel road, and has said that he would never build anything that could harm the ecosystem.

But it would be a commercial highway nonetheless, and it would link two populous regions of Tanzania. Even a gravel road across the northern Serengeti would bring an immediate flood of traffic, instantly fragmenting the ecosystem and causing enormous potential for human-animal conflict in the form of accidents and poaching…

Tanzania could still protect the integrity of the park…. There is an alternative southern route, one that would link more unserved communities than the northern route and still leave the Serengeti intact.

What is …needed is international pressure on the governments and NGO’s that would normally help finance this kind of economic development. That includes China, which plays an enormous role in African development. This is not a choice between economic development and protecting the Serengeti. It is a choice between the wrong kind of development and the right kind.’

However, the alternative southern route would be significantly more expensive, particularly since few dispute that better roads from Arusha to Loliondo and Musoma to Mugumo are required.

The government is therefore left with a difficult decision on whether to complete the link with a road between Loliondo and Mugumo, or else pay for a completely new road to the south of the National Park, the route as yet unsurveyed, but perhaps via Bariadi. The former would represent around 130km of road, including 50km through the Serengeti, much of it on existing tracks, while the alternative southern route would entail over 500km of road, and would arguably not represent a significant enough improvement over the existing road link via Singida and Shinyanga to justify the enormous expense involved.

In early September President Kikwete, in a nationwide broadcast, indicated that he was unrepentant. He said the project was part of a policy to link all regions with permanent roads. He added however that, in view of the need to protect the environment, part of the road would not be macadamized. “I would like to assure our friends abroad that I am an ardent supporter of the Serengeti reserve so I will be the last person to supervise any environmental degradation” – Nipashe.

The difficulty involved in successfully prosecuting the many corruption cases now being tried in Tanzania has been illustrated by the completion of the first stage of a significant case. However, the magistrates taking the case were not in agreement on the verdict; two were for and one against the sentence of two years in prison for the accused person. The lawyer for the accused immediately appealed and the suspect was then released on bail.

In a detailed account of the final days of the trial, published in Mtanzania and other papers, the Bank of Tanzania’s former Director of Personnel and Administration Amatus Liyumba was found guilty of abuse of office. While two members of the panel were satisfied that Liyumba unilaterally changed the scope of the Bank’s ‘Twin Towers’ project outside the law, regulations and BoT procedures, the chairman of the panel, Principal Resident Magistrate Edson Mkasimongwa said he was of the view that the prosecution had failed to prove the charge beyond any reasonable doubt. The newspaper reported that there was a stony silence in the packed courtroom as it was stated that there was no way the accused could escape liability after he arbitrarily changed the scope of work without consulting the central bank’s governing board. Liyumba remained calm and composed in the dock as the sentence was being read out. However, tears flowed freely among some of his relatives after he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

Liyumba, who served the central bank for 35 years before he retired in 2008, was initially charged with two counts of abuse of office and causing the government a Shs221 billion loss, but the court acquitted him of the second count for lack of evidence earlier. Liyumba first appeared in court in January 2009, when the prosecution alleged that he and former BoT Governor Daudi Ballali, who has since died, changed the scope of work of the extension project, raising the construction cost substantially. The prosecution’s case banked heavily on eight letters signed by Liyumba, which instructed the lead consultant to change the scope of the work. But Liyumba denied the charge, saying he only provided administrative support to the project, and did nothing other than convey decisions made by the management to the lead consultant. He maintained that the letters were approved by the Governor, and that he could not have signed them without consulting him.

Liyumba told the court that he was verbally authorised by the Governor to sign the letters on behalf of BoT as the project manager could not do so because he was not an employee of the central bank.

Vicky Ntetema has written to TA from Dar es Salaam to describe the continuing persecution of Albinos in various parts of Tanzania and the punishment being doled out it the courts for those found guilty. Among the recent cases she mentions are the following:

– Kenyan Nathan Mutei was sentenced to 17 years in prison with hard labour after admitting in a Mwanza court that he wanted to sell a fellow Kenyan Albino, Robinson Mkwama, for $260,000. Mutei pleaded guilty on 18th August. Almost 50% of the murders of persons with albinism between 2006 and 2010 were committed in Mwanza region. Mutei will serve the jail term in Kenya. In his plea of mitigation Mutei explained to the court that he arrived in Tanzania in June this year with the intention of seeking a witchdoctor for his personal problems. But the witchdoctor told him that he had to bring albino organs. On August 10th he left to find a person with albinism in Kenya. Two days later he was back in Mwanza and ready to sell Mkwama but walked into a police trap.

– Three men are on death row after the Kahama High Court found them guilty of brutally killing a 13-year-old boy in Shinyanga region in December 2008. The men, including a witchdoctor, severed the legs and took them to the home of the sangoma.

– Also in Kahama, in April 2010, a thirteen year old girl narrowly escaped death after three men severed her right arm. The men broke into her home where she was sleeping with her mother, terrorised the occupiers of the compound using hand grenades and shooting in the air and ordered the family to pour kerosene on the girl’s severed arm ‘to stop the bleeding’. When they could not find kerosene, they broke into a shop nearby, stole the liquid and handed it to the family members before speeding off.

– In April 2010 a four-year-old child in Kigoma Region had her left leg and left arm chopped off and was left to die just 200 metres from her home compound.

– Four men including village leaders are to hang for the brutal slaughter of 54-year-old Lyaku Willy in November 2009 in Shinyanga Region. Lyaku’s headless body was fished out from the River Kidamlida. His head and legs were recovered from the home of one of the killers.

– Kazamiri Mashauri is facing the hangman’s noose for the ferocious slaughter of five-year-old Mariamu Emmanuel on 21st January 2008 in Misungwi District, Mwanza region. The fifty-year-old man was convicted by the Mwanza High Court in July. Kazimiri and three others entered the house, slashing Mariamu’s throat open, drinking her blood before severing her legs and vanishing in the darkness.

The Tanzania Red Cross Society, UNICEF and local authorities in the Shinyanga region have received $25,000 to help set up camps for ‘Internally Displaced Persons with Albinism.’

For many months Tanzanian Affairs has been receiving a great deal of information from environmentalists, human rights activists and others concerning the allocation, in 1992, of a large block of land (4,000 sq kms) in Loliondo, Arusha to a game hunting firm. This firm, the Ortello Business Company, is owned by the Deputy Minister of Defence of the United Arab Emirates and his associates, some of whom are believed to be members of the royal family of the UAE. Much of the information alleges that these foreign leaseholders are guilty of various hunting malpractices.

In 2006 some of the Maasai resident in the area were said to have started constructing new biomass farming and bringing in large numbers of cattle during the hunting season. In 2009 it was reported that the government had evicted up to 3,000 Maasai villagers with their cattle.

The original hunting licence has now expired and the company is preparing an application to renew it.

According to the East African, quoting the company, Ortello has been paying its annual dues of $560,000 to the government, plus $150,000 to the villages around the Loliondo Game Controlled Area as well as $109,000 to the Ngorongoro District Council. The article concludes by saying that no other district in Tanzania containing hunting areas received this level of funding for community development from the hunting business.