In memory of Moringe ole Parkipuny,
sadly missed for one year now.
-There have been some meetings.
-In a meeting with the District Commissioner an
agreement was made that cows and herders will no longer be harassed on the occupied
land, but will graze freely.
-What happened when Olunjai Timan was shot
because of Thomson Safaris’ occupation of Maasai land.
-And a reminder of what the “philanthropic”
land grabber has been doing during these years.
Olunjai Timan (I’ve earlier been spelling his
name “Olonjai”) left hospital returning home to Mondorosi on 16th
July, one week after being shot by a policeman working for Thomson Safaris. His
wound still needs regular cleaning and dressing.
The meetings
On Sunday 13th
there was a big meeting in Mondorosi calling for the government to take action
against the shooting and against Thomson Safaris. People were bitter and
shocked by this shooting that happened while they were contributing money for
Torian Karia and Kotikash Kudate that have had trespass cases filed against
them by Thomson. The following day, Monday 14th the meeting
continued and people resolved to burn down Thomson’s camp – but were persuaded
to wait until after a meeting with the District Commissioner and Mondorosi leaders
that would take place the following day, Tuesday. On Monday night there was a news piece on ITV from the meeting in Mondorosi where warriors wanting to
attack the camp were being asked to calm down by leaders. In this piece the
chairman of Mondorosi, Joshua Makko explains what has happened, villager Daniel
Laizer talks about being hunted like animals and about a long cold war and
having to prepare for hot war. The councillor for Soitsambu Daniel Ngoitiko –
and also the district council chairman Elias Ngorisa – talk condemning the
incident. It’s a short, but clear and factual report – far from the usual puff
piece about a philanthropic tour operator.
The demands
that the community agreed on were:
- The land
should be left free for the Maasai community.
- The main
land case should be won.
- Community
solidarity should be strengthened.
- Compensation
for the cost of all the harassments and shooting.
The
District Commissioner was present and met leaders also at this Monday meeting
and some – like the lawyer William Olenasha who was there and had some serious
words for the District Commissioner - say that this one was the important
meeting. The government was asked to
remove police presence on the occupied land and the police have been removed.
Cattle were grazing on the land without disturbance on the 18th. The
government was also asked to transfer and prosecute the policeman responsible
for the shooting, to ask Thomson to remove their manager Daniel Yamat, and for
Rick Thomson and Judi Wineland to immediately come to Loliondo for a district
wide meeting about the company’s future presence in the area. Support from the
District Council in the pending land case was also discussed – it was recommended
that the District Council and also the office of the District Commissioner
should consider writing a letter to the commissioner for lands for the title to
be revoked.
However,
the gathered community that possible sees things more clearly strongly
expressed the will to burn down the camp and get rid of Thomson once and for
all.
On Tuesday
15th July there was a community meeting with the District
Commissioner (great friend of Thomson), District Executive Director and
District Security Officer. The meeting was attended by over 1000 people – men,
women and youths. Besides people from Mondorosi and Sukenya, there were also
those from Soitsambu, Enguserosambu, Oloipiri and Ololosokwan. The chairpersons
of the mentioned villages were present with the exception of the Oloipiri
chairman. The staunch Thomson supporter, the councillor for Oloipiri ward,
William Alais, was also absent.
This is
what the District Commissioner was told by the attendants to the meeting:
-We will
never continue to stay with Thomson Safaris; they either go or let the government
shoot all of us here. Big chorus: Thomson must go, Thomson must go, must go,
must go, must go. No Maasai owns land in America
- We are
tired of daily harassment and we have energy to respond, we are now set to do
so and we would like you to know that.
- Our land
must be free for our use, and this has to happen when Thomson Safaris is no
longer there.
- The
police who shot Olunjai must be taken to court or otherwise we will revenge
because we know him.
- Daniel
Yamat, Thomson Safaris’ farm manager must go.
The
District Commissioner said that he had no power (or will?) to get Thomson out
of the area, adding that the tour operator was there legally and difficult to
chase away. The government and especially his office was very concerned about
the shooting though. The case was already taken to the Director of Public
Prosecutions for decision. The District Commissioner also said that Olunjai was
shot at night, which made things unclear. The security and investigation team
had found that it was the other policeman, Jumanne, and not David, that was
missing two bullets from his gun. These comments by the District Commissioner
have raised some fears that the usual “nobody knows what happened and no action
will be taken” could be in the making. The District Commissioner spent three
unsuccessful hours trying to persuade the attendants not to burn down Thomson’s
camp, but instead be cool and wait for the government to investigate the
shooting. Not getting anywhere with this, the District Commissioner asked the
community for a short meeting with the leaders, which was refused since they
could be corrupted, but after a long discussion the gathered community
ultimately agreed.
The
“recommendations” that the District Commissioner, village leaders and ward
councillors came back with were as follows:
-The community
should not fight Thomson Safaris. Instead they should be calm and use the legal
system to support their case
-The government
will revitalize a committee that was established in January 2014 and was meant
to coordinate grazing and tourism in the area.
-The
committee will arrange for cattle to continue grazing on the disputed land.
-The government
will hold the police to account for the shooting.
-The
District Council will join the villages in the principal court case
That the
District Council as former defendant will join the villages in the court case
is good news indeed – even if one can wonder what William Alais and another
councillor that once fell for the land grabber’s charm (or something else) will
do. And really, after years of humiliation and mistreatment the recipe is - a
committee? Thomson Safaris have had many years to negotiate and start
conducting their business without interfering with grazing and passage of
herders and cattle. This tour operator has proven to be of an unusual arrogance
and will not change unless some direct action – hopefully not as violent as
burning the camp – is taken to make their business activities impossible. The
committee will have to be very active to stop the disturbance of grazing. These
recommendations sound like more of nothing, but I hope I’m wrong and this will
be the end of the land grabbing Thomson Safaris.
The local
NGOs also held a meeting and agreed on undertaking fact finding and supporting
community organisation and media coverage. Let’s hope it’s kept up!
On Thursday
17th the Ngorngoro Member of Parliament, Kaika Saning’o Telele, attended
a meeting with Mondorosi village council. The MP
who has earlier lent himself to Thomson’s PR spectacles more than once now said
that if the council set up a delegation with people from the three villages and
organise funding he will come with them to Dar es Salaam
On Friday
18th there was a meeting - walking the occupied land - between Thomson’s
sinister Daniel Yamat and the committee consisting of the chairmen of Sukenya,
Mondorosi and Soitsambu, three traditional leaders, three women, and the
councillors for Soitsambu and Oloipiri wards. Yamat made a proposal, maybe
rattled by serious coverage on national TV, of “allowing” grazing in wooded or
bushy areas, but not on the plains that form the larger part of the land. This
was refused by the committee that demanded access to the whole area without
harassment. The situation is absurd. As a man in Sukenya once told me, it’s
Thomson that have to sit down and ask the landowners how and where they can
conduct tourism, but instead they came with “power from the government” saying
that the land was theirs, and using violence to impose their management.
The case
had to be taken to a meeting with the District Commissioner on Monday 21st.
Several district officers and the executive officers of the two wards attended
this meeting together with the earlier committee, ward councillors and Thomson’s
Yamat. The meeting ended with an agreement that cattle will graze on the entire
12,617 acres starting immediately and continuing until the court case is over. Yamat
resisted till the end wanting to restrict grazing to bushy parts and to far
from to camp, but was pushed by the government officials -Thomson’s friends -
to agree. Yamat was advised by the officials to work with the committee to coordinate
grazing and tourism. If this can be kept up – and there are obvious reasons for
distrust – it’s a very positive change indeed.Update: the harassment and chasing of cattle started again on 15th August.
Ndolei´s sentence
On Tuesday
22nd Ndolei Musa from Sukenya was released with a fine of 150,000
TZShillings for on 4th June having beaten up Thomson’s guard Lucas
Semat who was chasing cows. Ndolei was told that if he does it again he will end
up in prison. Initially the sub-village chairman was accused of this beating,
but on 13th June Ndolei was identified by the guard at Wasso market.
Ndolei has never denied the beating. When in the usual manner being asked who
“sent him” Ndolei said that he feels obliged to protect his land..
The shooting
As
mentioned in the latest blog post what happened after dark (I’ve heard 8pm and
7.37pm) the night from 8th to 9th July was that Olunjai
Timan and some other herders from Mondorosi were looking for lost cows on the
land occupied by Thomson Safaris. They saw car lights supposedly driving the
cows towards Olunjai’s boma, so they went towards the vehicle. There were many
voices, almost all Thomson’s guards were there together with two policemen,
David and Jumanne. Olunjai heard, “mko
chini ya ulinzi” (you are under arrest), and a Thomson guard said, “piga huyo, piga huyo, washa risasi” (“shoot
that one, shoot that one, open fire”.) I’ve later also been told that Olunjai
was ordered to kneel down, which he didn’t do. There were two shots fired. The
second shot one hit Olunjai in the left buttock and he continued running for 50
metres before losing energy and falling down. He was found by his neighbour, Kitenge
Daniel Saing’eu, who saw blood all over. Olunjai was already weak by the time
he was found. He told the neighbour that he was shot by David - a policeman
stationed at Nginye police post. The village chairman called the ambulance from
Wasso that came and rushed Olunjai to hospital. Reception at hospital was first
slow and the police form needed for these cases was not collected.
The background
The whole
problem started in 2006 when Thomson bought the 12,617 acres of grazing land
from Tanzania Breweries Ltd that had cultivated a small part of it for a few
years in the 80s and then fraudulently got a right of occupancy in 2003. The
megalomaniac aim of this tour operator was to establish its own private
“Enashiva Nature Refuge” on other people’s land. Since this had to be done
restricting grazing, the base of people’s lives and livelihoods, it could
logically not happen without some measure of violence – and many cases of
beatings and arrests followed, especially in 2008-2009, but also frequently
later people have been beaten, arrested and in some cases also taken to court
for “trespassing”. Many of Thomson’s victims have been minors, and minors have
also been taken to court by the tour operator. In April 2008 Lesingo Nanyoi
from Enadooshoike (Mondorosi) was shot in the jaw in a confrontation with
Thomson guards aided by the police and to this day no action has been taken
against those responsible.
Thomson
have been disturbing grazing and passage to water, inflicting humiliation and
physical injury while pretending to be doing “community empowerment”.
Of the few
people who have wanted to report about this land grab several have encountered
problems. In 2008 photographer Trent Keegan felt threatened while investigating
and left for Nairobi
What
characterises Thomson Safaris is an extremely aggressive propaganda machine
presenting their land grab as a model for community-based tourism and
conservation. And they are emboldened not only by anti-pastoralist Tanzanian
authorities supporting them – in 2009 Tanzania Tourist Board awarded them for
their land grab – but also by organisations supposed to work for responsible
tourism - some of which have Thomson people on their boards - and therefore
have no credibility at all. To those that have heard of the conflict they like
to present themselves as victims of a “minority with selfish interests”, and
often they boil it down to one evil local Maasai woman. It will be
“interesting” to see their reaction to this shooting. They are still denying
having anything at all to do with the shooting of Lesinko Nanyoi and years ago
they were even saying that he had admitted that the whole story was a lie (he
never said such a thing, but Thomson have no limits to what they can claim).
Thomson are quite free to make up any lies since nobody in Loliondo is
particularly good at reporting, which I hope will change some day soon. Meanwhile
I will continue chasing information and blogging
Some
anonymous people based in Tanzania
In 2010 a
court case was, with the support of Minority Rights Group International,
initiated to regain the land grabbed by Thomson. After some complications, a
land case is still ongoing. One complication has been that the land was taken
from Soitsambu village that has later been split up and now “Enashiva” falls
within Sukenya and Mondorosi villages.
In the most
classic way of any invader Thomson have used division between three Maasai
sections living around the occupied land – Purko, Loita and Laitayok. Copying
the manner of operating of another threat to land - the UAE hunting
organisation OBC – they have worked with the Laitayok and were for a long time
close to the chairman of Sukenya, Loserian Minis. Though in June 2013 Minis
decided to join the fight against the land grabber and is going from strength
to strength in this. Currently the closest ally of the invader is the
councillor for Oloipiri ward, William Alais.
Even in the
unlikely case that Thomson would have been too ignorant to understand the
consequences of giving oneself the right to manage other people’s land, after
all these years of violence and propaganda to keep up this “community-based
tourism” there are no attenuating circumstances whatsoever – and neither are
there for the tourists choosing to use their services, unless they have no idea
of how to search for information online.
Thomson
Safaris came and declared their “Enashiva Nature Refuge” on Maasai land. Too
many years have passed, they have refused to rectify and instead upheld the
occupation through violence, authorities working for investors and against
people, lawyers and mad propaganda. This has to stop!
Susanna
Nordlund
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