Down To Earth speaks to members of a Maasai delegation that recently visited Europe to draw attention to the tribe’s plight in Tanzania
Joseph Oleshangay (Far right) and Noorkishili Nakero Naing’isa (Next to Joseph) with other members of the delegation at the start of the tour. Photo: Fian
It has been a year since clashes erupted in and around the world-famous Serengeti National Park in Tanzania as the country's government sought to relocate the Maasai people to make way for the Pololeti Game Control Area where United Arab Emirate (UAE) will be hunting charismatic African wildlife, according to media reports.
Last month, a Maasai delegation visited Europe and met with governments, representatives of the European Union and religious, as well as civil society groups in Germany, Austria, Italy and Belgium. The delegation was supported by a number of non-profits including Survival International and Fian.
The aim of the delegation was to garner international support against the ongoing displacement of the Maasai from their homes in the Loliondo and Ngorongoro areas.
Down To Earth (DTE) spoke to two delegation members — Joseph Oleshangay, a lawyer and human rights activist in Tanzania and Noorkishili Nakero Naing’isa, a Maasai leader about the situation that the nomadic pastoralists find themselves in.
Oleshangay and Naing’isa helped DTE trace the trajectory of events from the middle of last century onwards that have eventually led to the situation today. Edited excerpts:
Rajat Ghai: What memories do your elders have about 1951 when the Serengeti was given national park status and declared a protected area?
Joseph Oleshangay (JO): The Serengeti was declared a Game Reserve in 1940. It was an area used for hunting activities in German East Africa. The British continued the practice from 1918, when they took over the region.
The Maasai have lived in the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Crater and Loliondo for centuries. They were required to move out after the area got game reserve status.
Initially, the British colonial authorities planned to relocate the Maasai entirely from both Serengeti and Ngorongoro. But apprehensions that they might join the ongoing Maumau rebellion in Kenya forced the government to let the Maasai retain Ngorongoro (eastern part of Serengeti).
The colonial government persuaded and pressurised 12 Maasai to agree on behalf of the community into relinquishing the region.
The efforts to pressurise the Maasai were led by:
They sent WH Pearsall, Professor of Botany at University College London, to conduct a survey that would justify the need for Maasai relocation. The field study by Pearsall had inputs from only two Maasai and lasted for just nine days.
The 12 Maasai who agreed, purportedly on behalf of the entire tribe, to leave the Serengeti, met with the colonial District Commissioner. Their translator was a man named Mbarnoti who belonged to Monduli (out of Ngorongoro, Serengeti and Loliondo).
The Maasai were ultimately evicted from the Serengeti in 1958 without their informed consent due to the pressure and lobbying from western non-profits and of course, the colonial government’s interest.
To neutralise the Maasai, the colonial government made a firm commitment that they will never be relocated from Ngorongoro. This commitment was further translated in law that the objective of Ngorongoro Conservation Area was:
Noorkishili Nakero Naing’isa (NNN): The colonial government at the time did not know the Maasai language. And the Maasai could not speak Swahili. The authorities asked a Maasai man from Monduli named Mbarnoti to act as translator.
Mbarnoti told the Maasai that, from now onward they would be required to pay heavy taxes unless they agreed to move out of the Serengeti. Among the people of Loliondo, only two Maasai agreed to relinquish their interests on the Serengeti led by Olemurunga.
So, the authorities led the Maasai out of Serengeti and into woodland. They were told that their settlements should never be established beyond this area.
RG: What are your recollections of the period from 1964, when the modern nation-state of Tanzania came into being?
JO: The relationship between the Maasai and the state from 1964, when Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania is a mixed one.
British colonial governor Edward Twining feared that post-independent Tanganyika would undo the Serengeti eviction legacy. But independent Tanzania continued it by dispossessing Maasai land for conservation and large-scale farming.
Tarangire National Park, Mkomazi Game Reserve, Mikumi National Park are examples. It also took land without consent for large-scale wheat plantation in Loliondo.
Some 40,000 square kilometres, which cover the whole of Loliondo, was leased to the Dubai ruler and prime minister of the UAE for hunting activities without Maasai consent.
In the late 1970s, the government sold a million acres of land for US $422 (one million Tanzanian shillings — an average of 1 shillings or less than one cent dollar per acre).
This land borders the Serengeti National Park (now declared as Pololeti Game Controlled Area and another piece is the eastern part of the Tarangire National Park.
This land was sold for trophy hunting. The only Maasai district that was not impacted by conservation land seizure is Monduli, whose substantial land was made a military operation area, leaving the Maasai occupying less than 30 per cent of the land they occupied in the 18th century.
In Ngorongoro where the Maasai were guaranteed the right to stay by the colonial regime, relations between them and the state have been tense since the 1970s.
The post-independent government, due to pressure from conservation agencies, has been pushing the Maasai to relocate. It weaponised social services and poverty as a tool for relocation.
The Maasai have continued to resist the relocation. But the impact of these policies has made the Maasai of Ngorongoro the poorest community in the country.
A series of classified documents from the 1990s planning the relocation of the Maasai without their own knowledge is now available in the public domain.
Cultivation was first banned in 1974, allowed in 1992 before being banned again in 2008 as pressure to force the Maasai out.
NNN: After independence, the relationship wasn’t bad and we continued living our own life. But the Serengeti National Park continued to expanding and the authorities claimed these expansions to be fire breaks.
Every year, they too almost one kilometre of village land, claiming it to be a fire break. We have been losing land this way in Loliondo. Another piece of land was leased for wheat farming in Mundorosi village of Loliondo in the 1980s. It was later sold to an American tour operator for tourism.
This land had settlements within it which are being demolished till date. A more serious land dispossession involved the UAE royal family, who have been hunting in 4,000 square kilometres of Loliondo.
The concession was made in 1992 without the consent and knowledge of the Maasai. We heard planes were landing in the area, killing and transporting live animals. All this dispossession is always protected by the state machinery.
RG: What happened at Loliondo in June last year and what is going on in Ngorongoro?
JO: I will respond to this in two parts to avoid confusion as the problem exists in both, Ngorongoro and Loliondo.
On June 6, 2022, a number of vehicles started arriving in Loliondo. No one was aware about what was going to happen. On June 9, all political leaders from 14 village that were to fall within the intended Game Control Area were lured to the meeting by the District Commissioner for Ngorongoro District (Loliondo is headquarter of the District).
They were subsequently arrested, blindfolded and driven over 300 km away to Arusha city. Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa told Parliament on the morning of June 10 that the political leaders were being held for consultations and would eventually be released.
But the leaders were held incommunicado until June 16, 2022 and charged for killing a police officer in Loliondo on June 10 when they were already in police custody in Arusha.
Another 17 Maasai were arrested in Loliondo and Ngorongoro in connection with the killing of the police officer during the violence that erupted in Loliondo on June 10, 2022.
In total, 27 people were arrested, detained incommunicado and detained for six months before the state said that there was no evidence to connect them with the alleged offence. Not a single witness was brought to court for the entire six-month period that they were being held. They were also not allowed to respond to the charge against them.
Another 132 people were arrested on accusations of being Kenyan. Like the first group, they were held and prosecuted, before being discharged for lack of evidence.
Not a single witness was brought to testify or even lie that they were Kenyan. By November 2022, all charges against them had been dismissed by the court for lack of evidence to connect them with the crime charged.
Commutatively, 159 people were maliciously arrested and detained incommunicado for six months, without having a right to be heard and respond to the charges against them. This is a classic example of ‘lawfare’.
From June 10, 2022, a combined team of game rangers, Tanzanian Army personnel, police and prison services were deployed by the state to install beacons to demarcate the places where it intended to establish what is now known as the Pololeti Game Controlled Area.
As the community responded with peaceful gathering, the team fired live bullets, wounding 41 people. One man with three bullet injuries named Orias Oleng’iyo has not been seen since then. He was 84 years old.
This violence forced over 2,500 Maasai to leave Tanzania, most of them women and children. Over 30,000 people were internally displaced as their homes were declared within the Game Controlled Area.
Another 40,000 people who used to graze livestock in the disputed area in addition to the 30,000 who live in it, were left without land to graze their livestock.
Since the state took over this land which was prime pasture, the Maasai have been forced to choose between leaving their cows to die of starvation or risk grazing them in the disputed area.
The latter would mean the cows would be seized and sold by the state. Over 11,000 livestock have been sized and sold by the state.
Another, almost equal number, has been seized and the owners be forced to pay ransom fee of $50 per head of livestock. This has led to impoverishment of families and a broken Maasai self-sufficient economy.
A parallel relocation is underway in Ngorongoro. Unlike Loliondo, the government is using silence guns to force people out.
On April 6, 2021, hardly 19 days after becoming president of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan expressed her anger over the pastoralists in Ngorongoro and directed stern measures to control the population and its relocation.
Six days later, the government responded with a public notice that intended to demolish:
The government initially claimed it was doing this as this infrastructure was illegal. It also cited conservation as a reason.
On March 31, 2022, the government wrote letters to dispensaries, primary schools, secondary schools and other institutions, directing them to transfer all monies appropriated for the region to be transferred to other places.
In total, over 1.4 million Euros that were initially budgeted and appropriated for Ngorongoro in 2020 and 2021, have been diverted to other places in Tanzania.
The Medical Flying Service (MFS) that has been operating in Ngorongoro among other Maasai areas, delivering highly needed medical services, vaccines and emergency rescues, was grounded in April 2022.
This is because it was serving people the regime thinks should be starved to death unless they relocate.
Since grounding the MFS, over 24,000 children have not been vaccinated, over 5,700 patients not treated in scheduled clinics, hundreds of HIV and TB patients not supplied with life-saving medicines.
Children born to HIV positive mothers have not been given anti-retroviral drugs. How is this related to conservation? Ecology? Animal welfare?
On May 28, 2022, Garson Msigwa, the government spokesperson, said the authorities were targeting social services to trigger mass relocation from Ngorongoro and this resulted from consultation between the government and its stakeholders.
In 2019, in the MLUM report, FZS among other stakeholders advised the government to reduce social services inside Ngorongoro.
From 2022, Maasai staff in Ngorongoro have been targeted, transferred and threatened to be terminated unless they agree to relocate to Msomera.
We believe the world has a moral responsibility in stopping this extermination campaign.
RG: Do you think this is an old grudge playing out: One of settled people against pastoralists?
JO: Yes. The government does not hide this. They have projected the entire issue as a ‘Maasai problem’. As justification for its actions, it says the Maasai arrived in today’s Tanzania in the past few centuries.
The majority settled community sees the Maasai and the territory they occupy with their nomadic pastoralism as threats for expansion of their business interests that include hunting, hotels and farms. They, therefore, intend to force the Maasai to adopt sedentary lifestyles in small areas. Maasai and pastoralism do not survive in a zoo-like settlement that you cannot move.
RG: What are your expectations from the European tour?
JO: Our tour intended to create awareness about the situation in both Ngorongoro and Loliondo, which is now a humanitarian crisis. We also seek seeking accountability from those financing fortress conservation in Tanzania and around the world.
The philosophical foundations of what has bedevilled us, can be traced to Europe and America. Europeans put it in place in Ngorongoro and Serengeti.
Sixty-three years later, millions of European tax payers are being used to finance neo colonial conservation whose made trademark is expansion, violence, exclusion, propaganda and othering/racism.
We have particularly been to Germany because we can easily and clearly see the nexus between the financial aid from the German government and the unfortunate situation we have been forced into.
We hope after this visit, they rethink aiding the suffering of our people in the name of conservation. Financial aid is of value only if it is tied to observance of human rights, rule of law, good governance and democracy.
We hope all those whom we interacted with, have understood the magnitude and severity of this problem and that there will be a silver lining somewhere in this dark cloud.
We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.
.png)
Comments are moderated and will be published only after the site moderator’s approval. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition.