By Shola Lawal:
Joseph Oleshangay’s theory is that government officials in his country, Tanzania, see people from his community as less than human than others.
The resolution states that all civilisational achievements are “the collective heritage of humankind.”
The 36-year-old human rights lawyer and member of the Indigenous Maasai group is one of several at the forefront of a long-running fight to stop the government in the political capital, Dodoma, from forcefully evicting Maasai from areas around national parks.
Officials say the evictions are meant to protect wildlife, but Maasai members have accused park rangers and security forces of intimidation and rights abuses, including killings, sexual assaults and livestock seizures.
Because the courts have not always ruled in favour of aggrieved Maasai, community members like Oleshangay have taken their complaints to the government’s big funders, from Germany to the European Union (EU), urging them to withhold crucial funding and pressure the government to halt alleged violence.
“We go to the courts, we go to the media, because we have few alternatives,” said Oleshangay, who works with Tanzania’s Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC). “But we also go to the people we think have a say. We tell them—we don’t have a problem with conservation, but when you give the government more money, it means you are financing the displacement of all these people. It has nothing to do with nature, it is all business.”
Lately, the activists have been on a hot streak.
In late April, the World Bank yielded to petitions of rights violations in a massive park in the country’s south and suspended new disbursements from a $150m grant, saying it was “deeply concerned” about rights abuse allegations related to the project.
Then, in June, the EU crossed Tanzania off another 18 million euro ($20 million) conservation grant initially meant for the country and neighbouring Kenya.
Ana Pisonero Hernandez, an EU spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera that Tanzania was removed after an internal review process.
“The decision to amend the call was made to ensure the project’s objectives, in terms of human rights protection and environmental concerns, are achieved given recent tensions in the region,” she said.
The lost funds are a result of the government’s standoff with minorities in the country as it attempts to expand tourism.
That the Maasai instigated some of those actions also reflects the deepening bitterness between Dodoma and the group’s members in particular, who say they have long suffered displacement from their ancestral lands, and are now being targeted with unprecedented force.
“We cannot sit with the government because it is clear to us that they are not ready to listen,” said Oleshangay, who is based in the northern city of Arusha.
His father is one of many facing permanent displacement from areas around the iconic Serengeti to unfamiliar territory hundreds of kilometres away.
“We know they will want to attack those behind it, but we don’t have the option of staying silent, because they don’t see us as human beings,” he said.
Al Jazeera reached out to the Tanzanian government to ask about these allegations but did not receive a response.
Government officials have long claimed the Maasai’s expanding populations mean they are encroaching on wildlife territory, affecting access to resources for animals and contributing to human-wildlife conflict.
Tourism is one of Tanzania’s most important sources of foreign exchange, with safaris and game hunting contributing a fifth of gross domestic product (GDP) and employing close to a million people.
The country is home to the Ngorongoro Crater, Mount Kilimanjaro and swaths of savannahs replete with elephants, lions and iconic baobabs.
In off-season May, this year, the country’s mainland international airports filled up as a fraction of two million yearly visitors jetted in.
The sector’s success has fed the government’s desire to expand its offerings but that is now being affected by its constant clashes with the Maasai.
‘We lost the Serengeti’
Evicting the Maasai— seminomadic pastoralists spread across Kenya and Tanzania—is a well-known song in the East African Rift.
In colonial times, Maasai lived across the vast northern plains of the Siringet—loosely translated from Maa into “the land that never ends”.
But first German and then British, colonialists determined that the Serengeti ecosystem, with its dense wildlife population and spectacular wildebeest migration, was being pressured by growing numbers of the Maasai, and that they had to leave.
Critics say this approach is fortress conservation—a controversial idea that wildlife is best protected when they are entirely free from human disturbance, discarding the needs of Indigenous dwellers.
As a result of colonial policies, thousands in 1959 were forced to move to the newly created multiuse Ngorongoro Conservation Area at the southern tip of the plains, as well as to neighbouring Loliondo.
In Ngorongoro, Maasai could graze their cattle alongside zebras and also have tourists visit. The government promised they would never be displaced again, Maasai members say.
Now, the thousands of Maasai in Ngorongoro and Loliondo are again facing eviction.
“Our stay was never forever because they never really decolonised the whole thing,” said Oleshangay, whose 70-year-old father experienced the relocation in 1959.
“We lost the Serengeti. My father still remembers what happened like it was yesterday and I don’t want me or my children to experience the same thing,” he said.
Land in Tanzania belongs to the government, meaning officials can legally relocate people but with their prior consent.
Over the years, however, attempts to evict Maasai have become common—without dialogue or agreements, members say.
In 2017, the government issued eviction notices for villages in Loliondo, saying it wanted to protect 1,500sq kilometres from human activity.
Park rangers stormed Loliondo in August that year and razed 185 huts which they said breached the boundaries of the Serengeti National Park.
More than 6,000 people were left homeless, according to rights groups.
Although Maasai members took the matter to the Arusha-based East African Court of Justice, the case was dismissed, as judges ruled that those evicted could not prove they were outside the park’s boundaries.
Maasai lawyers, including Oleshangay, have appealed the ruling. – Xinhua
