By: SOSTHENES MWITA 
Date: February 18th 2016
Source: Daily News Tanzania

It has come to light that some devil-may-care elements invade reserved forests, national wildlife conservation areas and land belonging to schools and government institutions and private mining blocks with complete impunity.

This is illegal land grabbing. We are now told that the government has ordered the Mwanza regional administration to flush out unscrupulous people who have invaded the campus at Ukiruguru Agricultural Research Institute. This is incredible.It is also unthinkable.

The land officer for Misungwi District, Mr Fredrick Nyoka, has complained that a number of residents have invaded the campus at Ukiriguru. The land officer says that some land conflicts emanate from ignorance of law.

However, in some case the invaders are stone-hearted villains who have no respect for the rule of law. Ukiriguru Agricultural Research Institute is the oldest research station and the main cotton research centre in Tanzania.

It was established in 1930, long before many of us were born. The institute serves farmers as a native authority seed farm. It began its agriculture research activities in 1932 with the selection of varieties of sorghum, groundnuts and cotton.

But villains do not respect it. Encroachment into government forests or land belonging to institutions is rampant these days. Some miscreants in urban centres encroach into school land, green belts, church or mosque property and road reserve areas.

Others grab land along the sea shore. A few years ago it was reported in the press that invaders encroached into a conserved government forest near Kipamba-Munguli Village 120 kilometres north east of the municipality of Singida.

This was quite a smarting headache for the government. It was this kind of unacceptable behaviour which prompted the government to form the crack “Operation Tokomeza.”

The outfit was given clear-cut instructions to make sure that all conserved land was free from invaders who included poachers who decimated wildlife. Unfortunately, Operation Tokomeza operatives, whose team was mainly made up of military soldiers, members of the Police Force and wildlife management officers, took their job rather overzealously and trode on raw nerves. They were accused for attacking innocent villagers and, in some cases, rounding up cattle.

They were also believed to torture, rape and even kill some of their victims. The public outcry that followed was overwhelming. But the nation was also told that invaders had occupied a natural forest that is home to Hadzabe people in Singida Region.

The invaders, were ordered by Mkalama District Commissioner Edward ole Lenga to move out of the forest immediately. The DC ordered the invaders to move out of the conserved forest voluntarily short of which they would be arrested and prosecuted over illegal occupation of a conserved area.

The Hadzabe who still live in this forest have a lifestyle that is akin to that of wildlife.

Mr Lenga said that the government will not tolerate seeing the invaders felling trees and burning the forest to clear patches of land for agriculture and livestock rearing.

This is bad news for the Hadzabe who subsist on wild fruits, tubers, leaves, honey and meat. The Hadzabe are increasingly experiencing shortage of food due to forest clearing, especially the felling of baobab trees. The invaders have cleared huge tracts of the forest intent on establishing farms, creating pastureland and building homes.

The indigenous Tanzanians who lives in Yaeda Valley in Mbulu District also face possible starvation because the baobab trees on whose fruits and seeds they subsist are disappearing mainly due to old age and forest clearing.

These too are Hadzabe people. Baobabs are trees that normally have huge trunks and are resistant even to the harshest of droughts. The trees also store drinkable water in their trunks.

The Hadzabe who live in Yaeda Valley have been alarmed by the gradual disappearance of these important trees. As if this threat is not bad enough, some invaders have cleared huge tracts of the forest intent on establishing farms, creating pastureland and building homes. In the eyes of the now few Hadzabe diehards, the invaders are vermin.

The Hadzabe, who are also known as Tindiga, possess a thrilling ‘click’ language and uncanny hunting skills. They use bows and arrows in hunting. While some families live in cave-like holes inside baobab trees trunks, others live in “burrows” underground or in crude thatched huts. Of course, it is on record that efforts to improve the living standards of the Hadzabe in yesteryears failed.

In one instance, a group of Hadzabe people who were encouraged to live in a modern house near their forest refused to eat and some nearly died of starvation. Their refusal to eat what did not look like food to them (rice and ugali) baffled the officials who were detailed to make the experiment. One Hadzabe man who ate ugali contracted an infection and died.

Frightened, the remaining Hadzabe sneaked back into the forest. They continued gathering; honey, wild fruits, roots and tubers and hunting baboons, monkeys, antelopes and other animals with bows and arrows. And when a primary school was introduced in their locality the few pupils who were enrolled disappeared after a few days.

But a lot of water must have gone down the bridge since those years. Some cultural changes must have sprouted in the Hadzabe community bringing them closer to modernity.

Although Hadzabe men still hunt, not all look wild or vicious. The Hadzabe are believed to have been living in the remote Yaeda Valley for almost 100,000 years relying on the Baobab trees for both food and shelter. Some historians consider them to be the last hunter gatherer society left in Africa, their lifestyle unchanged for millennia.

Some of the Hadzabe now take kindly to visitors including tourists. They do not forage in the forest in the nude anymore as some indigenous tribesmen do in India, the Amazon Forest, Indonesia or the Kalahari Desert in Namibia.

The Hadzabe are opportunist hunters. Operating solo, they eat most animals, except reptiles. And they are lovers of honey. They brave huge swarms of bees to steal honey combs from high up in baobab trees.

The Hadzabe never grow any food or cash crops. While the Hadzabe like to live alone, they periodically come across other different people in the bush.

They trade tobacco in return for animal skins. They are a musical people, enjoying song and dance as a core part of their lives. Already, a few Hadzabe men wear shorts and their women appear in cotton skirts. Some speak crude Kiswahili but manage to get the message across. They frequently meet tourists in the forest during their hunting forays and interact with them cordially.

Continual encroachment by people originating from as far afield as Mwanza, Shinyanga and Singida, whose activities includes crop cultivation and raising large herds of cattle has taken a huge toll on vegetation, especially on the baobabs, on Hadzabe territory. This means the livelihood of the Hadzabe is under threat. Their population is likely to shrink further.

So it is high time another attempt to usher in a modicum of civilization was made. They need schools, dispensaries, clean drinkable water and other critical needs.

Some tour companies have been criticized for offering tourist trips to visit the few Hadzabe, who have moved into settlements after giving up their hunting ways to live off holiday-makers’ dollars.

These are typically shy, but welcoming of visitors. In the southern arid areas of the Great Rift Valley there are also other tribes that live near the Hadzabe but with different culture. These includes the Iraqw (Mbulu) who are pastoralists.

Other livestock loving people in the area are the Maasai and a few other Bantu groups. So far, there are no known tribal conflicts said to have occurred in recorded written history between the tribes.

Unfortunately there are many orphaned children in the Hadzabe tribe – a result of poverty among adults in the tribe. Modern culture encroaches rapidly on the lives of the Hadzabe through the introduction of ‘cultural experiences’ to the tour itineraries.

There is also the need for the Hadzabe to speak fluent Kiswahili in order to communicate with local communities. The Hadzabe live on land that has been gazetted by the government as a wildlife sanctuary– a national park.

As this land is protected, the Hadzabe are gradually being pushed off--reducing their food supply in the process. Tour companies disrupt the traditional life of the Hadzabe by bringing tourists to see the culture of hunting baboons with bows and arrows.

While this is an amazingly educational experience for the tourists, it amounts to “trespass” for the Hadzabe. It is not possible for any tribal setting to maintain its ancient culture when ‘intrusion’ is commonplace.

-- 

Read original article here

Photo source: Prasad Pillai via Flickr/Creative Commons (CC By-NC-ND 2.0). Photo: © Prasad Pillai