SafariLands.org: News: Tanzania Tourist Board honours Thomson Safaris with the 2009 Tanzania Conservation Award

If TANAPA is not evicting people from their lands to expand parks the parliament is forcing Mwangunga to withdraw from the parliament scrap wildlife bill. If TANAPA is not trapped in irregularities in the procurement of services from the Atlanta-based CNN and the London-based Jambo Publications Ltd as revealed by Controller and Auditor General, Ludovic Utouh, in his report[1] then the western wildlife conservation lobby such as FZS, UNESCO, WWF, AWF and more are leading the ministry by the nose.

Now the Tanzania Tourist Board, the Government agency responsible for the promotion of tourism, is trying to hide behind its finger. Recently it honored Thomson Safaris, an American tour operator company based in Boston in the Unites States, frighteningly, 'with the 2009 Tanzania Conservation Award.' The dirty award recognizes efforts by Thomson Safaris in establishing and supporting the Enashiva Nature Refuge, a community-based conservation project located East of Serengeti National Park.

Enashiva Project Manager, Daniel Yamat, received the award on behalf of Thomson Safaris at a ceremony in Cairo, Egypt, which was also attended, by Natural Resources and Tourism Minister, Shamsa Mwangunga.

Remember that the conservation award, under fire, marks the third honor Thomson Safaris has received from TTB. What transparent criteria is TTB using to heap awards on Thomson Safaris out of over 300 licensed tour operator companies in Tanzania? Why TTB had to award the company literarily on pyramid tops in far away Egypt? Is it another way of siphoning away public money unnoticed? Was TTB afraid of being pelted with knives and stones if it announced it was awarding such a company in Loliondo?

'We owe our gratitude to TTB, the government and, most of all, the Maasai communities around Enashiva that have helped make conservation successful. The award really belongs to them.' If the award belongs to the Maasai communities, as Yamat admits in a moment of rare honesty, why then it is that Thomson Safaris was awarded instead?

Yamat went ahead boasting. 'Since conservation efforts began at Enashiva, wildlife populations had doubled in the area and sightings of endangered species such as wild dogs had increased dramatically. Rare woodland habitats that support endangered tree species were also being restored.' It is a glaring standard fallacy to suggest that there are now more animals after Thomson Safaris bought the hotly contested land in June 2006. Abundance of wildlife must have attracted the company to the land in the first place.

In 1984 the Tanzanian state owned bear manufacturer, Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL), applied for 100,000 acres in Sukenya, Ngorongoro. TBL wanted to grow barley on the land. Led by their then MP, Moringe ole Parkipuny, the Maasai attempted to reject in total alienation of their land. They depended entirely on this land for pastures as well as water. Some leaders, fearing the state, gave TBL 10,000 acres instead.

Barley production, however, collapsed following intense opposition by the Maasai fully supported by harsh drought. By 1987 the barley project was closed down.

The Maasai continued to use communally the land and water from River Pololet as they did traditionally. TBL forged signatures of the Maasai to obtain a title deed and increased the area to 12,600 acres. In June 2006, TBL sold the 12,600 acres to Thomson Safaris, through its sister company. Thomson Safaris wanted to do tourism business on the land. What does American law says if you buy a stolen property? You are a thief, I guess.

Banding together like poisonous warms, Thomson Safaris and the Tanzanian state have been violently and corruptly preventing the Maasai from accessing pastures and water. People are reportedly beaten, arrested and forced to pay fines for impounded livestock. Victims of this weird situation are many. One of them is Shangai ole Putaa, a Maasai traditional leader. Putaa seriously opposed selling of their land to Thomson Safaris. In March 2007 President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania visited Ngorongoro District. It is said that Putaa, speaking on behalf of his fellow villagers of Soit Sambu in an internal meeting of the Tanzanian ruling party, made a brief and eloquent presentation to the President. He told the President, in graphic terms, to give the stolen land back to its rightful owners.

About six months later, on November 7, 2007, the police killed Putaa. The Government had a strange, but hardly surprising, explanation for the brutal killing. Basilio Matei, the Arusha Regional Police Commander, claimed that the ‘police officers said Putaa was understood to know where the guns were hidden and that, when they asked him to show them the spot in question, he tried to run away and that was when they shot him.’

James Lembikas, the Soit Sambu Village Chairman, disagrees. 'The police should find a better excuse; Putaa was the most respected person in the whole Maasai community, being a spiritual advisor and was always with the council of elders.'

The second victim is Lesinko ole Nanyoi. He was shot in the jaws on April 18, 2008. Both the Government and Thomson Safaris denied strenuously being responsible for his shooting. To this day the Tanzanian Government is still covering the mad shooter.

The shooting of Nanyoi attracted Trent Keegan, a sympathetic New Zealand-born photo-journalist living in Ireland, to Tanzania. Keegan attempted to investigate the conflict. On May 28, 2008 he was assassinated in Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to his killing, on May 16, 2008, Trent emailed his friend, Tim Gallagher, telling him 'he was writing a story about a tribe that was being kicked off its land to make way for a safari park.'

Brian MacCormaic, an Irish volunteer teacher in Ngorongoro, was soon to be yet another victim. He now writes that he was contacted by Rick, and asked if he would meet with them to help them get to the truth. There was tension in the meeting. Brian tried to leave to save his life. He was told that he was not allowed to leave. Suddenly, a Thomson Safaris vehicle sped into the compound and skidded to a halt beside Brian, raising a cloud of dust and loose gravel in the air. Before it had fully stopped, up to ten gunmen armed with guns jumped out arresting him under the orders of the District Commissioner.

Thomson Safaris, like a host of other greedy land grabbers posing as investors, has support of the state. Terry Rice, a de facto spokesperson for the company, once wrote; ‘Rick Thomson and his wife, Judi Wineland, were invited last year to meet in New York City with President, Kikwete in thanks for their investment in tourism in Tanzania!’

Meanwhile Thomson Safaris is engrossed in a morass of lies. On January 31, 2009 Arusha Times published a directive from its General Manager, Elizabeth McKee. McKee said that the company will lay 'off 45 employees out of its 140 Arusha staff. The remaining ones will endure 10 percent cut from their usual monthly salary packages.'

McKee said in the directive to the obviously frightened staff that this was to be effective from the 1st of May, which is ironically the international ‘Labor Day.’ McKee claimed that tourists’ bookings had dropped by as much as 40 percent, a 'serious economic blow' to the company thus calling for measures to cut down overhead costs.

Around the time McKee was fixing two fingers up the noses of the 40 Tanzanians, on January 23, 2009 specifically, The Citizen quoted Ina Steinhiler, Sales and Marketing Manager of Thomson Safaris in Boston, crowing, ‘Few people are cancelling or postponing for economic reasons. We are more than pleased.’

Obviously Thomson Safaris had sinister objectives for retrenching the 40 workers. Why it is using international financial crunch as an excuse for its acts of mindless vandalism is best known to it. What is clear is the record breaking mutual back scratching between the Government paid rich at TTB and their counterparts at Thomson Safaris.

It seems, to anybody who is not refusing to think, that Thomson Safaris badly needs such awards perhaps than any other tour operator company. There are over 300 licensed tour operators in Tanzania. Thomson Safaris is certainly not the best performing of all. There is obviously a cozy conspiracy propelling TTB to try to pull the company out of a mess.

The search engines have made authentic research possible. Not everything on the internet is true. However, an honest public institution wanting to elevate a private company to sainthood should have been drawn to investigate with military precision its soon to be declared Saint. TTB must be held accountable for this miscarriage of justice.