The Citizen | 13 March 2013
(Dar es Salaam) Bagamoyo villagers are up in arms over the government supporting an investor they accuse of grabbing about 6,000 hectares of their land in the district.
Representatives of over 2,000 villagers travelled all the way to Dar es Salaam at the weekend in protest against the government’s stance.They pointed an accusing finger at the Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development minister, Prof Anna Tibaijuka, for threatening to evict them forcefully.
Prof Tibaijuka was recently quoted by a Kiswahili newspaper as issuing the threat to the villagers, accusing the villagers of encroaching on the land of the investor.
Anders Bergfors, through his EcoEnergy Company, is intending to put up a sugar cane estate and a sugar processing facility at the defunct ranch.
Besides producing 125,000 tonnes of sugar for sale to the domestic market, the facility will also harness between eight and 15 million litres of ethanol to generate 100,000 MWh of electricity a year.
Led by a Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) chairman for Gama Makaani Village, the villagers said they were ready to enter into contracts with the investor as sugar cane outgrowers, but not as squatters.
Vowing to fight on to prevent the investor from grabbing their customary land, the villagers wondered why the minister was acting on misleading information from unscrupulous district officials.
“The minister has all along claimed to be defending the oppressed, yet she failed to travel barely 40 kilometres from Bagamoyo town to listen to us,” the CCM village chairman, Mr Ali Ngwega, complained.
The village CCM office is among buildings which will be demolished if the minister walks his forceful eviction rhetoric against the Gama Makaani, Matipwili and Makurunge villagers.
Mr Ngwega said the minister’s statement was evidence that some leaders were ignoring the rule of law, as there was a pending High Court case number 162 of 2012 on the same dispute.
“We’ve already written to the Attorney General asking him to advise the minister to withdraw his statement which may interfere with the court ruling,” he said. Ms Mwajabu Bello, 54, said trees, graves and buildings such as a mosque would have shown the minister how long they had been occupying the land had she physically visited their village.
“I enrolled in primary school and completed Standard Four when my parents were growing crops at Gama Makaani Village,” she explained.
Salum Timami, another representative of the villagers, recalled how Sekab Company had in 2007 invaded the land they had been occupying since the mid 1950s before the firm dubiously sold it to EcoEnergy. Some Bagamoyo District officials colluded with the investor to devise a fresh land use plan for the defunct ranch dubbed Razaba. They villagers were not involved in the plan which had encroached on their land.
EcoEnergy admitted recently that his firm was in the process of acquiring land belonging to the defunct ranch, including the one invaded by the villagers. Bergfors was quoted as saying Gama Makaani villagers were against the project even after his firm conducted an awareness campaign on it. His firm had established a paddy demonstration scheme which, save for the Gama Makaani, all other villages had welcomed the project.
He said EcoEnergy was implementing a Resettlement Action Programme for 450 houses, but outsiders from Bagamoyo and as far as Dar es Salaam were cunningly tapping in it by claiming to be residents of the villages.
This is the second time the former ranch confronts surrounding communities after the High Court ruled in favour of Winde villagers in a similar case number 275 of 1989.
Although the court had ordered Razaba to return and compensate the villagers’ land it had encroached, none of the community members has so far been paid.
In 2009 SEKAB sold all its African biofuel projects, including the ugar cane project in Bagamoyo, to its former CEO Per Carstedt for a token sum of €40. Above: Carstedt (left) with an official from the Tanzania Investment Centre (right).
(Dar es Salaam) Bagamoyo villagers are up in arms over the government supporting an investor they accuse of grabbing about 6,000 hectares of their land in the district.
Representatives of over 2,000 villagers travelled all the way to Dar es Salaam at the weekend in protest against the government’s stance.They pointed an accusing finger at the Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development minister, Prof Anna Tibaijuka, for threatening to evict them forcefully.
Prof Tibaijuka was recently quoted by a Kiswahili newspaper as issuing the threat to the villagers, accusing the villagers of encroaching on the land of the investor.
Anders Bergfors, through his EcoEnergy Company, is intending to put up a sugar cane estate and a sugar processing facility at the defunct ranch.
Besides producing 125,000 tonnes of sugar for sale to the domestic market, the facility will also harness between eight and 15 million litres of ethanol to generate 100,000 MWh of electricity a year.
Led by a Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) chairman for Gama Makaani Village, the villagers said they were ready to enter into contracts with the investor as sugar cane outgrowers, but not as squatters.
Vowing to fight on to prevent the investor from grabbing their customary land, the villagers wondered why the minister was acting on misleading information from unscrupulous district officials.
“The minister has all along claimed to be defending the oppressed, yet she failed to travel barely 40 kilometres from Bagamoyo town to listen to us,” the CCM village chairman, Mr Ali Ngwega, complained.
The village CCM office is among buildings which will be demolished if the minister walks his forceful eviction rhetoric against the Gama Makaani, Matipwili and Makurunge villagers.
Mr Ngwega said the minister’s statement was evidence that some leaders were ignoring the rule of law, as there was a pending High Court case number 162 of 2012 on the same dispute.
“We’ve already written to the Attorney General asking him to advise the minister to withdraw his statement which may interfere with the court ruling,” he said. Ms Mwajabu Bello, 54, said trees, graves and buildings such as a mosque would have shown the minister how long they had been occupying the land had she physically visited their village.
“I enrolled in primary school and completed Standard Four when my parents were growing crops at Gama Makaani Village,” she explained.
Salum Timami, another representative of the villagers, recalled how Sekab Company had in 2007 invaded the land they had been occupying since the mid 1950s before the firm dubiously sold it to EcoEnergy. Some Bagamoyo District officials colluded with the investor to devise a fresh land use plan for the defunct ranch dubbed Razaba. They villagers were not involved in the plan which had encroached on their land.
EcoEnergy admitted recently that his firm was in the process of acquiring land belonging to the defunct ranch, including the one invaded by the villagers. Bergfors was quoted as saying Gama Makaani villagers were against the project even after his firm conducted an awareness campaign on it. His firm had established a paddy demonstration scheme which, save for the Gama Makaani, all other villages had welcomed the project.
He said EcoEnergy was implementing a Resettlement Action Programme for 450 houses, but outsiders from Bagamoyo and as far as Dar es Salaam were cunningly tapping in it by claiming to be residents of the villages.
This is the second time the former ranch confronts surrounding communities after the High Court ruled in favour of Winde villagers in a similar case number 275 of 1989.
Although the court had ordered Razaba to return and compensate the villagers’ land it had encroached, none of the community members has so far been paid.
