REMARKABLE RESULTS FOLLOWING PAST MISTAKES
The FINANCIAL TIMES published a thoughtful and balanced 4-page supplement on March 31 in which it wrote that Tanzania was undergoing a transformation from being the standard bearer of African Socialism to an advocate of market driven reform. ‘The results are remarkable’ it wrote, and went on: ‘The mining sector is booming, tourism is growing, sold-off state companies are thriving and the government’s economic discipline has won the praise of the IMF ….. But erratic weather conditions saw floods last year and threaten a serious food shortage this year. Management is weak, the civil service is inefficient, phone lines are bad, roads are poor, illiteracy is increasing, health care is declining. Corruption is widespread and implementation of privatisation is behind schedule. Above all, Tanzania still has to overcome the legacy of the failed polices of the early post­independence period … Yet, for all these concerns, there is still a sense of opportunities being grasped and potential slowly being realised.
On Zanzibar the article is much less optimistic. Extract: ….. (it is) mid­morning … and a few milling tourists peer from a safe distance at the armed police surrounding Zanzibar town’s court. The guns and nervous aggression do not tally well with the tranquil retreat they were sold in the tourist brochures. Yet the police, watchful lest 18 political prisoners …. escape from the latest in an endless series of treason hearings, are every bit as Zanzibari as the islands’ stunning beaches and fading clove fields …. Thank you Pru Watts-Russell and Marlene Yeo for sending this -Editor.

‘BONGOISM’
Under the heading ‘Tanzania Corruption Company Ltd’ Asha Mtwangi, writing in the BBC’s FOCUS ON AFRICA (April-June) described ‘Bongoism’ in detail. ‘Bongo’, she wrote, ‘is derived from the Swahili word meaning brain. If you’ve got one, explore it, use it and you’ll survive. Dar es Salaam is the heart of this new Bongoism ….. as you wonder how to beat the snaking lines of patients queuing for the only X-ray machine at the public hospital you have to ‘think fast’ …. Once the magic words have been said you will willingly part with a little something …. everywhere you meet middlemen, people with lists of contacts which would turn the yellow pages green with envy. You need a new passport fast. Someone knows someone who knows someone who can do it …. with wages of $42 a month in government service and $24 in parastatals it’s small wonder people survive by their wits. They have no option …. ‘ .

INSTITUTIONAL CORRUPTION
Peter Preston in the London GUARDIAN (March 15) described (with many references to the Warioba Report) what he termed Tanzania’s ‘institutional corruption’ and the ‘burning anger’ this was causing amongst the people. President Mkapa’s efforts to implement Warioba had waned in the face of intransigence from the very leaders the Commission had wanted sacked: too powerful; too entrenched. Would it help, he asked, if the British Government were to tighten up its act and stop the Inland Revenue from giving tax deductions for bribes paid by companies doing business in Tanzania and were to bring British law fully behind the new International Convention on Combating Bribery? It would help a little, he wrote. It would give the system one more squeeze Thank you John Pearce for sending this item -Editor.

THE ‘MOST LOVED COUNTRY’
Reporting on Canadian Governor General Romeo Le Blanc’s visit to Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Morocco and Tanzania, NEW AFRICAN (April) described Tanzania as ‘by far Canada’s most loved African country’. As part of the visit Canada announced $13.4 million of new aid. The Governor General was accompanied by some 100 parliamentarians, businessmen and government officials.

PRIVATELY CONDUCTED RESEARCH
Michael Carr and W Stephens in the TROPICAL AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER of March 1999 explained how the new industry-funded privatised Tea Research Institute of Tanzania (TRIT) might be leading the way for other commodity crops in Tanzania where similar changes in structure and funding of agricultural research were overdue. They explained the delicacy of the change from government sponsored research to privately conducted research and how it had proved necessary to close one research station in order to concentrate efforts at the two other stations -Ngwazi in the south and Marikitanda in the north. TRIT has set an ambitious target to raise annual production from the present 20-25,000 tons of made tea to over 40,000 tons in ten years.

PIRATES
Reporting on a workshop on the International Property Rights issue in Zanzibar, THE AFRICA LINK (September 1998) quoted the ‘Father of Tanzanian cinema’, Mzee Rashidi Kawawa, as lamenting: “Our artists continue being ripped off by pirates….There is art all over the country -in the caves, in the ground, in ruins, in houses, on the pavements, everywhere . . . . . But our cultural rivals … have been stealing and plundering our heritage, taking them to their museums … pirates and copyright violators are killing artistic creativity … our artists languish in absolute poverty”. The Chairman of the local association of musicians (CHAMUDATA) John Kitime said that a group calling themselves ‘The Big Five’ now controlled all the audio cassette business in Tanzania. The South African Film Security Office is helping in the planning steps to combat the piracy.

SIX GRAMMES OF SEAWEED
‘Seven years ago Murtaza Fazal arrived in Tanzania with a kilogram of seaweed sneaked out of the Philippines. Only six grammes survived the journey’. So began an article in the FINANCIAL TIMES (March 24) which went on to explain how seaweed had overtaken cloves and was now second only to tourism in Zanzibar’s economy. Seaweed contains a gum called carrageenan that is used as a stabiliser and in ice cream, salad dressing, luncheon meat and shampoo. The dried product is processed in Denmark or the USA. Mr Fazal’s company has seen production increase from 150 tonnes from 150 tonnes in 1985 to 1,800 tonnes last year; Zanzibar as a whole produced 5,500 tonnes last year making it the third largest producer. nut Mr Fazal warned that high taxes, poor infrastructure and bureaucratic red tape risked destroying this highly competitive industry. “To export a shipment we have to fill in 21 forms for each of our 120 containers, and I have to sort things out at the port. In America I exported 4,000 containers and never saw the port” he was quoted as saying.

‘THE RISING STAR’ -‘DRAMATIC REVIVAL’
The FINANCIAL TIMES (February 3) headlined its coverage of a recent international mining conference with the words: ‘Tanzania tipped as the rising star of Africa’. In the TIMES (March 1) the headline read ‘Prospectors beat a path to Africa’s (in this case, Tanzania’s -Editor) new streets of gold.’ And the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST (February 28) under the heading ‘Foreign firms rush to tap potential of right rocks, right government’ highlighted what it described as the dramatic revival of the mining industry in Tanzania. It quoted Ashanti Exploration Managing Director Mike Cowley describing Tanzania as the number one country in Africa in terms of gold exploration. “If anybody wants to explore in Africa they will be trying to get a position in Tanzania” he said. The country had one of the best physical policies for mining in Africa. Thank you Ron Fennell for sending this latter item from Hong Kong. Details of the mining boom in Tanzania were given in Tanzanian Affairs No. 62 -Editor.

‘AFRICA’S MOST RESPECTED ELDER STATESPERSON’
Ikaweba Bunting of the NEW INTERNATIONALIST (January-February), reporting on a recent interview with Julius Nyerere recalled that Mwalimu had been the subject of the cover story in the very first issue of the magazine in 1970. ‘Three decades on’ he wrote ‘Mandela aside, Nyerere is still Africa’s most respected elder statesperson’. Extracts from the interview: On the Arusha Declaration: “I still travel around with it. I read it over and over to see what I would change. Maybe I would improve on the Kiswahili … but the Declaration is still valid. I would not change a thing”. On his mistakes: “I would not have nationalised the sisal plantations. Agriculture is difficult to socialise …. the land issue and family holdings were very sensitive. I saw this intellectually but it was hard to translate into policy implementation … ” On the World Bank: “I was in Washington last year. The first question they asked was ‘how did you fail’. I said that we took over a country with 85% illiterates … there were 2 engineers and 12 doctors after 43 years of British rule ….. When I stepped down there was 91% literacy and we had trained thousands of engineers and doctors …. As Tanzania’s social services have deteriorated during the last ten years when Tanzania has been signing on the dotted line and doing everything the World Bank and the IMF wants I asked them again ‘What went wrong?’ These people just sat there looking at me. Then they asked what could they do? I told them to have some humility. Humility -they are so arrogant! …….the conditions and policies of the World Bank: and the IMF are to enable countries to pay debt not to develop. That is all! ” Thank you Peter Yea for sending this -Editor.

THE BENEFITS OF HUNTING
AFRICA TODAY (January) pointed out the importance of hunting to raise revenue to help with the grave problem facing preservation of wildlife. The article said that if wildlife was to have a secure future it was essential that a value should be attached to it. In 1997 some 950 hunters practised their sport in Tanzania and revenue in excess of $440 million was obtained. This worked out at Shs 42,000 per visitor compared with the Shs 700 per visitor in the case of photographic safaris. In the same issue there was an article on the success of radio drama in developing public awareness of AIDS in Tanzania -‘Mashaka is the best known truck driver in Tanzania and his exploits are famous throughout the country. He spends most of his time on the road, rarely sees his wife and has a girlfriend in every town. A few weeks ago he fell ill and Tanzanians are holding their breath, as he grows sicker by the week. He coughs, has rashes on the skin and complains that his friends are avoiding him …. Mashaka is a fictional character in one of the country’s most popular soap operas, Geuza Mwendo, and his plight is the talk of some six million people who listen to the show every week …. ‘.

‘MWIZI! MWIZI’
‘Tanzanians who want to settle scores with old enemies only have to shout Mwizi! Mwizi! Immediately all hell breaks loose and in a matter of minutes their victim is dead’. So began an article in NEW AFRICAN (January) under the heading ‘Necklacing spreads to Tanzania’ (from South Africa) in which it was explained that mobs collect kerosene, matches and old tyres and then set victims ablaze. They call it Mwenge wa Uhuru the flame of freedom, after the uhuru torch which is raced annually through Tanzania …. ‘Many Tanzanians believe that the police are so inefficient that they are justified in taking the law into their own hands ……ignoring President Mkapa’s advice to them to stop killing the little thieves … “You have to deal with the huge looters who are milking this country dry” he said.

‘A DISAPPEARING BREED’
‘A man wearing only shorts and sandals walks along a track. He carries a hunting rifle for protection against wild animals. The sinking sun burnishes his back a deep bronze and sets aflame his shoulder-length hair. At his side lopes a lion cub, golden in the evening light. Tony Fitzjohn is among the last of a disappearing breed of game warden on a continent where wildlife is in retreat. Once an assistant to George Adamson, the renowned conservationist, the 54-year old Briton manages Mkomazi Game Reserve. The story of his amazing years in the bush is the subject of a forthcoming film To Walk With Lions starring Richard Harris as the magus-like conservationist and John Michie as his untamed protege ……..Fitzjohn has earned himself many enemies; not just sports hunters and commercial poachers, but also local Maasai people claiming ancestral grazing rights at Mkomazi……and powerful figures in the Tanzanian government who could make fortunes if sports hunting were allowed in the reserve’ -extracts from an article by David Orr in the TIMES on January 2. Thank you Liz Fennel! for this item ­Editor.

EXCITEMENT
Reporting from Toronto, Chris Roberts in AFRICA TODAY (April) wrote about the palpable excitement hanging in the air at the offices of the small Canadian oil-exploration company Canop following receipt of the results of exploration in Tanzania. Canop’s onshore and offshore concession, beginning 60 kms south of Dar es Salaam, if preliminary results are confirmed, would be able to plug into the planned natural gas pipeline of the SONGAS project led by two other Canadian companIes -TransCanada Pipelines and Ocelot Energy.

DEBT
The SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (February 20), discussing the debt issue, quoted the case of Angelus Mtego who is in his final year in school in Ludewa, southern Tanzania. He is 15 but no bigger than the average British 10-year old. His main ambition in life is to go on to secondary school but last year only 10 out of 70 in his year group were accepted. However, for Angelus the biggest hurdle is the cost. His father is too poor to pay his secondary school fees of US$IOO. The government had to introduce fees because of its huge budget deficit itself partially caused by Tanzania’s vast foreign debt. Thank you John Pearce for sending this from Australia ­Editor.

ANAESTHETIC REALITY
Dr R Towey and Dr E Kimaro wrote in the BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL (December 19-26) about how difficult it was for local doctors to carry out research in sub-Saharan Africa. They wanted to find out the obstacles to safe anaesthesia in outlying districts near Lake Victoria and wanted hard data, not just anecdotes. They spent four months visiting 27 hospitals -sometimes hitchhiking, sometimes buying petrol for hospital cars to get lifts, sometimes sleeping in wards or in bus stations. Eventually they established a computer database with reliable data. Three-quarters of the hospitals had no oxygen or equipment to give safe paediatric anaesthesia. A quarter had no equipment for anaesthesia even for adults. ‘How do they manage? They give bolus doses of parental ketamine; the surgeon does his best without muscle relaxation and the patients’ lungs are not protected by a cuffed endotracheal tube; safe ventilation of the lungs is impossible; and, there is no oxygen … .it is a nightmare ….. yet the cost of upgrading the majority of hospitals to a safe level is $50,000 -the approximate cost of one anaesthetic machine in Western Europe’.

PRIVATISlNG THE RUFIJI DELTA
The East African Wildlife Society’s journal SW ARA (October -December) joined the increasing clamour from conservationists around the world against the proposed prawn farming scheme in the Rufiji Delta which the government is supporting because it insists that it is environmentally viable. The article said that the 10,000 hectare project would privatise one fifth of the Rufiji Delta which contains eight of the nine species of mangrove found along the East African coast. Two thousand Delta residents were said to be seeking permission at the High Court to sue the government for endorsing the project which they say would deny them access to natural resources including prawns and fish which they have always had. The article concluded by saying that experience elsewhere had shown that such prawn farming failed on average after ten years, leaving behind severe environmental damage. Thank you Tony Macdonald for sending this information Editor.

SAFARI
An article by Darrel Bristow-Bovey in the South African SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (February 14) reflected on the history of what we now call safaris since they began in 1895 with the establishment of the East African Protectorate (Kenya), a British response to German expansion in Tanganyika. The hunter’s trophies -horns, tusks -were tangible evidence of a land bent to the will of the settlers. The cost of safaris had escalated over the years. One safari in the late 1930’s entailed an armoured car, a mobile movie theatre, motorcycle messengers, a generator and a mobile drawing room with a grand piano. The writer went on: ‘r recently crossed the border to Arusha, safari capital of old Tanganyika. Once a rival to early Nairobi, it is now in a state of charming disrepair, home to the worst roads and best Indian restaurants on the continent….. The safari may have lost its false Hollywood glamour, but its fundamental purpose remains. It exists to mediate the experience of visitors to Africa -to keep them safe and well-fed yet to give them an inkling, however illusory, of authenticity. Safari takes you to the land, and in it you glimpse a better version of yourself, a dream of your place in the world … ..Thank you David Leishman for sending this and other items from the South African media -Editor.

ALBINOS
Michael Okema writing in the EAST AFRICAN (February 15) explained why there are so many albinos -at least two pupils in every school -in the Kijitonyama-Uzuri-Mwanyamala triangle of Dar es Salaam. He quoted researchers at the Ocean Road Hospital as saying that it was because of the matrilineal cultural practises of the coastal Wazigua, Wanguu, Wazaramo and Makonde ethnic groups. Similar genes in parents, usually found among relatives, were said to increase the chances of producing an albino child. As children of a maternal uncle belong to the clan of the wife of that uncle and therefore to a different clan from the children of his sisters and brothers, first cousins may marry, thus enhancing the chances of albino children … There is also the Arab tradition of marriage among relatives so that the family property remains within the clan. The Tanzania Albino Society says that the country has 700,000 albinos. Of the 200,000 in Dar es Salaam 60% are in Kinondoni, 30% in Temeke and 10% in Ilala. The way people often treat albinos, Okema describes as ‘apartheid in reverse’.

LIFELINE
The Oxford United Football Club was thrown a lifeline after the resignation of its managing director following allegations of fraud according to the WANTAGE HERALD (February 2). Mr Firoz Khan, who came to Britain from Tanzania at the age of 19 and who now owns 1,000 hotel rooms in London, apparently agreed to buy the club and to provide £500,000 to maintain it until the transaction was completed –Thank you Geoffrey Stokell for this item -Editor.

ADVERTISING TECHNIQUES
The Commonwealth Development Corporation’s THE MAGAZINE (September 1998) wrote about the ‘outstanding success of its Tanzania Venture Capital Fund in supporting, with its financial muscle, Tanzania Tea Packers during the last three years’. Tanzania Tea Packers blends and packs tea under its brand name Chai Bora and sells three blends – Nguvu Blend, Supreme Blend and Blue Label, and its success has been in breaking the modern rules of advertising and going back to 30-year old techniques -promotional discounts, 20% extra tea free in the pack -a first for Tanzania; wall signs; bill boards; radio jingles; simple phrasing like ‘Good Tea’ plus some exciting modern visual designs and the most modern packaging available. Kahawa Bora was due to be introduced in September 1998, then Soda Bora and then lots of other little boras, ‘all of whose aim is to provide the consumer with a simple product, at a reasonable price, a standard quality obeying environmental and food norms and, making money’.

THE FISHING ROD
An anecdote from the autobiography of former British Prime Minister Edward Heath was quoted in the EAST AFRICAN (November 2). Apparently President Reagan was lecturing Mwalimu Nyerere on the need for his country to become self­supporting. “In other words” he said “I will help you to buy the fishing rod, but after that the rest lies with you. You must fish in your own pond to support yourselves” “That is fine” said Mwalimu “but what happens if you haven’t got a pond with any fish?”

UNIQUE FILM FESTIVAL
The VSO publication ORBIT published in its third quarter 1998 issue an account of the Zanzibar International Film Festival held there recently. It wrote: ‘It was a unique film festival which questioned the overwhelming presence of Hollywood and Indian Bollywood films in Africa by screening nearly 100 films from the ‘dhow’ countries, most of them African in origin ….. these were films with social realism, depth and diversity ….. one was ‘Bongo Beat’, a Tanzanian-made film featuring local musical hero Ronny Ongala and another ‘Flame’ about two female teenagers who sign up to fight in Zimbabwe’s war. By the end of the week over 1,000 people a night were cramming into the open-air fort beneath a clear sky, straining their ears above the noise of the insects to enjoy the films …. but local cinema owner Firoz complained that he lost money by showing festival films’. After the festival he was happy to go back to his regular and highly popular rota of Indian films, Titanic and James Bond. The article quoted a UNESCO estimate that film attendance in Tanzania totals five million a year -a major leisure pursuit. But Michael Booth, writing in the INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY (October 25) went out to one of the 25 ‘Village Panorama’s designed to bring African-made films to African audiences. At Bambi, two hours drive from Stone Town, he found 500 people waiting for the performance. The main film was Black Ninja Group, a Dar es Salaam-made feature -‘it was probably the worst film I had ever seen’ he wrote. ‘It was a non-sensical tale of mainly kung fu bouts between baddies in balaclavas and policemen, and was edited with an axe. But it went down well with the audience who made off into the night around midnight still shouting and laughing…. Meanwhile, he EAST AFRICAN reported that Tanzania was the only country in East Africa to submit a film to M-Net’s 4th All Africa Film Awards in Pretoria in November. The film, Maangamizi – The Ancient One, did not win an award.

SOUTH AFRICAN VIEWS
The South African press continues to take a close interest in Tanzania. The SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (October 25) wrote about the estimated 15,000 prostitutes in the country. ‘Recently, eight pupils at Songea’s Girls Secondary School were expelled for running a brothel using a building near the school. The girls were found naked in the house when a team of teachers invaded it. Six customers ran away. The pupils said they were forced to make money that way because their parents could not give them any. Peggy Mengoli, a writer to the editor of the MAIL AND GUARDIAN (October 10) referred to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s call for an ‘African Renaissance’. He associated it with Julius Nyerere’s ‘African Socialism’ and wrote that, ‘when he (Nyerere) got into his stride he took control of the media, banned opposition parties, controlled the trade unions, denied members the right to strike, jailed people without trial for merely protesting and nationalised industries which had previously been doing well… leaving Tanzania one of the poorest countries on earth’. The writer concluded that ‘if Mbeki follows in the footsteps of Nyerere, it won’t be to oversee an African renaissance but an African mass funeral’. Another article on the same day in the same paper under the heading ‘Tanzania feels the pain of indifference’ quoted Christopher Mwakasese, Director of Tanzania’s ‘Social and Economic Trust’ (an NGO) as being angry about the way in which Africa’s needs for debt relief were being handled by the World Bank and IMF. He said that out of 25 World Bank agricultural projects in Tanzania 13 had negative rates of return. The South African BUSINESS DAY (November 18) reported that the South African company Murray and Roberts is going to build, starting in 1999 a large shopping complex in Dar es Salaam to be know as the Mali Msasani in which other South African firms are expected to open shops –Thank you David Leishman for sending these items from South Africa Editor.

LIBERALISED TELECOMMUNICATIONS
A supplement on Tanzania produced by PM Communications for the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (November 15) included statements by government officials and others (covering all sectors) and pointed out the rapid development of telecommunications since the sector was liberalised in 1993. Tritel, one of the main operators of cellular telephones said that it has gained 10,000 subscribers in two and a half years, and with Mobitel, the other main operator, there would be around 40,000 mobile phone users by the end of 1999. Tritel is a joint venture with a Malaysian company which has invested almost $40 million. Mobitel, which has the greater share of the market, is a joint venture with Millicom International Cellular and is busy extending its operations to Mbeya, Shinyanga and Tanga –Thank you Donald Wright for sending this item ­Editor.

THE COAST
A new glossy international travel magazine called SWAHILI COAST, which is designed to promote coastal eco-tourism, published its first issue in July. The first article advertised the Zanzibar Film Festival and the second article, supported by beautiful reproductions, featured Tingatinga art. Professor Sherrif wrote about the sad life of Princess Salme, the daughter of Seyyid Said, the nineteenth century ruler of Oman and Zanzibar, who fell in love with a young German trader, Rudolph Heinrich Ruete, who lived only three years after their marriage. The princess resided in Germany for most of the rest of her life. The concluding article was a short history of Mafia by Peter Byme.

COMMUNAL RESPONSIBILTY
Another volunteer, Patrick Wilson (from ‘Health Projects Abroad ­ HPA’) has been describing life in a Tanzanian village. His story filled a page in the SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE (May 17). ‘ ……. people have a strong sense of communal responsibility. Recently, when a man was hit on the head and couldn’t work for months, every family in the village gave his family rice or vegetables. The villagers are amused at our attitude to work; when they learnt that an HPA engineer had been working a l2-hour day in England, they were flabbergasted. “Was your family starving?” they asked …… a visit to the movies is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. One day we heard we could see a film in a certain village. After riding on our Chinese bicycles for two hours, we arrived to find a man with a video. We watched it outside on a TV run from half an old car which was so noisy that we could hardly hear what was going on. The video turned out to be a terrible Chinese martial arts film dubbed into American Irish. Every time there was a fight scene the audience leapt to its feet and an imitation fight ensued. Then the car engine cut out because it had run out of petrol. Some men cycled off furiously to find petrol. An hour later petrol was found and the video resumed. But it soon cut out again. The whole thing took all day’ –Thank you Cath Rowlatt for sending us this story -Editor.

CONVERTING FEAR INTO HOPE
‘What previous chief executives of the National Bank of Commerce (NBC 1997 Ltd) could not achieve in several years, Dr. Francis Mlozi and his team have accomplished in 10 months. Mlozi has turned the crumbling, debt laden bank from a dying loser to a profitable winner’ -so wrote BUSINESS IN AFRICA in its October-November 1998 issue. The article was full of praise for the newly restructured bank. The author wrote that Mlozi’s first task had been that of converting fear into hope for his 1,000 staff and ultimately for his customers. Thousands of customers had left. Just three months into his “change for the better programme’, NBC 1997 hit profits. These totalled Shs 2.5 billion in the last quarter of 1997 but by June 1998 had reached the “incredible’ figure of Shs 10.5 billion. Mlozi considers Tanzania ‘over-banked’ -there are now 23 commercial banks in the country -but this competitiveness was not negative in the short term he said.

CO-OPERATIVES AND LIBERALISATION
The March 1998 issue of REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL CO­OPERATION contained an article by John Launder analysing the causes of the virtual collapse of certain cooperatives in Eastern and Southern Africa (with particular reference to Tanzania) and how this has affected agricultural industries. He concludes that the effect of liberalisation of marketing has been positive for consumers and larger traders but has been a negative experience for many farmers and may have harmed agricultural development. The lack of support services for small traders, particularly for finance, has delayed the establishment of an efficient marketing system. Liberalisation was poorly managed and was introduced too quickly after structural adjustment started. He concludes that a key issue is the integration of cooperatives and other marketers to produce an effective market base for agricultural development ­Thank you Peter Yea for sending this item -Editor.

THE PAIN OF INDIFFERENCE
The GUARDIAN WEEKLY (October 18) pointed out that when Asian currencies collapsed last year the IMF came to the rescue with multi-billion dollar bail-outs. However, since 1985 when Tanzania started its IMF structural adjustment programme, the Shilling had been devalued by 1,500% yet the country did not qualify for debt relief until 2002. The article quoted Christopher Mwakasese of the Tanzania Social and Economic Trust as complaining about this and also about the World Bank demanding repayment of loans for its own badly designed projects. Out of 25 agricultural projects 13 had had a negative rate of return, he said.
Thank you John Pearce for sending this item from Australia ­Editor.

CONTROVERSIAL TOURISM PROPOSAL
DEVELOPMENTS, the journal of Britain’s Department of International Development, had a page on the proposed new £2.5 billion tourist project in the Nungwi peninsular in northern Zanzibar in its Issue 3 of 1998. The ‘East African Development Company’ has leased 57 sq. kms. to create a resort which is intended to include 14-16 luxury hotels, timeshare villas, a world trade centre, three golf courses and Olympic-size swimming pools. But ‘Tourism Concern’ is expressing alarm about the 20,000 local people who may have to be uprooted and what it terms the massive environmental damage which would be caused. The developers deny the charges. They said that the government would have 26% of the shares in the joint company and that the people would receive water, electricity, sewerage and new roads under the project.
Criticism of the project was much stronger in the London OBSERVER (August 30) which had an item on the front page and a full page inside under the heading ‘On the Crooked Road to Zanzibar’ in which it claimed that two British businessmen with criminal records were masterminding the project to turn the ‘paradise’ island of Zanzibar into a playground for rich tourists. The Observer’s reporters, having tracked down the businessmen in addresses in Hampshire, the Isle of Man and Cyprus were left feeling that the necessary funds would never be raised. Villagers at Nungwi were found either not to know anything about the project or too afraid to speak about it except a certain dhow maker (who had been making dhows since he was 15) and was very concerned about losing his living.

THE BLUE BICYCLE
In its series ‘About Us’ the BBC’s FOCUS ON AFRICA (October­December) featured its man in Zanzibar, Ally Saleh and his blue bicycle -a bike which he claimed was more famous in Zanzibar than President Amour’s Mercedes 280. ‘I take my job very seriously’ he wrote ‘and have even managed to shake the government a few times. And the government has shaken me .. .I’ve been visited by plain-clothes policemen on more than one occasion and I’m not exactly a stranger to the inside of a prison cell. I spent a 30-day vacation in Zanzibar’s central jail in May 1998 after I was accused of taking part in an illegal demonstration …. ‘ Sal eh, who is disabled following polio at the age of four, concluded: ‘Everyone tells me to get rid of my trusty bicycle and get a car. A car? What for?

ARMS TRADE
NEW AFRICAN (December) shared the surprise of many on learning that the Tanzanian Government had suddenly decided to liberalise its arms trade at a time when shootings and killings by gangsters are frequently hitting the headlines. This was a radical change of policy, the article wrote, and followed the bankruptcy of the government owned company which had previously controlled the arms trade. But Home Affairs Minister Ali Ameir Mohamed denied the dangers. “Guns are not going to be sold like tomatoes in the market” he said. “Only experienced former army officers will be arms importers and only light weapons will be traded”.

THE BOMB
It is difficult to recall any occasion in recent history during which Tanzania has received so much international media attention as it did in the days following the setting off of a powerful bomb near the US embassy in Dar es Salaam at 10.45 am on August 7. Ten people were killed and scores injured. The bomb, whose explosion was heard six kilometres away, destroyed the Eastern side of the embassy and seriously damaged five adjacent buildings. Twenty two cars, three motor cycles and five bicycles were destroyed. It damaged the Nigerian Embassy and the residences of several Ambassadors and High Commissioners. Senior reporter Kajubi Mukajanga wrote in the Dar es Salaam ‘Daily Mail’: ‘The wreckage, the screeching Red Cross ambulances, the stern paramilitary unit, the hordes of reporters and TV crews, the sombre atmosphere, made the vicinity of the embassy like a war zone ….. Dar es Salaam, once called the rumour capital of the world by Mwalimu Nyerere, ….. succeeded in proving him right. Theories were flying all over. It was revenge by the Oklahoma bombers …. a missile had been fired from the Indian Ocean …. .it was the work of Saddam Hussein …… ‘

DEPORTATIONS
The South African BUSINESS DAY quoted on March 23 a report from Dar es Salaam to the effect that Tanzania had deported illegal aliens from several countries including Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and Saudi Arabia in a move to check increasing Muslim fundamentalism (Thank you David Leishman for sending this item -Editor).

THEFT BLAMED ON MALARIA DRUG
A court case which received wide publicity in the London EVENING STANDARD and other British newspapers in April concerned a geography master at Harrow School who was found guilty of stealing £35,000 paid by parents for a school trip to Tanzania in 1996. The accused said in court that he began to behave oddly after taking the anti-malaria drug Larium. Part of the money had been used by the teacher to get fit before facing a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro.

STAR LETTER
The ‘star’ readers letter in the July-September issue of the BBC’S FOCUS ON AFRICA came from a reader in Handeni who complained bitterly that Tanzania was always in the international limelight during the Nyerere years and during his crusade against colonialism but that Focus’s cover of Tanzania nowadays was insignificant. He went on: ‘You may consider Tanzania boring and its people weak-willed and timid. Well, I have news for you. Our nation is engulfed in economic chaos and decline. …. Our health and education sectors are failing. The majority of our people are pathetically poor. And yet ‘Focus on Africa’ still finds nothing of interest to say about us!’

NOT FAR AWAY FROM THE GARDEN OF EDEN!
Adam and Eve saw the light of day among the savannahs and the forests of Africa. This announcement from the Vatican, where an international conference on human genoma was held earlier this year, was quoted in the April 30 issue of the Italian daily LA REPUBLICA. The article went on: ‘Father Angelo Serra, a Jesuit at Milan’s Catholic University, explained that the Garden of Eden, where human beings appeared for the first time approximately 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, should be in one of the regions of South or East Africa. Lay scientists already knew this, but hearing it proclaimed by the Vatican makes a definite impression.
Q: “Padre Serra, was Eden really in Africa?”
A: “Yes, between South Africa and Tanzania.”
Q: “How did you come to this conclusion?”
A: “We did so by studying the genetic information contained in the chromosomal nuclei. Scientists have been analysing the sequences of the molecules since 1989. There are 6,000 million of them in a human being; 3,000 million in an ovum or in a spermatozoon. It is like reading backwards through the pages of an enormous volume. Studies made on the DNA of several different populations show that it is possible to trace back beyond mutation, to an ancestor of Homo Sapiens who lived in Africa. From there the descendants of Adam and Eve emigrated to other continents’.
Q: “Any theological problems?”
A: “None”.
(Thank you Ugo Fornari in Rome for sending us this item – Editor)

NEW SPECIES
The OXFORD TIMES (July 31) claimed that a team of Oxford researchers had returned from the Mkomazi Game Reserve after discovering thousands of previously unknown insects and even mammals plus up to 1,500 plants. They were uncovered during a ten-year study by Dr Malcolm Coe on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society (Thank you Brian Costeloe for this item – Editor).

UNEXPLOITED CONTACTS
In an unusually Tanzania-friendly article in its May 30 issue THE ECONOMIST noted that, in the rest of Africa, Tanzania is seen as Mr Nice Guy. In the 1970’s and 1980’s it paid a heavy economic price for backing liberation movements in other African countries. ‘Some of Africa’s most influential leaders spent their formative years in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam’s little hotels are still crowded with Africans from elsewhere. Tanzania has never exploited its continent-wide contacts. But one day these grateful friends may play a part in waking up this somnolent old socialist’. (Thank you Philip Clarke for this item – Editor).

IMPRESSIVE ACHIEVEMENT
‘One by one they entered the conference hall. President Mkapa, his predecessor Ali Hassan Mwinyi and the country’s first president Julius Nyerere. Smiling broadly, the three politicians waved to the applauding crowd …..The scene dramatically illustrated Tanzania’s success in achieving peaceful, democratic transitions of government. Very few other African counties, if any, can boast of having a current president and two former leaders together in the same room. By the measures of the continent, the country’s political stability is an impressive achievement.’ So began an article in the GUARDIAN WEEKLY
recently.

BLEAK FUTURE
A recent article in the ECONOMIST referred to what it described as the bleak future for Zanzibar’s traditional cash crop because Indonesia’s economic collapse ‘will almost certainly curtail demand for the scented Kretek cigarettes that absorb the bulk of the world’s clove crop.. . . But Zanzibar’s tourist industry is booming; the Zanzibar Investment Promotion Agency has approved $260 million-worth of projects in tourism, ten times the total for other industries. Tourist revenue is expected to be $2.5 million this year, twice that of the year before’ (Thank you Debbie Simmons, for these two items – Editor).

£1 OFF DEBT
The TIMES (April 4) gave publicity to a campaign being organised by the charity Christian Aid under which people are invited to attach £1 coins to cards which are then sent to constituency MP’s for forwarding to British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown as a contribution to relief of developing world debt. The first £6,300 raised has been put towards reducing (fractionally) Tanzania’s debt to Britain (Thank you Betty Wells and Christine Lawrence for sending the newspaper cutting -Editor). The TIMES also chose as the picture to illustrate an article on the economic situation in China a photograph of the Guard of Honour in Beijing which had greeted President Mkapa on his arrival for a state visit in early April. The next day it printed a picture of some of the miners who had escaped from the tragedy in Arusha Region mentioned above.

DEBT RELIEF. WHY NOT UNTIL 2002?
On April 14 the TIMES, quoting from Oxfam material, explained why Tanzania is going to have to wait several years before it can benefit from the ‘Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC)’ described in TA No 59. The article explained how Uganda had just become the first country to ‘get its hands on some of the money’. Mozambique had gone through the tortuous qualification process but would still not see any cash until the end of another year-long review. The article went on: ‘For all the colourful photo opportunities afforded by the Clinton’s recent grand tour of Africa, a desperately poor country such as Burkina Faso will not get any relief until at least 2000. Tanzania, where Hillary and Chelsea went on safari, may never be eligible for debt relief even though one in six children die there before the age of five. Tanzania is a particularly perverse example of the IMF’s strict eligibility criteria. Countries have to take part in IMF economic reforms for six years before being eligible. Tanzania has been in IMF programmes since the mid-1980’s but will still not qualify until at least 2002 because it temporarily fell out with the donor community in 1994 over targets for revenue collection. The IMF dates the start of Tanzania’s HIPC track record from November 1996 when it inaugurated a fresh adjustment programme. It gets no credit for past participation in IMF programmes (Thank you Christine Lawrence for bringing this information to our attention -Editor).

HOW TANZANIA MADE A MAN OF HIM!
Ann McFerran didn’t want to embarrass her 19-year son Patrick by turning up at his ‘gap-year’ project. But his letters home persuaded her to have one last adventure’ These were the first words in a full-page article in the DAILY TELEGRAPH on February 14 under a headline (‘How Africa made a man of my son’) which probably did embarrass him! When offered snake for dinner one night the son asked his mother “where else will you eat snake.” He suggested that she should ‘live a little.’ The 51-year old mother admitted to being torn between total revulsion and a renewed thirst for adventure. The son was clearly enjoying himself as his letters from a British charity project near the Tarangire National Park had indicated. “On Sunday morning I got up before dawn to meet a Tanzanian who took me to find gold. . .we walked for four hours” . . . .. “I went to the nearest town for my birthday and found myself staring amazed at a water tap. I wish you could see this place.” The mother concluded her article: ‘On our last day we visited a cultural village in Tarangire’s wildlife conservation area….in a Maasai village we were greeted like visiting royalty, our hands grabbed by women and children.. .as the sun set young men began a rhythmic chant that seemed to explode though their throats as they jumped in the air in perfect unison. We watched mesmerised. Later we sat in silence under the stars -closer and wiser ….I pondered how Africa had changed my son into a thoughtful young man.’ (Thank you Donald Wright for sending us this article -Editor).

COKE IS BEST!
BUSINESS IN AFRICA (December-January) had some difficulty in concealing its surprise, if not indignation, when it published a six-page news article about an inaugural award (the ‘US Corporate Citizenship Africa Award’) by the ‘US Corporate Council for Africa’ to the Coca Cola Company. It asked whether a soft drink made of 99% sugar and water should have been allowed to reach the position where its annual sales surpassed the economies of whole regions of Africa. Defenders of the award had pointed out, however, that the company had invested or committed $600 million in Africa including $50 million in Tanzania. The total investment was about half of US aid to the continent in 1997. Some $30 million had been devoted to charity in recent years and there had been a great deal of sport sponsorship in East Africa. But no mention was made of the profits obtained by Coca Cola in Africa. (Meanwhile, the EAST AFRICAN reports that Bonnie Bottlers of Moshi has received an award from Coca Cola for reaching the ‘international quality standard’ benchmark in the production of Coke – Editor).

TOURISM TN ZANZIBAR
‘Forget the ski slopes. The rich and famous are chilling out in the tropical hotspots of Jamaica and Zanzibar’ wrote Grace Berry in THE TIMES (January 29). ‘They’re just tripping over one another to get to Zanzibar…. Designer Amanda Wakeley gets the inspiration for her collections there’. But Tanzanian authorities are not happy about the thousands of budget tourists or backpackers flocking there according to the South African SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (February l). These foreigners, they say, promote decadence and crime. Zanzibaris call them vishuka (those who wear rags) says Omar Ali, a senior official in the Criminal Investigation Department. According to unofficial figures they spend less than $20 a day and promote drugs and sex through their loose association with beach boys. The article went on to say that crime is low in Zanzibar but on December 27 the DAILY TELEGRAPH reported that a 28-year old German visitor had been shot dead, allegedly by members of the Tanzania Defence Forces at Fumba, 25 kms from Zanzibar town in a restricted area close to a military camp. Officials were reported as saying that the incident happened after the visitor refused to be searched But critics, including tour operators, argue that no sign was posted to warn visitors to stay away. The Tanzania Tourist Board opposes a ban on backpackers saying that it would impair efforts to boost the tourist industry. Although they are usually thrifty, a good word from them back home, always brings other visitors, the Board says. Ali’s remarks were said to reflect only the concerns of the security authorities.

The SUNDAY TIMES (January ll) reported that a British tourist couple were attacked by seven robbers and stabbed while walking at 11 pm near the Serena Inn. Two German women were reported to have been mugged in the same area and another tourist was mugged on a beach at 3pm. The British High Commission was advising people to exert caution on quiet beaches and in urban areas at night. As we go to press it is reported that CCM has expressed shock at an incident in which six thugs armed with knives gang raped a female European volunteer in Zanzibar town. (Thank you David Leishman ,from South Africa and Geoffrey Stoke11 for sending parts of this information Editor).

ILLEGAL INHABITANTS
The January issue of THE MSITU NEWSLETTER is again packed with extracts of news stories about the environment. The main story complains that a government decree of May 1997 under which all illegal inhabitants of the 4,362 ha Kazimzumbwi Forest reserve (Coast Region) should move out within three months, had fallen on deaf ears. Agricultural activities, tree felling for charcoal and construction of houses were continuing.

A page was devoted to the news that the government had approved, in spite of strong opposition from environmental groups (worried about the possible impact it will have on the Rufiji Delta) a prawn farming project by the Dar es Salaam-based ‘African Fishing Company’. (Thank you Joy Clancy of the University of Twente in the Netherlands for sending this information on the strength of the opposition to this project. The article you sent indicated that 10,000 ha of mangrove shrubs (of eight specie) would have to he cleared; that the sea and fish could suffer ,from pollution from prawn waste and fertilisers; and, it was doubtful !f there would be enough fish available to feed the prawns -Editor).

THE CHILDREN OF THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS
The JOHANNESBURG STAR reported in mid February that some 340 children fathered by South African freedom fighters during the struggle against apartheid are battling to make a living in Tanzania. Only those whose fathers died during the struggle can apply to the South African High Commission in Dar es Salaam for assistance from a special pension fund set up by the South African government. An ANC spokesman said that party members who were still alive had the responsibility of looking after their children.

THREATENED BIRDS
Tanzania featured prominently in an illustrated 4-page article in the spring 1998 issue of BIRDS. The article, about the ‘Royal Society of Birds International Network’, written by Paul Buckley, Zul Bhatia and Rob Lake, explained that the 19 bird species which are found only in Tanzania are threatened. Since 1993 the RSPB has supported a project in the Uluguru Mountains under Zul Bhatia, where there are 15 birds of special conservation interest. Pride of place goes to the Uluguru bush shrike, a critically threatened species found only in these forests. Few people have seen it and little is known of its ecology; it is believed to live in the lower forests, just those that are under greatest danger through increasing human pressure. An exciting discovery had been finding the globally threatened Usambara eagle owl, previously thought to be found only in two other mountain ranges. The main object of the RSPB’s efforts has been to understand pressures on the forest, the perceptions of local people and ways to involve them in managing the forest to improve the quality of life and ensure its protection (Thank you Donald Wright for sending this item -Editor).

PACKED WITH INTEREST
The September-December issue of the glossy and colourful magazine TANZANIA WLLDLIFE is packed with articles of interest to Tanzanophiles. Subjects covered include ‘A Resource Taken for Granted’ (the coastal mangroves), ‘An NGO’s Crusade’ (fighting dynamite fishing and the destruction of coral reefs), ‘The Triple Disaster at Lake Victoria’ (an endemic species of fish is being wiped out; fish smoking is reducing the forest cover; a fast spreading weed is choking marine life); ‘The Art of Survival’ (the Defassa Waterbuck); ‘Why Does A Crocodile Lie With Its Mouth Open? (nobody seems sure but the best hypothesis is that mouth-gaping allows escape of body heat); ‘Star Gazing in Tanzania’ (the country’s first star gazing station is being established in the Selous Game Reserve); ‘From Wedding Present to Global Heritage Site’ (the story of how Kaiser Wilhelm I gave his wife the biggest wedding anniversary present in the annals of romance); ‘Zanzibar’s Wonder Crab’ (which actually climbs coconut trees!); and, an article on page 19 asks why a coastal bat flies low over the ocean with its abdomen in the water. Is it washing prior to evening prayers?

The equally colourful magazine of the Zanzibar Commission for Tourism, KARIBU ZANZlBAR (Third Quarter 1997) also has a variety of stories – ‘The Secret Ruins’, ‘The Cradle Of Standard Kiswahili’, ‘Organic Spice Tours’, ‘The Next Triathlon and Marathon’, ‘The Mwaka Kogwa Festival. Another article tells the story of Bushiri bin Maulid, a freed slave, who found himself in South Africa in the 1920’s and faced many problems in trying to obtain his Zanzibar nationality certificate.

MARRIAGE OF WOMAN TO WOMAN
The South African SUNDAY INDEPENDENT on November 9 described one of the customs of the Kuria people in North Mara – nyumba ntobu, (a house manned by a woman) under which women are allowed to marry women. This is not a homosexual relationship but is designed to continue the lineage of wealthy families in which there are no males. Normally an older woman marries another after paying a bride price. The woman so married is free to choose a man to procreate with, but the children will belong to the older woman. Health workers say that this tradition contributes to the spread of HIV because men do not like to use condoms. Nyumba ntobu wives have become major contributors to the spread of HIV. Why would a woman many another woman? Because of the liberty such marriages offer, the article says. Such women escape the sexual harassment they would typically endure from a husband.

MARRIAGE OF GIRLS
The recently publicised arranged marriage to an MP of a Form 1 schoolgirl studying at the Jamhuri Secondary School in Dar has infuriated human rights activists, wrote the South African INDEPENDENT on September 28. They were quoted as saying that, even though Islamic law allowed such marriages, the 1978 Education Act did not condone them. The article went on to note how the imposition of school fees was weighing heavily on girls. While there was still some parity in enrolment between girls and boys at primary school, girls represented only 40% at secondary schools, 25% at A level and only 5% at university level. (Thank you David Leishman for this and the other item above Editor).

THE ITALIANS
‘Nobody ever seems to mention the Italians’ wrote Mark Ottaway in a travel feature on Zanzibar in the SUNDAY TIMES recently. Extracts: ‘The Italians are by far the majority of tourists. They send in two jets a week from Milan and have done so for years. Zanzibar might be our far horizon but it has become their backyard. One might wonder what kind of Italian is happy to invest considerable sums in such a precarious investment climate. But, for their customers at least, it is a case of easy come easy go dolce far niente. Because their tour operators haven’t liked to tell them that this is a strict Muslim society in which they are expected to cover up, the Italians waver between making themselves unpopular, or sticking to the beach, and that isn’t much of a contest. This leaves Zanzibar to the rest of us, with the Italians an interesting footnote to our perceptions of place, sunning themselves topless around the pool, or, if it is remote enough, on the beach.. . ..’

“YOU FEEL YOU’VE GOT AFRICA COMING UP THROUGH YOUR FEET”
So said Rita Hamilton quoted in an article in THE TIMES on November 22 when describing a 120-mile sponsored trek in temperatures of up to 120 degrees in Tanzania’s Great Rift Valley. Some £40,000 was raised for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children which supports projects to help the Maasai each year. A donation was made to cover the cost of 800 cataract operations. “It was the hardest walk of my life and the most rewarding week I have ever spent” she said. (‘Thank you John Sankey-for this item – Editor.

The DAILY MAIL WEEKEND MAGAZINE (August 23) devoted four pages to the diary of Sarah Ashworth (25) and Roslyn Poole (24) who have spent two years at the ‘Animal Behaviour Research Unit’ studying yellow baboons and monitoring vegetation in the Mikumi National Park. Extracts: ‘We found our baboons, all 24 of them, peacefully s o h g up the sun. They are given Kiswahili names soon after they are born and it’s quite easy to recognise each one. Our study involves following an individual for 20 minutes at a time; we usually get through eight each day. We also have to collect their droppings which are sent to the U.S. to be analysed for stress hormones, looking for a link with the reproductive fitness of the females …. The only irritations are the incessant biting of the tsetse flies – when their proboscis sinks into your flesh it feels like a hypodermic needle.. . . . .I glanced down and noticed a squirming, red mass of pinhead-size ticks covering my body from navel down; I shrieked. We promptly stripped … I flicked open my Swiss army knife and decided the only way of removing them was to scrape the blade across my stomach.. . .that night, each place where a tick had been embedded in my skin swelled up and itched like crazy. When they had scabbed over I counted the scars – 530! …. There was nothing to eat for breakfast again so I decided to make some bread … I wanted it to be perfect.. . . And it was the most perfect bread I’d ever made. I decided to celebrate with a cup of tea on the roof. A baboon came up the ladder behind me – with a great big piece of my best bread in its mouth. More baboons were by the washing line, their cheeks full of delicious fresh bread! (Thank you Ian Enticott for this item – Editor).

PUBLICISING THE DEVIL
NEW AFRICAN (October) quoted Bishop Zakaria Kakobe of the Full Gospel Church as describing a new Tanzanian stamp as ‘publicising the devil.’ “All morally upright people must reject it”, he said. The stamp depicts a couple holding hands at sundown and advises them to use ‘Salama’ condoms. The Rev. Amos Selen of the Pentecostal Church said that letters bearing the stamp on the envelope should be torn to pieces and burnt without reading the contents. But Health Ministry Principal Secretary Ray Mope pointed out that the stamps warned people to protect themselves against AIDS; thousands had died from it. The postal corporation was reported to have had to bow to the storm and withdraw the stamps from circulation, though a huge stock remained unsold.

GREAT SUCCESS STORY
‘A large inflated beer bottle featuring the ‘Kilimanjaro’ brand’s giraffe logo enlivens the shabby industrial site outside Dar es salaam. At Oyster Bay billboards promote the launch of the new Ndovu (elephant) lager. And throughout the country Tanzanians sport ‘Safari Lager’ T-shirts.’ So began one of the articles in the London GUARDIAN’S supplement on Tanzania on December 9 Extracts: ‘The colourful promotion of Tanzania Breweries’ various brands highlights the turn-round of the company from a loss-making state corporation to a dynamic, privately-owned company that, in a few years, has won back 80% of the market. The sale of the Breweries to the giant South African Breweries is the great success story of the country’s privatisation drive.. . . . . (Thank you Joan Wicken for sending us this supplement – Editor)

ROCKING GREEN CREDENTIALS
‘Green Globe’, the environmental arm of the World Travel and Tourism Council – made up of the world’s top 200 tourism corporations – organised environmental ‘clinics’ at the World Travel Market in London recently to help tourism executives to ‘green up’ their act. But, according to THE INDEPENDENT (November 22) there’s obviously a long way to go. The news item referred to a proposed five-mile, $368 million development in Nungwi, northern Zanzibar, in which Forte Meridien (Forte was a founding member of ‘Green Globe’) was involved – a development likely to rock its green credentials, the paper said. Plans were afoot for a presidential-style hotel, an ocean marina, 200 condominiums, 300 luxury villas, a conference centre, a 27- hole golf course and a country club. Local people on the peninsula were quoted as saying that they had not been consulted and were expecting to be ousted from their homes (Thank you Stella Smethurst for this item – Editor).

AFRIKANERS AND DANES
The writer of one of the many letters from readers published in the December issue of NEW AFRICAN stated that he was against the idea of allowing white South African Afrikaners to purchase farms in Tanzania and that it would be unwise for President Mkapa to allow himself to be pressurised by President Mandela into accepting this idea. Another letter, from a certain Kambarage Nyerere, complained about the way Africans are treated in Denmark. ‘We Africans are treated only as drug dealers and social benefit leaches; we are not offered work and yet we are called lazy.. . .’ he wrote. ‘You may ask why I am saying all this and still living there. Not anymore. I an going back home!’

NO ACCIDENT OF GEOGRAPHY OR GEOLOGY
‘It is no accident of geography or geology that Tanzania has just opened its first and only Australian Consulate in Perth’ – so began an article in the WEST AUSTRALIAN (December 1). It went on to mention six Western Australian companies which now had a presence in Tanzania and how the recent slump in the gold price had not caused any drop-off in investor interest. The potential for discovering high quality deposits with low labour costs had probably made investment in gold in Tanzania relatively more attractive than before (Thank you Mr D Gledhill for sending this item – Editor).

WHERE HAS THE MAGIC GONE?
‘I stood on the banks of the Ngoitokitok Springs in the heart of the famed Ngorongoro Crater gnawing miserably on a cold greasy chicken thigh. It was high noon in one of our planet’s great wildlife areas and ringed around me, as far as my eyes could see, sat four-wheel drive vehicles of every make known to man; I counted 55 of them. Their passengers waddled around, eating the chicken and stale bread from box lunches and taking group photos. Circling yellow-billed lutes provided the thrills, dive bombing to snatch a chicken leg here and a bread roll there. Squeals of surprise. Squeals of delight. Squeals … …. Where … oh where has the magic gone?’ – a writer in the Johannesburg SATURDAY STAR (November 10) – Thank you David Leishmann for this item – Editor).

TELECOMMUNICATIONS – THE FUTURE
Tanzania currently has three telephones per 1,000 people according to Lisa Sykes writing in the VS0 publication ORBIT (Third Quarter 1997). She goes on to propose possible solutions for people in developing country rural areas where phones are very few and far between. Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS) systems have orbits much closer to earth than current telecoms stations and simple had-held phones will be able to receive from them. Solar-powered payphones linked to Immarsat, an existing network, are proving successful. Near the Ngorongoro Crater an Immarsat terminal is being installed which will allow fax, voice and data communications; part of the revenue earned will be fed back into local infrastructure.

And, according to MAF NEWS (November) a former systems analyst for the World Trade Centre in London, Simon James-Morse, has installed a new modem which connects the computer to a telephone line and smooths out the wrinkles in the telephone service caused by poor quality lines in Dodoma. The report was headed ‘Harnessing the benefits of computer technology to help advance God’s Kingdom (Thank you Christine Lawrence for these items – Editor).

CHARITY SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN AT HOME
Extracts from a letter to the editor of the London Evening Standard (November 4): ‘Two articles in your newspaper provide an ironic contrast on how this country deals nowadays with people in need.. .one describes the plight of 80- year old Joshua Reynolds, discharged from hospital after a hip replacement and left without any help of any sort. .. ..the other writes about a family, political refugees from some unproven danger in Tanzania, who are given first-class treatment with a modern house on a private estate and additional benefit payments … ..yet if you suggest that men and women like Joshua Reynolds should be given priority over immigrants ….. one runs the danger of facing unwarranted accusations of racism by numerous well-organised lobbies.’

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CORRUPTION IN AID?
Under this title, in the June issue of Transparency International’s Newsletter, Brim Cooksey blamed foreign aid for much of the corruption found in developing countries. He wrote that one of the main reasons for the disappointing performance of structural adjustment programmes was systematic corruption. An extreme example had been Tanzania’s import substitution programme which had allowed local manufacturers to import raw materials and finished goods. Some companies stopped paying counterpart funds. Import duty and sales taxes were not paid on some imports. Neither the Treasury nor the commercial banks had the administrative capacity or the integrity to handle large volumes of free foreign exchange and the donors ignored the problem.. . . ‘in December 1996 the IMF started disbursing a US$240 million structural adjustment loan but to date not one private or parastatal company has been put in receivership for the hundreds of millions of donor dollars which went astray ….pressure to spend (donor money) has led to unbelievable over funding.. . .well known examples are NGO’s, many of which are created with the sole objective of embezzling donor money’.

The writer went on to say that the picture emerging from the recent Warioba Report on corruption was that of an oppressed people largely at the mercy of an incompetent and corrupt state apparatus. Unfortunately, the report had not mentioned corruption in aid and this matter should be explored (Thank you Ron Fennel1 for this item – Editor).

ELEPHANTS
AFRICA (July-August) reported that singing of Ishe Konzberera (God Bless Africa) greeted the 74-21 vote at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Harare to relax the protection of the African elephant in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe and allow regulated sales of ivory in 1999.

SPARTAN SPLENDOUR
Dr. Adbayo Williams, wrote in AFRICA TODAY (July/August) about what he described as the ‘new generation of visionary African leaders’ now emerging on the continent. It contrasted former President Mobuto of Zaire who ‘will spend his last days in lonely exile’ on the one hand with Nelson Mandela ‘who will be granted his last wish to die with a smiling face’, Leopold Senghor of Senegal who was spending his last days in ‘refined retirement’ and Julius Nyerere who, ‘in spartan splendour, still continues to function as the father of his nation’.

HELL ON EARTH
Tanzanians figured prominently in a two-page article in the July/August issue of NEW AFRICAN under the heading ‘Turkey: Hell on Earth for African Immigrants’. Istanbul was said to have less than 1,000 African immigrants but half of them were currently in detention, rotting away on trumped up charges. The trouble had started, the article said, when a Tanzanian was caught with heroin stuffed in his back-pack in June 1996. ‘This gave the Turkish police the excuse to raid the apartments of other Africans in the city…. Later, 43 Africans (mostly Tanzanians) were caught crossing illegally into Turkey from Greece. The immigration police promptly put them in detention. A week later the narcotics police arrested a Tanzanian with 500 grammes of heroin. The police then went straight to the African hostel, took out 13 other Africans, and planted heroin on them. A year later they are still in detention….another group was found in the apartment of a Tanzanian who had a postcard photo of a famous Turkish model singer, Hulya Avsar. The police mistook the postcard for a real photograph and thought the Tanzanian (“a monkey from the African jungle”) had had the cheek to take the beautiful model as a girl friend. The police gave the Tanzanian a good beating before realising that it was merely a postcard….’

‘JENGA’
This is the name of the second-best-selling game (after Monopoly) in the world and is, of course, the Swahili word ‘to build’. The object of Jenga, is to take wooden bricks from the bottom of a tower and put them on top without making it fall over. Last year 3 million people bought it. The SUNDAY TIMES (July 6) explained how the inventor of the game, Leslie Scott, who now lives in Denmark, spent the first years of her life in Africa and her first language was Swahili (Thank you Randal Sadleir for this item – Editor).

THE CURATE’S EGG
‘Tourism. The definitive curate’s egg, the pre-eminent mixed blessing’ – so began a recent article in THE SCOTSMAN by Julie Davidson. She went on to say ‘This week I thought of Nasser K. Awadh … whose gene pool is Zanzibar’s history, who draws his pedigree from the Yemen, from Indonesia and also from sub-Saharan Africa … and who recently slapped an Italian visitor. Crowning tourists, rather than hotels, is not one of the traditions of Zanzibar hospitality, but Nasser was defending his island’s dignity. “I asked him several times to stop throwing sweets at the children and then photographing the ensuing scrum of human monkeys but he went on doing it. So I smacked him’. Later we were standing outside the Persian Baths at Kidichi, a relic of the Omani Sultanate, when we saw the same disagreeable device practised by two German men. This time Nasser controlled his itchy palm. He scolded the children instead while I scowled and muttered at the Germans…. The curate’s egg. Nasser knows the merits of its good parts. He is much in demand for his guide’s eloquence and authority, the valued employee of Abercrombie and Kent, the only British tour operator which maintains an office in Zanzibar. But A & K’s exclusive foothold will soon be challenged by Britain’s largest tour operator, Thomson, who will be the first mass market holiday company to go into Zanzibar…..’ (Thank you Fiona Scott for this item – Editor).

INDUSTRIES REVIEW
The INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE (June 11) contained a ‘sponsored page’ written by Richard Synge, who is based in Cambridge, Extracts: ‘Practically every sector of the economy is being transformed. The new Government policies are attracting investor interest from all over the world……analysts say that the first results of foreign direct investments made in the past five years will show over the coming months in the form of a rapid rise in gold exports and a sharp revival in the production of goods and services for the domestic market….evidence of the benefits of reform can be seen clearly in Dar es Salaam where a construction boom is under way. Mwanza is also developing rapidly with banks and other services moving in…. over the next three to five years Tanzania will begin to score some successes that will be noticed internationally…..if Uganda has done it, then Tanzania can do it……’ (Many thanks Ronald Neath for sending this item – Editor).

‘WHAT THE WITCHDOCTOR ORDERED’
This was the heading of a serious article in the DAILY TLEGRAPH (July 2) about how rich Tanzania is in medicinal plants and in people who say they can use them in medicine. With panic in the West that the African repository of potential future drugs will disappear as agriculture spreads across the continent, Tanzania is launching a pioneer project (through the Missouri Botanical Garden) which will try to document this plant world before it is too late and through training of local people, attempt to quell the fears of local scientists about the drug company scientists who, they say, fly in, whip some exciting looking plants from the bush, and then jet home again without benefiting the host country. The author of the article had visited the corner of the market in Dar es Salaam where the healers sell their exotic wares and went on to describe the work of the Tanzanian Institute of Traditional Medicine and of botanists at the university. Mention was made of a pile of gnarled ebony roots in the market used to relieve pain; elephant dung – ‘its smoke treats children’s fits’; and, lion oil ‘which relieves an inflamed leg’ (Thank you Liz Fennel1 for this item – Editor).

CORPORATE AMERICA
‘Kiswahili has found its way into the highest level of corporate America, sort of’. So began a note in the Spring 1997 issue of Mbegu za Urafiki (the Newsletter of (American) Friends of Tanzania) which is based in Maryland and has many former Peace Corps volunteers among its membership. The note continued: ‘The Miami-based Burger King Corporation has appointed Tanga born Dennis Malamatinas (41), the son of Greek sisal farmers as its Chief Executive…. although he left Tanzania at the age of six he still speaks a few words of Kiswahili and is believed to be the highest ranking American business executive who is from Tanzania (thank you Trevor Jaggar for this item – Editor).

BEAUTY CONTESTS
The September issue of NEW AFRICAN contained an article under the heading ‘Tanzania Bans Beauty Contests’ in which it wrote about what it described as the ever growing controversy over beauty contests. Organisers of a MSS Eastern Africa contest in April were warned that they were not to allow competitors to compete in swimsuits. Arguing that all beauty contests in the world allowed swimsuits, the non-Tanzanian entrants threatened to boycott the contest and the organisers backed down. But the government was said to have been furious. Arts and Languages Director Elinkunda Matteru said “We cannot allow our culture to be spoilt. We cannot allow the aping of shameful things with Africans walking in halls”. But former culture minister Philemon Sarungi was said to have defended the wearing of swimsuits as they are worn universally. The debate seems likely to continue.

‘FROM SOCIALIST SHEEP TO CAPITALIST LION’?
In a 7-page cover story in its February issue AFRICAN BUSINESS Maja Wallengren wrote that ‘decades of socialism have so enervated the enterprise spirit in Tanzania that it acquired the unwelcome reputation of being a sheep in a region of predators. All this is about to change and the country is clearing its throat to roar like a lion’. The Director General of the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) was quoted as saying that it was his hope that in the 21st century not only Asian tigers but also some African lions will be roaring in the international economic arena and Tanzania could be one of them.

QUALITY YES; QUANTITY NO.
AFRICAN BUSINESS (March) described the state of Tanzania’s struggling coffee industry as ‘quality not quantity’ following reports that the production in the year 1996/67 would be only 42,000 tonnes, a drop of 20% from the previous year. Traders were quoted as saying that massive replanting schemes were needed to replace the many trees which are 50 to 100 years old and thus increase the average yields from the 250kg per hectare in Tanzania to the Kenya figure of 500 kgs. However, quality was said to be improving and the country was now again earning a world class reputation for its mild Arabica. Production of Robusta coffee in Bukoba remained steady at 12-14,000 tonnes but here the problem was price. Vietnam’s coffee production had increased from 20,000 tonnes in the mid-1980’s to almost 250,000 tonnes for 1996/97 which was depressing world prices (A massive new replanting programme is about to start under a $14 million EC aid grant – Editor).

“SOOO POOR”
Zoe Heller, the columnist in the SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE explained (on March 9) how she had thrown over her boyfriend and, in order to distance herself from him, moved from Los Angeles to New York. But she doesn’t seem very happy with her new friends: ‘I have been out to a dinner party at a fancy house on the Upper East Side’ she wrote. ‘There was a revolting deb type there banging on about her recent jaunt up Kilimanjaro. “God, Africa, I mean, it’s sooo poor”! she kept on bellowing. “But so real, you know”. She told me about how fetchingly hard her thighs got during her ascent. ” ….. my porter was sooo sweet – when it got really cold and my nose was running, he’d take a handkerchief and wipe my nose for me”. “Ah, yes” I murmured “those marvellous Tanzanians, they do make remarkably good bearers, don’t they ……. ”

THE ‘MAGIC WAND’
NEW AFRICA (February) recounted how Mwalimu Julius Nyerere recently sold his famous cane or ‘magic wand’ as he calls it to raise funds for his sponsorship of the education of bright but poor children. Dozens of wealthy Tanzanians wanted to buy it. Former UN Adviser Gertrude Mongella was said to have offered Shs 3 million but it was local business tycoon and soccer financier Ahmed Bora who eventually got it for Shs 4.5 million. Nyerere was said to have been shocked by this revelation of the wealth of Tanzania’s new capitalist class. One of his relatives said that Mwalimu had lots of sticks and he had probably sold one of the powerless ones, not the magic one. Midst much public criticism Mr Bora decided to give the stick back to Mwalimu. No one knew whether he got his money back. Some were said to believe that the wand just refused to stay in Bora’s hands.

‘WHERE TO BE MUGGED’
Under this heading the INDEPENDENT published a guide to mugging (based on information from the British Foreign Office Travel Advice Unit) in its issue of March 1. Countries featured in this particular issue included Indonesia, Iran, Sierra Leone and Swaziland. On Tanzania it wrote: ‘Incidents of mugging and theft are common especially on public transport and beaches. Food should not be accepted from strangers as it may be drugged. Armed car thefts, particularly of four-wheel drive vehicles occur fairly frequently and may be accompanied by personal violence (Thank you Jane Carroll for this item- Editor).

BUREAUCRATIC HURDLES
The JOHANNESBURG STAR’s BUSINESS REPORT in its issue dated January 23 was highly critical of Tanzania’s six-year old investment act and wrote that the country was now rewriting its investment code. ‘The Investor Road Map of Tanzania’ sponsored by USAID had ranked it among countries with the worst investment hurdles. The article went on: ‘The report said that it took between 545 and 1,095 days to lodge an application for business …. there were delays in finding land, high taxes, poor infrastructure and far too many forms to fill in. In all, a firm in Dar es Salaam could expect to submit at least 89 separate filings per year ….. and financial institutions had to submit up to 235 returns every year. …. While it takes only one or two days to clear imports into Mauritius, Namibia or South Africa, in Tanzania it takes up to three months’. The article went on to describe the changes likely under the new code with its one-stop centre and a ‘facilitation office’ which was expected to make a considerable improvement in the investment climate.

ONE MAN COMPENDIUM
In an article on a recent African music festival at the Barbican in London NEW AFRICAN (February) reported as follows: ‘Tanzania’s much travelled master musician Hukwe Zawose, who is almost a one-man compendium of his nation’s cultural heritage, performed a spellbinding demonstration of song and dance with myriad traditional instruments’. It reminded readers that Hukwe’ s current album Chibeto had been chosen as African Life’s ‘Album of the Year’. The VSO publication ORBIT (fourth quarter 1996) listing the same album in its ‘Top 10 Sounds of 1966’ described Zawose as ‘one of Tanzania’s national treasures and a magical character of mythical proportions’ .

‘MALARIA FEAR FOR AFRICA TRIP MAYOR’
Under this heading the DAILY TELEGRAPH (21/3/97) wrote that a Labour mayor who spent £1,500 of council money on a week-long ‘fact finding’ trip to Musoma, Tanzania has returned with suspected malaria. Dawn Neal’s visit had been criticised at a time of financial cuts on Calderdale Council, West Yorkshire. She was accompanied by her boyfriend Danny McIntire, a fellow councillor and Margaret Berry, the council’s senior environmental health officer. They left Halifax to see the Serengeti Game reserve and advise the locals on tourism and also handed over a piece of medical equipment that can help to clear swallowed fishbones from throats. “This was not a holiday” she said. “It was a fact-finding mission to Calderdale’s twin town and we intend to begin fund-raising to pay for medical supplies for the people of Musoma” but a former mayor, Liberal Democrat Stephen Pearson, said “I don’t believe glad-handing people is going to make a fundamental difference to their quality of life”.

SCHOOL FEES
“When our children do well in primary school we get really worried” said a farmer in the western Usambara mountains. He was peaking to Charles Worth who wrote in CHRISTIAN AID NEWS (February/March) that since the government had imposed fees, secondary education had become a luxury which this family could scarcely afford. Only one family out of 300 in the village were able to send their children to secondary school. … many Tanzanians felt enslaved today because of Tanzania’s massive debt burden – the World Bank and IMF had imposed a structural adjustment programme which had drastically cut government spending on health and education …. ‘ Mr Worth went on: ‘Victorian campaigners had the vision and persistence to help bring an end to the evil of slavery. Can the British churches today catch their spirit, change the rules and end the slavery of debt in Tanzania?’ (Thank you Betty Wells for this item – Ed).

ONE HUNDRED CONSULTANTS
‘That is the staffing level of a London hospital with 300-400 beds and a district population of 200,000 – the same as Muheza district in Tanga Region. In London there are many more junior doctors and a network of GP’s. Muheza has three doctors. If each saw only inpatients for 10 hours a day, seven days a week, that would be 3xlOx7 = 210 hours, half an hour for each inpatient. Yet many are very sick and need more intensive treatment or operations done by the same three doctors. Then there are long hours to be spent seeking outpatients, supervising the laboratory and X-ray, and administration, teaching and trips to the ministry in Dar es Salaam to be fitted in …… ‘ extracts from a recent issue of the NEWSLETTER of ‘MEDICINES FOR MUHEZA’ (Thank you Trevor Jaggar for this item- Editor).

LAUNDERING
The New York WALL STREET JOURNAL has published an article by Robert Greenberger under the heading’ Some Hotels May Do More Laundering of Cash Than Towels’ which has attracted a lot of attention. It stated that there were indications that Zanzibar banking and hotel businesses were being used by foreign investors to launder international drug money. It was alleged that huge sums were being deposited in banks by hotels which had few guests. The IMF has been quoted as saying that shady financial flows were flourishing in Zanzibar but the Government of Zanzibar and the Bank of Tanzania have denied the allegations.

‘ALMOST LIKE HOME’
‘Tanzania may not resemble the famous gold producing regions of Western Australia on the surface, but Australian explorers active in the east African nation reckon that underground it is almost like home. ‘Tanganyika Gold’ has 28 exploration tenements in two main areas – the Lake Victoria Goldfield and the Lupa Goldfield. “it is exciting to be in an area that is very unexplored by Western standards and clearly has a lot of gold” says Managing Director Ian Middlemas. “It has similar geology to W Australia”….. Two tenements have been drilled so far – at Buhemba in the north of the Lake region and Busolwa to the South. The latter included intersects of 32m at 2.48 grams per tonne – a lot of the holes end in mineralisation Mr Middlemas said – THE WEST AUSTRALIAN (December 23) – (Thank you Mr D Gledhill for this item and for the mention of your gold prospecting uncles who were on the Lupa in the 1930 ‘s – Ed).

‘BARRED FROM ANIMAL KINGDOM’
Under this heading, at the end of a speaking tour of Britain by three Maasai spokespeople complaining about the action of the Tanzanian government in driving them from their lands in the interests of game and tourism, the London OBSERVER (April 6) published a half page article. It concentrated on the situation at the Mkomazi Game Reserve in the Same district and contrasted what it described as ‘the glass-fronted house with a satellite dish, verandah and spectacular views’ of manager Tony Fitzjohn (said to be nicknamed ‘boy Tarzan’ by the Maasai) and ‘the fly-infested, stinking animal carcasses, children with distended bodies standing in glum groups … near the boundaries of the 1,400-square mile reserve’. Mkomazi is run by a non-profit trust-making trust set up by the late George Adamson – husband of ‘Born Free’ author Joy Adamson – and Mr Fitzjohn and supported by the wealthy, including Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, and the film stars Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood and Ali MacGraw; the Duke of Kent is a patron. When the trust arrived in 1989 the Maasai thought they would be able to negotiate but they claim that his has not happened and that they were driven out of the land at gunpoint. Sixty three of them are challenging the government in court. The trust, on the other hand, claims that it has succeeded in its conservation task and that the elephant count has gone up from two in ] 968 to 1,000 in 1993; the East African black rhino population had previously been hunted from 65,000 to near extinction; the area was badly overgrazed and there had been serious erosion when the Maasai were there.

SUDECO
AFRICAN BUSINESS (January) had a cover story and seven pages of text on Tanzania’s impressive political and economic progress. One of the articles was about the sad state of the sugar industry due to a severing of government subsidies to the Sugar Development Corporation (SUDECO) and the associated lack of capital for rehabilitation of factories now running at an average of only 50% capacity. It was assumed that SUDECO would be privatised some time this year.

THE MAASAI AND THE MINERS
The BBC WORLD SERVICE in its FARMING TODA Y programme on February 26 reported on the effect of mining for minerals on Maasai cattle keeping around the settlement of Simajiro. Cattle fall into the pits left after the miners of Rhodolite (a pale violet or red garnet) move on to other sites and as the miners encroach upon the surrounds of the village itself. A Maasai spokesman in a taped interview complained also of the water supply problem and a woman reporter spoke of the careful control of overgrazing of the poor land by the Maasai. (Thank you Mr P H C Clarke for this item – Editor).

ARROGANT ANIMALS
“At one time attacks by wild animals constituted 25% of all evacuations” said Juliette Heza, the longest serving flight nurse in the Flying Doctor Service quoted in AMREF NEWS (Spring 1997). “Nowadays”, she said, “most of the patients are from traffic accidents, malaria, cardiac emergencies and exhaustion amongst tourists”. She went on “I’ve treated dozens of hyena bites and snake bites. We still get buffalo attacks – they’re very arrogant animals. They can be very frightening”. The Flying Doctor Service teams aim to leave their base within five minutes of receiving a call for help.

THE BIGGEST RATS
‘They nibble at sleeping people. They gnaw at parcels in the post office. They take free rides in cars and trains …. .rats are on the rampage in Tanzania’ according to NEW AFRICAN (April). Minister of Transport and Communications William Kusila was quoted as claiming that the biggest rats of all were found on Tanzanian trains. “They grow fat on the food brought on board by travellers” he said. The article concluded ‘Foreign funded projects to eliminate crop destroying rodents ceased when donors cut their aid three years ago. Now the whole nation is being overwhelmed by a plague of rats and very little is being done about it’ .

REFUGEE STUDIES
A new Centre for Refugee Studies has been established at the University of Dar es Salaam reports the BRITISH COUNCIL’S AFRICA NEWSLETTER (January 1997). A British Council managed link has been arranged between the Centre and the Refugee Studies Programme at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University (Thank you Trevor Jaggar for this item – Editor).

FROM TOTTENHAM TO TANZANIA
‘A friend of mine, a surgeon, volunteered to work overseas and was swiftly transferred from Tottenham to Tanzania and a post in a city hospital… the wards were adequately equipped and the work was most satisfying … But she found that there was little she could do to affect a series of curious occurrences in one intensive care bed … patients had been passing away with far greater frequency in bed No 13 than occupants of other beds. Some staff thought that the bed was jinxed …. And then our surgeon discovered that the victims of bed 13 all died on the same day – a Wednesday, early in the morning. She decided to stake out the ward. All was quiet until the appearance of the cleaner, mechanically cleaning the floors as usual. Then suddenly, above the grinding din, she could just hear the high-pitched life-support machine alarm bleeping desperately. Springing to the rescue, the surgeon rushed over to see that the intensive care apparatus appeared to be switched off. To her horror she then noticed that the cleaner had been plugging his floor-polisher into the most convenient socket.. … ‘ from ‘Urban Myths’ in THE GUARDIAN (November 11).

(In our last issue there was a story about the difficulties ‘Mission Aviation Overseas’ was facing in obtaining licenses for airstrips in Maasai country. Christine Lawrence tells us that eighteen licences have now been granted – Editor).

(In order to make this part of the Bulletin as interesting and representative as possible we welcome contributions from readers. If you see a mention of Tanzania in the journal, magazine or newspaper you read, especially if you live or travel outside the UK, please cut out the relevant bit, indicate the name and date of the journal, and send it to the address on the back page. If you do not wish your name to be mentioned please say so. We cannot guarantee to publish everything we receive but if your item gives a new or original view about Tanzania we certainly will – Editor)

MWALIMU AT HOME
The NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL devoted a full page in its September 1 issue to ’74-year old African elder statesman Julius Nyerere’ who was visited at his house in Butiama (Musoma); several of his 24 grandchildren were around. Nowadays he spends many of his mornings working in his maize fields and returns to the house at 2pm to have lunch with his wife of 43 years. Most afternoons he spends time in his library reading history, writing essays and later he often plays ‘bao’ with the best players in the village. He always wins! Every evening he attends Mass at the Roman Catholic church. (Thank you Elsbeth Court for this item – Editor).

THE BACK SEAT
A report by the organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has noted that Swedish aid to Tanzania since independence had totalled $3 billion but that the aid had ‘deterred rather than enhanced development and had led to aid dependency’. It should be reduced and then ended. Head of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA) Bo Goransson said he was extremely surprised by the report. “We do not think it is OECD’s task to make suggestions as to what an individual donor does with its aid. He said that the Tanzanian leadership must share the blame for the ‘failed vision’ of self-reliance but he admitted that in dealing with Tanzania “we did take more responsibility than was necessary. The effect was that Tanzanians were moved from the driver’s seat to the back seat in development planning …… We have now started a new process of co-sharing in decision making to ensure that projects are owned by recipient countries” he said – EAST AFRICAN, October 21.

TANZANIA’S IMAGE NOT DAMAGED
During a recent long interview in the French magazine ‘PARIS MATCH’ Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye was asked whether he thought that Tanzania’s image might have been affected in French-speaking countries (where Tanzania was described as having been previously I qui te unknown’) due to the travails of Burundi and Rwanda. He replied “I don’t think it has damaged our image …. Tanzania has been praised by the international community for what it has done for refugees …. when you have a district like Ngara with 200,000 inhabitants and then, within one month, you get 500,000 people coming in you can imagine the pressures …. schools had to be used to accommodate the refugees, forests were destroyed …. if refugees passed though your farm they would cut your bananas or take your maize …. many had terrible wounds and our dispensaries were greatly affected …… ”

UNRELENTING MEDIATION EFFORTS
To coincide with its East African seminar in London the FINANCIAL TIMES (November 5) published a six-page supplement. It said that if East African co-operation reached fruition no one would be able to claim more credit than President Benjamin Mkapa. The recent rapprochement between the Kenya and Uganda presidents, who had been barely on speaking terms, had been largely due to his unrelenting mediation efforts. However, such commitment verged on the chivalrous because, while landlocked Uganda’s interest in sweeping away the barricades blocking its access to international trade seemed clear, Tanzania’s was far less obvious. Its lumbering bureaucracy remained a brake on development and the country was running trade deficits with both Uganda and Kenya.

However, the article went on: ‘Yet Mr Mkapa’s behaviour is not so foolhardy as it may seem. While the short term might be risky, the long-term benefits could be enormous’. Tanzania had huge tracts of unsurveyed and unexploited land; there was gold and minerals and the country was just beginning to recognise its failure to market its extraordinary tourist attractions; it would soon be exporting power to Kenya.

‘A SHARED SOFTNESS’
Two Ugandans and four Tanzanians put on an art exhibition in Kampala in August: Elaine Eliah writing in the EAST AFRICAN (August 26) contrasted their art. The Ugandan prints were ‘explosions of colour’ but there was a ‘softness about the Tanzanians’ styles’ probably due to their greater maturity: the Tanzanians were all significantly older. George Lilanga, from Newala ranked as one of Tanzania’s ‘master artists’ and was proficient in sculpting, pen and ink and batik painting as well as being an expert printmaker. Robino Ntila from Mdanda in Mtwara Region was described as pre-eminent in etching techniques and Francis Inmanjama’s work (he comes from Zanzibar) was said to show detailed realism in its depictions of wildlife and humans; his soft pastels ‘resembled illustrations in old books’.

BAD NEWS ON MALARIA
In what its editorial described as ‘bad news’ the LANCET (September 14) said that the very promising malaria vaccine known as SP166 which was tested in Tanzania last year had been found to offer no protection following a three year study in Thailand. ‘Any notion of actually eliminating the disease I , the Lancet wrote, has long since been abandoned; the operative term is still ‘control’.

A SYSTEM WITHOUT PARALLEL
Under the heading ‘Tanzania: a second garden of Eden’ PEOPLE AND THE PLANET (Vol. 5 No. 1) featured the ‘tree gardens’ of the Chagga people of Mount Kilimanjaro. It described them as an inspiring model of how tropical rainforest could be sustainably managed. Chagga farmers cultivated up to 60 different species of trees on areas of land typically the size of a soccer field. Known locally as vihamba the farms comprised multi-story tree gardens. They originated on patches of forest land where useful species remained standing while other parts were gradually replaced by what was now the main cash crop – coffee. Coffee had arrived at the Kilema mission from the island of Reunion in 1885. Long before the colonial period the Chagga tapped water in steep, remote gorges, digging canals and hollowing out tree trunks to conduct it as irrigation water to settlements on mountain ridges.

‘A DIFFICULT MARKET FOR OUR ADVERTISERS’
An article in the EAST AFRICAN (September 30) compared attitudes to TV advertising in Kenya and Tanzania. In Kenya advertising was throwing off its previously staid image and now testing viewer’s tolerance in hitherto taboo areas such as sex and politics. A very successful Barclays Bank advert had featured a robot dancing to a Zairean-style kwasa kwasa beat; the dancing cash machine was a great hit but some people hated it because the robot danced in a physically suggestive manner. Despite protests, this and other similar advertisements had remained on the air in Kenya.

But in Tanzania things could have been different. A range of factors including a long period of socialism was said to have rooted in the people a deep multi-cultural sensitivity. with its rural and conservative nature, Tanzania was difficult to handle for a globally inclined industry like advertising. A Mr. Sam Madoka was quoted as saying that Tanzania’s resistance to some commercials from Kenya was a commendable insistence on the country’s own identity and protection against the dumping of western concepts. Another advertiser said that “lack of a tangible knowledge of our cultures by expatriates results in the misrepresentation one sees on commercial TV in Kenya”. Others disagreed. Africa could not live in isolation from the rest of the world they said.

MILES AHEAD IN POLITICAL CULTURE
Kenyan journalist John Githongo has been writing in the EAST AFRICAN (October 21) about his long love affair with Tanzania. Extracts: ‘Nyerereism has made Tanzania an extremely refreshing place to visit ….. it is miles ahead of Kenya in political culture; notably absent from the recent by-election was the fierce abuse and threats that are typical of Kenya … then there is the refreshing way the media covered the Dar poll; the ITV went out and interviewed supporters of all parties …… both of Tanzania’s presidential transitions had been carried out peacefully and President Mkapa’s predecessors have not been aggressively marginalised in any way …… but there are two sides to the coin; Kenyans complain that everything takes too long in Dar especially financial transactions … the hunt for profit just isn’t taken seriously …. there is a subsistence mentality …. but I’m an optimist about Tanzania’s future and we in Kenya have a lot to learn from the country’.

REAL MEN
The London TIMES ran a series of articles on feminism and masculinism in mid-October and Lotte Hughes, who said that she had had a long romance with one of them, wrote about the ‘real men’ the Maasai. ‘Warriors dance, sing, cry (I’ve seen warriors weep and shake when their mothers shave off their locks at the Eunoto ceremony), show tenderness, laugh, fight a little, talk a lot to their sweethearts, take care of their families ….. they may look tough but they are true gentlemen with perfect manners ….. sex is guilt-free for both men and women and though Maasai society is patriarchal and polygamous I found that women have a fair amount of power …. these men are attractive because they are “centred”, self-assured without arrogance …. unlike British men who hang back when the going gets tough, these warriors defend their territory and their girlfriends …. to my surprise I rather liked it!’

UMOJA
The first issue of a quarterly newsletter entitled UMOJA has been published by the Tanzania Association in London. The members of the association, which elected a new Executive committee in 1995 (the chairman is Dr. G Mutahaba) are Tanzanians resident in Britain and Ireland. The newsletter contained an article on the increasing numbers of Tanzanians applying for political asylum in Britain. It said that in 1955 about 1,500 people from Zanzibar, including 43 unaccompanied children, had claimed that they were political refugees. Some 800 Tanzanians had been turned away by the immigration authorities. It was this influx that had prompted the British government to impose tighter visa restrictions. The article quoted Foreign Minister Jakaya Kikwete as telling the Britain Tanzania Society earlier that there was no political crisis in Tanzania to justify people fleeing the country.

‘A SYMBOLIC FORUM’
In an article critical of the arrangements being made for the trial of Rwandans on charges of genocide, Michela Wrong wrote in the FINANCIAL TIMES (September 25) that the choice of Arusha as a venue had proved a bone of contention. ‘A sleepy base for tourists climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the town is a five-hour drive from the nearest capital Nairobi and communications range from patchy to nonexistent’. Cells and bullet proof partition walls reinforced to withstand terrorist attack had to be built from scratch ….. only 21 people had been indicted and Judge Richard Goldstone, chief prosecutor for both the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals, had admitted that the total might never exceed 40. That would turn Arusha into a symbolic forum rather than a realistic attempt to mete out justice to the thousands who had tried to eliminate a troublesome minority. But for those trying to rebuild Rwanda, such symbolism still had its value.’

The TIMES reported on November 19 that documents left behind by the fleeing Hutu extremists in Zaire had revealed plans to attack the Arusha centre to free three of the accused; they were said to be staying in conditions which resembled a four-star hotel. Tanzanian soldiers guarding the centre were said to have shown an ability to be corrupted and a Maasai spiritualist, who had access to the prisoners, might have been prepared to help (Thank you Andrew Gaisford for the first item – Editor).

LIONS AND AIRSTRIPS FOR FLYING DOCTORS
BBC WILDLIFE (December 1996) reported that mass vaccination of some 10,000 dogs living on the western borders of the Serengeti National park (around Musoma and Mwanza) would commence shortly. It would prevent a repeat of the 1994 distemper epidemic that had wiped out a third of the 3,000 lions.

A story about three human lives saved in Tanzania’s north Masailand recently was related in the November’96-January ’97 issue of MISSION AVIATION NEWS which described the apparently very difficult problem of obtaining a licence for an airstrip in Tanzania. It was said that it could take years. Forms have to be filled in by villagers who have cleared the strips and these then have to be approved by the village authorities, the District Commissioner – up to 50 miles away, the Regional Commissioner in Arusha and then, finally they have to go to Oar es Salaam. In January 1995 an airstrip at Buga had been opened which had been first identified four years earlier; 50 women had initiated the action which had led to the opening of the airstrip. Instead of a journey of six hours by road, serious medical conditions could now be reached within minutes.

Pilot John Clifford had identified 135 Tanzanian airstrips which could have a claim to exemption from the long licensing process as they were not used for tourism but only for medical and charitable work. Three new airstrips were recently licensed but seven were closed at the same time because licenses are for only two years. (Thank you Christine Lawrence for these two items – Ed.)

‘HIGH FLYING, DAPPER, GREGARIOUS BUSINESS TYCOON’
Under the heading ‘The rise and rise of Reginald Mengi’ NEW AFRICAN recently featured Reginald Abraham Mengi, the Tanzanian ‘media mogul’ who had risen from an impoverished childhood and who now owned a chain of other businesses in manufacturing (soap, chinaware, cold drinks and paper). ‘Two years ago he launched new radio and TV stations to add to his two national daily papers and three weeklies …. though his cri tics say he is expanding too fast and spending too much, his media is booming …. his success has made him many enemies and he has received hate letters …. though he says he has no political ambition ….. few doubt that deep down he has presidential ambitions’.

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
Under this heading OASIS, the journal of water Aid, recounted in its Autumn/Winter 1996 issue the story of Chololo village in Dodoma region. water Aid’s programme in Dodoma was said to have enabled 622,000 people to improve the quality of their lives through the provision of improved water supply coupled with sanitation and hygiene education. In Chololo the people began work on their new water supply with great enthusiasm; they established a water fund, formed committees and took part in the initial survey but later, concerns over aspects of management of the supply caused them to lose confidence in the project. It took a visit to Ng’omai village, which had successfully completed its project 18 months earlier, for the villagers of Chololo to be convinced through discussions with their peers on the issues about which they were concerned. (Thank you Roy Galbraith for this item Editor).

‘ONE OF NATURE’S SILENT WORKERS‘
This is how the INDEPENDENT on a recent obituary page described Brother Adam (Dom Adam Kehrle): monk, bee breeder and beekeeper; born Germany 1898; died Buckfast Abbey, Devon September 1 1996. The obituary, by Lesley Bill, said that he was known in all beekeeping circles from the small market trader selling his honey on a stall in a French provincial town to the big commercial apiary owners in America and he was also well-known in academic circles in every continent. His aim had always been to create a cross-breed of bees with resistance to disease; bees that were gentle to handle, that swarmed rarely and were abundant honey producers. He had travelled 82,000 miles by road and 7,800 miles by sea plus many further miles by air in his search for appropriate bee characteristics. His travels culminated in a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro in search of the black honey bee (Apis Mellifera Monticola) when he was 89. The result of all this work had been the distinctive tan-coloured ‘Buckfast Bee’ which was still produced commercially on both sides of the Atlantic.

DANGEROUS PASSAGE
The story of a group of British tourists trying to snorkel off the coast of Zanzibar was given prominence in THE TIMES in its October 14 issue. Mrs Joan Garratt from Derbyshire described how she, three other Britons and two Africans, came into heavy weather; as they turned for shore the skipper got a line snagged round the outrigger and the small boat capsized. “The skipper gathered up the floating snorkel masks and started swimming for a distant sail and we assumed he was going for help” Mrs Garratt said. “But after he had reached it and climbed in, it set sail for the shore and we never saw him again. I think he was scared he was in trouble …. It was getting colder and colder in the water … and we expected to die. It was only when a fellow tourist began waving his brightly coloured shirt that we were spotted from the coast by a fisherman …. he had a dinghy and came out to rescue us. It seemed as though his boat would capsize too. I have never been so grateful to be on dry land”. After they returned they saw a map of the area with the words ‘white sharks’ written across it!

TANZANIA’S TRAIL OF TEARS – THE SLAVE ROUTES
The October-December 1996 issue of the Tanzania Tourist Board’s publication TANTRAVEL is so filled (in its 72 pages) with interest that it is impossible to do it justice in the limited space available in this section of TA. It is a very fine production filled with beautiful illustrations, enticing advertisements and engrossing short articles. The main subject in this issue is slavery. The early history of slavery is recorded followed by Livingtone’s eyewitness account of a slave massacre, an article on Tippu Tip (the King of the slavers), on Zanzibar, the hub of the whole trade and on Bagamoyo, the slave port. Other articles feature a family’s journey from Abu Dhabi to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and the ‘best fishing in the world’ at Mafia Island.

THE ANGLICAN CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL
The CHURCH TIMES of October 17 stated that the Rt. Revd Simon Chiwanga, Bishop of Mpwapwa has been elected Chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) one of the Anglican Church’s instruments of unity, which meets every three years. At its most recent meeting in Panama in October 1996 it discussed the next Lambeth Conference scheduled for 1998 and the future role of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Thank you Mr E G Pike for this item).

WHAT A FANTASTIC PLACE!
In its regular feature ‘My Hols’ in the SUNDAY TIMES (July 7) the well-known Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow wrote as follows: ‘… when I was with VS0 in Uganda I hitch-hiked on a wonderful holiday all round East Africa. Round Uganda, down Lake Victoria, round Tanzania, down to the coast and on to Zanzibar. What a fantastic place! Empty beaches, white Arab houses, graceful dhows, the smell of nutmeg …’

LAND LAW LEGISLATION AND RECORDS MANAGEMENT
The British Council’s ACTION IN AFRICA newsletter (June 1996) reported that two eminent land lawyers, Charles Harpum, a member of the Law Commission of England and Wales and Malcolm Grant, Professor of Land Economy at Cambridge University, were in Tanzania recently. They contributed to a workshop organised by the Ministry of Lands for lawyers scrutinising the draft land law legislation for consistency with the published National Land Policy before its presentation to Parliament later this year.

The same newsletter reported that the Council had hosted a presentation of the film ‘Towards Good Government: Records Management and Public Sector Reform in Tanzania’ to an invited audience of Principal Secretaries in the Civil Service and members of the Cabinet Secretariat. The film was made by the International Records Management Trust as one of the outputs of a workshop to restore order to the Tanzania National Archives which took place last year. The Ministry of Education has invited archives personnel to appraise records and reorganise its congested registry.

‘A VIBRANT REBIRTH’
This is how Mark Besire in the EAST AFRICAN (May 6-12) described a cultural renaissance now happening amongst the Sukuma. The centre of this rebirth was the Sukuma Museum, a ‘living museum’, at Kisesa 24 kms north of Mwanza which was being assisted by several donors including the Dartington Trust in Britain. New chiefs were being installed and others reinstalled. Many were collecting and researching shitogeljo – objects that played a significant role in traditional ceremonies. Some chiefdoms were returning to matrilineal succession as practised before the colonial period. The institution of chiefs was abolished at independence. But many chiefs were now taking active roles in their communities, more people were turning to traditional healers and there was great zest for traditional dance competitions.

THREAT OF EXTINCTION
A note of alarm was signalled in an article about a well-known Tanzanian tree in BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE in August 1996. It stated that, unless action is taken, harvestable stocks of the African Blackwood or ‘Mpingo’ tree which is used to make clarinets and oboes, the chinrests of violins and the wooden part of bagpipes – plus Makonde wood carvings, could run out within 30 years. An expedition from Cambridge University has gone to Tanzania this summer to get data to help the Flora preservation Society draw up a conservation plan for Mpingo. (Thank you Jane Carroll for finding this item. More on this subject in Readers Letters below – Editor).

PEMBA LIBRARY
The Bellagio Network Newsletter No 16 (Spring 1996) contained an article about the Pemba Public Library by Margaret Ling, Director of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, Although the need for a library had been established 40 years earlier this one finally opened in 1994. Its initial stocking was helped by the British ODA and Council and there are now some 1,500 regular users of the 13,000 titles. Of these only 2% are from African publishers and Pemba, like 85 of the 104 districts in Tanzania, does not yet have a bookshop. (Thank you Pru Watts-Russel for this item – Editor).

TANZANIAN CD-ROM
GUARDIAN EDUCATION (March 12) revealed that the Leeds Development Education Centre (Tel: 0113 278 4030) has designed an interactive CD-Rom and accompanying teacher’s pack and video about a Tanzanian woman and her family for key stages 1 to 3 in schools. The cost is £49.

BIG ZOOLOGICAL FIND
According to the March/April issue of AFRICA – ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE, a small chameleon spotted in the Mkomazi Game Reserve late in 1994 by entomologist Tony Russell-Smith has turned out to be a big zoological find. This was the first African pygmy chameleon seen by Dr. Malcolm Coe, leader of the Mkomazi Ecological Research Programme, in 40 years of studying savanna ecology. But Rhampholian kerstenti is a familiar sight in the coastal forests and in the Usambara and Pare mountains. The hills of Mkomazi are relatively undisturbed, offering what may in the future be a critical refuge for these eight centimetre-long reptiles.

PERHAPS THE GREATEST MUSICIAN TANZANIA HAS EVER PRODUCED
This is how the EAST AFRICAN described Mbaraka Mwinshehe Mwaruka on what would have been his 52nd birthday. He died in 1979 aged 35. ‘He was a singer, guitarist, performer and composer – East Africa’s most prolific all-round pop musician’, the article said. ‘Although he said that he only wanted to sing and dance he was an amalgamation of different things to different people – a poet to some; to his family a cutting satirist; to the country’s politicians a lavish praise singer; to the nation, a musical ambassador (he was with the famous Morogoro Jazz Band at the Expo ’70 Exhibition in Japan and later formed his own band, Orchestra Super Volcano); he was a witty social commentator in the East African oral tradition’. A commemoration was held at the newly opened FM Club in Kinondoni on January 12 this year.

ENGLISH VERSUS SWAHILI
Herald Tagama of Gemini News writing in the Uganda MONITOR (May 6-7) featured the revived debate in Tanzania about the language to be used in schools. The Chairman of the National Swahili Council, Prof. Herman Mwansoko, was quoted as having started the debate by leading a delegation to President Mkapa to press for a ban on English in all subjects in schools from primary level to university. President Mkapa deflected the proposal but said it was worth debating. And a debate began. Particularly vociferous were those parents who send their children to Kenya and Malawi to avoid declining standards in Tanzanian schools. Tony Ngaiza, the editor of Majira attacked this ‘fanciful’ proposal and accused the Kiswahili Council of frivolity when the quality of education was nose-diving. Mwansoko returned to the fray, calling the objectors ‘colonial minded’. Others noted that European countries had no difficulty in continuing to use their local languages in schools and also learning English. Eventually Mwalimu Nyerere, who had made Swahili the medium of instruction in primary schools so that he could put his message across to ALL the people, said that “What we have done for Swahili is enough. Now we have to give English its vim. It is the ‘Kiswahili’ of the world”.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE LAST WEEK”
This, according to British TV personality Jeremy Paxman is what you always hear when you go on a fishing holiday. But, according to the WEEKEND GUARDIAN (January 27) when he went fishing at the Pemba Channel Fishing Club on the Kenya/Tanzania border he was greeted with the unprecedented words “You are going to catch fish. We’re having the best season for years”. Marlin fishing, Paxman wrote, is the macho end of angling – it is to fly fishing what arm wrestling is to chess. ‘The longer the search went on the more I began to dread what would happen if and when we found one. Then suddenly complete commotion… when the fight began it was every bit as exhausting as I’d feared. The fish tore off 400 yards of line and then leapt from the water… within five minutes I was soaked in perspiration and had lost most of the skin from my index finger. In 10 minutes my left arm was aching as if it couldn’t move any more. It took about 15 minutes. “Do you want to kill him?” the boatman asked. I couldn’t see the point and so we tagged him in the hope that the next time his aggression led him to attack a bait, the boatman might think it worth $5 to send back the tag and we’d learn a bit about how these beautiful fish migrate around the world’.

SUSPENSION OF REGISTRATION OF NGO’s
The EAST AFRICAN (June 17-23) reported that the government had suspended the registration of new NGO’s (non-government organisations) until September pending amendment of the 1953 Association Ordinance that governs the operations of such bodies. Each of the 850 NGO’s registered in Tanzania since 1953 would be examined amid rising suspicions that many were not following the law.

CLEANING UP LAKE VICTORIA
WORLD BANK NEWS (August 1) announced that $77.6 million $35 million from IDA is being invested in a project designed to conserve the lake’s biodiverity and genetic resources, control the water hyacinth, generate food and provide jobs and safe water in a disease-free environment.

NO SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS
VSO’s quarterly magazine ORBIT (No. 61) reported what it described as an unwelcome jolt. Volunteer Jennifer Semahimbo, who had married a Tanzanian while in the country, was refused social security benefits on her return to pending ‘reestablishment of her habitual residence’ even though she had kept her home in Birmingham and VS0 had paid her national insurance contributions. The Department of Social Security claimed that a Tanzanian tax clearance certificate in her passport indicated residence there.

TEA RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF TANZANIA
The EAST AFRICAN (August 19-25) reported that Tanzania has inaugurated its own Tea Research Institute in an effort to reverse the decline in the country’s tea production. Malawi was said to have the same acreage under tea as Tanzania but produced twice as much tea.

Geographical Magazine excerpt

The Times article on Tanzanian Tourism

A bold new five-year tourism programme involving investment of over $150 million was launched in Britain, at the Royal Geographic Society, on April 17 by Tanzania’s Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr. Juma Ngasongwa. The meeting coincided with the publication in the Geographic Magazine (May 1996) of an attractively illustrated 16-page Supplement (Cover photograph by Gary J Strand of ‘Wildlife Explorer’) about Tanzania’s tourist attractions. The next day the London Times publicised the event in an article under the heading ‘Halting the Hordes’ – see above.

RATIONING THE NUMBER OF VISITORS
Tourist numbers, which, ten years ago, totalled only 50,000 and have now reached almost 300,000 are to be increased further up to half a million by the year 2000. However, after the year 2,000, a break will be put on further increase in numbers in a bid to create a ‘quality product’ and avoid overcrowding of parks and reserves and hence damage to the fragile ecosystem.

SCOPE AND FUNDING
Funds for the programme are to come from international donors (following completion of a recent ‘World Bank Tourism Infrastructure Plan’ and a ‘European Union Tourism Master Plant plus private sector investments and Government funds. Features of the plan include new roads, upgrading of seven airstrips, the development of a new ‘Southern Circuit’ (Selous – the largest wildlife reserve in the world – Mikumi, Ruaha, Udzungwa, Katavi and Gombe Stream) by construction of tented camps and small lodges rather than big hotels, special interest holidays such as game fishing in the Pemba Channel and Mafia Island, bird watching in the Usambaras, historical tourism (including extension of the Livingstone Museum in Bagamoyo, a new School of Tribal Art there and greater accessibility to the caves with prehistoric paintings and the gorge where early human remains were found.

But critics at the meeting questioned whether it would be possible to control the numbers, One speaker pointed out that Ngorongoro was already catering for 50 vehicles a day and yet a new Sopa Lodge and new Serena Hotel were being built. In Zanzibar hotel construction had “gone berserk”. At a Britain- Tanzania Society tourism seminar held on March 23 one speaker attacked the whole idea of Third World tourism – it led to neo-colonialism, local people did not benefit enough, it destroyed the natural environment, led to prostitution etc. Dr. Ngasongwa, at the Royal Geographic Society, admitted that, as a result of inviting the private sector to develop tourism, there had been overdevelopment but stated that the government was now introducing a moratorium on the development of hotels and lodges serving the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro crater and that all future developments would be subject to environmental impact surveys. Tanzania had learnt by its mistakes. Tanzania Tourist Board Chairman Natim Karimjee added that the main problem he faced was ‘control’. The article went on to say that autonomy would enhance positive management and eliminate the need to depend on governments for subventions.