AJIRA ZA UHAKIKA NJE NJE, BONYEZA HAPA
Regular and usually well informed sources in Dar es Salaam confirmed that there is a mood of incredulity if not outright shock in Tanzanian government circles, as a sponsored visit by a Daily Mail on Sunday journalist spectacularly backfired with a follow up report about his experiences in the country, to which he was flown and hosted entirely at the expense of the Tanzanian government.
The article in last Sunday’s edition showed that some 34.000 tusks were kept in a central store in Dar es Salaam, constituting over 17.000 elephants, some of which died of natural causes with the ivory collected by park personnel and sent to the store but most apparently, at least going by the Daily Mail on Sunday report, originating from confiscated blood ivory.
The PR consultants the Tanzanian government hired, and which most likely recommended that the journalist be flown to Dar for a fact finding mission, clearly misread intent and purpose of Martin Fletcher’s trip and to have to pay them adds injury to insult, as the entire response now is exposed as one bodged operation, over which many surely must hang their head in shame to have so misjudged the final outcome.
The story also insists that President Kikwete is in possession of the names of the alleged ringleaders responsible for the unprecedented elephant slaughter in recent years, when little if anything was done to prevent the massacres in the Selous and in Ruaha, which decimated the great elephant herds from the previous game count standing at between 65 – 70.000 elephant in 2005 to a mere 13.000 as of late last year.
President Kikwete will go into the history books with this black mark against his name for having presided over the globally worst elecide in human history, perhaps only comparable with the wiping out of the bisons in North America in the 19th century.
For the Tanzanian government it is surely back to the drawing board now, to find ways and means to deal with the PR disaster now unfolding, and is well advised to fast track the return of Operation Tokomeza with real tangible results, including the naming, shaming and prosecution of those fund involved, by funding and trading and influence peddling to facilitate the killings of what once was Tanzania’s prized natural wildlife heritage. But going by past experience, results may be a long way off as more political horse trading is presently going on in Tanzania with a new constitution in the making, which may perhaps preclude, until its completion, to rock the boat and bring regime sycophants behind the poaching tsunami to justice while they are needed to swing crucial opinion the way of the ruling party. Observers in fact expect that while actual footsoldiers of the poaching syndicates may be arrested, even killed in the field, the big shots behind it all, those 50 on that nebulous list compiled by former minister Amb. Khamis Kagesheki, who was then put to the political sword, will remain foot loose and fancy free to recruit more to continue their bloody handiwork.
In a notable development yesterday in Arusha did Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, when addressing the East African Legislative Assembly, liken poaching with terrorism and called for a unified approach to fight a war on poaching in the same fashion like fighting a war on terror, as after all evidence is at hand that at least Uganda’s LRA and Somalia’s Al Shabaab have in the past financed operations and fresh supplies from proceeds of blood ivory and of rhino horn. Watch this space for what will undoubtedly see more twists in the tail of this monstrous saga.
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