Villagers, investor lock horns over 700 hectares

Korogwe. A land conflict is brewing at Kwagunda Village in Korogwe District pitting between 240 households and a dairy farmer.
The land in question consists of over 700 hectares that the villagers claim have been tilling for the last 23 years.
Two village government officials who preferred anonymity for fear of retribution claimed that the households have been farming on the land since 1993 after the investor failed to develop it.
“The village general assembly has three times refused to approve the sale of the land to the investor, but we were surprised to see visitors we did not know being accompanied by the Village Executive Officer on October 27, last year surveying the land. The VEO told us that the owner of the land had come for his land and that we were required to move out,” claimed one village government official.
He stressed that they (villagers) want nothing but the land because it is what they depend on for livelihood.
According to the villagers, a trend has emerged at the village whereby anyone seen to oppose the investor is locked by, whereby authorities would claim that such a person was a security threat in the area.  
In efforts to try and secure their hold to the land, the villagers on November 9 wrote to the Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development, Mr William Lukuvi, asking him to intervene, but until  now they are yet to receive a response.
Given the population growth rate of 1.8 per cent per annum at the village, the villagers fear that in ten years time, the land would no longer be enfour for them all, currently numbering 3,481.
Narrating a brief history of the land, one of the two village leaders, said the land once belonged to the former Tanzania Sisal Authority (TSA).
However, following the privatisation drive of the 1990s, the land was handed over to  various developers including the Tanga-based company that has pioneered sisal smallholder and outgrower scheme (Siso). “This land was given to a dairy farming developer who however, failed to develop it leaving it to turn in to a bush two decades ago,” he said, pointing out that villagers began farming the land starting 1993.
They said that the government seems to have been pushing to see to it that the investor takes over the land.
“We have been astounded by the responses of the government officials, including the ward executive officer when they were escorting the visitors to survey the land. They told us they were doing this on the order from above, being accompanied by two armed police officers,” they claimed.
The duo said further that prior to writing the letter to Mr Lukuvi, the villagers held a meeting on October 28, 2016 during which they appointed three elders to accompany the Village chairman and the Village Land Committee to meet the DC.  In their letter sent to the minister, they revealed that the DC admitted knowledge of the issue but told them to go to the then district executive director George John because he was not a land expert but a keeper of peace.
However, Mr John told them elaborately that he did not know anything about the issue but knew that the land belonged to them. This information was also put in the letter.  He said all the land that was idle has been handed back to the government and procedures for developers to get that land must start from the village level.
According to them, the DED was clearly surprised that the land was being surveyed without the involvement of his office.
The villagers in their letter signed by the Village chairman, Mr Abdi Maganga, appealed to the minister to respond immediately because outside that land, the villagers had no other alternative land to which they could be relocated. “On the east there is the Amani Nature Reserve (ANR) whose area is very steep and unfit for agriculture and which also acts as a water catchment area. On the other sides, we border other villages that also face land shortages.