Kisarawe villagers fight against lopsided land lease plan

Dar es Salaam. Athuman Nipe is an activist turned politician who was determined to begin pursuing people’s rights from where Nelson Mandela, his hero, left.

As was the case with the former South African prisoner and president, the Mandela of Marumbo Village in Kisarawe District has also sacrificed his job as a result of his noble yet an ugly course.

He lost his job a few years ago at a jatropha plantation for leading a movement aimed at demanding reasonable compensation for land from Sun Biofuel, his former employer and investor in over 8,500-hectare jatropha farm. 

The investor did not only pledge to compensate villagers handsomely when asking for their land, but also to use jatropha oil to lubricate poverty, as he would furnish areas surrounding the farm with roads, education, water and health infrastructures.

The Sun Biofuel’s failure to meet its promise, aroused the activism urge in Mandela, prompting him to found and chair a task force in a bid to follow up on the villagers’ rights.

The investor paying barely Sh840 million compensation for the whole villagers’ land, equivalent to Sh1,000 per hectare,  is a mockery, says Mandela.

“The money cannot compensate for the loss the villagers incur as a result of selling their land to the investor,” he argues.

The villagers relied on the land initially covered by natural forest for firewood, traditional medicine and the production of food and cash crops including honey, maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, pigeon peas, mangoes, cashews and coconuts.

The Mandela Committee found out that Sun Biofuel had colluded with Kisarawe District Council executives to dubiously secure a 99-year land lease.

A letter purported to be authored by the district council executive director had prematurely cleared the British firm before the land commissioner.

It says the investor had met all procedures and the villagers’ conditions as well and that he was qualified for a title deed he applied for. But when the committee consulted the district authorities, none of the officials was bold enough to own the letter found at the headquarters of the Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development ministry.

The groundwork has earned Mandela the village chairmanship, but has not ended his movement, as the committee formed in 2010 is now in able hands of his youthful fellow villager Ibrahim Muwadi.

Will Muwadi fit in Mandela’s shoes, it remains to be seen. But the committee now seems to be a thorn in the local politician’s flesh under his leadership. 

Most of the residents of 11 villages surrounding the jatropha plantation vow to vote out their councillors come 2015 as a result of a massive campaign waged by the committee in the area. They accuse their civic leaders of betraying them in their quest for lucrative compensation from the investor for their customary land.

Despite attending closed door meetings on the fate of their demands, the councillors do not give feedback, the villagers complain, believing that the councillors are part of the plot to grab their land.

The Muwadi Committee has revealed that the investor has abandoned the plantation and is planning to sell it to 30 Degree, another investor also from Britain. According to the committee, over 700 workers of the plantation have been paid off their terminal dues before they were laid off.

The new firm is named after a conglomerate of 30 companies including Jivanjo, a subsidiary which is currently overseeing few activities going on at the farm.

One of the workers of the firm admits on condition of anonymity that the Sun Biofuel has closed almost all operations at the farm including the harvesting of jatropha seed scattered all over 2,000 hectares of the farm so far cultivated.

Few retained workers are involved in security of the plantation and conducting research on availability of water and destructive insects to the crop meant for the production of environmental friendly or green oil.

In addition to the two hitches, he says, lack of the market led the Sun Biofuel to abandon the multibillion investment and a similar one which the company replicated in Mozambique.

One wonders, however, if a thorough feasibility study was conducted beforehand to ascertain strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the project lest it turns.

The financial aspect of the project begs more questions than answers. Will what has befallen the investor not affect the new one? Where did the Sun Biofuel secure a loan from? Will the loan be transferred to the Tanzania’s ever skyrocketing national debt? 

Any investor cannot give up his project before he has recouped the capital he injected into it especially if he borrowed from a financial institution.

Others have, indeed, to chip in where the Marumbo Village task force has left in a bid to find out the truth pertaining to the white elephant.