History as Hadzabes secure title deed

Karatu. Gone are days of the war of nerves pitting Hadzabe and investors in Karatu District, Arusha Region, as the vulnerable hunter-gatherers have notched their own Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO).

The credit for this success is due to the Ujamaa Community Resources Team (UCRT) which paved the way for the government to provide the marginalised community with the document. 

The group title now defines the Hadzabe’s communal land area and provides the closest cultural relatives to the San Bushmen of the Kalahari in Botswana with greater tenure security.

With the collective nature of the certificate, transactions and subdivision of the land now can no longer take place without the consent of the entire community.

Mongo wa Mono Village was specifically established to support the Hadzabe’s livelihood and culture, but outsiders moved in the hunter-gatherers-dominated area over the years.

Owing to insufficient representation in the village and district councils, the Hadzabe had limited voice in decisions pertaining to their own land.

In 2006, for instance, the United Arab Emirates Safaris Ltd almost grabbed 2,267 square kilometres of the land covering Karatu and Mbulu districts in Arusha and Manyara regions, respectively, at Yaeda Chini and Lake Eyasi Basin.

However, members of the marginalised ethnic group in collaboration with local and international media and activists had successfully foiled the firm’s attempt to turn the Hadzabe’s ancestral land into a tourist hunting block for the Arab royal family.

Here’s the big threat

The big threat to the livelihood and culture of the 400 hunter-gatherers remaining in Karatu prompted the UCRT to closely work with the hunter-gatherers themselves, the district council and the central government in a bid to secure the CCRO.

A decade later, Mr Kankon Mkanga, a member of the hunter-gatherers in the district, could not resist expressing his joy to journalists on the sidelines of a ceremony which saw the Minister of Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development, Mr William Lukuvi, handing over the CCRO to the community.

The protection of boundaries of their communal land is all what the Hadzabes were now asking for from the government, said Mr Mkanga, lamenting, “What hurt us the most are farmers and herders encroaching on our land and constructing buildings, and in so doing, denying us our traditional food.”

Invaders’ challenge

Although they had long earmarked their communal land for guarding the livelihood and propagating their culture, the Hadzabe lacked the power to prevent Sukuma, Iraqw and Barbeig livestock keepers and farmers from clearing forests.

“Tree caves are our natural bee hives, we harvest honey and sell it to buy tobacco and slippers for our children,” Mr Mkanga explained.

As a result of the increasing pressures, tubers and fruits they ate were destroyed and bells, which herders tied around the necks of their cows and goats, scared away wildlife animals they also relied on for food.

“We plead with the government to evict all the invaders for the sake of our survival and let the $20 fee each tourist pays the village government and district council to visit us benefit us,” Mr Mkanga said.

And the government, in turn, vowed to provide the Hadzabe with protection at all cost, lest the hunter-gatherers community became extinct.

“Farmers and herders caught encroaching on the Hadzabe’s land will now be forcefully evicted and punished to allow fruits, tubers and wildlife animals the hunter-gatherers rely on for their livelihood to recover,” the minister said.

The Hadzabe are believed to be less than 1,500 countrywide, down from about 5,000 in 1990s.

Indigenous rights activists warn that the ethnic group is on the verge of extinction if affirmative actions are not taken to relieve its natural habitat of encroachment pressure.

“Woe to land officials who will be caught tempering with over 700 acres earmarked for the Hadzabe in the district,” Mr Lukuvi cautioned during the ceremony held at Qangdet Village in the district towards the end of last month.

He said one way of protecting the marginalised ethnic group was granting it its basic land rights. “But this certificate will be useless if village and district leaders do not prevent boundaries of the Hadzabe’s communal land from being disintegrated,” he stressed.

Title for the voiceless

He commended the UCRT for going through a tedious process of obtaining the title for the voiceless hunter-gatherer community, pastoralists and farmers’ groups in the district.

The Hadzabe constitute barely six per cent of the population of Karatu District, which, according to the 2012 Census, stands at 254,000 residents. “I want to see the 700 plus acres of the Hadzabe land intact when I return here in five years’ time,” Mr Lukuvi stressed, adding:

“Any hunter-gatherer intending to abandon his culture and join fellow Tanzanians elsewhere will be provided with land, but members of other ethnic groups are not allowed to encroach on the land of the marginalised ethnic group.”

The UCRT director, Mr Makko Sinandei, pleaded with the government to consider beefing up its lands budget for the ministry to meet a growing demand for village land use plans countrywide.

“The government should also put in place a participatory procedure for dividing villages with land use plans,” Mr Sinandei said.

He pointed an accusing finger at politicians allegedly for haphazardly separating villages with such plans to the chagrin of donors who threatened to stop supporting the good course.

Mr Lukuvi called on all villages with land use plans countrywide to respect their boundaries.

“There is no use for the government and development partners to spend colossal amount of money on the land use plans only to see herders continue encroaching on the farmers’ land at their whims,” he said.