About 100,000 people in the four villages of Maganzo, Ikonongo, Songwa and Masagara cry foul to the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, Central-West Zone for issuing mining license to El Hilal Minerals Limited on a fraudulently acquired piece of land.
El Hilal Minerals deceptively acquired village land in Songwa ward, Kishapu district, totaling to over 4,000 hectares in the year 2000 displacing villagers without compensation in the diamond rich area of Mwadui.
According the 1999 Village Land Act, administration of land has been decentralised to the village and that there are solid guarantees in place to protect the smallholder security of tenure. Essentially, the Village Land Act vests all village land in the village. The precise distribution of authority between the Village Council and the Village Assembly is not always defined, but the underlying principle is clearly that village land is vested in the Village Assembly, and that the Village Council administers the land through the authority of the Village Assembly.
The situation at the four villages whose land has been grabbed is different. The village land was forcefully taken after aborted negotiations with the investor.
The almost 4,000 hectare land now being held by the investor is contrary to the mining license issuing authority.
The investor was issued with a mining license in 2005 even though there are irregularities in the documents that supported his acquisition of land.
According to the mining policy of 2009, an investor will only hold land after ensuring that there is adequate compensation and relocation which is reached onto after negotiation between the investor and the villagers under the leadership of the village leaders.
Speaking at different times to the villagers from the four villages of Maganzo, Ikonongo, Songwa and Masagara whose land has been looted, the mood of gloom and fear now reign over them.
“The villagers now have no farm land of their own and should nothing happen in the name of either reclaiming their lost land or resettlement, they will die of hunger,” Stephen Kassoni, Songwa ward agricultural officer says.
“We have 15,838 working people population in this ward but their land has been fraudulently taken without compensation by the investor,” he adds without elaborating, how.
According to the documents that The African has, 93 villagers that were compensated were paid 30,000/- per hectare but the rest of the villagers were uprooted from their land without any compensation whatsoever.
Samuel Kalima, a chairman of Magagi sub-village in Maganzo village says that El Hilal Minerals was only given the Buganika area in the year 2000 but he has since then extended its borders with impunity grabbing a vast land of about 4,000 hectares.
“The four villages in our ward were affected. We have no farming and grazing land as of now, worst of all, we have not been compensated,” he laments.
He says they have not been doing farming since 2000 when the then District Commissioner asked the villagers to live the land within 30 days.
Kalima says that they opened a case against El Hilal Minerals Limited accusing the company of land grabbing and forceful eviction. They won the case and the investor was ordered by the court to compensate for disturbance but that is yet to happen because the law has been lenient on him bearing in mind affords to disrespect court order with impunity.
Ironically the annexed land is now out of bound to the villagers and trespassing in anyway spells brutality in the mode of torture and rape against women.
Animals that enter the vast tract of land looted village land are fined a fee of 5,000/- per head.
Charles Kabeya, chairman of Masagara village says that his people do not do any farming simply because their land has been taken by the powerful and they don’t have anywhere to go to seek remedy.
“He has stolen our land and he is not ashamed to impound with impunity our livestock in a situation his security officers call trespassing!” he says.
Legally trespass is to intrude, to enter into someone’s private land, house etc without his permission. A trespass is a wrongful entry and an offence. The villagers dispute this very fact.
Tobias Msalaba , the chairman of Maganzo village says that they are treated as intruders in their own land by a looter whose illegal ownership of the land is well known by the authorities.
“My people now rent land at 40,000/- per hectare in distant villagers for farming and another 50,000/- for grazing land per year,” Msalaba says.
Joseph Ngusa (59), a father of ten has been reduced to perpetual beggar who has to wait for government charity that was last received in 2009 with each villager getting two kilograms of maize.
Ngusa says that none of his children has gone beyond primary school since El Hilal robbed him of his 20 hectare land hence paralyzing his alternative.
“I had to sell my livestock one after another to buy food since we do not practice farming. Alternatively, I rent land in the distant village at Tshs. 40,000 per year for farming,” he bitterly says.
In a document that The African obtained from file number DA 264/352/01 at zonal mines office in Shinyanga, only 94 villagers were compensated at a rate of 30,000/- per hectare. The rest 120 people were listed but not yet compensated.
Hemedi Shaban, Songwa ward councilor says that El Hilal robbed village land in 2000 without compensation.
“We had a meeting with El Hilal Minerals Ltd officials on the of February9th, this year and they promised that they would compensate the remaining villagers before the end of the year,” Shaban told The African during an interview in his office.
Speaking to Majabuso Alfred, Assistant Zonal Mining officer in Shinyanga, he claimed that all the villagers were compensated before license was issued to El Hilal Minerals Limited in 2005.
“We cannot issue license in a situation where land has not been appropriately compensated and in the event that such a fault is committed, there is every likelihood that the license is going to be nullified,” Alfred clarified.
Scrutiny of El Hilal Minerals Limited file at the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, Central-West zone office tell a different story altogether. There are only 120 people who are listed as not yet compensated in the file.
Asked what action they would take against El Hilal Minerals Limited, Alfred said that they are yet to know as it was too early to say and they are no complainants.
It is intriguing to know that for 13 years El Hilal Minerals Limited has held village land with impunity denying them an opportunity for farming and grazing land. The government officials administer files that they don’t know its contents and defend people who violate the rules they are being paid to defend .
Though the Village Land Act vests all village land in the village, villagers were not involved in the process of their land expropriation.
Defective law
The precise distribution of authority between the Village Council and the Village Assembly is not always defined, but the underlying principle is clear that village land is vested in the Village Assembly, and that the Village Council administers the land through the authority of the Village Assembly.
A more critical reading of the Act exposes several problem areas and ambiguities. The legal provisions of key aspects of adjudication, registration and safeguarding of land rights. The provisions are long on protocol and seek to incorporate security of tenure. At the same time, they impose administrative controls to ensure that developmental policy concerns are considered.
In other words, ownership of land is not only determined by pre-existing rights but also by the perceived capacity of the landowner to develop the land in question. In order to safeguard against improper manipulation of the bureaucracy required to impose developmental control of land allocation, a complex layer of legal stipulations has been put in place to block potential loopholes from abuse.
But land provision and administration is legal exercise and when entrusted to non-legals is disaster! According to Haki Ardhi there are many subsisting land disputes and cases in the country and mainly are fostered by village leaders.