PRESIDENT MAGUFULI ISSUES STARK WARNING TO POACHERS AND THEIR ACCOMPLICES
(Posted 25th November 2015)
Civil servants as well as politicians in Tanzania are starting to come to terms that their newly elected President Dr. John Pombe Magufuli does mean business, as the various shock waves sent out by him already bear witness to. Turning money saved from his inaugural address to parliament in Dodoma last week into hospital beds and equipment was only a start it seems as he then told the nation to clean up their neighbourhoods on the upcoming Independence Day on 09th of December instead to expecting pompeous celebrations. When he cut the delegation ready to depart for the Commonwealth Summit in Malta down from 50 people to just four, did a major earthquake jolt Tanzania’s establishment, making it clear that wasteful spending under this President will no longer be tolerated and fund saved from extravagant trips will be diverted to schools, hospitals and other social services which suffered from various degrees of neglect in the past.
Corruption and theft by public servants too is in the president’s cross hairs and Tanzanians are now positively holding their breath what sort of cabinet members President Magufuli will appoint to help him accomplish his vision for a cleaner, more modern and more East African Tanzania over the next years. In fact, no one is talking any longer about the main loser of the presidential election, former Prime Minister Lowassa who had decamped from the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi when he failed to capture the nomination, and all eyes are now firmly on what the new president does and says.
Today he took aim at another ill regularly pointed out here over the past years about the old regime of former president Kikwete, poaching, and the damage it does to the country’s reputation abroad. Accusing yet unnamed officials of collaborating with poaching syndicates did Magufuli take aim at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, not just over poaching but also the growing number of human / wildlife conflicts in the country. ‘How come tusks are impounded in China or Europe while they passed at Dar es Salaam port? Something should be done to make sure that this situation does not recur’ basically giving carde blanche to anti poaching units to take down the cartels and bring the suspects to book. Under former president Kikwete were tens of thousands of elephant butchered with little if any reaction for far too long. When reactions eventually came were first the messengers shot, proverbially speaking, then denials issued and when former Minister Amb. Khamis Kagesheki produced a list of the top 300 suspects and handed it to Kikwete he was pushed out of office while the list was locked away instead of being acted upon.
The pronouncement by President Magufuli was greeted with optimism by the Tanzanian conservation fraternity who have taken fresh hope that the remaining elephant, a fraction of the herds of just a decade ago, are now definitely enjoying greater protection again.
It remains to be seen now what stand the new president will take vis a vis the very controversial Serengeti Highway, where the southern bypass option has been on the table but largely ignored by the Kikwete government, or how he will handle other aspects of environmental concerns as outlined in the article series ‘The Corridor of Destruction’ but from early indications there is hope that a fundamental change is underway in Tanzania, brought about by a President whose candidacy was largely seen as a compromise but who swiftly came into his own.
https://atcnews.org/2012/01/18/tanzania-conservation-news-corridor-of-destruction-reloaded/
This correspondent is heading to Tanzania and a new cabinet may well be announced while in the country, giving the opportunity to speak with conservation and tourism sources and get their take on the new President and what his initial shake down of the government bureaucracy means for them.
