The controversy about the extension of the sea boundary has come at
the right time when Zanzibaris have shown that they will no longer be
hijacked when their vital national interest are at stake, regardless of
party affiliation. It was rather disingenuous for Prof Tubaijuka to try
to introduce party divisions when she claimed that CUF was claiming that
Zanzibar was not consulted. If she heard the debate in the House of
Representatives, it was almost unanimous, and prominent CCM backbenchers
made a point of saying that this was not the question of CUF but of the
whole of Zanzibar. She should not try to divide Zanzibaris again. We
have suffered enough from such tactics.
It seems that mainland leaders feel that if you have a few Zanzibaris
in your gang, then Zanzibaris are represented – and it is never
difficult to get a few vibaraka, as we know all too well from our
history. The question is whether the people in Zanzibar even knew this
business was cooking – certainly the House of Representatives, a body
that was elected by the whole people of Zanzibar, did not know about it
until the professor was in New York presenting the document to the UN. I
and many of my friends who try to keep up with events affecting our
country were taken by surprise.
Prof Tibaijuka may be right that some people even in the Zanzibar
Government may have been aware of this project, but the Minister of
Lands in Zanzibar, Mr Shamhuna himself said in the House of
Representatives that he know about it, but the Zanzibar Government did
not know it officially. The Executive Summary of Tanzania’s submission
to the UN has 2 long lists of institutions and people who were involved
in this project, but mentions only Shamhuna’s Ministry of Lands out of 9
institutions, and only one State Attorney from Zanzibar out of 8
members of the Technical Core Group. Now Professor Tubaijuka mentions a
few more names of Zanzibari ‘representative’, including my friend and
former student Zakia Meghji, but if my memory serves me right, she used
to be an MP for Moshi, and has never pretended to be representing
Zanzibar except as a person who was born in Zanzibar. This is definitely
a case of desperation in looking for Zanzibari faces.
But all this still does not cover the substantive issue involved. It
is well known that Foreign Affairs is a Union matter, and therefore any
dealings with the UN has to involve the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
even if the exact issue involves only one side of our Union. There are
plenty of cases when this has been done about issues concerning
non-Union matters of Mainland Tanzania. Therefore, it is not a favour to
Zanzibar that once in a while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to
take up the case when Zanzibar’s interests are concerned – it is our
right, iof we are part of the Union. The same applies to the defence of
Tanzania’s territorial boundaries, which include the now extended
boundaries in the Indian Ocean – that is its responsibility.
But this does not mean that the Union Government therefore becomes
the owner of all the resources within the territorial boundaries of
Tanzania. The Articles of Union had defined 11 Union Matters that came
under the Union Government, and the sea is not one of them. Since 1964,
the Union Matters have been increased to 22, illegally according to
Prof. Shivji, but even in this extended list you will look in vain for
the blue seas. It is for this reason that Prof. Tubaijuka is the
Minister of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development (all
non-Union matters), but the seas are not included. Why she was sent and
not the Minister of Foreign Affairs is for the Union President to
explain.
Therefore, it has to be admitted that since the oceanic resources are
not a Union matter, but are of vital concern for the islands of
Zanzibar which are surrounded by the sea on all sides, the people of
Zanzibar have a direct stake in what is decided about their resources.
And here it is not enough to mention a few names, however, highly placed
they may be, and say Zanzibaris were represented.
The same argument was used in the case of the first draft of the
Constitution Bill. Former Speaker Samuel Sitta claimed that Zanzibaris
were consulted, naming the Zanzibar Minister of Good Governance and the
AG, but it turned out that they were asked to submit their
recommendations, but adopted only two out of 13, and threw the rest in
the dustbin, and then went on to add many more without consulting even
the Zanzibar Government.
Don’t they ever learn?
What the Representative Ismail Jussa was trying to do was to teach
our Big Brother another lesson, and the mainland-based Swahili newspaper
dares to ask him to apologise to Prof Tubaijuka? I think it is Prof
Tubaijuka and the Union Government that need to apologise to the people
of Zanzibaris for trying once gain to take us for a ride. But as the old
politician Hasan Nassor Moyo told Samuel Sitta, the new generation in
Zanzibar is not the same as the old generation of the 1960s, and will
not say ‘hewallah bwana.’
Abdul Sheriff
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