What next for the Loliondo herders?

Arusha. For the herding communities in Loliondo Division in Arusha Region, the die is cast.

The ruling by the regional Court here on Friday against their eviction from a protected area was just the beginning of another legal tussle.

“We will appeal against the judgement,” insisted a lawyer representing them, Ms Esther Mnaro.

She said after the ruling by the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) that the court verdict had legal flaws.

The regional legal facility based in Arusha ruled out that the Tanzania government was right to force the herders out of the disputed area.

The case has dragged in the Court since 2017 when the cattle keepers in Loliondo, a division within Ngorongoro District, protested against eviction from their ancestral land.

They objected to the removal order by the district authorities on grounds the land in question was to be allocated to a hunting company.

The case was filed by herders from four villages in the remote area in the far north-west corner of the Arusha region.

They are Ololosokwan, Olorien, Kirtalo and Arash, all inhabited by the Maasai nomadic pastoralists.

The disputed land borders the Serengeti national park to the west and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) to the south.

Under the Tanzanian laws, no human activity is allowed in a national park of which there are currently 22 of them. In between is what is known as the Loliondo Game Controlled Area, one of the hotly contested conservation sites in the country

The pastoralists in their application alleged violence and brutality by the state officers during the eviction carried out in 2017.

The claimed that the action was in violation to the East African Community (EAC) Treaty in that it breached the tenets of human dignity.

However, the Court on Friday ruled that the Tanzania government had its own right to evict the herders from the area.

“The applicants have not proved that the evictions were carried out outside the Serengeti National Park,” it said. The judgement was read before the packed Court by Judge Charles Nyachae. Two other members of the bench were Lady Justice Monica Mugenyi and Justice Audace Ngiye.

On the contrary the evictions, the judges concluded, were carried out “within the law and with dignity to the affected”.

Some of the prosecution witnesses though had alleged “lack of specificity” on the boundaries of the national park.

They said the evictions and other acts of violence and harassment took place in their villages outside the Serengeti NP.

The Court, however, alluded to the confusion over an order which seeks people to stay put to the park boundaries or vacate an area within five kilometres from the park.

The Court, therefore, dismissed the application for lack of merit and ordered each party to bear own costs.

Activists aligned to the pastoralists here received the ruling with a bit of disappointment and dismay, hinting that they consider to file an appeal.

They claimed that the judgement did not take into account the evidence presented by scores of witnesses.

Many of them could not be reached to comment on the ruling with their mobiles not answered or not reachable.

The herders were represented by a prominent Arusha advocate Donald Deya and Nelson Ndeki while the Solicitor General stood for the government.