UNBELIEVABLE:TANZANIA GOVERNMENT WANT TO SELL 'MASAI ANCESTRAL LAND' TO UNITED ARAB EMIRATE ROYAL FAMILY!

African leaders can sell their mothers because of money! Thanks to Avaaz that calls the world attention to the plight of Tanzania Masai whom their President according to Avaaz had ambitions to turn 1,500 square kilometres (580 square miles) of their ancestral land in the Loliondo district into a hunting reserve for a company catering to the royal family of the United Arab Emirates! What a shame.

Avaaz, which launched an online petition against the alleged plans that has collected 2.3 million signatures, claimed Maasai community leaders had been told they would be offered one billion Tanzania shillings (about 466,200 euros, $578,000) for their lands, about 12 euros ($15) each for 40,000 of them to leave.

However, thank to Tanzania's president, President Jakaya Kikwete who vowed never to evict the Maasai people from their traditional lands. "There has never been, nor will there ever be any plan by the government of Tanzania to evict the Maasai people from their ancestral land," President Jakaya Kikwete said in a message on Twitter on Sunday.

The Masai Association has in the past raised an alarm that ‘ The new land management system of individual ranches has economically polarized our people; some Maasais, as well as outside wealthy individuals, have substantially increased their wealth at the expense of others. The largest loss of land, however, has been to national parks and reserves, in which the Maasai people are restricted from accessing critical water sources, pasture, and salt lick. Subdivision of Maasailand reduced land size for cattle herding, reduced the number of cows per household, and reduced food production. As a result, the Maasai society, which once was a proud and self-sufficient society, is now facing many social-economic and political challenges. The level of poverty among the Maasai people is beyond conceivable height. It is sad to see a society that had a long tradition of pride being a beggar for relief food because of imposed foreign concepts of development’.

Avaaz welcomed the promise by Tanzania. "This is a massive breakthrough," Avaaz campaign director Sam Barratt said.
"For the first time in 20 years, a Tanzanian president has definitively said the Maasai are safe on their land. Over two million people around the world have stood arm in arm with the Maasai to keep foreign hunters at bay."

It is important to know that Masai people of East Africa live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania along the Great Rift Valley on semi-arid and arid lands. The Maasai occupy a total land area of 160,000 square kilometers with a population of approximately one half million people and the land is home to the annual Masai Mara/Serengeti Wildebeest Migration, Home to the July - November wildebeest migration, where animals cross into neighbouring Kenya's Maasai Mara park following seasonal grazing.

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Source: AFP,Masai Association.