Mama Amon
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 30, 2018
- 2,021
- 2,478
The Palestine-Israel struggle, which is now at its peak, as the above picture shows, is the product of settler colonial ideology, that Tanzania should avoid at any cost.
Settler colonialism, as opposed to a temporary exploitative strategy hereby called extractive-evacuative colonialism, is a deadly ideology which is defined in terms of the following minimal attributes:
- forceful native land acquisition from its native inhabitants,
- native inhabitants expulsion and marginalization,
- occupation of the acquired land by settlers from outside/invaders,
- elimination of the natives through genocides and mass killings, and
- claiming social, economic, legislative, judicative, and executive sovereignty over annexed land through the eradication and erasure of native sovereignty.
- The three step strategy of total foreigner-to-native domination, namely:
(a) acquiring trans-generational economic citizenship through massive investments in the economy and military,
(b) gaining partial political citizenship in terms of the capacity to influence political decision-makers (becoming political decision formers), and finally
(c) getting full political citizenship, in the name of non-repatriable foreigners, and hence full power of participating in political decision-making organs.
In other words, while extractive-evacuative colonialism is the practice of a foreign state or group of people temporarily exercising control over another country or area, settler colonialism is a form of permanent colonialism in which settlers create societies that are distinct from the indigenous population and seek to control land and resources and establish their own economy and system of governance.
Settler colonists come to stay, assimilate or kill natives, and own their land. This is the core problem of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, apartheid struggle in south Africa, Arab-Bantu struggle in pre-revolution Zanzibar, Arab-Loliondo natives struggle in Northern Tanzania, and Swahili-Indians struggles in Upanga-Dar and Gezaulole-Bagamoyo in Tanzania.
Specifically, the Investors-Villagers struggles at Gezaulole Village, Makurunge Ward, Bagamoyo District, where a 7,000 village land has been forcibly acquired by an investor, hence expulsing 600 natives, is a serious recent case in point.
Key reference here is the ruling by the High Court , Land Division, at Dar es Salaam, Miscellaneous Application No. 102/2023, between Adelina Crispin Kilimba and 599 others versus Noble Agriculture Enterprises Ltd and 3 others, as issued on 22 May 2023 by Judge K. D. Mhina.
Noble Agriculture Enterprises Ltd is a part of the group of Companies called Noble Azania Investments Ltd. Mr. Jayantkumar Patel is the Group Chairman while Mr. Bharat Patel is the Group Managing Director.
The villagers application for an interlocutory order called Mareva injunction, was unsuccessful due to legal technicalities, related to the legal requirement of serving the government with a ninety days statutory notice before filing a suit against any of its department, agency or unit. However, the facts of the case are so telling.
In addition, I wish to note that, if it does not die a natural death on 25 October 2023, or if the government and the parliament do not reverse their intentions now, the Tanzania-Dubai Treaty is a gateway to another scenario of settler colonialism around 88 Ports in Tanzania Mainland.
And so, America and whoever supports what Israel has been doing to Palestinians since 1917, and whoever supports the above dirty scenarios, is a supporter of the deadly ideology of settler colonialism as currently being implemented by Israel in Gaza strip.
At the domestic level in Tanzania, the wisdom of the dictum "prevention is better than cure," is highly needed. We need to put our house in order now.
Empty "government prayers" for showing solidarity with the suffering Palestinians and Israelites, which are made by a secular government in Tanzania, as alluded to by Hon. January Makamba, in her recent statement concerning the ongoing Palestine-Israel struggle, won't do.
Let us explain why. By the above stated bad domestic examples on setller colonialism, it does not mean that we have already failed.
Instead, we have just found some vivid examples that don’t work for the good of the nation. What we are supposed to do when we don’t like a thing is to change it. If we can’t change it, then, at least, let us change the way we think about it.
In fact, only in the darkness can we see the stars. Let us do what we can, with what we have, where we are. If we can’t fly then let us run, if we can’t run then let us walk, if we can’t walk then let us crawl, but whatever we do we have to keep moving forward in pursuit of the common good of the nation.
Silence when we should speak up is not something the God of Abrahamic Religions has always looked kindly upon.
Let us remember the story where God told Moses to take the rod and speak to the rock before the people but instead rebelled and smote the rock twice in Numbers 20:6 -13.
Moses was punished because he did something God did not tell him to do and was not allowed to enter the Promised Land.
The interesting thing is that Aaron too was punished and not allowed to enter the Promised Land but his rebellion was he did not do something God told him to do, as he kept his mouth shut, didn’t let his voice be heard, and was held accountable for his silence.
For this reason, we wish to conclude this message by using the following four great quotes by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the danger of silence.
One, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Two, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Three, “The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die”
And four, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
We submit.
Some of the current Cabinet members, URT
Mama Amon,
Chief Executive Officer,
Dawati la Utafiti la Mama Amon (DUMA)
"Sumbawanga Town"
S.L.P P/Bag,
Sumbawanga.