AT last the Prime Minister Edward Lowassa finally pinched the painful boil. Foreign mineral exploitation is not benefiting this country. The people had complained about it before but their cries fell on deaf ears.
It still appeared like it was sinful for a Tanzanian to posses an ounce of gold while foreigners were lifted to the seventh heaven in their lifestyles and quality of life right here on our national soil by exploiting the same wealth.
I am told some of the workers of the foreign mining companies are airlifted daily from Dar es Salaam to and from their duty stations at the Lake Zone gold mines, more than a thousand kilometres away!
Investors can only do that where costs are extremely low, yields exceedingly high and profits nothing but pure obscenity. So even the deliberately blind can see and tell that mining in this country is shameless plunder and looting of a poor people’s natural wealth at a magnitude unimaginable even under the most primitive conditions.
However, the most unfortunate thing is that pillaging does not end with mining only. The entire natural resources sector appears to have been targeted by foreign interests for sacking.
This country literally gains nothing from tourism, fisheries and its forests. Elsewhere in the world, it is exploitation of the natural resources that spurred countries to prosperity and development. If it weren’t for gold, South Africa is basically nothing but desert.
Like in the case of the slave trade, it might be not altogether right and fair to simply blame foreign interests for “doing business.” Of course their primary concern is to advance their interests, personal, corporate and national, often again within a regional and class perspective.
Our ancestors were often duped into trade in fellow human beings because of ignorance and narrow tribal interests. The same cannot be said to be exactly true of the present generation. We are better educated and have better understanding of global perspectives and trends.
Scenarios like what is obtaining in the mining sector are typical of cases of ignoring national interests. No one can take care of your interests if you don’t. It is foolhardy immaturity to expect others to espouse higher goals and objectives for us if we don’t!
Such is the reality of political being in the world we live in. I take it as an insult for AngloGold Ashanti to give the government a cheque for 60m/- towards the food relief fund and get banner coverage in our newspapers for it. At least they should have done it quietly.
We are told that the mining sector has been growing at 17 per cent but its contribution to GDP is still negligible. The unfortunate part about minerals is that they don’t increase with increased mining. The truth is mining depletes deposits and the country will finally be left with nothing but gapping holes.
Mwadui Diamond Mine Township was once an oasis in a desert. It had probably the best town bus service in the Lake Zone, the best hospital in Shinyanga Region and, of course, the best aerodrome. They also had a power plant that could supply Shinyanga town with electricity but they were a world of their own.
After more than 50 years of digging, diamonds have technically dried out at Mwadui with hardly any signs of the mine ever having played a community role. There is neither a school nor hospital at surrounding villages which could be said to be a legacy of the diamond boom in the area.
I am sure if Williamson himself were to return, he would marvel more at the extent of environmental degradation that has occurred since when he first discovered the gemstones there.
In its present state, Mwadui cannot even be a tourist destination if diamonds were to completely dry out.
When I last visited the place about ten years ago, those shacks in the African housing section were falling apart and I won’t be surprised if no structure of the mud houses still exists. But that is besides the point.
The important thing is that proceeds from natural resources should be turned into knowledge wealth. That is the best way for minerals to benefit societies before mines die out. Knowledge wealth is the key.
Nanotechnology promises to produce real diamonds for instance, by merely rearranging the molecules of coal. We have in this country both coal and diamonds. Do we have an appreciation of how much wealth we are sitting on even as we like to say we are a poor nation?
According to travellers, Arusha is experiencing a new mineral boom even as the indigenous are only peripheral players in the industry. Minerals have overtaken tourism as the main preoccupation in the city, often seen as more hectic than other parts of the country.
But we need to get more organised. It is minerals, more than agriculture that could easily give this country the minimum 20 per cent middle class population for superior consumption of goods and services, a figure economists say is important to invigorate an economy.
Without making money circulate and have affordable housing, food and shelter, then we should probably brace ourselves for increased crime and other social vices in society. The only way to ensure our Tanzanian way of life and culture survives trying times is through a strong economy for in the final analysis everybody wants to have a comfortable life.
That is the biggest challenge for the government and for the intelligentsia. Again, if we won’t use our own experts, in all fields and walks of life, it would be the equivalent of trying to win a war with hired guns.
We want to be a mini-tiger economy, fine. But have we seriously sat down to study what the countries of the Asian Economic Miracle did? Singapore used a combination of knowledge wealth and its port, a natural resource to eventually give its citizens par capita income of US dollars 10,000 in less than a generation. It is sometimes difficult to understand what is wrong with us.
