Dar es Salaam. Good morning! The Chanzo is here with a rundown of major news stories reported in Tanzania on Monday, September 25, 2023.
Bank of Tanzania launches Domestic Gold Purchase Programme
The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) Monday announced the commencement of the Domestic Gold Purchasing Programme aimed at bolstering foreign exchange reserves in the East African nation through acquiring and holding gold.
Monday’s announcement comes almost six months after the government announced a process to launch a gold reserve in the country, with the then Minister of Minerals Doto Biteko informing the parliament on April 28, 2023, that the regulation for gold purchases is ready.
In its announcement, BoT said it would buy gold from domestic miners and traders in Tanzanian shillings.
In a BoT video shared on YouTube, the central bank’s governor, Emmanuel Tutuba, said the bank has so far bought 418kg of gold, with the plan being to buy six tonnes of the precious metal in 2023 alone.
Full story here.
NSSF is ‘finalising talks’ with buyer of its Dege Eco Village
The Director General of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), Masha Mshomba, said Monday that by October 31, 2023, the fund should have disposed of its controversial Dege Eco Village project in Kigamboni.
Mr Mshomba told editors from Tanzania’s media houses in Dar es Salaam that the fund has obtained a buyer willing to pay US$220 million (Sh501 billion) to buy the project whose construction stalled for more than seven years since 2016.
Mshomba’s announcement comes almost seven months after he revealed on February 8, 2023, that NSSF would not sell the project to anyone who will not commit to paying the money the fund incurred to construct the project.
Full story here.
US national fined Sh500,000 for illegally obtaining Tanzania ID
A US citizen was on Monday ordered to pay Sh500,000 or spend six months in jail after pleading guilty to unlawfully obtaining a Tanzanian national ID, The Citizen newspaper reported.
Mr Yaki Lee, alias Khalid Juma, pleaded guilty to multiple offences at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court in Dar es Salaam, including providing false information and unlawful access to Tanzania’s National ID.
After pleading guilty, Mr Lee opted to pay the fine to escape a six-month jail sentence, and the court ordered that he be repatriated to the US.
Mr Lee said he regretted committing the crime, requested a lenient punishment, and promised to distance himself from such offences, but the Magistrate urged the court to impose a tough punishment to deter other people from committing such offences.
In criminal case number 169/2023, Mr Lee was also charged with unlawfully staying in Tanzania, accused of committing the offence on September 14, 2023.
Mr Lee was on the same day accused of providing false information to immigration officials regarding his nationality to obtain a Tanzanian passport. He was also accused of obtaining a Tanzanian national ID using fraudulent documents and submitting forged documents, such as a Tanzanian birth certificate.
Licence to silence: Making sense of Tanzania’s efforts to control dissent
Paradoxically, while it is stated that it is the force of public opinion that keeps the waters pure, those in the waters believe that they are the ones who are clean, and the force of public opinion actually muddies the water.
Expressions of public opinion which do not conform to the wishes of those swimming in the waters can easily be interpreted by the swimmers as uchochezi, or incitement, attempts to turn the waters against them.
Well, of course, they are uchochezi, but with a very different meaning from the one given to them by the swimmers.
Even the pronouncements of the swimmers are uchochezi because the aim of any uchochezi is to change people’s opinions, to make them see things differently from before.
Full analysis here.
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One Response
Dear Chanzo.
Your editor went to sleep on the Dege story.
Your summary says NSSF ‘has obtained a buyer willing to pay US$220 million (Sh501 billion) to buy the project’ while the full story says exactly the opposite: ‘Masha Mshomba said on Wednesday that the fund is yet to get a buyer for its Dege Eco Village project’.
I assume the full story is the correct story (no buyer forthcoming), since nobody will pay $220m for this project.