Dar es Salaam – Joseph Oleshangay, a lawyer and human rights activist who has spent years defending the rights of Maasai communities in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), has delivered a sweeping critique of the two presidential commission reports presented to President Samia Suluhu Hassan on March 12, 2026, calling them neither independent nor credible.
In an interview with The Chanzo’s Ibrahim Mgaza, Oleshangay argued that both commissions — one on land use led by retired Court of Appeal Judge Dr Gerard Ndika, and the other on the so-called voluntary relocation exercise led by retired Permanent Secretary Eng. Musa Iyombe — were structured to validate decisions the government had already made, rather than to genuinely investigate the community’s grievances.
“The Terms of Reference were designed to rubber-stamp decisions that had already been made,” says Oleshangay in the interview we published Wednesday. “Both commissions focused on how relocation could be carried out successfully, rather than on whether it should happen at all.”
Recycled narrative
Oleshangay’s most pointed criticism was directed at the land use commission’s report, which he said was a near-verbatim reproduction of the contested 2019 Multiple Land Use Model (MLUM) Report — a document that Maasai communities and rights organisations have long disputed.
He noted that Dr Maurus Msuha, who served as secretary of the 2019 MLUM commission, was also appointed as secretary of the Ndika commission, creating what he described as a fundamental conflict of interest.
“The person who wrote the propaganda we have been subjected to is now the one validating it,” he pointed out. “What do you expect?”
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He cited specific examples of what he called direct copying. The Ndika commission’s claim that the NCA’s population is growing at 3.6 per cent per year, he said, is mathematically incorrect.
Using official data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), he calculated that the actual growth rate is 1.6 per cent — based on a rise from 8,000 residents in 1959 to 93,136 in 2017 and 117,930 in 2022. The 3.6 per cent figure, he argued, was lifted directly from the 2019 report without independent verification.
He made a similar observation about the commission’s claim that certain wildlife species had disappeared from the Ngorongoro Crater. The three species cited — Oryx, Eland, and Gerenuk — are the same three species mentioned in the 2019 MLUM Report.
“They didn’t even add a fourth species,” Oleshangay notes. “It is copy and paste. I know the page numbers. You go to page 65, page 68, page 69, page 85 of the 2019 report — it is all there.”
The Lake Natron problem
Oleshangay also challenged the Ndika commission’s recommendation to upgrade the Lake Natron Forest Reserve to a Game Controlled Area (GCA), calling it legally untenable.
He explained that under the Wildlife Conservation Act (Chapter 283), a GCA cannot be established on village land. The Lake Natron area encompasses more than 20 villages and over 70,000 people.
He further noted that the commission’s mandate did not include the Lake Natron area, and that its members never visited the Longido district, where many of the affected communities live.
“You condemn the people without hearing them,” says Oleshangay. “At least they came to Ngorongoro, and we met with them. But they never went to Longido, and they are already making recommendations about those people’s land.”
He drew a pointed comparison: other areas historically designated as Game Controlled Areas — including the land on which the Chamwino State House now stands, the UN Residual Mechanism in Arusha, and Kilimanjaro Airport — were never cleared of human activity.
“Why are they applying the law selectively?” asked Oleshangay. “Why don’t they evacuate the State House? Why don’t they move the UN mechanism? Because conservation in this country is designed to contain the Maasai.”
7% and Sh137 billion
On the relocation commission’s findings, Oleshangay said Iyombe’s report contained important admissions that ultimately undermined the government’s case for continuing the exercise.
He noted that Iyombe himself acknowledged the relocation was not genuinely voluntary — using language that, in Oleshangay’s interpretation, amounted to an admission of coercion.
READ MORE: Ngorongoro’s Mixed Land Use Model ‘No Longer Sustainable,’ Presidential Commission Finds
“The language he used was ‘inducement’ — meaning you persuade a person to leave, not that you negotiate with them,” he says. “That is the honourable way of saying it was not voluntary.”
The commission found that only 1,678 of approximately 23,000 households — 7.3 per cent — had relocated, and that only 5.7 per cent of livestock had been moved.
Meanwhile, the government has spent a combined Sh137 billion on infrastructure at the three relocation sites of Msomera, Saunyi, and Kitwa B, with 1,559 houses at Msomera remaining unoccupied.
“Sh137 billion for a programme that achieved 7 per cent,” Oleshangay wondered. “That money did not go into the pockets of those who relocated. It went to the builders and contractors. As a Tanzanian, you have to ask whether this money is being spent wisely.”
He predicted the programme would fail even more comprehensively if it continued under the revised model proposed by Iyombe, which would give families cash allowances to build their own homes rather than receiving pre-built houses.
“Think of the Palestinians,” Oleshangay drew a parallel. “Bombs fall on them every day, they lose family members, and still they do not leave. That is how people feel about their homeland. The Maasai of Ngorongoro are patriots. They love their country. You cannot pay them to leave it.”
Conservation as pretext
Oleshangay argued that the framing of the Ngorongoro dispute as a conservation issue is a deliberate misdirection, pointing to evidence he said the commissions ignored entirely.
READ MORE: Maasai Advocacy Group Rejects Ngorongoro Commission Reports, Vows to Resist Relocation
He noted that Ngorongoro generates more tourism revenue than any other conservation area in Tanzania, and that it is the only protected area in the country with a resident human population. If people were genuinely incompatible with conservation, he argued, Ngorongoro would be the worst-performing conservation area — not the best.
“The government itself admits that Ngorongoro leads in tourism revenue,” said Oleshangay. “It is the only conservation area with people, and it earns the most. That tells you people are not a threat to conservation.”
He also challenged the commission’s projection that the NCA would be unable to support its livestock population by 2050, pointing out that the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya — which covers only 1,510 square kilometres, compared to the NCA’s 8,122 — receives millions of wildebeest annually without the ecosystem collapsing.
Dispossession
Oleshangay placed the current dispute within a longer historical arc, tracing the pressure on Maasai communities back to the colonial era.
He cited a BBC interview given by Governor Twining on September 5, 1958, in which the colonial governor explicitly stated that the Maasai would not threaten wildlife, that the population figures being cited were exaggerated propaganda, and that the land belonged to the Maasai.
“Sixty-five years later, those whom Twining thought would come to defend us are repeating the same propaganda from the 1950s,” he highlighted. “The lies are not new. They are not from this commission, not from Iyombe, not from the 2019 report. This propaganda goes back to 1952.”
He also noted that the Maasai were removed from the Serengeti in the 1950s and relocated to the NCA — and that the current drive to remove them from the NCA, combined with the creation of the Pololeti Game Reserve in 2022 and the proposed Lake Natron upgrade, would collectively strip the community of a territory larger than Rwanda.
What comes next
Despite his comprehensive rejection of both reports, Oleshangay said the community would continue to resist through peaceful and legal means. He called on the government to engage in genuine dialogue rather than implement recommendations that he said would deepen, not resolve, the conflict.
“We are not going to sell our birthright,” Oleshangay said. “We have some knowledge of right and wrong, and we know oppression when we see it. We will fight it — not with weapons, but with our minds. And we have enough of those.”
He also issued a broader warning, arguing that the targeting of the Maasai today set a dangerous precedent for other communities in Tanzania.
“The elements that are anti-Maasai today can be anti-anyone tomorrow,” he warned. “Our job as human beings is not to be silent because we think it does not concern us. Because tomorrow it could be someone else, and the same weapon could be used against them in circumstances even more painful than what we face today.”
