As a human rights lawyer and advocate with the High Court of the United Republic of Tanzania, Joseph Moses Oleshangay spends most of his time crossing from one court to another, litigating human rights cases, some with life-altering implications for ordinary people. It is a monumental responsibility, one he never envisaged growing up.
As a young boy born into a Maasai household in northern Tanzania, his entire childhood revolved around cattle: “Our entire livelihood revolved around cattle. As a child, the main preoccupation was to tend to cows, and my formative years were spent grazing cattle around Endulen. It a simple lifestyle,” he says.
That simplicity soon disappeared when the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), the agency responsible for the administration of the Ngorongoro conservation area in which many Maasai pastoralists stay and live, started harassing subsistence cattle-rearing and restricting access to grazing lands in the name of conservation. For Oleshangay and the rest of the Maasai, this was a stub at the very core of their existence, and many families started to either sell their excess herds, while others(herds) died altogether, beginning the community’s slow descent into poverty.
It was this summary injustice that awakened Oleshangay’s awareness to injustice. Initially interested in teaching and nursing as the professions familiar to him, he now was driven to study law to defend his people against state and government overreach.
In the proceeding years, the pressure on the Maasai from the NCAA would only increase, as the Tanzanian government determined to cash in on tourism revenues and attract foreign direct investment. As the Ngorongoro conservation area, with its vast swaths of flat savannah grassland and considerable wildlife overtime emerged as a favourite for tourism game drives, the government responded by gazetting more and more of previous Maasi grazing lands as conservation land, pushing more and more people from their ancestral lands and leading to the deaths of thousands of cattle, pushing a signficant number of Maasai into poverty and destitution.
In June 2022, the Tanzanian government announced plans to demarcate 1,500 square kilometers of land in Loliondo division, Ngorongoro district as a game reserve, prohibiting the primarily pastoralist Maasai inhabitants of the area from living on the land, using it for grazing, or even entering the area to seek water for household and agricultural use. What followed was a litany of human rights violations:
Immediately, government displaced thousands of Maasai in 14 village in Loliondo, and seized/confiscated close to forty thousand livestock in a span of eighteen months from July 2022 to December 2023. Since then, traditional Maasai villages have been raided, cattle confiscated, and those who have dared stand in the way of police actions have been shot and killed. Those who have resisted relocation are constantly threatened, and Maasai employees of NCAA are being threatened to either accept relocation or lose their jobs,” says Oleshangay.
Oleshangay has sought to challenge all this state impunity in the courts of law. Since 2022, he has either supported or litigated at least 14 cases related to Loliondo and Ngorongoro displacement problem in the Tanzanian High court and in the East African court of justice, securing favourable court orders/directives against the displacement on three occasions. “But almost all of these court decisions have been disregarded, he says.
Immediately, government displaced thousands of Maasai in 14 village in Loliondo, and seized/confiscated close to forty thousand livestock in a span of eighteen months from July 2022 to December 2023. Since then, traditional Maasai villages have been raided, cattle confiscated, and those who have dared stand in the way of police actions have been shot and killed. Those who have resisted relocation are constantly threatened, and Maasai employees of NCAA are being threatened to either accept relocation or lose their jobs,” says Oleshangay.
Oleshangay has sought to challenge all this state impunity in the courts of law. Since 2022, he has either supported or litigated at least 14 cases related to Loliondo and Ngorongoro displacement problem in the Tanzanian High court and in the East African court of justice, securing favourable court orders/directives against the displacement on three occasions. “But almost all of these court decisions have been disregarded, he says.
“Plans to displace Maasai in different part of Longido, Monduli, Simanjiro and Kiteto continue. Just days ago, Maasai villages of Kimotorok in Simanjiro were invaded by armed forces, people recklessly shot with live bullets, livestock confiscated right within human settlements and driven into a park for which the government demand ransom, as if they were terrorists. In the last three years, the Maasai particularly in Ngorongoro and Loliondo have not been able to undertake any economic activity to improve their livelihoods because they have been preoccupied with fending off attacks and pressure from government to vacate their traditional lands” he adds.
Despite the obstinance from the government, Oleshangay has not been deterred. When he is not in court, he has been engaging in international advocacy, articulating the Maasai’s case in local and international media. He has also had engagements with the German and EU Parliaments to galvanise international attention on the Maasai plight, and to call for international pressure against the actions of the Tanzanian authorities.
This stubbornness has not been without consequences for Oleshangay. On several occasions, he has been threatened, while state agents have trailed his movements both in Arusha where he works, and in Ngorongoro where he has his family home, looking for him, all of which have pushed him to undertake some precautionary measures regarding his physical and all-round personal security. Yet he remains committed to the struggle to defend his people:
“Plans to displace Maasai in different part of Longido, Monduli, Simanjiro and Kiteto continue. Just days ago, Maasai villages of Kimotorok in Simanjiro were invaded by armed forces, people recklessly shot with live bullets, livestock confiscated right within human settlements and driven into a park for which the government demand ransom, as if they were terrorists. In the last three years, the Maasai particularly in Ngorongoro and Loliondo have not been able to undertake any economic activity to improve their livelihoods because they have been preoccupied with fending off attacks and pressure from government to vacate their traditional lands” he adds.
Despite the obstinance from the government, Oleshangay has not been deterred. When he is not in court, he has been engaging in international advocacy, articulating the Maasai’s case in local and international media. He has also had engagements with the German and EU Parliaments to galvanise international attention on the Maasai plight, and to call for international pressure against the actions of the Tanzanian authorities.
This stubbornness has not been without consequences for Oleshangay. On several occasions, he has been threatened, while state agents have trailed his movements both in Arusha where he works, and in Ngorongoro where he has his family home, looking for him, all of which have pushed him to undertake some precautionary measures regarding his physical and all-round personal security. Yet he remains committed to the struggle to defend his people:
“Firstly, I believe what I am doing is the right thing to do – to defend the rights of not just the Maasai, but of all those who’re unable to assert their rights. Secondly, Ngorongoro has been the traditional and historical land of the Maasai going back generations, so I shudder to watch as they’re unjustly removed from their ancestral lands to pave way for commercial interests. I will do everything in my power to ensure that it does not happen on my watch, he says.”