By Mabvuto Banda
YAANI ETI NI KWELI ASKARI WETU WANAPIGA WAVUVI WA MALAWI? KAMA KWELI MBONA NI HABARI YA KUSIKITISHA? HIYO ZIWA NI KUBWA SANA!
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Fishing
families on Lake Malawi, Karonga District. Many fisherfolk have said
they have been beaten up and detained by Tanzanian police since the
dispute over the lake began late last year. Credit: Mabvuto Banda/IPS
KARONGA,
Malawi, Feb 27 2013 (IPS) - Since he was nine years old, Martin Mhango
from Karonga village in northern Malawi has known no other livelihood
than fishing. And for the last 33 years he has been fishing freely on
Lake Malawi – that is, until last October when he was detained and
beaten by Tanzanian security forces.
“They
stopped me, dragged me to the beach where they beat me up and detained
me. They told me that I had trespassed and was fishing on the Tanzanian
side,” Mhango, 42, told IPS. “I was told to never fish on their side
again. He had been fishing on both sides of the lake for years, he
said, just as Tanzanian fisherfolk did.
The dispute over Africa’s third-largest lake, which is also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania, dates back half a century.
Malawi
claims sovereignty over the entirety of the 29,600-square-kilometre
lake that straddles the borders of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Meanwhile, Tanzania says 50 percent is part of its territory.
The
dispute between both southern African countries reignited when Malawi
awarded exploration licenses to United Kingdom-based Surestream
Petroleum in 2011 to search for oil and gas on Lake Malawi.
Tanzanian authorities want Surestream Petroleum to
postpone any planned drilling on the lake until the dispute is resolved.
But Malawi has remained defiant.
Last
December, the Malawian government awarded the second-largest oil
exploration license (after the Surestream license) to South African
company SacOil Holdings Limited.
So far, oil companies have yet to begin drilling and are still exploring the centre of the lake, which has been cordoned off.
But
several fishing families like Mhango’s that work along Songwe River in
northern Malawi are already caught up in this row, making the fisherman
fear that the two countries will eventually go to war.
After the October incident, Mhango has been careful
not to venture into the waters on the purportedly Tanzanian side, which
has affected his livelihood.
A reduced catch has lowered his income from over 286 dollars per month to just 142 dollars.
“I have all my life been a fisherman and this is the
first time I am unable to fish freely on the lake and I fear for my
future,” he said.
Josiah Mwangoshi, 52,
remembers belonging to two villages when he was growing up – one on the
Malawian side and another on the Tanzanian side.
“My village is right along Songwe River and I
remember that when the river used to shift its course, we would migrate
to the Tanzanian side and later on return to the Malawian side when the
river shifted again,” Mwangoshi told IPS.
“But I am now afraid that the Tanzanians may arrest
me. I can no longer live and fish on the Tanzanian side where I also
have a family, because it’s now clear that the dispute is very deep,” he
said.
Reports of alleged beatings and harassment of
Malawian fisherfolk in October last year forced Malawi’s President Joyce
Banda to cut off the dialogue that had started between the two
countries.
The wrangle deepened when last November Tanzania
published a new map shifting the boundary between Tanzania and Malawi to
the middle of the lake.
Banda, angry with the
new map and Tanzania’s harassment of fisherfolk, called a press
conference in the capital Lilongwe a few days later and announced that
she had protested to the United Nations General Secretary and cancelled a
planned state visit to Tanzania.
But Tanzanian
High Commissioner to Malawi, Patrick Tsere, defended his country’s
actions saying that no Malawian fisherfolk have ever been harassed in
Tanzanian territorial waters.
“Tanzania’s security forces
have never engaged in such behaviour. It’s rather us who have been
worried that Malawian planes have been seen flying into Tanzania
territory without our permission,” Tsere told IPS.
Many believe that the row over the lake has the potential to worsen if significant oil and gas is discovered.
“This
dispute has been around for over 50 years but it has heightened and
entered the public domain now because of the potential of oil and gas
discoveries,” Udule Mwakasungura, the executive director for the Centre
for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, a Malawian NGO, told IPS.
“Lake
Malawi contains more than 2,000 different fish species — our worry is
that oil exploration and its subsequent drilling will affect the fresh
water ecosystem,” he added.
The
lake has been witnessing a decline in fish stocks from 30,000 metric
tonnes a year to just 2,000 tonnes over the last 20 years, according to a
recent Ministry of Agriculture report read in parliament this February.
Last
month, both countries presented their position papers after agreeing
that the dispute would be mediate by the Southern African Development
Community former heads of state, also known as the African Forum.
“We
agreed with Tanzania that we will hand over the mediation to the
African Forum and so far we have both presented our position papers. A
mediation process should commence before the end of this month or early
March,” Malawi’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs and International
Co-operation, Patrick Kabambe, told IPS.
Mhango and Mwangoshi have pinned all their hopes on the mediation efforts.
“I
have been following news reports about this on the radio and my prayer
is that the former African leaders resolve this issue once and for all,”
said Mwangoshi.
Mhango
has similar hopes. “All I want is to go back and start fishing freely
on this lake — because without that, my family’s future is doomed.”
- See more at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/02/lake-malawi-dispute-instils-fear-in-fisherfolk/#sthash.TF5ztGpX.dpuf
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| Photo by Mabvuto Banda IPS |
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