By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM (TrustLaw) – Tanzanite is one of the world’s most sought-after gemstones, a thousand times rarer than diamond and prized by New York jeweler Tiffany & Co. But the three men who say they discovered the deep blue crystal have received nothing but $30 in cash, a government certificate and a plaque.
Jumanne Ngoma, a 74-year-old former Meru herdsman, said he stumbled upon the stones, which rival sapphire in their intensity, while tending cattle in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Four decades later, he is fighting for a share in the profits but is caught between big mining, which credits two other men with the discovery, and a Tanzanian government with limited revenue.
“I feel robbed of my rights as a discoverer, but I haven’t given up. I will keep fighting until I get what I deserve,” Ngoma said in an interview.
Ngoma is poor. He has a modest mud-brick home with a corrugated iron roof he built himself and a farm in Makanya village in northern Tanzania.
“I am the victim of circumstances – I can’t even afford my own (health) treatment … when I get sick it’s my children who have to pay to send me to hospital,” he said.
As east Africa’s second biggest economy begins exploiting its natural gas and petroleum resources, which are turning it into a regional energy hub, the story of what happened in the community where the rarest of gemstones was discovered in 1967 is a cautionary tale on natural resource wealth.
Ngoma said he found gemstones strewn on the ground while grazing cattle near the Merelani hills in Kiteto district. He was 28 at the time.
“They were very beautiful stones. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw them, my friends were also fascinated,” he said.
He took some samples to the regional city of Moshi for analysis. They were sent to the capital Dodoma and mineral inspectors confirmed they were a rare type of zoisite minerals, found only in the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro, Ngoma added.
In 1979, the Ministry of Tourism and Natural Resources recognised Ngoma for the rare discovery. Then President Julius Nyerere named the crystals tanzanite because he wanted them to reflect the national identity.
The Commission for Science and Technology in 1984 awarded Ngoma a certificate of citation, a plaque and 50,000 Tanzanian shillings, equivalent to about $30. To this day, Director General Hassan Mshinda said the commission recognises Ngoma as the discoverer of tanzanite.
Yet the biggest mining company, Tanzanite One, a subsidiary of the publicly traded company Richland Resources Ltd, credits another man with the discovery of the gemstone. Ali Juu ya Watu, a Maasai tribesman stumbled upon blue crystals while walking through the Kilimanjaro foothills on the way to visit relatives and shared them with South African Manuel de Souza, a tailor by profession and a prospector by passion, according to the company’s website.
At the National Museum of Tanzania, Dr. Amandus Kweka, who looks after geological and paleontological collections, said he could find no documentation about Watu or his family, nor any documented evidence linking him to the discovery of a rare stone.
Interviews with Maasai elders in the Merelani region in Arusha also failed to uncover anyone who remembered Watu as a member of their clan or anyone associated with him.
Meanwhile, the biggest marketing firm for tanzanite, AFGEM, says on its website that Manuel de Souza was searching for rubies when he discovered fragments of the vivid blue and purple crystals. South African High Commission officials in Dar es Salaam have not responded to inquiries about De Souza’s whereabouts or to requests to interview him or his relatives.
Leanne Goot, a spokeswoman for AFGEM, said the marketer does not know definitively who discovered the gem nor would it comment on the veracity of the claims on its website, pointing to popular wisdom.
“The most common narrative includes both Ali Juu ya Watu and Manuel De Souza,” Goot said.
BIG MONEY
Tanzanite is big business. As owner of the largest extraction operation, Richland reported $3.5 million in profits for 2011 on revenues of $20.5 million. The company said in its annual report it has contributed $23.4 million to the Tanzanian government in royalties and taxes over the past eight years.
Last year, tanzanite output increased by almost 17 percent to 15,000 kilograms (33,000 pounds), up from 12,733 kilograms in 2011. The Tanzania government recently increased the royalties it charges mining companies to 4 percent from 3 percent.
But Ally Samaje, commissioner for minerals at the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, said the government is only getting $100 million a year in royalties and taxes from the tanzanite trade. As yet, it does not have detailed export data, but the government suspects that more than $500 million in tanzanite revenues are lost to smugglers and unscrupulous traders who sell the gems on the black market in Kenya, he said.
Some analysts blame the government for signing contracts with foreign companies that fail to adequately compensate the country.
“Tanzanite was a great discovery, but it is foreigners who enjoy our national splendor,” said Azaveli Lwaitama, a political analyst, at the University of Dar es Salaam. “I wonder if there’ll be a day when we stand up and fight for our wealth?”
He sees evidence in Tanzania of the natural resource curse – where a country has immense natural wealth but its citizens live in poverty.
“We don’t seem to take these signs seriously, but they are adding up. We will soon realise when it is too late,” he said.
The allure of tanzanite is so great that independent contractors risk their lives to hack out the gemstones from the rock face. The foothills of Kilimanjaro are dotted with wooden shacks. Local miners skinny down wooden ladders into shafts and crawl on their bellies through airless tunnels into narrow caves to mine lumps of crystal.
These artisanal miners, working deep in the mines, complain of poor working conditions, and the community leaders complain they do not receive benefits from the presence of foreign companies.
“They are digging deep holes … they don’t care about the environment and we the people who live here face many social problems. We don’t have schools, hospitals, water and nobody is ready to help us,” said Daniel Ole Nyan’goro, a Maasai elder in the area.
Tanzanite One founded a charitable organisation in 2003, funded by the industry, to support community development projects in the Mount Kilimanjaro area affected by the mining, including schools, medical clinics and fresh water.
But the Maasai communities close to the mining area say the mining companies treat them like land encroachers, even though they have grazed cattle there for generations. They say their communities are not the ones helped by these social programmes.
“Traditional herders are being harassed and expelled from the area, where should we herd our cattle?” Nyan’goro said.
Jumanne Ngoma said he is left with absolutely nothing – not even the full recognition he believes he deserves for his discovery.
“I tell you De Souza was a pretender and an opportunist who wanted to benefit from the gem,” he said. “When I discovered tanzanite, it wouldn’t have been easy for him to find his way through that terrain because he didn’t know the area.”
((Mark Nkwame also contributed to this report. Editing by Stella Dawson))
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