After being silent for months, Wikileaks, a global whistleblower website is back at it this week, releasing over 100 US secret State Department cables about Tanzania filed between 2005 and 2010.
Some 20,000 documents were made available from the cable trove between Wednesday and Friday morning, and a Friday tweet from WikiLeaks promises 45,000 more will come soon. These numbers are still developing.
In perhaps the biggest batch of cables about Washington’s views about the Dar es Salaam regime under President Kikwete, the cables touche various issues from politics to economics, terrorism, human rights and the media.
However majority of these cables are unclassified and only two cables, the one about the smuggling of Uranium from Democratic Republic of Congo to Iran via Dar es Salaam port, and the corruption dossier, are classified.
In one of the cables filed to Washington, the US government described President Jakaya Kikwete as pro-Westerner, charismatic, and a friend of the world’s most powerful nation.
The cable was filed just a few days after Kikwete was elected to be the fourth President of the United Republic of Tanzania in November, 2005.
But, this view seemed to conflict with what the US embassy reported back to their country, four years since President Kikwete came into power.
In its cable filed in 2009, US claims that President Kikwete’s regime was failing to deliver contrary to the expectations, citing massive corruption within the government as well as growing frustration among Tanzanians. The cables also aired the view about the closure of a Ponzi scheme known as Deci, which during its closure was worth $10 million, with an estimated 700,000 members countrywide.
“Although all indications point to Deci Tanzania being a Ponzi scheme, among investors the most controversial issues surrounding it was the government’s decision to close it down…some theories propounded by unhappy investors include that Tanzanian leadership was was angry that traditional banks and investment opportunities would lose out to Deci,” reads part of the cables.
The cable further adds that the government was angry because Deci was a Christian and not a Muslim organisation.
Citing drug trafficking, the cables brand Tanzania as the ‘main conduit’ for drugs to Southern African countries due to its porous borders, seaports and airports.
The cables also blame lack of control at Zanzibar’s ports and airports, adding that the loopholes pave the way for the Indian Ocean archipelago to be the heaven of drug traffickers.
In general most of the leaked cables have very few ‘toxic materials’ that may hamper the growing relationship between Washington and Dar es Salaam.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
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