In September the Tanzanian government conducted a mostly secret campaign of apprehending illegal immigrants and deporting them to Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda. No questions asked. No legal recourse. Simply “grab and go.”
Operation Kimbunga (“Cyclone”) officially launched on Sept. 6. According to the government-owned Daily News newspaper, over 6,600 people have been arrested. Some 900 were deported virtually overnight. Two hundred were Tanzanian citizens and thus released. Not much data is available for the remainder.
Hailed as a major success by most Tanzanian media outlets, the operation has received little international coverage, despite questionable methods and terrifying consequences.
“It is a nightmare,” said Joseph (not his real name), who owns a small restaurant in the border city of Kigoma.
Recently, government forces expelled some of Joseph’s friends. “They came and took him in the middle of the night. I hear they seized his property and looted his business. They asked him to show his Tanzanian birth certificate or else he’ll be deported. He was taken over the border next day.”
The person in question is a 48-year-old boutique owner I interviewed in 2009 during an ethnographic project. He entered Tanzania from Burundi amid violent attacks and political instability in the late 1990s and had since lived in Kigoma. Nobody knows his fate since he was given to Burundian authorities.
Another acquaintance of Joseph’s was luckier. Although apprehended by police, he paid a substantial bribe to local officers to avoid deportation. Now returned to his Tanzanian family, he remains anxious that government forces may return for more money or, worse, to deport him.
“We live in fear. Who’s going to be next?” asked Joseph over the phone. Joseph is a Burundian immigrant, with permanent resident status and government papers proving it. He is frightened this is not enough: “You know, I made copies of all my papers at different local notary public offices and [I have] hidden the originals. What if they come and seize my papers or worse set them on fire?”
Anti-Immigrant Propaganda
Joseph has much to fear with the operation in full flight and enforcers showing little tolerance. Worse, anti-immigrant propaganda has been broadcast across all media channels since the operation commenced and is gathering momentum and public support.
A recent unsigned front-page editorial in Daily News demonized all immigrants in Tanzania and demanded the operation become permanent. As its author wrote: “It is unthinkable that thousands, possibly millions, of foreign nationals should sneak into our country and live clandestinely, sabotaging our economy, committing atrocities and plundering our resources.” The editorial concludes by summarizing what Tanzanian politicians have publicly said when defending the operation: “Tanzania is for indigenous Tanzanians. Illegal immigrants, criminals and their cronies must stay away.”
Such an operation is not new in Africa. During the xenophobic attacks of 2008 in South Africa, the government seized hundreds of darker-skinned Africans and removed them to Mozambique. Many were actually South-African born, not immigrants, a mess the South African Embassy in Mozambique struggled to undo.
More worrisome, Burundi is widely considered a dangerous haven for terrorist activities. Earlier this year, the U.S. Consulate in Bujumbura released multiple emergency messages to visiting U.S. citizens warning about “regional terror groups [which] remain actively interested in attacking U.S. and other Western and local interests in Burundi.”
Stripped of their resources and removed from their families, illegal immigrants have no legal recourse to this operation. They are publicly ostracized, blamed for Tanzania’s misfortunes and, if prosperous, are often accused of witchcraft.
The irony that just as the Tanzanian government launched the task force executing the operation, President Jakaya Kikwete attended a White House sponsored event in New York dedicated to African heads of state who promote good governance and transparency. President Obama made a stellar portrait of the Tanzanian president and called him “a true brother and friend.”
There is nothing transparent about uprooting and deporting without recourse thousands of people virtually overnight. No matter what immigration status they hold, even illegal immigrants have the right to their day in court. Except in Tanzania!
Codrin Arsene writes about African political and cultural affairs. He is a Chicago-based anthropologist who lived and worked in Tanzania and Uganda.
