Ringo W Tenga

The article examines the Unit Titles Act, its background, prospects and enforcement challenges. It is clear that the enactment of the Unit Titles Act aimed to inter alia ameliorate the problems associated with urban housing by providing for division of properties into units where common areas on land may be shared, including facilities and services thereupon. This form of common property ownership provides economized costs by spreading the cost among the occupiers. The article surveys the various modes of disposition through which a person can acquire or transfer a unit property in Tanzania. The modes include sale, lease and mortgage. The article notes that there are challenges that impinge on realization of effective disposition under the Act. Hence, there is need for an effective legal and institutional regime for the Act to achieve its intended objective. Laws like the Land Act, Registration Act should be harmonized with the Unit Titles Act. There should also be robust, well-coordinated administrative machinery to ensure effective development and transfer of unit title properties. Such effort should go hand in hand with improving the capacity of the relevant land departments in the office of the Registrar of Titles and Local Government Authorities.

The Book which in which this Piece is a part examines themes of human rights, constitutionalism and the role of the judiciary from an Irish and Tanzanian perspective. Several of Ireland’s greatest legal minds have come together with their colleagues in Tanzania to produce this work, which examines a range of issues including constitutional rights, women and the law, gender and the law, minority rights, property rights, judicial review, procedure, electoral law, Tribunals of inquiry, environmental protection, media freedom, freedom of expression, judicial independence, judicial activism and the right to a fair trial. The editor notes that “it is fascinating to see how global values impact on national legal systems and how, so often, judges in Tanzania and Ireland, with different constitutional structures, have crafted similar solutions”

The Paper is a chapter  in a Book edited by Lorenzo Cotula then of IIED from a FAO Conference in 2008.  It is dated as it is but raises some fundamental questions on the right to food.  Indigenous people in Tanzania and similar countries struggle for recognition through unique forms of livelihoods.  Often their rights are ignored by the population in power and their habitats destroyed or put to other uses.  The paper goes through the legal instruments that protect the right to food and looks at court cases that have defended rights to land and in that sense right to food and unique livelihoods.  Issues raised there are still critical to date and Tanzania is moving in a positive direction with the Presidential order that protected Pastoralists from removal in their grazing areas in 2019.  There is still some matters that need to be addressed which were left open during the Constitutional Review process in 2013.  These need to be raised again going forward to actualise Collective Rights such as the Right to food.

The Article addresses an existing lacunae in research with regard to prosecution of Money Laundering offences in Tanzania.  The investigated statute is Tanzania's Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2006 (AMLA).  Although the Offence was in existence since the early 90's under s. 71 of the Proceeds of Crimes Act, Cap. 256 (Act 25 of 1991) - now amended -  the new AML Act brought in a full FATF Style AMLA. Early prosecutions for the crime started from 2010, after the FATF Review of 2009, and to-date a comprehensive review in this particular area is absent. Although much has been surveyed on its other aspects by authors such as Eugene Mniwasa and Wilbert Kapinga a statistical review is still absent.  This review gives tentative conclusions that the offence section (s. 12) is badly drafted and does not adhere to standard definitions of the offence that would help courts in deriving its essential elements.  When it comes to proof Courts can hardly identify the mental element (mens rea) as against the physical criminal element (actus reus) of the crime. The Offences, to date, are highly hyped as 'serious offences' without evidence based on the severity of their occurrence.  Data is presented from Police and Audit Reports to show otherwise. A disturbing feature of criminal procedure is noted where the offence is rendered un-bailable under the statute, while it is bailable in next-door Zanzibar , and in other East African countries, as well as countries of origin such as the US and UK. The Paper supports the public perception that from charge sheets observed the offence is used by authorities in lieu of Preventive Detention, which is against Human Rights. Since the Statute is necessary for combat of  Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing suggestions are given to streamline and fine-tune it in line with international policy standard (e.g. the  FORTY RECOMMENDATIONS of FATF) and Human Rights considerations.

This study done more than a decade ago (2008) was an effort by a select group of researchers (Ringo Tenga, Amon Mattee, Ntengua Mdoe ,Raymond Mnenwa, Sengondo Mvungi,  and Martin Walsh) to realize the challenge given in 2006 to pastoralist stakeholders in Tanzania by the UN Special Rapporteur Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen on the rights and situation of Indigenous peoples, where he argued on the necessity of developing options for securing livelihoods in the face of loss of basic resources. Here the authors present options for Pastoralist livelihoods in terms of current State Policies (Prof. Amon Mattee - SUA and Dr. Martin Walsh - Cambridge U. - UK), Legal Status (Drs.Ringo Tenga & Sengondo Edmund Mvungi - UDSoL) and Economic Prospects (Prof. Ntegua Mdoe & Dr. Raymond Mnenwa - SUA)). The study was commissioned by CORDS, PWC, IIED, MMM Ngaramtoni Centre, TNRF and UCRT. It has been funded by CORDAID, TROCAIRE, Ireland Aid and the Wildlife Conservation Society AHEAD Programme. (As usual views expressed herein are solely those of the authors).