The demonstrators pointed out how Tanzania had helped the ANC during the fight against apartheid
DAR ES SALAAM, Aug 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Police in Tanzania have dispersed hundreds of protesters, who were demanding the release of a Tanzanian plane seized in South Africa last week, from outside South Africa’s High Commission.
The Air Tanzania Airbus 220-3 was impounded by the South African authorities on Friday following an order from the High Court in Johannesburg.
A retired farmer said it was because Tanzania’s government had not paid him $33m (£28.8m) it owed in compensation after his farm was nationalised in the 1980s.
The move has caused anger in the East African nation, which was a key ally to South Africa’s now-governing African National Congress (ANC) when it was fighting white-minority rule from the 1960s until the early 1990s.
The demonstrators in Tanzania’s main city of Dar es Salaam were chanting in Swahili: “We want our plane back.”
One protester carried a placard reading: “Remember we offered food, land and skills to your freedom fighters but today [President Cyril] Ramaphosa offers space for our enemies to beat us! Release our Air Bus.”
Dar es Salaam’s chief of police said officers had arrested some of the protest’s ringleaders.
He urged Tanzanians to remain calm and said that lawyers from Tanzania were in South Africa to secure the release of the plane that belonged to the national carrier.
The retired farmer was declared a prohibited immigrant in Tanzania after battling for years get what was owed to him – the government reportedly only paid a portion of the compensation after the farm and all its equipment was seized. — NNN-AGENCIES
