Somali Bantus to get citizenship

Tanzania will favourably consider applications for citizenship from about 3,000 Somali Bantu refugees who have lived in the country since 1992, a government official told IRIN on Thursday. Speaking from Dar es Salaam, the deputy minister for home affairs, John Chiligati, said the government was willing to integrate the refugees into the society because it believed that they originated in the country before they were taken to Somalia as slaves some 300 years ago. Chiligati said issue was raised in the Tanzanian parliament on Wednesday by a member who wanted to know what the government was doing about the Somali Bantus who have been living in Tanga region. The first group of about 1,000 refugees arrived in Tanzania in 1992 after they fled Somalia when Mohammed Siad Barre's presidency ended in 1991. Although the government had not received any applications for citizenship from the refugees whose number had since increased to at least 3,000, Chiligati said they were welcome to apply. Initially, he said, the refugees had been settled in the Mkuyu area in Tanga, eastern Tanzania. However since April, he added, the government, in collaboration with the UN refugee agency UNHCR, had relocated the group to Chogo village in Handeni, still in Tanga, where each family had been allocated at least one hectare to cultivate. The relocation was to cater for the increase in numbers of the refugees, he added. "We believe that these people were originally from Tanzania," he said. "The speak Zigua [a local language] fluently, that is why we took them to Tanga where the Zigua people live." He said that the UNHCR had built a primary school, health centre and other structures in Chogo, to cater for the Somali Bantus. The refugees are said to be descendants of slaves who were captured from Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania by a ruler of Zanzibar and other slave traders and sold into Somalia.