The government of Tanzania has banned a local NGO from undertaking studies and publishing any articles regarding schools claiming it had been disparaging the country's education system and teaching profession, officials said on Wednesday. The Ministry of Education and Culture issued a circular on Tuesday prohibiting the NGO, Hakielimu, from "undertaking studies and publishing any articles regarding Tanzanian schools".

The latest update from the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) looks at the key issues pertinent to Tanzania's 2005 parliamentary and presidential elections. "In many cases, a review of a country's elections is unlikely to undergo an all-encompassing assessment of the relevant elections matters, leaving aside other dominant issues that influence the delicate democracy within the analyzed elections. That said the subsequent analysis will contain a set of election issues reviewed via a justifiable list of topics."

At least 700 people have registered more than once to vote in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar, the head of the local electoral body said on Tuesday. "More names are likely to be discovered," Masauni Yussuf, the chairman of the Zanzibar Electoral Commission, said in the statement. "We are still going on with the verification exercise.". On 30 October, Tanzanians are to elect a new national president, parliament and ward councillors. Voters in Zanzibar and the neighbouring island Pemba will also choose a local president and parliament.

Zanzibar's main opposition party is planning to hold a rally in defiance of new regulations published over the weekend ahead of next month's polls. Zanzibar's authorities said rallies could only be held in one place, without giving any reason. Civic United Front (CUF) leader Seif Shariff Hamad said the ruling defeated the whole purpose of elections, which were the time when politicians should go out to meet the people.

The Tanzanian GCAP/MDGs Campaign, "Ondoa Umaskini Tanzania" (Eradicate Poverty in Tanzania) will officially launch its campaign on September 10, 2005 simultaneously in Dar Es Salaam, Kigoma, Loliondo, Mwanza, Same and Singida. A press conference announcing the launch will be held on September 8th with banners and posters displayed at bus stops, along major roads and in front of key public buildings. At the Mnzani Mmoja Ground in Dar Es Salaam more than 2,000 people will come together to form a human chain wearing shirts with the campaign messages and white bands made by poor women living in rural villages in Ngorongoro.

International donors should not interfere in Tanzania’s general elections on 30 October, outgoing President Benjamin Mkapa said on Saturday while visiting his country’s politically volatile semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar. "I must stress that our development partners should respect our sovereignty," he told supporters at a public rally in Zanzibar. "They should not take advantage of the assistance they give us to decide which political party and leaders suit us."

Some 1,000 refugees in camps in Tanzania returned to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) late in July in order to register to vote in the 2006 general elections, according to UNHCR. Voter registration is set to begin in the province of South Kivu on 21 August and will end 21 days later. The National Independent Electoral Commission has said it cannot tour countries bordering the DRC to register refugees. In addition, the commission's deputy president, Norbert Kantitima Bashengezi, said it did not have the means to repatriate the refugees.

Rallying under the themes “no more broken promise” and “ Acha mizengwe timiza malengo ya Millennia”, TANGO and Action-Aid will on 5th July be holding a procession which will culminate into a mass rally at Karimjee Hall grounds. The procession and rally will be part of the Global Call to action Against Poverty, which aims at creating awareness on the content of the Millennium Declaration and the subsequent Development Goals.

Ananilea Nkya looks at the rise of maternal mortality in Tanzania and asks whether more attention would be given to the deaths if they were caused by road accidents or plane crashes. Without a concerted effort to reduce maternal mortality, the MDGs will remain a dream.

Although the reduction of maternal mortality is an area of focus for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of which Tanzania is a signatory, pregnancy related deaths continue to be a major threat to women of reproductive age in the East African country which attained its independence 44 years ago.

Statistics indicate that deaths during child birth jumped from about 10 deaths a day (208 per 100,000 live births) in 1995 to 26 deaths (800 per 100,000 live births) in 2004. “What if this was a road accident or a plane crash killing 26 people daily. Would action not be taken to prevent it?” Professor Malise Kaisi, a long serving Gynecologist with the national hospital Muhimbili and based in the city of Dar Es Salaam, has asked.

Kaisi believes there is a need to break the silence on maternal death by sensitizing the public, decision makers, law makers, development partners and financial institutions on the need to make maternal mortality a priority.

He said for the MDGs to be a success the national government should accord maternal mortality due priority by setting aside sufficient financial resources for establishing and adequately funding reproductive health services, training of more medical personnel and running massive public education programmes against behaviour and cultural practices that endanger the health of the pregnant mother.

A gender and media consultant, Charles Kayoka, said the government should treat child bearing as a public service. “This important labour must be recognized and budgeted for,” he noted. He was speaking at a session organized by the Tanzania Media Women’s Association in collaboration with State University of New York (SUNY) in the central capital Dodoma recently. The session was intended to sensitise women parliamentarians on the need to make maternal mortality their permanent agenda.

Kayoka said the road pregnant mothers travel to their preventable deaths is a narrative of their own low status in society and indifference by the government towards reproductive health.

He indicated that medical reasons attributed to maternal mortality can be explained in general terms. “The medical causes given by doctors could be indicators for a more serious problem of where a pregnant woman comes from,” he noted, adding that “we should study the woman’s journey to the hospital to see how certain cultural elements contribute to her death when giving birth.” He said: “What made her anemic? What made her marry early? What made her undergo FGM and thus have a problematic delivery?”

Kayoka said many of these deaths are attributed to the poor status women are accorded in society. As a result they are denied rights to control resources and power to control their bodies - a crucial factor is planning when and how to have a child.

The women parliamentarians who attended the session admitted that maternal deaths are a preventable problem and that some work needed to be done to empower various leaders, women, men and communities at large to take action. “Before this session I hardly looked at maternal mortality in gender terms nor as a road accident that claims so many lives on daily basis,” noted Monica Mbega, Iringa Urban Member of Parliament. She urged members of parliament to take up the issue as a priority and build a case for government as well as people in different constituencies to act. “ If the government, MPs, councilors and communities work seriously on this problem, it will take a short time to reduce the number of these shameful deaths in the country,” she said, noting that without such efforts the realization of the MDGs would be a mere dream.

Anne Makinda, MP for Njombe South in Iringa region, who is also the chairperson of women parliamentarians, suggested the organisation of bigger training events for all MPs after the 30th October general elections to sensitise law makers on their role in the prevention of maternal deaths. “Sensitisation of the entire house is crucial, should we wish to engage all parliamentarians so that they are able to see the problem from a gender perspective and act accordingly,” Makinda insisted.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Services at Tanzania's largest medical facility, the Muhimbili National Hospital, have deteriorated further after the government failed to resolve a dispute with medical interns who have been on strike for more than a week, demanding increased allowances. "We tried our best to convince the interns to go back to work, but it appears some of them were not ready to call off the strike," Hussein Mwinyi, the deputy minister for health, told a news conference on Tuesday when he announced the government's termination of the services of the striking interns.

Women’s Legal Aid Centre, (WLAC) on behalf of the Southern Africa Non Governmental Organizations Network (SAHRINGON) Tanzania Chapter has organized a two days Tanzania Social Watch Country Forum to be held from 1st to 2nd July 2005 at the Karimjee Hall to contribute and support the Global Campaign on the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP).

A group of national and international development organizations celebrated the Day of the African Child last week and renewed a call to the Government of Tanzania and international donors to focus on improving the quality of education by ensuring all primary schools have enough classrooms, textbooks, desks and toilets to meet student demands as well as supporting in-service teacher training.

At least 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania will receive anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) free of charge by the end of 2006, Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye announced last Thursday. "The target is to ensure at least 400,000 people are on free ARV treatment within the next five years," he said in a speech before parliament in Tanzania's administrative capital, Dodoma.

Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the country have been urged to sit back and reflect on themselves as civil society activists. In a key-note address to a Gender Festival in Dar es Salaam, Issa Shivji, Professor of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, said reflecting on who we are, what are we doing and where we are going does not require any justification. In other words, he queried, are we contributing to the great cause of humanity, the cause of emancipation from oppression, exploitation and deprivation, or are we engaged, consciously or unconsciously, in playing to the tune set by others?

As part of activities to mark the World Refugee Day, the government of Tanzania granted citizenship on Monday to the first 182 of 1,320 Somali refugees, a UN official said. A naturalisation ceremony was held at a refugee camp in Chogo village, in the northeastern Tanga region, which is home to 472 Somali refugee families.

Today several thousand children, parents, teachers, civil society organizations and government officials gathered in Shinyanga to celebrate the Day of the African Child through the voices of children. The day started with a march from Jomo primary school in the center of town. Led by a brass band, over a thousand children wearing white headbands with messages asking for more books, teachers, desks and the full $10 per child capitation grant to be paid to schools on time made their way to Kambarage Stadium. Here they were welcomed by the District Commissioner Mrs. Mansweta Sanka and entertained by classmates performing traditional dances, songs, poems, and a drama production. Especially moving was the testimony of two orphans struggling to get an education. The participants sent messages to the Government of Tanzania and members of the G8 joining with others throughout Africa in the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. In doing so, a specific call went out to the Government to meet targets set by the Millennium Development Goals and MKUKUTA. Also on the occasion a press release was issued by a group of national and international organizations calling on the government and donors to improve education.

The African Conservation Foundation (ACF) is announcing a unique fundraising campaign with award-winning Canadian painter, Daniel Taylor. The “Art for Africa” project is a partnership to create artwork for wildlife conservation and for educating school children in Africa. Taylor is a world famous painter. He transforms an original portrait into his signature style known as high realism art. High realism is the realist and natural representation of life in a work of art.

Authorities on the semi-autonomous Tanzanian island of Zanzibar have banned political columnist Jabir Idrissa from writing, saying he was working without permission. Idrissa told the Committee to Protect Journalists that he believes he was banned for criticizing the Zanzibar government. The Zanzibar-based Idrissa is a well-known political columnist for the weekly, Swahili language newspaper Rai. The newspaper is based on the Tanzanian mainland, but sells on Zanzibar.

A company involved in the production of artemisinine, an anti-malaria drug, is due to set up extraction plants in Kenya and Tanzania to make the drug easily and cheaply available to patients, an official for the company said on Wednesday. The factories would be established in East Africa because of the potential in the region for cultivating artemisia-annua, the plant from which the anti-malaria drug is extracted, the managing director of African Artemisia Limited, Geoff Burrell, said at a conference convened by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.

The CSOs' GCAP/MDGs Campaign Coalition in Tanzania is now at 50 and growing daily. TANGO is continuing to serve as the secretariat. WLAC / Sustainability Watch project participated in a meeting in Canada and a few others in a "African Women with MDGs" meeting convened by AWOMI in Nairobi recently. Back home, Sustainability Watch Campaign and TENMET were busy planning for events / activities that take place this month (June 2005) and beyond. Soon we will be in a position to share and circulate widely the information/reports once they become available.