The government does not intend to demand any compensation from the colonial masters before independence.
The Minister for State in the Prime Minister’s Office Hawa Ghasia said yesterday in the National Assembly in response to a question by Sylvester Mabumba, MP for Dole constituency (CCM).
The MP had wanted to know if the colonial administrators who ruled the country had to pay compensation for any damages caused by them.
“From the beginning of colonial era until the time we gained independence, there has been no system that regulated the damage caused. Therefore, it is difficult to get to know the actual damage caused by rulers from Oman, Germany and Britain,” Ghasia argued.
Earlier, the minister explained that a colony is a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.
In the case of Tanzania, originally which was Tanganyika Territory, the British share of the former German colony of German East Africa, which the British took under a League of Nations Mandate in 1922, and which was later transformed into a United Nations Trust Territory after World War II.
And the German East Africa (German: Deutsch-Ostafrika) was a German colony in the African Great Lakes region, which included what are now Burundi, Rwanda, and the mainland part of present Tanzania (formerly known as Tanganyika).
“…such areas are called a colony or a trusteeship, Tanganyika which on 26th April 1964 united with Zanzibar and Pemba islands to form the United Republic of Tanzania, was colonised by German for about 34 years, moreover, for 42 years the country was under British trusteeship while Oman ruled Zanzibar and Pemba islands for about 265 years,” she detailed.
