Joe Chilaizya
The Tazara railway line, a key rail link between Tanzania and Zambia is under threat, and may be privatised and sold off to South African interests.
If Tazara is not rescued thousands will lose their jobs, and people all along the route will lose their incomes.
Few Tanzanian or Zambian officials are likely to have heard of Chozi, Idiga or Vwawa. Fewer still would be aware that should their governments close the railway line operated by the troubled Tanzania- Zambia Railway Authority (Tazara), economic activity in those remote stations would ground to a halt.
The Tazara railway is a lifeline to villagers living along its route. When they hear the train coming, people bearing baskets full of onions, potatoes, rice, bananas, tomatoes and oranges rush to meet it.
They live for those ten minutes during which the train stops alongside the station to change tracks or locomotives on its three-day journey between Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the Zambian town of New Kapiri Mposhi.
A few are men, but most are barefooted women with babies strapped on their backs and heavy bags or baskets of produce on their heads.
“I’ve got to sell as much as I can, which normally is not much or anything at all because the train stops for just a few minutes,” said Amina, from the Zambian village of Chozi.
“Usually, we sell our produce very cheaply because there is too much competition among ourselves and those of us who are more desperate for cash end up lowering prices for everybody,” Amina said.
But, unknown to Amina and her counterparts in Tanzanian villages such as Vwawa and Idiga, Tazara is finding it difficult to keep afloat.
The railway was Zambia’s answer to the closure of its routes to Southern African ports as a result of Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. With help from the Chinese government, the 1 860km line was constructed in the mid-1970s in partnership with the Tanzanian government.
Initially, it was meant to handle all of landlocked Zambia’s freight. But since the re-opening of the southern routes following independence in Mozambique in 1975 and the coming of majority rule in Zimbabwe in 1980, Zambia’s dependency on Dar es Salaam as a port has lessened — and with it Tazara’s earnings. This has forced the two governments to take a new look at its operations.
The railway authority itself says it cannot continue to employ some 6 000 Zambians and Tanzanians. Roughly 4 000 will be laid off in a planned restructuring.
According to sources at the Tazara office in Dar es salaam, there are plans to privatise the company. They said both governments will put most of their shares up for sale to their respective citizens and the rest will be sold to outside investors.
“Rumour has it that a South African company has expressed interest in investing in the railway line, but it is all just speculation,” one source said. – — IPS