NEPOTISM

A key element of any just and transparent system of governance is the principle that all parties must receive equal treatment by the officials who dispense justice or who deal with bids, tenders, proposals, and applications. This principle of fair play requires that all elements of favoritism be discouraged. It is, therefore, vital that government officials disclose any information, relation, prejudice, or interest they may have that might affect their decisions. This helps to ensure that justice is not only done, but is seen by the public to have been done. An 1852 ruling by the British House of Lords gave a classic statement of this principle. Setting aside the Lord Chancellor's affirmation of the Vice-Chancellor's decree in favor of a company in which the Lord Chancellor was a shareholder, Lord Campbell stated:

Courts in Tanzania have also emphasized the importance of fair play. In the case of Donald Kilala v. Mwanza Town Council the High Court characterized fair play as the "rules of the wise… that [are] not foreign in origin" (LRT No.19, 1973). However, the current system of hunting block allocation does not provide or promote any safeguards to ensure fair play and guard against nepotism. For example, there is no requirement under the law or the Consensus Agreement barring the Director of Wildlife from owning shares in any hunting company, nor forbidding the Director from adjudicating applications in which shares are held by a relative. The same is true at the ministerial level.

This has led to the formation of hunting companies in which sons, brothers, or in-laws of these officials have shares. This situation is exemplified in the outcome of the Tanzania Bundu Safaris case cited above. In that case, as soon as the hunting blocks were withdrawn, the Director immediately allocated them to other companies in two of which friends and relatives of the Minister for Tourism, Natural Resources and Environment were majority shareholders.

The allocation of hunting blocks to companies in which relatives of the Director and the Minister are shareholders was one of the issues of concern to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry Against Corruption, known as the Warioba Commission, formed by President Benjamin Mkapa on the 17th January 1996 as a way of fulfilling his election pledge to fight corruption in the country. The Commission was asked to review the laws of the country and working procedures in the government and parastatal sectors in order to reduce opportunities for corruption as well as to improve transparency in the rendering of services. Examining the Wildlife Division and the system of hunting block allocation, the Warioba Commission found that blocks had been assigned to companies formed primarily to take advantage of insider connections. In a scathing attack on this state of affairs, the Commission went so far as to provide the names of the shareholders in these companies and stated: