A South African court has directed the release of an impounded Tanzanian airbus aircraft after over a week of seizure at the Johannesburg airport. The court set aside the order of a lower court to impound the aircraft and told the respondents to pay costs. The August 24 seizure of the plane, which has attracted a lot of media attention, was the result of a court application by a farmer to whom the Tanzanian government was to pay compensation for a land purchase to the tune of US$13 million including interest. Tanzania has acknowledged the debt and initiated payments. But since 2014, the farmer has not received any payment. Therefore, the lower court issued the order for impounding the aircraft.
The impounding was a major blow to Air Tanzania, which has inaugurated its Johannesburg services only two months ago. The Tanzanian Air has high hopes of converting its national airways into something similar to the Ethiopian Airlines. Of late, it has started services to many new destinations including Mumbai, in India and Beijing in China. Tanzania is keen to convert the country into a regional transport hub and a prominent tourism destination. Recently, our portal www.trendsnafrica.com has reported about the visit of a team of tourism experts from China to Tanzania, which stayed there for 11 days to map the potential tourism spots in the country and to prepare a plan for developing those areas to make them more attractive to the discerning tourists from other countries, particularly from China. It also is in the process of creating relevant publicity materials to hard sell Tanzanian tourist destinations globally.
