"“Hotels that discriminate over race are a disgrace”

[The Tanzanian] economy is under threat from cartels of corrupt and unethical civil servants in cahoots with the private sector. Enclaves of exclusion are developing, and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened. I saw this first hand last Sunday at the Sunrise Beach Resort…We were subjected to treatment that was racist, discriminatory, and totally inexcusable.

I arrived at Sunrise Beach Resort with a party of eight around one O’clock in the afternoon…Trouble started at the gate where we were required to pay an individual cover charge of 10K TZS to enter, or 15K TZS to swim at the beach...Nor did I know hotels can charge patrons to use public beaches…The cover charge, an apartheid-like device, is a barrier to exclude blacks.

…It took over one hour before a server came to take our orders for drinks and another one hour before our order for food. In the meantime, I noticed that other parties — Asian and white — would be served as soon as they sat down. Waiters zipped past us in a haze with trays of drinks and food for Asian and white patrons who had found us there…Eventually my son went and fished out the Asian manager from the bowels of the premises. We strongly registered our displeasure and told him we felt discriminated against. He offered a tepid apology and a discount of 25 per cent. I told him this wasn’t the issue because the problem appeared to be institutional. He promised to do better.