ZIMBABWE - Destruction of wildlife, the environment and sensitive eco-systems

Invaders and invaded cont...

The Styles built a school for the workers on their ranch. It's heavily subsidised by the Conservancy, which pays all water, electricity bills and provides the accommodation for the teachers. They also provide a clinic with free health care for the workers and a post office as a service to the community. It might come as a shock to hear that the land on which this school, clinic and post office are built, and the adjacent Buffalo Range Airport which is vital to bringing tourists in to the area, have all been designated for takeover!

'What I think needs to be done,' says Maengedze, 'is that even if government plans to take some farms, those that are productive should be left because they are bringing in foreign currency and creating employment. Agriculture is poor on this farm, there isn't adequate rainfall but our wildlife is good and we have tourists. What they want is for Mr. Style to leave the area so the ministers can use this land. Mugabe is just after more votes from these people.'

Rob Style has his own beliefs as to why Chiredzi Conservancy has been targeted: 'I can safely say this has been the most productive property in the district and it's all been from wildlife and tourism. It's possible that the most productive land is what's actually being targeted. Humani was also central in the creation of Save and they've been hit hard too. Other conservancies in the country don't seem to have been touched. No one in this country denies that there's a land problem, it's the scale of the problem that's in question. It can be easily resolved, it doesn't need this amount of destruction.'

Since the Abuja Agreement, which Zimbabwe signed in September 2001, agreeing to a return to orderly resettlement schemes and the removal of illegal settlers from the farms, there have in fact been many more invasions onto the conservancies and poaching has escalated beyond belief. 'It's got more intense in the last month, there are more people coming in and more people on each plot. Some have 3-4 plots.'

It also appears that poachers come in pretending to build a hut and cursorily clear a piece of land. Their intention is purely to kill the wildlife and sell it on a commercial basis. I found one blatant example of this where at the base of a granite kopje, the ground covered in rocks, a man had made a makeshift shelter and burnt the surrounding area well into the hills. There was no way this man was going to harvest anything apart from the wildlife.

Style says, 'Those people who cleared plots last year tried to grow crops but it was a bit of a disaster apart from one man who used the water from our game guard base (that the squatters have subsequently trashed). Some try to grow sunflowers but they harvested nothing as the animals ate it all. They've now poached everything out of the area and so this year abandoned those plots and moved to fresh poaching land.'

Whilst driving through the conservancy, we met a man walking down the road carrying a homemade fishing rod. He said he was a junior doctor at Chiredzi hospital helping his cousin who had a plot of land on the conservancy. He said 'Some people have not come here for the land they have come to poach and because of that they are making us suffer - it's not all of us who are guilty.' He was trying to get Rob to give him permission to fish in the river and went on to say, 'you know what, if you give me a chance to fish this might make other things be resolved. I can talk to my guys.. things do not come all of a sudden.. what makes things difficult is that some of us don't understand about talking they just want harassment, so if you can find someone who will talk and I ask a favour from you….'

Rob replied, 'It's not a question of being difficult, I only allow my workers to fish as a privilege and if I let you fish I'd have to let everyone else fish too.'

The doctor carried on 'None of us are politicians, we're all Zimbabweans.. War will come again in Zimbabwe... Someone may appear interested in us but later on when he comes into power he works on behalf of himself. Since 1980 we were supposed to have been given land and now, as we prepare for elections, we're given land and project money is only given to people in Mashonaland and where the 'king prawns' are settled. They're bribing people. What I know is, as soon as we vote, the land issue will change. You might see people being turned off this land. What happens with this government of ours, it supplies people with maize seeds and the older folk are happy with that, but tomorrow when we put the person in power we suffer again. We've given this guy a long period, why can't people see they're being bribed?'