Zimbabwe: Safari Area Under Threat

September 24, 2009

Published by the government of Zimbabwe

Noah Pito

23 September 2009

opinion

Harare — It is Friday afternoon and a man masquerading as a gold buyer gets to a stunted bushy area near Sanyati Bridge.

Cries of joy and the blaring sound of sungura music from Daiton Somanje's current hit album, Haisi Nyaya, greet him from a distance.

Coming closer to the source of music and jubilation, he discovers there is no proper shelter and the commercial activities take place in the pits, caves and under the shade of stunted bushes.

Bars, grocery shops, hair salons, bush butcheries and bureaux de change operate in the cover of bushes and pits. The place has turned into a hive of commercial activity in the midst of the jungle.

Apart from rampant poaching, the place is a real cesspool of vice. Gambling, prostitution, brewing of kachasu, mbanje smoking and selling are the hallmark of Sanyati Bridge.

The place, which has also become home to more than a thousand people, has no leader and anyone can be one depending on whether or not they can solve a problem that arises at any given time.

According to a senior Gweja (a popular informal term for a gold or diamond digger) who only identified himself as Biggie, crimes like fighting, burglary, rape and malicious injury to property have become the order of the day at Sanyati.

"Here everything happens. Drugs, prostitution and murder. It is the law of the jungle. You dig, get your gold and sell it fast.

"You can crush brass and sell it as fake gold and succeed. If you get arrested tough luck," explains George.

No one, therefore, will ever be foolhardy enough to try and seek justice on such matters for they know very well that even the complainant will not be spared when the police descend on the illegal village. The place is governed by the principles of the law of the jungle -- survival of the fittest.

The gwejas do not usually trust strangers who are dreesed in formal clothes and and are clean-shaven. They always suspect such visitors to be officers ferreting and intending to arrest them.

"Murungu auya! Tangai nokuno bigaz, tadhingura price, mapross ijawi, dollar-fifty chete papoint. Baccosi iripo!"

Eight or nine gwejas welcome you jostling and shouting for your attention, urging you to buy gold at the slashed price of US$1,50 per a tenth of a gram instead of the usual US$2.

"Mudhara munotengeserwa brass, siyanai navo dhirai neni chete!,"One of the gwejas jokingly warns of the possibility of being sold brass instead of genuine gold.

One wonders whether this scenario at Sanyati will not degenerate into a complete cessation of tourism in this once vibrant safari area, as the panners-cum-poachers continue to generate craters along the river banks and diminish the diversity of wildlife through illegal hunts and wanton destruction of the forests.

Settlements resulting from illegal gold mining and poaching have become the biggest problem to the success and development of tourism in Hurungwe district's major safari areas.

It only takes a short visit to Sanyati Bridge -- one of Hurungwe's richest safari areas -- for one to understand the urgency with which conservationists and other concerned stakeholders should join hands to salvage Hurungwe Rural District Council's lifeline.

It is silently being destroyed by the heartless gold diggers-cum-poachers in broad daylight.

In an interview last week, Hurungwe RDC chief executive Mr Joram Misheck Moyo described the Sanyati activities as a thorn in the flesh, not only for the council ,but for the whole country.

"We are continually losing a lot of revenue owing to the illegal settlements. Remember our clients, who happen to be mostly international hunters, cannot go hunting in a jungle that teems with humans instead of game.

"Where panners-cum-poachers hunt daily with dogs and at times use snares and poison to kill animals, in a jungle where animals are played Macheso music, it is not funny," said the HRDC chief.

The most disturbing thing about the panners is that they have resorted to veld fires and river poisoning as means of killing animals. Whenever elephants come to drink water on the banks of Sanyati the panners stone them forcing them to move further and further in search of water. The elephants then cause problems for villagers in the neighbouring areas.

The angry animals end up attacking any person they come across. Several deaths and injuries from such angry elephants have been reported in the Deve Point 4, Chiroti and Batanai areas.

In August this year Campfire scouts who went to Sanyati asking illegal settlers to leave ahead of scheduled hunts by tourists rued the day.

Upon their arrival a mob of about 200 club and chisel-wielding men and women chased them out of the valley.

They, of course, had to run for dear life.

Mr Moyo said the officers later sought reinforcements from Magunje Police Station but on arrival at the settlement the following day they only managed to arrest a buyer, his wife and four panners while the rest went into hiding, only to resurface in their large numbers after the officers had left.

Biggie said some tunnels stretched up to 30 metres long and the shafts up to 12 metres deep.

This makes it difficult for the police to chase the perpetrators into the tunnels because the tunnels can only accommodate someone crawling on their bellies.

The HRDC chief also lamented the disturbances happening along the eastern boundaries of the district, especially in the Chiwore-Mkwichi safari area, which covers parts of Wards 8, 9 and 22 under Chief Chundu.

This is the area through which the Angwa River meanders its way to Lake Cabora Bassa in Mozambique.

The area, which is bordered by Mana Pools to the north and Guruve to the east, is rich in elephants and best known for its alluvial gold.

Apart from gold panning in the Angwa River, the panners have of late established sophisticated poaching syndicates with people from as far as Harare and the Diaspora masterminding the poaching deals.

"The type of poaching we are seeing is not the usual one where elephants are killed using guns.

"The poachers have turned to poisoning as their preferred method of killing elephants.

"They scout for the herd with the biggest elephants then they throw sacks of poisoned oranges at points where the unsuspecting animals drink water. The animals die within a short while after consuming the fruits," lamented Mr Moyo.

While the problem of gold panning and illegal settlements appears to be only impinging on matters around land degradation, the environment and decimation of bio-diversity, it should be understood that such settlements unnecessarily offer sanctuary to criminals.

The issue of illegal settlements should be dealt with, not only from the environmental perspective, but also from a legal perspective

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