Zimbabwe Bartered Ivory for Guns

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*Zimbabwe " Bartered Ivory for

Guns " <http://baraza.wildlifedirect.org/2008/11/10/zimbabwe-bartered-ivory-for-gu\

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*

 

Nov 10 2008 | By: Maina

 

Our fears that the one-off ivory auction by four southern Africa states to

China and Japan was not going to end well may come true. Not that that is

any cause for us to wear a smirk and say " we told you so " , but a time for us

to ask CITES to open their eyes.

 

<http://baraza.wildlifedirect.org2008/11/ivory-stockpiles-mod.jpg>

 

There are reports in a Zimbabwean newspaper saying that Robert Mugabe's

government - cash strapped and hungry for foreign exchange to pay for

imports - is planning to have the Chinese government pay for the ivory with

guns Mugabe's people ordered just before this year's Zimbabwean presidential

run-off. Apparently, Mugabe was facing an imminent end to his three-decade

grip on power and decided to buy guns to wage war against the opposition

should he loose the elections. The best place to buy these guns was from

China since they are not participating in the arms embargo by western

nations on Zimbabwe.

 

The report, published in the Zim

Daily<http://www.zimdaily.com/news/ivory27.6533.html>,

indicate that part of the $480,000 Zimbabwe raised when they auctioned 3.5

tons of ivory last week is earmarked as payment for a cache of military

hardware set to be flown into the capital Harare soon. The reports also

indicate that in the run up to the ivory auction, " substantial quantities of

high caliber weapons " had disappeared from the armory of Zimbabwe's

department of parks and wildlife near State House, Harare. During the same

period, 200 elephants are reported to have been killed in the Zambezi Valley

bordering Zambia. The Zimbabwe government blames this carnage on foreign

animal rights groups which " want to thwart Mugabe's bid to have CITES relax

its trade rules " .

 

These reports have put the " fear of Mugabe " in conservationists who are now

worried that Zimbabwe's claim of being protector of the elephant is just a

sham. Official Zimbabwe reports indicate that the country has 70,000

elephants in the wild, but experts think this is just window dressing by the

government to get CITES to approve their proposal to sell all their alleged

20 tons of ivory stockpiles. The head of the wildlife department, Brigadier

Albert Kanunga, a retired army officer, had lobbied CITES to allow them to

sell 10 tons of ivory but only 3.5 tons were approved.

 

It is alleged that the ivory auctioned by Zimbabwe was flown out of Harare

Airport on Thursday 6 November. If, then, the ivory for guns scam is true,

the Chinese will bring Mugabe the guns sooner than latter. Apparently, an

earlier shipping of Chinese military equipment bound for Harare had been

turned away in the South African port of Durban. That could be the reason

why China will fly in the new cache of arms.

 

Eight years ago in July 2000, a Nairobi based German wildlife conservation

organization, ECOTERRA had revealed that Mugabe had sold 8 tons of ivory to

China in exchange for firearms. According to the report on BNet

website<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WDQ/is_/ai_63514670>,

the ivory had been flown out of Zimbabwe through Libya.

 

With such a record, it would be feasible to believe that last weeks

CITES-backed auction will indeed be used to pay for more guns and ammo some

of which - given the mysterious disappearance of arms from the wildlife

department's armory and consequent upsurge of elephant poaching- could be

used in " harvesting " more ivory for Mugabe's government. Which then negates

the CITES claim that one-off sales will help elephant protection by reducing

the attractiveness of poaching and investing the funds into conservation.

 

Moreover, Zambian and Senegalese middlemen operating in Zimbabwe organize

underground deals through the " close-knit Chinese community " in South Africa

to service the high demand for illegal ivory in China. This would imply that

even South Africa, the allegorical " Big Brother " of Africa, is not fully in

control of the ivory situation. In as much as *Big Brother* may have a tab

of it's own ivory stockpiles, they cannot rule out being used as a conduit

for illegal ivory from tattered Zimbabwe. In short, the entire African

continent is not ready for these - in Dr Richard

Leakey's<http://richardleakey.wildlifedirect.org>words - ill advised

one-off auctions.

 

In the end, what will save the elephant, in my view, is not how cheap ivory

becomes - a la CITES - but how well we convince ordinary Chinese, Japanese

and other Asian communities that they can practice their cultural beliefs

without Ivory. Remove the demand for ivory and let the elephant roam the

sunny grasslands of Africa without fear - like they did for millennia gone

by. *Legally *selling government-held stockpiles will not kill demand.

 

 

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