New Zimbabwe land shock

Date: 9 June 2004

Source: CAPE TIMES

Author: Tony Weaver and Basildon Peta

In what has been described as "the end of the end" for Zimbabwe's wildlife, President Robert Mugabe's government has announced it is to nationalise all wildlife conservancies and productive farm land.

In an interview with the state-owned Herald newspaper, the Minister of Special Affairs in the Office of the President in charge of lands, land reform and resettlement, John Nkomo, said the government wanted to abolish all title deed holdings.

"In the end all land will be state land and there will be no such thing called private land."

Title deeds are to be replaced with 99-year leases for farm land.

But, in a move that has sent shockwaves through the community of conservationists, who have been fairly immune to land grabs because of their importance to the economy, leases on nationalised conservancies are to be limited to 25 years.

This would open the "lucrative" game sector to "many more people", Nkomo said.

Eddie Cross, finance spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, told the Cape Times by e-mail "this will mark the end of private conservation in Zimbabwe".

"The majority of the conservancies are foreign-owned and therefore protected by investment guarantee agreements with foreign governments. French, German, American and British interests are involved, as are several South African investors. These people have bought into these conservancies with certificates of 'no interest' by the state (and have) made huge investments in infrastructure ... and in wildlife."

At stake were hunting and ecotourism revenues of around US$50 million a year, investment inflows of around US$6m a year and the "survival of certain species that have virtually been wiped out in other areas".

Cross alleged that "indigenous participation", as mentioned by Nkomo, did not mean peasants participating in conservation, but "selected Zanu-PF officials and others connected with the Mugabe regime".

Zimbabwe's government has quietly accelerated the seizure of commercial farms, despite assurances by Mugabe that this had ended. At the weekend, the government gazetted 259 more farms for seizure, bringing to 918 the number listed since January for compulsory acquisition. Another 245 farms have been acquired since January.

Of a long list of farms gazetted since April, most are in mainly game conservancy areas.

Nkomo has advised private landowners to surrender their land immediately. He said the process of acquiring it under the Land Acquisition Act was too involved and no longer necessary in view of the move to nationalise all land.

"The state should not be made to waste time and money on acquisitions," he said.

The Cape Times spoke to a number of leading Zimbabwean conservationists, several of them involved in the conservancy movement, which protects vast wildlife areas outside the national parks. None was prepared to be named because, as one put it, "the climate of fear here now is all-pervasive - this is the end of the end for Zimbabwe's wildlife".

Johnny Rodrigues, outspoken chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, was the only conservationist prepared to speak on the record.

"The period of 25 years is ridiculous. It will take 15 to 25 years just to get the wildlife to recover. The wildlife situation is terrible, it really is disastrous.

"The army is involved in a lot of the poaching. We are getting reports of (soldiers) using landmines to kill hippos for meat near Binga (on Lake Kariba). There are trophy-hunters coming in with no legal quotas. Three Americans recently shot 38 trophies without proper permits."

Rodrigues said he and others suspected wildlife areas had not been earmarked before because of international sensitivity about conservation.

"Now the quickest way left to get rich is through wildlife - everyone's saying that's where the money is, let's go the whole hog and take the lot. That's the mood in Zimbabwe ... get rich as fast as possible. All the wildlife people need to get together fast, to preserve what we have left before it's too late."

Another leading conservationist, a pioneer of the conservancy movement, said: "I don't think I can take it any more.

"This is the end."