Game park's wildlife dies of thirst as Mugabe lives in luxury

Source: The Telegraph (UK)

Date: September 31, 2005

Author: Peta Thornycroft

Wild animals in Zimbabwe are suffering and dying as the sun beats down during the year's hottest season.

Like so many humans, they are victims of President Robert Mugabe.
This dehydrated buffalo reached water but was too exhausted to drink and collapsed and died in the trough

In Africa's most densely populated game park water from underground bores is now available only intermittently because there is no money to fix engines pumping it to the surface.

Plains animals, in particular buffalo, are dying of thirst in Hwange National Park, 8,000 square miles of protected wilderness including the eastern edge of the Kalahari desert.

According to Johnny Rodrigues, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, as many as half the animals, except elephants, are at risk because the government has failed to finance the repair of borehole pumps.

For the first time since the park was established in dry Matabeleland 76 years ago the pumps were not serviced in April or May, when last summer's below-average rains ended.

"This is mismanagement, nothing more. It's not a natural disaster," Mr Rodrigues said after a heartbreaking trip last week delivering fuel donated by well-wishers to keep a few pumps working. Although the country's economic collapse ensures there is no foreign currency for imports such as fuel, Mr Mugabe does have cash to spend on luxury vehicles.

Parked outside the headquarters of the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority in Harare are 10 new 4x4's for executives, costing far more than repairs and service for the engines that pump water to the pans.

"Most of the water in the pans is on the surface and too shallow for animals to drink," Mr Rodrigues said. "It is terrible to see them fighting each other for water and extraordinary to see multiple species gathering to drink.

"We know that 33 buffalos died near one water hole last week from dehydration."

'It is grim': Many areas of water have turned to mud

Barry Wolhuter, who runs a safari camp in Hwange, said he had seen "nothing to compare" with conditions in the park in the past 20 years.

"It is grim," he said. "We try not to tell the few tourists who come here how bad it is as we don't want to upset them."

Margie Pearce, the chairman of the Matabeleland branch of Wildlife and Environment Zimbabwe, WEZ, a long-standing voluntary organisation, said the situation in Hwange was "worrying."

"The pumps should be uplifted each dry season and that hasn't happened," she said. "There was little rain in Hwange last year; it was as dry as in 1998. But then the pumps were working."

Mrs Pearce said that if no repairs were carried out then private companies, safari operators and big game hunters would try to keep some water flowing, especially around their areas at the southern end of the park.

Mr Rodrigues warned that animal carcasses had started showing up near dry water pans in the last week or so.

One factor aggravating the water shortage is the size of the park's elephant population, now about 30,000 when conservationists estimate that it should be no more than 12,000. Culls were abandoned several years ago following pressure from abroad, leading to huge degradation of the park's forests and thorn bushes.

The vast wilderness was always too dry for agriculture and far-sighted early settlers had it set aside as one of Africa's first great conservation areas. Boreholes were sunk that fed new water pans, attracting hordes of animals and then tourists.

Today the park has deteriorated and tourists are missing, except at private safari camps adjoining the park for hunters.

According to Mrs Pearce, most wild animals outside protected areas have been eaten by hungry Zimbabweans over the past six years. The economy has shrunk every year since Mr Mugabe began evicting white farmers in 2000. Their export crops previously provided as much as 40 per cent of foreign currency earnings.

The environment minister, Frances Nhema, declined last week to answer questions about the national park.

Related Story...

Wildlife dying of thirst in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe

Source: Canada Free Press

Date: 31 October 2005

Author: Judi McLeod

On those rare occasions when Zimbabwe it to the news, I think of the courageous Roy Bennett.

Bennett is the opposition MP who was sentenced to one year’s hard labour for shoving President Robert Mugabe’s justice minister during a parliamentary session after the minister had called Bennett’s father and grandfather, thieves and murderers.

Bennett readily apologized, but without the courtesy of a court trial, was taken from his family and sent to prison by the government.

Thinner, a little worse for the wear and relieved to have survived a Zimbabwean prison to return to his beloved wife, Bennett was in Toronto last summer.

Released from gaol only a month before, Bennett had received the customary release gratuity of six Zimbabwean dollars for his “re-entry” into society. A box of matches in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe costs Z$1,000.

In prison, he saw the return of a cellmate who had been severely beaten by guards, all for having been caught with a single match.

Bennett’s coffee ranch was confiscated by Mugabe’s dreaded ZANU-PF. The former MP, who was media dubbed “the reluctant politician” because he had to be coaxed into candidacy for public office in 2000, has been to hell and back.

“I lost everything, but gained everything,” he told a Toronto gathering of friends at the Spoke Club.

“With lots of time to think, I learned that in life possessions are nothing compared to people.”

Most of the prisoners he left behind upon his release cannot afford lawyers to fight for their freedom. They languish, lonely in prison, subsisting on three meals of daily gruel, and their relatives, part of the starving masses in a country whose currency is so devalued by inflation that it has become virtually worthless, can’t even afford the bus fare to visit them.

Some of Bennett’s prison stories were touching. Fresh fruit and vegetables are rare in present day Zimbabwe and rarer still for political prisoners. The relatives of one of his fellow prisoners somehow got to the prison after a one-year lapse. They brought their family member three apples and one banana, which he immediately brought to an overwhelmed Bennett.

The Mugabe regime may be killing their own people with starvation and keeping prisons swelling with political prisoners who are forced to sit on their haunches or bottoms when in the presence of government officials. But in these soul-killing Zimbabwean times, the regime has not been able to kill off human hope and dignity.

“Even the prison guards would do anything to see Mugabe go,” said Bennett.

With feet held up backwards, lying face down, prisoners are punished by being beaten with rubber on their soles. Barely able to move, they soon stand painfully upward with a hope and dignity that refuse to die.

During Bennett’s time in prison, another election came and went. Wife, Heather stood in for her husband in a Mugabe election victory that that had nothing to do with the ballot box.

Incredibly, while his own people continue to suffer hunger pangs, Mugabe was invited to Rome by the United Nations to speak about world hunger.

Even the animals are victims of Mugabe’s wanton destruction.

Sickened by their task, veterinarians have had to kill off most of the pet population, as their owners can’t feed them.

And now in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, it’s the wholesale death of wild animals.

Game wardens report the heartbreaking reality of animals fighting each other to get to the shallow water at some of the few bores where water is left.

As the sun beats down during the year’s hottest season in Africa’s most densely populated game park, water from underground bores is now available only infrequently because Zimbabwe has run out of money to fix engines pumping it to the surface.

Thirty-three buffalos died near one water hole last week from dehydration.

Despot that he is, Mugabe does have cash for luxury vehicles.

At the same location where the animals are dropping from thirst, are 10 brand new 4x4s for executives. The luxury vehicles cost far more than service and repairs needed for the engines that pump water for the wildlife.

While he was addressing a UN assembly in Rome about hunger, people back home were starving and wild animals were dying of thirst.

The only organization on earth that honours the despot of Zimbabwe is the hypocritical United Nations.

Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media.