Zimbabwe land invaders burn US$22 million in plantation fires
Source: ZimOnline
Date: 8 November 2005
Author: Anon
Harare - Zimbabwe's Timber Producers Federation (TPF) has said about Z$1.3 trillion (nearly US$22 million) of export timber was lost to forest fires since the beginning of the year, adding that the government was for political reasons reluctant to act against black farmers accused of causing the fires.
In a report to Environment Minister Francis Nhema at the weekend, federation chairman, Joseph Kanyekanye, said the fires were largely caused by black villagers some of them illegally occupying plantations but many of them settled there by the government contrary to its earlier claims that it would not seize plantations for redistribution to landless blacks.
Kanyekanye, who said the damage caused to plantation agriculture could take up to 20 years to correct, said damage caused by forest fires since 2000 when the government began its chaotic land redistribution exercise was greater than damage incurred in the previous 30 years before the land seizures.
"In 2000, the Forest Act was sidelined in favour of the Land Reform Programme. Since then, the plantations have had little protection against fires. Fire damage in the last four years is greater than the previous 30 years added together," Kanyekanye said in his report.
In many cases plantation managers have reported the black farmers to the police for burning down forests but the police have shown unwillingness to arrest the farmers because they considered the matter to be political, according to Kanyekanye.
"(There is) frequently no reaction (as the) matter would be deemed political. The absence of policy and related lawlessness is encouraging illegal occupation of plantations," the TPF chief said.
It was not possible to get comment from Nhema or Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi on Kanyekanye's report.
President Robert Mugabe and his government have since 2000 seized white-owned land, parcelling it out to landless blacks in what they said was a campaign to correct an unjust land tenure system that reserved 75 percent of the best arable land to the minority whites while blacks were cramped on poor soils.
More than 90 percent of the country's large-scale producing white commercial farmers were forcibly evicted from their properties under the chaotic and often violent government land reforms that have also seen food production plummeting.
Zimbabwe has in the past five years avoided famine only because international food agencies provided food aid. But a third of the country's 12 million people face starvation between now and the next harvest around March/April 2006 unless more than one million tonnes of food aid is urgently provided.
Mugabe's government had said it would not seize plantations and game conservancies but backtracked on its promise allowing its supporters to seize huge tracts of forestry and game conservancy land.
It is estimated that more than 50 percent of Zimbabwe's wildlife may have been lost to poachers during the chaotic government farm seizures.