WILDLIFE CONSERVATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT IN AN ‘OUTPOST OF TYRANNY’

BRIAN GRATWICKE AND BRENT STAPELKAMP
ZIMCONSERVATION

This section lists some of the more pressing problems of day-to-day life in Zimbabwe, where survival comes first, and conservation slips to the bottom of the priority list.

1) Keeping Your Mouth Shut – It is increasingly difficult to find out very basic information in Zimbabwe because most people are too scared to speak on the record for fear of reprisals from the government [1]. One of the best survival strategies in Zimbabwe is simply not to draw any attention to oneself because any voice of dissent is simply crushed. For example: 4,000 commercial farmers had their land confiscated [98], 750,000 urban dwellers were bulldozed out of their homes [99], opposition party members are routinely arrested detained and tortured [100], and constituencies that vote the wrong way are denied food aid [101]. The one thing they all had in common was voicing dissent towards Zanu PF. The lesson learned here is that if you can’t sing praises about the government; just keep your mouth shut.

2) Fuel and Energy Crisis – It is extremely difficult to get anything done in a country without fuel. Zimbabwe has endured a 5-year long fuel crisis [102] that began right about the time the government decided to flush the economy down the drain. This will inevitably have negative consequences for wildlife, as it is almost impossible to perform the simplest duties or to keep regular patrol routes, research sampling, water pumps or tour vehicles running [103]. Ironically, the situation does present some potentially positive benefits as the government is apparently embarking on a series of very imaginative alternative fuel schemes such as bio-diesel [33], biogas [32], ethanol [30], and methane [31], but lacks the expertise and financial resources to seriously develop any of them.

3) Corruption - Zimbabwe ranks 114th out of 146 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index [104]. The country’s descent into the current corruption vortex began long before its accelerated land reform program but slipped markedly after the year 2000 and has become a system with a rampant disregard for ethics [104]. This translates indirectly and directly to environmental issues, but we’ll list a few recent allegations to give a fairly superficial glimpse of how corrupt practices may affect the environment:
· The tender process around the Kunzvi Dam being built by the Chinese was very shady [63].
· Game wardens have been selling the water pumps donated to National parks by conservation groups [5].
· Vitalis Chadenga, the operations director Parks and Wildlife Management Authority was suspended following investigations into the theft and translocation of live game and the improper issuing of permits then re-instated due to a ‘lack of evidence’.
· Some game conservancies were confiscated and distributed to favoured, politically connected individuals [77, 106].
· Mugabe has been granted logging rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo in exchange for troops [107].

4) Hyperinflation - The term sounds so quaint, yet it has incalculable consequences for a country in which inflation rates sometimes exceed 600% [108]. Daily existence becomes virtually impossible as savings and salaries erode daily, virtually forcing people into illegal activities and/or subsistence farming simply to survive. Apart from these fairly self-evident problems, there are also more subtle repercussions because the Zimbabwean government does what it does best and simply denies that inflation exists. Thus fines for environmental crimes, prices for boat licenses and entry to national parks become out-dated within hours of being revised. Foreign tourists, however, can’t take advantage of this phenomenon because they’ve been required to pay for most things in foreign currency for a number of years now. Another annoying aspect of hyperinflation for Zimbabwe-watchers is that the Zimbabwe dollar is now a meaningless economic indicator and Zimbabwean journalists simply can’t be weaned off them. For example, hunting revenues generated Z$ 60 billion in 2005 [24] – this really means very little unless you have a written record of the black-market exchange rates for that particular date, and the whole purpose of the black-market is it’s informal nature, which brings us to the next point.

5) Lack of Foreign Currency - foreign exchange rules vary enormously depending on who you are. For example, on October 18, 2005 an NGO, tobacco farmer or tourist exchanging money at a bank could get just Z$824 for each US$; a businessman needing foreign currency for a business trip could with some luck and political connections buy one US$ for Z$26,000 through an auction system run by the Reserve bank; important ministers that get to buy foreign currency at Z$26,000 to one have been known to sell it at much higher black-market rates - the most recent report is Z$ 70,000 for each US$ [109]. Thus, the Zimbabwean dollar has thus ceased to be a meaningful economic indicator yet the government strictly enforces its continued use, making life rather difficult and traumatic for any businesses, NGO’s and tourist outfits in Zimbabwe that deal in foreign currency, because they basically have to operate illegally if they want to continue to exist.

6) Brain Drain – Between 3 and 4.5 million Zimbabweans are estimated to be living abroad, primarily in South Africa, Botswana and Britain [110, 111]. The reasons for this exodus have been: 70% unemployment [112], poor salaries, concerns for personal safety, poor exchange rates, bleak future prospects for one’s children and a straightforward lack of professional opportunities. A survey of half a million professionals in the Zimbabwean diaspora indicated that most of them had university degrees and 25% had Masters or PhD level degrees. The conservation and wildlife management industry has lost a significant number of the important researchers and conservationists that founded the excellent research and management systems [87]. These highly valued skills are very transferable within Africa and abroad and Zimbabwean conservationists have taken advantage of this fact, many of them now continue their work in far-flung reaches of the globe.

7) Education – The expansion of the education sector in Zimbabwe since 1980 has often been characterised as one of the major achievements of the post-independence government. In 1979 about 800,000 children attended primary school while almost 2.3 million attended in 1989. Unfortunately, Zimbabwe’s once excellent education system is under siege mostly due to the economic crisis and the government’s prohibition of increasing school fees, despite hyperinflation [24]. Under the current economic scenario, schools may continue to operate, but simply cannot provide the services that a school should be providing. The government also actively meddles in the affairs of private educational institutions, trying to set them on the same ruinous path as their government-run counterparts. Environmental education components are usually taught in schools as part of the geography and the biology syllabi, but environmental NGO’s have a long and accomplished history of spearheading efforts to get environmental messages out to students (See Appendix 2). The need for these supplementary teaching activities has never been greater and the NGO’s continue to do good work, but many of them have real viability concerns and are trying desperately to stay afloat in these turbulent circumstances with severely demoralized staff.

8) Wilful ignorance - There have been an increasingly worrying barrage of ludicrous statements coming from the government over the last five years. Take this quote from the Zanu PF homepage. It explains why destroying one’s natural heritage is an every day part and parcel of progress…

“When God created heaven and earth, and gave to each race its own corner of the land to inhabit, He did not allow others to destroy their own share of heritage so that they could move over and claim the shares of others. In England He created the Bear, Hedgehog, Fox, Unicorn and many others for the Barbarian, Anglo-Saxon, Scottish, Welsh and Irish to feast on with their eyes and quench their appetites.” [113].

Another clanger comes from the state-owned newspaper widely seen as the government’s mouthpiece the Herald who claim that the US and the UK were causing a drought in Zimbabwe with cyber climate nano-technology

“Those countries that submit to the caprices of the westerners automatically receive the seal of approval as "democratic" nations which qualifies them to get massive aid support and debt cancellation. With Zimbabwe fast emerging as the possible epicentre of the furtive weather modification programme that is meant to break its agricultural backbone; the world could be entering a new phase of cyber imperialism.” [114]

Clearly the Zimbabwean government cannot be held responsible for the paranoia of a Zimbabwean journalist who reads American conspiracy theory blogs and treats them as legitimate news sources, however, these sorts of paranoid outbursts are routinely spouted by Mugabe and his ministers in non-conservation related arenas.

One thing that Mugabe’s ministers have been very effectively communicating is that the economic crisis is due to drought, rather than land reform—even though the government’s own rainfall records over the last 5 years indicate fairly unremarkable deviations from the rainfall norm since 1999 [115]. A key problem frustrating Zimbabwean researchers is that crucial statistics such as rainfall figures, food production figures and election results can be directly or indirectly concocted by the President’s office and any figures coming from government departments should be interpreted very cautiously. One can learn from Stalin’s Russia and Mao Zedong’s great leap forward, that such delusional dictators inevitably place their countries of courses that have catastrophic environmental and humanitarian consequences and they can only recover when those errant leaders are removed from power.

9) Tourism Industry as a Whole - According to the World Tourism Council, tourism has the potential to contribute up to12% of Zimbabwe’s GDP [116]. In 2001, tourism was worth 6% of the GDP [117] but declined to just 2% of the GDP in 2004 [116]. Zimbabwe’s tourist industry is inextricably linked with its rich wildlife heritage, which is the main attraction to a relatively high-end tourist market [59]. Revenues generated from wildlife tourism have been very important, providing significant economic incentives to conserve wildlife and once provided job security for 200,000 people in rural backwaters of Zimbabwe [117].

Significant declines in overseas tourist arrivals (Fig 5) have led to the demise of many tourism operations, loss of jobs and hotels and Safari companies are barely surviving from year to year with reduced occupancy rates and skeleton staff. Sensible tourists can still enjoy a remarkably inexpensive, and safe holiday, and see Zimbabwe’s spectacular wildlife [118], but it is now perceived as a dangerous off the beaten path destination for adventurous tourists.

The Government attributes the drop in tourism to the following factors:
· Continued negative publicity overseas and lack of money to counter the negative publicity.
· Decline in travellers going to long-haul destinations due to the September 11 attack in America and continued terrorism threats.
· Lack of direct flights from major markets.
The real reasons for the continued decline in tourists visiting Zimbabwe are likely to be due to the following:
· Travel warnings issued by the US Department of State [26].
· Concern over the political instability and lack of rule of law associated with land seizures [119].
· Risk of being confused with illegally operating, under-cover journalists [4].
· Fear of election violence during election periods [60].
· Chronic fuel shortages [53].
· Reports of tourists being harassed by war veterans [117].
· Reports of tourists being killed in robbery incidents [120].
· Reports of government-sanctioned hunting in game reserves [5].
· A wide choice of safer destinations offering similar tourism experiences [121].
· Tourists also have mixed feelings about visiting the “Outpost of Tyranny” [122], and an online survey by ZimConservation revealed that about half of all people surveyed (47%) felt it would be ethical to visit Zimbabwe in it’s current state, but the other half felt that it was either unethical (33%), or did not know (19%) [123].

The reserve bank is also worried about the decline in tourism receipts, but maintains that hotels are fixing their books to reflect low occupancy rates so that they can dodge taxes and sell their foreign currency earnings at high black market rates [124] (Fig 6). The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority suggests a different reason: “Though the figure for those who were in Zimbabwe for holiday and business is quite high, the majority of them, about 69%, were staying with their friends and relatives as evidenced by the low bed occupancy rates in hotels and lodges [26-31% in 2004 compared to 61% in 1999] in Zimbabwe.” [125]. The logical deduction from this is that most of Zimbabwe’s current tourism market is made up of exiled Zimbabweans coming home for the holidays. Even though 2005 figures are not yet available, initial trends indicate that a decline in tourism receipts of 8% is anticipated since the previous year [92], despite Miss World contest that was supposedly going to rescue Zimbabwe’s tourism industry [126]. Another much-touted rescue package is the government’s “look east policy”, but a cursory examination of the numbers shows that Asian arrivals have increased markedly, but the total numbers remain insignificant (Fig 5). Tour operators have also been complaining that the Asian’s are demanding (and getting) rates at roughly half the rate that a European client would pay [116]. Regional travellers came to Zimbabwe for many reasons other than tourism and the data should be interpreted cautiously, for example the huge spike in Zambian visitors 2001-2002 is because Zambians would come in to Zimbabwe to fill up their fuel tanks paying for it with cheap Zimbabwean dollars bought on the black market, then go home and sell the fuel for US dollars at a huge profit.

10) Hunting – Apparently the numbers of hunts authorized in safari areas has remained fairly consistent in recent years and in 2003 hunting generated US$24 million earned mostly from American hunters, including a United States Senator [127]. Mr. Charles Jonga of CAMPFIRE is on record saying that “There has been a few cancellations but they have not really made a significant negative impact on the hunting sector” [84]. And a brief look at the African Hunter web forum indicates that on the whole hunters felt that Zimbabwe remained a top-quality hunting destination with good guides, good infrastructure and very inexpensive trophies [128]. However, the revenues declared by safari operators declined from $24 million to US$13 million in one year prompting a back-lash from the reserve bank [129]. It is also worth noting here that any trophies hunted on former commercial farms have apparently been denied importation permits back to the US because the US Fish and Wildlife Service regards them as stolen property [130].

11) HIV- It is estimated that 1 in 5 Zimbabweans is HIV positive – this is an epidemic that will lead to rapid demographic changes over the next 10 years [131]. Life expectancy has dropped from 56 years in 1975 to just 33 years [132]. The high mortality rate amongst the sexually active population aside from creating a hugely unbalanced dependency ratio and associated social problems, it is also leading to an acute loss of skilled wildlife managers in the National parks system.

12) Lack of Research – there is a growing gap in research programs in Zimbabwe – conservation groups that have excellent baseline data have lost local skills through the brain-drain and many foreign-based researchers have abandoned their Zimbabwe projects, taking their funding elsewhere. As whole areas of the country have become no-go areas and the government has outlawed foreign reporters and cracked down on foreign NGO activity it is impossible to actually calculate the losses of wildlife given the situation on the ground, but some reports estimate 50-80% loss in large game from some areas [15]. The government’s monopoly over the media and grip on power depend on massaging wars, lack of facts, lack of synthesis, lack of vision and fear, they seem to have very effectively undermined any attempts to systematically take stock of the Zimbabwe situation since 2000 leaving Zimbabwe flailing like a rudderless ship in stormy seas.

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