South African hunters and safari operators are exploiting the Zimbabwean political situation as local authorities make a fast buck by allowing them to strip parts of the new Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park and its surrounds, including the farming district bordering South Africa.
Local councils between Beit Bridge and the park are turning a roaring trade in hunting licences.
Most of the permits are being sold to new settlers on previously white owned farms, but opportunistic South African hunters are also exploiting the lack of control in southern Zimbabwe.
”South African hunters are cashing in on the demise of the farmers. They are organising hunts, using the facilities on ranches and paying the settlers behind the farm owners’ backs,” said Johnny Rodrigues, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.
The Mwenezi district bordering the newly proclaimed transfrontier park is one of the hot spots for the opportunistic hunters. The local councils sell hunting permits to settlers as well as ”campfire hunting concessions” on farms to interested safari operators.
”Besides being totally unethical it is also illegal,” Rodrigues said. ”What controls will there be on the foreign currency, which may be generated, and what tax is going to be paid on the income? What quotas will there be? This is just another free-for-all onslaught against the pitiful remnants of the wildlife on the commercial farms.”
A Harare resident says he was horrified when he heard a young South African hunter boast about his newly acquired hunting concessions in the Beit Bridge farming district.
”He was boasting about having delivered about 400 zebra skins from a Zimbabwean ranch close to South Africa,” he said.
The Zimbabwean man reported the incident to the Zimbabwean Conservation Task Force, which suspects that the animals came from Nuanetsi, a ranch near the South African border belonging to the Development Trust of Zimbabwe, that was founded by former Zimbabwean vice-president Joshua Nkomo.
The South African hunter, whose identity is known to the Mail & Guardian, reportedly also boasted about many other suspicious cross-border transactions.
Rodrigues said the hunter’s defence was that he was just running a business.
”He showed little concern that he was cashing in on the plight of the commercial farmers, whose lives and properties had been shattered by the present confrontational political land programme.”
Rodrigues said he suspects the hunter operates with his father, who is based in Limpopo and is well known in South African hunting circles.
”We have to expose these people and their activities before all our wildlife is destroyed.”
The Mwenezi district was one of the most pristine areas in Zimbabwe until recently and was heavily populated with wildlife.
The Zimbabwean government previously encouraged the farmers to conserve wildlife and many well-stocked conservancy reserves were developed. But game ranches prosperity ended when ”war veterans” and other settlers were encouraged to invade the properties as part of Zimbabwe’s land redistribution programme.
Less than 6% of the local population are currently employed and many now depend on the wildlife to survive.
Rodrigues said that a settler, known as David, told him that he regularly hunts on his new farm and that he can proudly produce a licence to show that he has been granted the authority to hunt.
Now provincial authorities headed by Josaya Hungwe, Masvingo’s governor who chairs the provincial land committee, are climbing in to get their share of the windfall.
The Daily Sun in Zimbabwe reported that hundreds of newly resettled farmers on the Mateke Hills Ranch in Mwenezi face eviction after the Masvingo provincial land committee sold off land to South African safari operator Russel Collins.
The deal means that more than 200 resettled farmers could be removed so Collins and a few hand-picked political heavyweights can convert the ranch into an animal sanctuary.
Part of the land will be allocated to ruling party politicians so they too can enter the lucrative wildlife business.
The deal has sparked an outcry from black and white Zimbabwean farmers.