Grace Mutandwa

The Horns of a Dilemma

I really liked the comment by Polez on my blog ‘The Horns of a Dilemma’ (below) about the rights and wrongs of visiting Zimbabwe - and I’d like to respond. Polez is concerned that I was putting people off travelling to Zimbabwe at a time when it is vital to help people financially and to witness the sorry state in which the country finds itself.

I’d better say up front that I understand Polez 's points 100%. But I have to bear in mind that the Foreign Office travel advice - put together by people wiser than me - is still recommending that people visit Zimbabwe only if their journey is essential. There are good reasons for being cautious about visiting. It is hard to do basic things in Zimbabwe. A casual tourist, not supported by a tour company, would have real trouble getting fuel for a car or food to eat. This is particularly true outside of Harare. There is a cholera epidemic, to add to the long-term HIV epidemic, and water from taps is now considered unsafe to drink. Add to that the political instability in the country and the result is an impressive list of reasons to avoid Zimbabwe!

But as Polez said, few travellers have any problems. Many things in Zimbabwe remain impressively tourist-friendly. Crime is low – far lower than in South Africa. Trunk roads are good by African standards. And hotels and lodges at key tourist destinations – like Victoria Falls and the Game Parks – remain beautiful places offering excellent service and life-changing experiences.

Apart from thinking about personal safety, Polez also raises ethical questions. Is it right to enjoy oneself in a country where people are starving and dying of basic diseases? Can a tourist do anything positive about such a situation?

For me, the response should be driven by what local people want. Burmese opposition groups have at times called for tourist boycotts of their own country, as did the ANC during the Apartheid years. The reason for such boycotts is to generate an extra pressure point on harsh, intransigent regimes. If a request like that is in place, it is surely unethical to visit.

Zimbabwe’s people today are in a very similar situation to the black majority trapped under Apartheid.   They wish for a change of Government, but are being denied brutally by a repressive clique.  But nobody within Zimbabwean civil society has called for a tourist boycott. So it would be wrong for me to advocate one.

If you do decide to visit Zimbabwe today, next year, next decade, then you will certainly enjoy a wonderful country. Unfortunately a fair proportion of the money you spend here will find its way into the pockets of the rich and odious old men who run the country. But much will reach companies trying to survive and to offer employment. And some will trickle all the way into the pockets of Zimbabwe’s poor to buy food and medicine. Also Zimbabweans love to chat and will give you a very clear picture of the ways in which this country is being misgoverned. They will appreciate it if you take the time to listen, and when you get home you can offer a vivid background of the plight of Zimbabwe’s people – and project your photos of waterfalls and rhinos on top of it!

The choice, Dear Reader, is yours. Thanks for the comment Polez. Philip

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Dhulamithi stood, as you will know if you are fluent in Ndebele, taller than trees. He was the bull of bulls – an elephant above four metres tall. His tusks alone weighed 110 Kilograms. He might have weighed ten tonnes. We don’t really know because Dhulamithi died in 1920.

I thought of this late mega-tusker at the weekend as I sat in Mana Pools, a shudderingly lovely National Park on the south bank of the Zambezi. I sat as still as I’ve ever sat. For Dhulamithi’s might-be great-grandson, Shamwari - "friend" as my Shona-speaking readership will know - was moving about me, gently snuffling the seed pods which fall from Mana’s sausage trees. His trunk felt around my feet, lifting the delicious scarlet seeds to his grindstone molars. His mighty forehead blotted out the sun. His eyes don’t really see much, but he could smell me as he softly placed his colossal feet. He was calm and gentle, as those who think themselves invulnerable can be.

Dhulamithi was killed by a poacher: Stephanus Barnard a man who delighted in slaughtering thousands of the animals incorporated into Southern Rhodesia after his fellow settlers had slaughtered the Matabele.

And sadly Shamwari may meet the same fate. Zimbabwe should be a wildlife haven. But its environment and wildlife is not being safeguarded. There are not enough tourists to pay for the protection of gigantic national parks. And what budget is allocated to the parks’ authority is spent – as ever in Zimbabwe – on luxury German and Japanese vehicles for politically affiliated top dogs in Harare. Nothing left to help the bottom dogs – the painted variety - that I watched this week lolling together in loyal, wagging packs, psyching themselves up for another collective hunt.

Zimbabwe’s park rangers are decent and skilled men. But on a salary of a dollar a month, lacking food, water, fuel, they cannot stand against better-resourced squads of poachers. In this law and order vacuum, created by the collapse of tourism, the disreputable and the criminal have flourished.

The disreputable are modern day Barnards: pathetic men (and they are all men) who travel thousands of miles to crawl through mud and dung to creep up on scarce animals and kill them. Zimbabwe’s professional guides stand behind ready to finish the condemned animal off – most hunters are terrible marksmen and merely wound. The professionals have to finish the job to shorten the animals’ pain.

The criminals are the poachers. Elephants do suffer, but the main target is Zimbabwe’s dwindling stock of rhinos. Thousands of these blind, armour-plated uber-cows used to roam the country. But there are now just a couple of hundred in protected private reserves. Viable populations of black and white rhino in the Matusadonha and Chivero National Parks have been recently destroyed to Zimbabwe’s great shame.

Nobody really knows who is running the poaching. But the market for rhino horn is of course the Far East, so the advent of Chinese investment here might just be connected. And there is no shortage of officials who will take a bribe to look away. Wildlife is just another part of Zimbabwe’s heritage being mortgaged or sold off for the short-term profit of the ruling elite.

That may all sound grim. Perhaps too grim given the mood of cautious optimism on the streets of Harare. So be assured there is an upside. Zimbabwe’s parks remain – welcoming, beautiful, fecund – and wildlife could recover. I could bore you with a hundred tales of carmine bee-eaters, elands and honey badgers. If the country does stabilise, tourists could return quickly to see these natural delights: creating jobs and national income, as well as the all-important economic case for a properly funded anti-poaching force.

So what is the rhino-horned dilemma? It is yours, gentle reader. Will you come to Zimbabwe’s national parks? For now our travel advice is pretty cautious, so I can hardly tell you to visit. But, if the new power sharing arrangement works - and we all hope that it will deliver justice and prosperity for Zimbabwe – there will be a time when you could think about visiting.

When that time comes, please do visit Zimbabwe: to show support and friendship to its long-suffering people; to do something concrete to help the country’s recovery; to be humbled by Shamwari’s benevolent might and to provide the resources to ensure that his grandchildren continue to grace Mana Pools.

Posted at 13:42 23 September 2008 by Philip Barclay  |  Comments[6]