The fault for such a perception resides with the government and I hold no brief to assist it in changing how its policies are viewed globally or domestically. But it is important that the issue of the Save Conservancy is not lost in the typical debate about land conflict and/or reform in Zimbabwe. This is because it is more complicated than currently being communicated in the public domain.
There are four points of conflict:
– The broad policy of the government to pursue indigenisation of the national economy. Given the fact that parts of the conservancy are managed by some local state and private entities in partnership with foreign nationals, it appears that the Zimbabwe Community Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (Campfire) is not immune from indigenisation . In response, the European Union has issued a warning that it may renew targeted sanctions over this matter.
– The two MDCs have denounced not only the broader methodology of economic empowerment but also specifically the takeover of the conservancy by persons perceived to be functionaries of Zanu (PF).
– The third and rather surprising note of conflict is that of the Zanu (PF) intra-party divisions over the allocation of parts of the conservancy that have reportedly required the intervention of Vice President Mujuru.
– Finally – the dispute has now been reported as coming from traditional chiefs, who are arguing that any redistribution of the land must not be only for party bigwigs but must benefit the whole community.
This claim by the chiefs should however be accepted with caution as it is not clear whose interests they are representing. Whatever happens, the conservancy must benefit the ‘community’ and this point that must be debated honestly.
The general narrative about conservancies has been about preserving wildlife both for environmental reasons or an income-generating tourist and hunting endeavours. As with our forestry protection policies, which are largely a carry-over of colonial policy, conservancies are protected particularly from what have been perceived to be ‘marauding’ locals who are deemed to have a limited understanding of either the environment or the wildlife in which they live in close proximity. (Hence some of the statements from the incumbents at the Save Conservancy that some of those that wish to take over do not understand a thing about running safaris).
‘Whatever happens, the conservancy must benefit the community’
Even those who have been in partnerships or those politicians who intend to take over the conservancy have not shifted in this approach to the ‘local community’.
As it was in the beginning of the laying of the boundaries between villages and the wildlife/forestry areas before independence, so it has remained.
This is even in the aftermath of the once much celebrated Campfire, which has demonstrated the patent ineptitude of many a rural district council since its inception in 1989. In effect, all players in this new environmental/safari tourism cum political contest have essentially become part players in what is referred to in some academic circles as the lie of the land ( an unquestioning acceptance of statistical data from environmental and other NGOs that Africa’s rural poor damage their own environment).
This has been the underlying reason why local communities are barely in with a chance of benefiting from such projects. This is especially so when one looks at the displacement of people from Matopos to the Gwaai Shangani forests and their subsequent placement under another Campfire project in their new locations after independence (ostensibly to protect elephants and other wildlife).
In extending its indigenisation programme to conservancies, the government has not demonstrated a thorough re-examination of its Campfire programmes thus far and is not necessarily seeking to depart from ‘colonial’ policy understanding of the interaction between environmental/natural resources and citizens. The Save Conservancy debacle is the latest proof of this. To seek merely to replace existing owners of the wildlife sanctuary and assume that is ‘progress’ is thoroughly inadequate. Simultaneously, to talk of community share ownership trusts without a thorough re-examination of Campfire’s successes and failures is to give false hope (if any) to local communities.
The primary challenge is now not only about managing the narrative of investor confidence ahead of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation conference.
It is about the urgent need for the government to depart from the exclusionary policies of the colonial past – not by way of displacement or replacement, but by wholesale democratic reform of the manner in which our natural resources are managed in the best public interest.
This would begin with an evident understanding that what is happening in Save is a proverbial case of the grass suffering while the elephants fight in order for things to remain the same. – Title taken from book by Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns, eds. The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment Oxford: James Currey and Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1996.
Post published in: News