• JAG PR Communique - 25th February 2003
• JAG SITREP - 25th February 2003
• Zim crisis 'boggles the mind'
• Zimbabwe's land reform beneficiaries under scrutiny
• Parliament bars Daily News
• There's a limit to helping Zim
• UN seeks 35 000 tons of maize
• My protest goes on, says Flower
• Border crisis over
• Armed Robbery in Belvedere
• THE GOLDEN ACRES
• THE NOMADIC PASTURALISTS
• Not cricket
• It has to stop
• Fighting for Survival
• Fuel-starved Zimbabwe hikes prices
• Commonwealth's Biggest Media Gathering Gets Underway in Sri Lanka
• World needs Tatchell's crusade against tyrannical rulers
• Troika must push for a transitional government
• Mugabe, top officials face fresh US sanctions

THE GOLDEN ACRES

“We will be self sufficient in maize this year by producing 2,100,000 tons from 100,000hectares on Nuanetsi Ranch.”

A highly commendable statement indeed in this hunger ravaged country, but highly debatable and very improbable. Who are we trying to fool?

Last winter the two international companies growing sugar in the Lowveld were seduced into growing about 1600ha of maize on their sugar cane lands. The total yield of this crop, which reportedly averaged 2.7 tons under state of the art irrigation schemes, was far lower than predicted by the worst sceptics.

Without even delving into the technical details the companies made, what could only be considered, a huge donation of very scarce inputs of fertiliser, fuel and power to produce a minute quantity of food – in terms of national requirements. Also a huge amount of sugar production was sacrificed in a country, whose consumers are queuing for sugar as well as many other normally freely available commodities.

The much talked about scheme on Nuanetsi Ranch is not a reality and at the present moment in time it does not even exist.

Firstly, the water for this proposed scheme would come from the Tokwe-Makorsi Dam which once build would overshadow Lake Mutirikwe as the largest dam in the country only overshadowed by Kariba. At the moment, the dam, which has been beset by financing problems over the last 20 years, or more, is only at ground level. It would take at least three years before completion, and then several years to fill up – remembering the saga of Lake Mutirikwe, which took very many years to fill after completion.

Secondly the proposed 100,000ha area is presently merely lines drawn on a map, which on the ground is covered in normal Lowveld vegetation – bar the areas destroyed by the settlers. There are also hills to be flattened and gullies to be bridged in a massive exercise to turn virgin bush into productive irrigation land.

Then we come to the part where the taps have to be opened and the proposed crops be watered. The huge network of irrigation canals, pipelines, road networks, housing, administration blocks, schools, hospitals etc etc need to be put in place which will take many years.

How can we be thinking of such ambitious scientific plans of planting three maize crops a year to produce 21 tons per ha on the same land, when the scheme does not even exist?

Apart from that maize grown for grain is a 5-month cycle and yields in the Lowveld would only average 5 tons per ha under absolute optimum conditions. During summer the weather is too hot and in winter the daylight hours are too short to produce a higher yield. To the non-scientific minded all crops need to be grown in rotation and to even consider a continuous cycle of maize would be madness, due to the ever-decreasing yield caused by the build up of pests and diseases.

Even when the Tokwe-Makorsi Dam has been built the capacity would only be sufficient to irrigate 50,000ha, so the designers of the present much-talked-about “lifeline” surely need to get back to the drawing board and put some new batteries in their calculators. Apart from that part of that water has already been allocated to some of the companies for expansion in their existing and out grower schemes.

There have also been some extreme reservations made about the motivation of the hungry nation who has been so eager to invest such a huge amount of money in this country at the moment particularly at a time when most of the world is carefully avoiding us.

We are looking at a huge project with huge potential which would go a very long way in creating necessary employment and making a major contribution to food production, but we need to be careful of not making this another “land” issue to solve another political crisis.

There are many other areas in the country, which are already developed and far more suitable for maize production. All that needs to be done is to give the people with the right skills, knowledge, equipment and experience the right encouragement to get back onto their farms that they know so well, and they will once again produce a surplus of maize to our requirements. In the long run it would be far cheaper than either securing high priced forex for inputs, or than throwing good money after bad.

THE NOMADIC PASTURALISTS

There was a very interesting programme on BBC, on Sunday February 23, 2003, in which there was discussion and debate on the development of boreholes in the arid areas of northern Kenya, by the NGO donor organisations.

Being a dry area the only surviving inhabitants in that particular district were the nomadic pasturalists with their herds of cattle, goats and donkeys. Their survival was based on their very nomadic existence of herding their livestock to feed on the grass in areas where the isolated rains had nurtured scattered pockets of pasture. With the short and patchy rainy seasons the very limited grazing is their livestock’s’ only source of food during the long dry winter periods. Although water points were very few and far apart the nomadic pasturalists have adapted to their environment and are able to survive without outside assistance.

This was until the march of progress came along and with it impoverishment of the nomadic pasturalists living in this sensitive environment. Their livestock numbers have had to be decreased so they can have money to buy food and milk, which they used to normally produce. There is no longer sufficient grazing for their herds to survive in a situation that is reportedly so precarious and rapidly deteriorating that they may soon have to sell all and move into the towns to look for work, which is scarcely available.

Why has all this disruption to their idealistic existence taken place? It is called “development”. Apparently the “experts” carried out numerous meetings and consultations and it was decided that the NGOs should be requested to drill for water to supply “clean water for all” under the international health and sanitation programmes, which have been promoted for developing countries. It has been argued that in this particular case the survival of the sensitive environment and the people depending on it was not considered.

So, the drilling rigs came in and drilled numerous boreholes and installed with diesel driven pumps in this development programme, there was abundant water. However this “abundant water” was considered “unnecessary water” from the nomadic pasturalist’s point of view. With the development came more people, more livestock, which has resulted in a serious encroachment on their sensitive environment, which is unable to sustain the extra burden.

This development programme has resulted in the destruction of the nomadic pasturalists very existence and their extremely sensitive environment. It has been argued that the drilling of the holes has now increased development in the district that used to survive only on livestock production.

Unfortunately the development, which has only produced water in this sensitive dry district, cannot yield or produce more grazing, but has been solely responsible for destroying it!

This BBC programme was of great personal interest to me because the Kenyan situation is very much mirrored in our particular situation in the dry ranching district of Mwenezi.

The Mwenezi district has been classified in agricultural regions V and VI because of the low, erratic rainfall as well as periodic droughts (like we are experiencing now), and is obviously very similar to the area described in the Kenyan discussion.

Historically the entire West Nicholson and Nuanetsi (later called Mwenezi) districts were bought by Liebigs and Nuanetsi Ranches, the latter being 3,250,000acres in extent. Because of their logistical position and climate they were virtually uninhabited. It was only after large areas of these ranches was later subdivided when the surrounding communal areas were inhabited, with some in effect being used as “penal areas” where the politically unfavourable people were put. No crops could be grown and water was scarce so the people who were confined here were totally reliant on the government for food, or else on poaching.

Parts of both ranches were again subdivided in the 1950s to form the smaller ranches, which make up the Mwenezi and West Nicholson districts today. Initially the ranches only ran limited numbers of cattle, mainly because of the scarcity of water supplies. Basically, during the summer cattle were grazed inland and watered at open pans and boreholes, but during the winter cattle were herded along the river areas where water was extracted from below the sand riverbeds.

When I first came to the lowveld in the late 60s the above was the case and many of the smaller properties were mainly used as shooting blocks for South Africans because the wildlife was able to survive better than livestock, due to a migration practice similar to the nomadic pasturalists in Kenya being carried out.

In the early 70s cheap PVC piping and high-pressure low volume pumps were developed. This meant that larger areas of the existing ranches could be developed and could be more efficiently utilised through easier management. Ranches were paddocked off and water was more evenly distributed and many of the smaller hunting blocks were consolidated into bigger units because of the easier water distribution.

As a result of this the livestock numbers could be dramatically increased, and during the mid 80s wildlife took a new perspective with higher values being put on wildlife because of increasing interest being paid in them by foreign hunters who paid in American Dollars. Although cattle numbers had been increasing the producers suffered a series of crippling droughts in the early 80s and 90s. This was also compounded by Foot and Mouth Disease, which was controlled in our lowveld districts by strict zoning and vaccinations. In effect what this meant was that producers had no advantage from the higher export prices and their cattle were confined to the lowveld in times of drought.

As a result of this many ranchers went out of cattle and into wildlife, but many could not financially sustain the establishment period where there is an extremely low income (or no income at all), so they sold their ranches mainly to foreign investors or other successful crop farmers. This was the beginning of the conservancies and the beginning of the recovery of the environment to its previous pristine glory as it had been before the consecutive droughts. Huge amounts of money were invested building dams, developing water points, game fencing, and lodges and restocking the areas with wildlife.

Where are we today?

We have a political argument and agenda in which almost the entire population has unwittingly been dragged into. The economy is in tatters and people are forced to waste valuable working hours, and often days in queues to obtain the very basic commodities. The farming community, who are now being classed as criminals, because they invested their time and money into agriculture in Zimbabwe, produced many of these commodities in abundance. Their rights of usage of their farms granted by their title deeds is now being denied so they are unable to grow food to feed a desperate and starving nation.

On the previously carefully managed farms in Mwenezi, the Government has sanctioned the mass movement of settlers onto the ranches in this delicate environment. Where normal ranch management would only consider stocking cattle at a rate of 1 beast (Livestock unit or LSU) to every 10 to 20ha, the settlers have been put onto farms in blocks of between 25 and 50ha each. This is despite no legal transfer of title having taken place. They are then instructed to cut, clear and burn an 8ha portion from their plot on which they would cultivate crops. The resultant piece of land, which is left, is supposed to accommodate their 15 to 20 cattle; plus a flock of goats; plus donkeys for ploughing; on a sustainable basis?

What has resulted from this is the once carefully managed farms, which were farmed by people with a deep understanding and respect of the environment, are being turned into an ecological disaster. Very, very soon the plots and grazing areas will be totally unproductive due to the unsustainable practices being carried out. The wildlife has already died painfully and the genuine owner’s cattle would have either died or been squeezed out, and the settlers livestock will also succumb to starvation. There will be no winners.

As a result we will have a situation very similar to that of the Kenyan nomadic pasturalists. This is not progress, or development; it is just total destruction of a nation, which deserves a better future. The queues for basic food supplied so willingly by the NGOs and donor countries will just increase even more.

Just how much food can the donor countries afford to continually give to countries in a deliberately manipulated situation like ours, which is primarily about political survival?