According to a September 6, 2012 article
on SW Radio Africa’s Web site, the rape of the Save (pronounced Sah-Vay) Valley
Conservancy continues. The conservancy,
a collection of conservation areas in the southern region of Zimbabwe that had
the game migration routes for many of the species that are in South Africa’s
Kruger Park, has been the target of attempted land grabs for several years, spearheaded by the governor of
Masvingo Province, Titus Maluleke and a member of the Zimbabwean Defense
Forces, Lieutenant Colonel David Moyo, in blatant defiance of the government’s
supposed efforts to protect the environment and place the conservancies in a
special category from other properties that have been seized in the so-called ‘indigenization’
drive.
According to SW Africa Radio, the current efforts,
aided by National Parks chief Vitalis Chadenga, who himself has been the
beneficiary of seized property; include many high level officials of the
ZANU-PF party. Vitalis, according to the
article, has given land leases in the conservancy to officials who have issued
warnings to the current occupants that they are now the new ‘owners,’ and also
has granted hunting licenses to the new ‘owners,’ which is starving current
owners of the revenue needed to maintain the facilities.
These takeover efforts have also ignored warnings
that they risk destroying the country’s wildlife and tourism sectors. This is especially troubling considering that
it comes ahead of the planned UN World Tourism Organization General Assembly in
Victoria Falls next year. Previous take
overs of portions of the conservancies have not only threatened wild life
sanctuaries and migration routes, but have resulted in rural populations being
displaced from relatively fertile agricultural land to land without adequate
water or other means of economic livelihood.
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