Isdore Guvamombe Reflections
Back in the village, in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve, a man who hangs around a beautiful girl without proposing to her ends up fetching water for guests at her wedding.

There are indeed some things that you just have to say right on time.

There has been gnashing of teeth in the Victoria Falls Municipality resulting in the council this week disowning the Santonga Project and going to great lengths to exonerate itself. Are the chickens coming back to the village to roost?

If we don’t stop Santonga from closing the last standing animal corridor now, we will end up being servants there, working towards the destruction of our own heritage. When others do it for the love of money, we should do it to protect our heritage.

Of late, Zimbabwe has witnessed an unorthodox regrouping of diehard Rhodesians, clandestinely trying to usurp powers from National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, based on the mentality that they were doing it better in Rhodesia.

This is precisely the reason why Government recently stopped that Hwange project, because it was in direct competition with National Parks.

Like this villager promised last week, here are the facts about Africa Albida Tourism’s land ownership in Victoria Falls.

AAT owns the Boma Restaurant in Victoria Falls on Stand 471 and the land is about 30 hectares. The company also owns Stand 1560 which is zoned for the construction of lodges. The land is about 20ha and it was purchased from the Local Government during the Zimbabwean dollar era.

AAT also has a terminable lease for Stand 1561 from the Municipality of Victoria Falls. This is a 25-year lease running from 2007 and expiring in 2032.

AAT also leases from Local Government a 50,5ha of land on Stand 936. The first lease was given to the company just before the announcement of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in February 1964 and expired in 1991. In 1991, AAT got an extension of the lease up to February 2016. They have now applied to buy the piece of land or extend the lease by another 25 years on a terminable lease basis. The application is still pending.

Of interest is that each stand has a different land use plan, yet AAT now wants to incorporate all the four pieces of land and create a zoo called Santonga Project.

Stands 1561 and 936 are supposed to be used as an animal corridor, where Santonga is only allowed to do horse trails and photography on wildlife passing to and from the Zambezi River. This is captured in the contracts that govern the use of the two stands. Section 4 of Contract LB/131/936 and L2064 refers, according to Ministry of Local Government records.

Stands 471 and 1560 are meant to accommodate lodges development. Stand 471 was developed about two decades ago while stand 1560 has no development on it.

The Santonga Project is not a lodge and does not fall into the category of lodges. If AAT wants to develop this piece of land into a zoo or theme park, as they call it, they are supposed to approach the Victoria Falls Municipality and apply for either change of land use or change of reservation. The process includes advertising such intention in the local press and people are given an opportunity to air their views. That has not been done despite the fact that this process is mandatory.

It is very surprising in the first instance, therefore, that the company has so many pieces of land under its control in an area like Victoria Falls which has serious land shortages. Contrary to the Santonga shenanigans, the Government of Zimbabwe has decided not to tamper with the area near the Falls and allocated itself land about 20km from the Falls for the development of its theme parks under the Mosi a Tunya Trust. Government is also mooting a new town 40km from the current Victoria Falls in a bid to keep the Falls as natural and intact as possible.

It is therefore very clear that when Local Government gave AAT some of these stands to control, the intention was that AAT would keep the stands in their wilderness state thereby promoting the tenets of the world heritage site.

There is no point in taking shelter in a cave after the rain. Karitundundu weee!

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