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Zimbabwe has the right to manage her wildlife in a manner that benefits communities that live with these animals on a daily basis, for all their lives

Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story
THESE are not happy days for many genuine and pseudo-wildlife conservationists from faraway places like the United States that are grieving sore at Zimbabwe’s unflinching boldness to resolving its elephant problem; liquidating the surplus herd to overseas buyers.

There is nothing illegal about that. My stubbornly and rationally assertive instalment from last week, “Live elephant sales better than culling,” was reproduced on several news sites and websites worldwide, drawing a slew of undignified hate messages aimed at my personality, not work, and at individual Zimbabwean authorities.

Some took to social media pouring out their “disgust and heartbreak” at this “heartless spin on. . . the capture of baby elephants from their mothers,” as a shadowy US group calling itself Global March for Elephants and Rhinos put it.

Most of the tantrums are unprintable for their unrestrained, unashamed use of unrefined language, a moral sickness that yields a lot of shame to those who do not regularly practice it in “civilised” Western societies.

“This Government never listens to anyone but themselves and these Government officials would sell their own mothers if they could,” shouted one J Calbert.

He wasn’t done yet, and in vengeful typical racially-charged tone, predicted the downfall of tourism in Zimbabwe.

“The world will take revenge,” Calbert said in pitiful ignorance, dangerously convinced in his little mind that “the world” is as represented only by the West.

“The world tourists will continue to support other African countries, instead. Bravo to them, when they boycott you baboons in Government might wake up.”

Again, as mentioned last week, Calbert, like numerous “wildlife conservationists” before him/her, proves my point about this whole live elephant sales issue, that of being led by emotional, and possibly, romantic idealism.

That’s understandable, but not excusable. On matters of substance, Calbert and like-minded pseudo-conservationists were disappointingly thin.

The submissions were sentimentally speculative and premised on hallucinations of looting of yet-to-be earned sale proceeds by Government authorities.

They failed to challenge in any intelligent, compelling manner the fundamental arguments so clearly elaborated in the founding article, such as the socio-economic and environmental impacts of having too many animals crammed onto too small a habitat.

At best, and in denigrating individual Zimbabwean political leaders, the “conservationists”, who are predominantly based in the US, exposed their calculated disdain towards the country and its political governance systems.

On my involuntary behalf, the inconvenient true conclusion was made; it’s political. Desperate arrogance and ignorance. One Greg de Sleskine epitomises this nauseating politicisation of legal and noble wildlife trade by Zimbabwe.

He has no clue whatsoever, of what he is ranting about, but because it’s Zimbabwe, a brewer of evil before the US’ eyes, what good thing can come out that southern African country? Greg had to prove he was a competent fool.

“A country at the root cause of bringing most of Africa’s wildlife to the brink of extinction, a country where even cats and dogs are not safe from being eaten or having their skins ripped off while still alive,” Greg submitted his “intelligent” intervention to the elephants debate.

Seriously? On which planet does he live? Cats and dogs are not and will never be a delicacy in Zimbabwe. And how has Zimbabwe brought “most of Africa’s wildlife on the brink of extinction”?

Just how? One cannot help but wonder whether the animal rights groups such as the so-called Global March for Elephants and Rhinos are not on the US government’s payroll, paid to make unnecessary noise on the perceived illegality of Zimbabwe’s live elephant sales.

In light of this, it becomes a challenge denying the presence of a hidden US hand in the current crusade against Zimbabwe’s elephant’s trade.

The US is habitually, and as a matter of (ill) principle, anti-Zimbabwe. Similar underhand tactics have been employed in diamond trade to no avail.

Multiple brainwashed individuals and organisations were surreptitiously mobilised and generously funded to discredit the country’s precious stones as blood diamonds, but the real world resisted such flimsy claims.

In the same manner, we are now witnessing growing numbers of rented wildlife conservationists masquerading as messiahs appointed by themselves to liberate the African elephant from the “corrupt, greedy and downright evil” hands of the Zimbabwe Government, as one Sandra Wilentz charged in her emailed correspondence.

“I cannot fathom what squalid, seedy back-room deals have gone into this, but the cumulative result will be infinitely more expensive in the long run than the proceeds of a quick sale,” Wilentz continued on her speculative charge sheet.

The Parks and Wildlife Authority of Zimbabwe have neither talked about this being a quick sale nor a quick fund-raising scheme.

Only when the rightful buyer has been found and when all the pre-shipment, shipment and post-shipment safety conditions have been met to CITIES’ satisfaction, will the elephants be relocated.

And that does not happen overnight.

Now, while Zimbabwe has a genuine elephant problem, the unreasonably cheeky Parks and Wildlife Authority spokesperson Ms Caroline Washaya-Moyo is not doing much to aide the country’s cause when she evades important questions from journalists.

The acceptable argument for live elephant sales has been that of overstocking. But there are lions and sables that have been traded.

Does Zimbabwe have an overpopulation of that as well? I asked Washaya-Moyo by telephone on Friday. Without specifically addressing the question, she responded, angrily: “you are mixing issues. You were talking about elephants . . . and now you are talking about other species. Who is your editor? Let me talk to him.”

At the time of going to print, Washaya-Moyo was still to talk to my editor. Such deliberate ambiguity provides the many mongering real or imagined conservationists with the free ammunition and idle justification they so desperately need to tear into Zimbabwe’s live elephant plans at will.

Ms Washaya-Moyo’s sloppiness could lend the cheer leading pseudo-animal rights groups unwarranted sympathisers, to Zimbabwe’s dismay.

It must be remembered, however, that regardless of conservationists’ resistance, often times genuine but disregarded by politicians, Zimbabwe has the right to manage her wildlife in a manner that benefits communities that live with these animals on a daily basis, for all their lives.

It is Government’s primary responsibility to maintain a healthy elephant population, one it can control and sustain from own resources, and to create a sustainable future for its people and wildlife by building systems and strategies that minimise conflicts between the two.

Disposing of the excess herd is one of those strategies.

God is faithful.

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