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Tendai Rupapa-Senior Reporter

First Lady and Secretary for Environment and Tourism in the Zanu PF politburo Cde Auxillia Mnangagwa this week met the ruling party’s secretaries for Environment and Tourism from the country’s 10 provinces to ensure they fully understand their role, promote tree-planting, deliberate on environmental conservation issues to equip them with knowledge for the development of their communities and the nation.

This comes as the First Lady, who is the country’s Environment Ambassador has in a short period of time this year, led to the planting of more than 10 300 trees with her tree planting awareness campaign still ongoing.

During the meeting at her offices in Harare, Amai Mnangagwa urged the provincial secretaries to embrace everyone in their communities and work with them mainly in planting trees thus preserving the environment including forests, wetlands and potential tourist sites.

They were also urged to remember and assist the less privileged and the elderly in their communities.

Present at yesterday’s educative meeting were stakeholders from the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry, the Forestry Commission, Parks and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe, Environmental Management Agency, National Monuments and Monuments of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) who took turns to educate the gathering on environment and tourism.

In her remarks, the First Lady said it was incumbent upon citizens to protect the environment and promote sustainable environmental practices and management systems.

“With a new team born out of an internal election of the party, it is clear that the party’s Tourism and Environment portfolio is poised for new ideas.

 “However, our role should transcend effectively, delivering on party goals.

“We must have a national outlook to our policy-making in our provinces. This follows our obligation to national interest as leaders whose source of legitimacy is derived from the broad aspirations of our people and the communities we directly represent. This third edition of our annual engagement should carry the relevant themes of our last session with a view to foster continuity and meeting our long strategic goals. 

“We must consolidate all our resolutions with an aim to make vision 2030 a reality,” she said to applause. 

The meeting, she said, provided an opportunity to revisit the mandate drawn from the party constitution to determine and implement policies affecting the tourism and environmental management sector. 

The dictates of the Zanu PF constitution, the First Lady said, needed to be blended well with the broader national and global policy aspirations of tourism and environment. 

“Therefore, this meeting should help produce ideas that are relevant in assisting each one of us to produce a schedule of activities which will promote tourism and environment. The policy deliberations of this workshop must translate to a meaningful impact in the lives of our people. 

“Beyond rhetoric, all of us have a great task of ensuring that our sector makes a meaningful contribution to Zimbabwe’s economic growth as espoused by the “Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo principle”. 

“To this end, the workshop will enable us to fully exploit the opportunities of the tourism sector for the attainment of long term economic goals,” she said. 

The mother of the nation said she was grateful that God spared Zimbabwe from the wrath of natural disasters in the last half of 2021.

 However, this was not supposed to be an excuse for complacency as the nation had to be more determined to promote environmental preservation throughout the provinces. 

“Comrades and friends over the years, we have grappled with several natural disasters such as cyclones and climate change. 

“At the same time, we have fallen short of our mandate to save the environment and this has led to excesses in the depletion of many forests, wetlands and wildlife amongst many others. 

“More than 60 percent of our wetlands in Zimbabwe are significantly vanishing as a result of human activities.

“Our limitless desires to develop ourselves through construction of houses and other types of physical infrastructure has seen us expanding into our wetlands. 

“In the process, we have deliberately ignored the ecological value of wetlands in controlling climate change, preventing floods and purifying our water bodies among other important environmental preservation imperatives. 

“As a party and Government, it is incumbent upon us to protect our environment and promote sustainable environmental practices and management systems. 

“This is also in light of the fact that the success of our tourism sector is highly dependent on the way we interact with and protect our environment,” she said.

The First Lady said her tours in all provinces had exposed her to diverse cultures and traditions that had formed as anchors of the nation. 

“Thus, the rich cultural motifs found in our rural homesteads which are taken care of by women do not only provide a site of our deep-rooted cultural preservation, but has compelled me to perceive them as mediums of tourist attraction. 

“These spaces are an alternative means of harnessing tourist investment as compared to the conventional tourism sites in Zimbabwe. 

“Therefore, I challenge you today to think of more ways of mobilising people through grassroots based tourism. 

“Communities must become active participants in modelling local tourism from cell to provincial level. This is because much of our social cultural heritage has the capacity to invite tourist attention if well packaged and marketed.

“This will then create employment for our youths and women and contribute to socio-economic development of our country.” 

The First Lady implored the nation to observe Covid-19 health and hygiene regulations of social distancing, proper wearing of face masks and social distancing as recommended by WHO and health experts.

Secretary for Environment, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Mr Munesu Munodawafa said provincial secretaries for Environment and Tourism were implored to take a leading role in veld fire management with a view to protecting people, livestock and properties from fire.

He urged them to fully participate together with members of their communities in the national cleanup campaign in order to achieve Vision 2030.

Mr Munodawafa said there were waste management provided opportunities in projects such as green energy technologies, waste recycling, waste to energy, remediation technologies and eco-tourism.

He added that consolidated gardens, orchards, fisheries and irrigation schemes were opportunities arising from wetlands protection. 

He gave an example of Njovo wetland in Masvingo. 

Mr Munodawafa further spoke on the impact of deforestation saying: “Forests are responsible for recharging underground aquifers. Deforestation is accelerating the loss of indigenous trees that take long time to reach maturity.

“It is causing increased siltation of internal water bodies. Therefore, we should all mobilise our communities and plant trees in support of the First Lady’s tree planting campaign,” he said.

The provincial secretaries promised to take with them the knowledge they had gained for the benefit of their communities.

They also commended the First Lady for taking a leading role in environment conservation.

Zanu PF national secretary for Environment and Tourism Cde Edith Kagoro expressed gratitude to the First Lady for yesterday’s educative meeting.

“On behalf of secretaries for Environment and Tourism, I am thankful for the opportunity to learn more about our department. Today Amai taught us what our work is all about.

“In the communities, in the provinces we come from we have been shown that as secretaries for Environment and Tourism we have a great job of going around the communities assessing the environment and we have been made to see that we have to work with the whole community despite any status. 

“We have learnt that we must protect the environment against littering for the good health of the community.

“Diseases like cholera and typhoid thrive where there is dirt and we must always practice good hygiene. We have learnt that we must preserve both indigenous and exotic trees. 

“For the trees to grow, they take a long time but the time to destroy is a matter of seconds. That is where our oxygen, medicines and shade come from,” she said. 

Equally grateful was Cde Mebo Zomi, the secretary for Environment and Tourism in Midlands.

“Amai has taught us that we must always remember our elderly and assist them. As we leave here with the words shared by Amai we shall go out there and assist our elderly and the less priviledged some of whom have no one to care for them. 

“From the lessons we learnt today, we shall play our part in preserving our wetlands. I have learnt that I cannot teach people to protect these trees when I have no fruit trees or trees in my yard. I must start by planting fruit trees in my yard so that my community learns something beneficial from me. We have learnt the importance of planting trees because in our province there were animals which lived in forests near our communities, but because of the cutting down of trees they ran away. There were zebras in areas like Jakani. We have learnt to form teams to clean our environment regularly,” she said.

Cde Kudakwashe Matsaka from Binga said he appreciated the First Lady’s efforts and interventions to preserve the environment.

“We would like to appreciate the opportunity that her excellency the First Lady has given to us. We have noted with excitement the roadmap that she has given to us as provincial members and the challenge that she has given to us. 

“Basically, she has set a tone for us to start working aggressively. Top among them is the tree planting initiative which she has tasked us to embark on so from now as Mat North province we are going to start with immediate effect. Amai has also challenged us to look into the issue of wetlands and the opportunities that are available within that area. She has also challenged us to look into issues to do with the environment and she has encouraged us to work with EMA to embark on clean up campaigns. We were taught to work with everyone because we cannot build the nation without love,” he said.

Cde Washington Zindoga from Mashonaland West Province said he was going to take what the First Lady had taught them to the district and cell levels sharing the information.