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Obert Chifamba

Agric-Insight

THIS other day I was going to Manyame Airbase just for a social visit. I used the route that circumvents the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport.

 I had travelled briefly past the main gate into the air terminal towards Kutsaga Tobacco Research Station when I noticed some activity to my left.

Hordes of youths were busy loading sand into some lorries parked right inside some dongas whose depth easily informed me that these activities could have been happening over a long period of time.

  I stopped to get an appreciation of the goings-on the farm. I guess if I was viewing the situation from the air I could have easily lost count of the crater-like openings that now litter the landscape.

The farm is virtually being shredded into craters that will render it useless immediately after the sand extractions. 

Chances are high that the sand excavations may easily and soon encroach into Kutsaga, the country’s sole tobacco research institution, which is a key research, development and economic security institution that must be jealously protected given that tobacco is one of the key drivers of the economy.

The clear and present danger from the situation is that once research operations are disrupted, which will indirectly affect projects being done at the institution, production of the golden leaf will suffer and so will a host of other value chain actors. 

This will also mean that the recent upward momentum the country had picked in the production of the crop will take a knock.

 It also means that the dream of attaining 300 million kilogrammes per season by 2025 will go up in flames because there will be no source of certified seed for tobacco growers to start healthy nurseries from which they get planting material.

Sand poachers, like their friends — the illegal miners, do not stop at anything once they notice that they are getting what their customers want. 

The risk of them even extending their operations into the research farm are very high if they are not stopped immediately. 

The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) may need to be a bit more ruthless in their handling of such citizens who do not care for the next person that they are currently doing. 

It is time they take off their gloves and go in for a gruelling battle. The tragedy of the matter is that the poachers usually start from a place that is not under anyone’s custody and then move into areas they should not be taking their shenanigans to.

In this case, I also noticed they were digging sand way into an area that seemed, from where I was viewing, to be in the premises of cement producers, Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) Limited Zimbabwe.

This is despite the presence of a very big signpost hinting at the illegality of anybody doing such activities within the premises. 

But, whether they are on PPC Limited Zimbabwe premises or not, the crux of the matter here is that the poachers are destroying the environment, albeit, at a rate that if not stopped, may see the entire country sitting on craters without top soil for agriculture.

Incidentally, the farm on which this massive land degradation is rampant through sand poaching and deforestation is situated on the upper catchment area of the river basin, which feeds Kutsaga Research water bodies. 

This naturally leaves the downstream waterways susceptible to siltation. The dams irrigating key national agricultural research programmes for the country face massive siltation from the illegal activities. 

One thing also worth noting is that Kutsaga has since extended its research to cover many other crops outside tobacco, which means the impact from a possible disruption of activities may also be felt by other cropping disciplines.

Such a development will obviously come laden with a host of challenges that will among other things manifest through revenue losses and even loss of employment for some citizens who have been legally making their livelihoods from something linked to tobacco. 

People from the neighbouring suburb of Epworth, for instance, who I am made to understand, form the bulk of the permanent farm workers and even the casual component that is hired at the peak of activities will immediately feel the heat. 

Outside the socio-economic circles that will be ravaged in the process, the impact of the reckless tree-cuttings will soon be noticeable on the environment and the ecosystem in general.

 These unregulated activities are at the epicentre of current wanton destruction of the environment that has culminated in the proliferation of huge dongas, deforestation and land degradation happening in the Manyame River catchment area in which the Kutsaga Tobacco Research Station is located.

I understand EMA has since been alerted to this disturbing development amid indications that some private security detail manning some of the affected farms and premises in the area are being bribed to allow the sand poachers do their illegal activities. 

EMA should team up with law enforcement agents and the Harare city council to deal with this problem before it turns uglier than what it currently is.

 Statutory Instrument 7 of 2007 gives local authorities the power to set aside designated areas for sand abstraction within their areas of jurisdiction to ensure the activities are properly regulated and not haphazardly done.

Harare City Council should evoke this SI to move in and push the poachers out and protect the environment, properties and other developmental issues whose success rests on the availability of a good natural environment to be realised. 

On the one hand, businesses operating in the area should also be proactive and engage their own security agents whom they can always order to be very strict. They can also fire agents guilty of acting in complicit with the sand poachers.

It is critical for businesses in the affected areas to seek the intervention of the national security agents while they are also doing something to protect their business interests and not just leave their fate in the hands of others. 

Outside interventions should come in to bolster measures that the affected people would have put in place to address the matter.