© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
August 25, 2000
By Neville Judd

PRETORIA, South Africa, August 25, 2000 (ENS) - Zimbabwe's controversial policy of redistributing land owned by white commercial farmers threatens a host of animal and plant species, says a South African conservationist.

Significant populations of black rhinos, African wild dog, sable and roan antelope, cheetah, Lichtenstein's hartebeest and tsessebe are among the species supported by private land in Zimbabwe.

President Robert Mugabe's plan to redistribute white owned land among the black population threatens the indigenous savanna woodland that grows on commercial farmland, and which supports these species and others, said Professor Johan du Toit, director of Pretoria University's Mammal Research Unit.

Du Toit told ENS that black Zimbabweans fed up with 20 years of government inaction on the land issue cannot be blamed for environmental destruction.

"The black people in Zimbabwe who are demanding land are people who either don't have access to land already or who wish to move from land that has become degraded," said du Toit. "These are very poor people. When they move onto new land they will need to feed themselves as quickly as possible, establish dwellings, and demonstrate some form of tenure over the land.

"This will inevitably involve deforestation, hand tillage of fields and vegetable gardens as close as possible to water, hunting or snaring of wildlife, and the introduction of goats and cattle. Such people cannot be blamed for their actions within a system that is effectively throwing land at the masses and each man and woman has to scramble to maximize individual short term gains," said du Toit.

"It is quite understandable that they wish to improve their prospects and are frustrated at the government's failure to address the land issue in any sensible fashion over the last 20 years," he added.

Over 11.3 million people live in Zimbabwe, a landlocked country in south-central Africa, slightly smaller than California. One third of its arable land is owned by 4,000 white farmers.

In February, President Mugabe's government lost a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the seizure of this land without compensation. Despite the defeat, the government supported the seizure of the land anyway.

Veterans of Zimbabwe's war for independence in the 1970s began squatting on the land and attacking the whites in an effort to reclaim land taken under British colonization. Several white farmers were killed in the violence.

Mugabe's support for the squatters has lead to foreign sanctions against Zimbabwe, and the president's critics say the reclamation of the land is meant to deflect attention from the country's economic crisis.

But Du Toit, an ecologist and third generation white Zimbabwean, believes there would be no shortage of help from the international donor community if Zimbabwe revised its land policy.

A transparent system of acquiring land for resettlement on a fair willing buyer/willing seller basis combined with a rational system for engaging more black people in the commercial agricultural sector would ensure wildlife conservation did not suffer, said du Toit.

"The international donor community has already indicated willingness to support such programs. If adequately trained and equipped black farmers are given title to commercially viable land holdings, with venture capital allocated to support basic farm infrastructure with workable loan terms, then it is in each landowner's interest to conserve all natural resources on the land," he said.

"Subsistence dry land cropping is not a viable form of land use in the low rainfall areas, which is where most privately managed wildlife in Zimbabwe is - on extensive ranches. So, a rationally planned land redistribution and resettlement program should not have to conflict with wildlife conservation," du Toit said.

Du Toit stressed that he does not care who owns land in Zimbabwe, as long as nobody is treated unjustly and that incoming landowners are educated, empowered and equipped to use the land wisely for the sustainable benefit of all Zimbabweans.

"I am not motivated by any racial, political, or looney environmental agendas," he added.

Du Toit doubted whether the current government could negotiate the land policy's environmental hurdles. "An inability to completely implement any plan is a characteristic of the Zimbabwean government."

"It might end up that the situation settles into an unofficial state of limbo for long enough to allow commercial farmers and local community leaders to reach agreements of their own on a local level. That seems to be the best case scenario at present," du Toit concluded.

Pretoria University's Mammal Research Unit specializes in researching and teaching the biology and ecology of African mammals. By focusing on southern Africa, it aims to help conserve the diversity of the region's indigenous mammal fauna in the context of sustainable human development. Error: Unable to read footer file.