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“Let’s improve the security around our minerals to prevent smuggling,” President Mugabe told an Ordinary Session of the Central Committee in Chinhoyi last December on the eve of Zanu-PF’s 14th Annual National People’s Conference. “We have small planes landing at secret locations in some parts of the country. Tingaita nyika inongomharwa tisingazivi (We cannot have planes flying into our air space, landing and flying away undetected).”
He said this in the context of continued smuggling of precious minerals, particularly gold, into South Africa. We share his concerns as this asks profound questions on our capacity to defend our natural resources from undeserved exploitation by foreigners or individual locals to the detriment of the economy. In addition to gold, we suspect that some of our ivory is being spirited out similarly.
On May 5, a two-seater Robinson 22 chopper flew in unnoticed and attempted to land at Doddieburn Ranch near West Nicholson but crashed. The pilot, Frikkie Lutzkie and his wife both South Africans, and Lawrence Botha, who is leasing the farm from Gwanda Town Council brought in earth-moving machinery and buried the plane, still undetected. A day later, another small craft flew in, again unobserved to pick up Lutzkie and his wife. It flew away, yet again unnoticed.
For us, the fortunate part is that the Robinson crash-landed. Authorities were thus able to detect it, by default rather than by design. If it hadn’t crashed, it was going to be yet another of the unaccounted flights into our airspace.
We had heard rumours of unregistered flights into and out of our country many times but the Gwanda incident exposes the multi-faceted challenges we face in safeguarding our resources from foreign plunder. It also asks questions about our preparedness to detect security threats and respond to them accordingly.
Workers at Doddieburn Ranch have seen many choppers flying in and out of the property and the explanation given was they would be driving away elephants.
If the plane was dealing with problem animals, why were Botha and Lutzkie in so much a hurry to actually bury it? Their desperation suggests something very untoward was happening or has been happening at that government-owned property for a long period. We think everything revolves around smuggling of minerals or animal contraband.
How many more planes are violating our airspace in various parts of the country with authorities unaware?
Botha must be held accountable because the accident happened at a property he is running and was reportedly active in concealing evidence by burying the stricken plane. Whatever Lutzkie was doing there at the time of the accident and in his multiple flights in and out, Botha must know.
We expect Lutzkie to be called in for questioning as well because he is the one who invaded our territory. We feel that is his first offence. He crashed, buried his craft and neglected to notify the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) as the law says; that is number two. Road traffic regulations state that a motorist must report an accident within 24 hours; this must apply to air traffic too.
Lutzkie then called in a rescue chopper to fly in and airlift him out illegally; that is number three. Number four, he probably violated our immigration laws by not presenting himself before relevant authorities when coming in and going out of the country. Fifthly, he and Botha were probably involved in smuggling and police would be interested to find out more about this. Facts about smuggling are not there yet and need to be established for a strong case to be raised against them.
They have security questions to answer as well. Who knows, the crash might be the first clue to a wider story.
Transport and Infrastructure Development Minister, Dr Obert Mpofu suspects that the helicopter was being used in the smuggling of minerals or ivory out of Zimbabwe down south.
“All air strips especially those on former white commercial farms are going to be closely monitored henceforth as they can be used for criminal activities that could harm national interests,” he said.
There are hundreds of these airstrips to monitor but choppers like Lutzkie’s don’t need an airstrip to land, a small clearing can do.
The Doddieburn incident has awakened us to the need to upgrade our security system in order for us to be able to detect and contain smuggling and respond to more existential threats to our national security. That demands money to buy contemporary surveillance equipment, technology to enable us to enforce landings of intrusions when necessary and to improve our policing skills.
Zimbabweans take themselves very seriously and this is a matter of serious concern to them.
Online Reporter
Bongani Ndlovu