Shortage of funds impacts negatively on land mine clearing

downstream to a crossing point on Limpopo River and sneak into South Africa to look for jobs and a better life. They leave wives and children behind.
“Ndingashanda sei ndisina gumbo?” (How can I work when I have one leg?)
After finishing his Grade 7 at Dumisa Primary School in 1997, his parents did not have money to fund his secondary education so he had to seek a job. Because of his limited education, he became a herd boy at a neighbouring home.
One Wednesday in June 1998, around 2pm, 11-year-old Sibanda was out in the forest, at work. He decided to water the cattle along Mwanedzi River. Before he reached the river, he stepped on something and boom!
“There used to be a fence to mark the minefield, but it had been vandalised,” said Mr Sibanda.
“So I could not identify the field. It hit me around 2pm on a Wednesday. People say they heard the explosion, but were unsure if the landmine had been detonated by an animal or a person. So no one went out to check. Although I had been hit, I ran for about 100 metres, but because of excruciating pain on my foot, I looked down at it and saw blood oozing. The foot had basically been ripped apart. Up to now, I don’t know how I managed to run off. I cannot describe the pain and the blood loss. I thank God that despite the pain, I rolled myself to a mopane tree which was nearby, pulled off a switch and used its bark to bandage my foot. That reduced the bleeding, not the pain. I spent the night alone in the bush.”
A search party comprising his parents and employer and his family went about looking for him. They searched for him in vain for hours until his employer spotted a blood trail and followed it.
“You can’t forget such a horrific experience. They discovered me at around 2pm, so I had spent about 24 hours injured, in pain alone in the forest,” he said.
Mr Sibanda was lucky to survive a night in the bush after the landmine blast. He had other fears to overcome – attacks by predators like lions, leopards and hyenas and snakes that roam the densely forested area which adjoins Sengwe One and Two safari hunting areas.
He does not remember how he was ferried to Dumisa Clinic, and later to Chikombedzi District Hospital. Initially medical staff amputated his right foot. The wound did not immediately heal, but actually festered, forcing them to amputate his leg at the knee.
Mr Sibanda now has an artificial leg and walks with a crutch, donated to him by a local, a Mr Mahlapepe – a man whom he thankfully says partially restored his honour and freedom of movement. The good-natured landmine survivor said he has a girlfriend, but because he struggles to walk, and work, he does not have money to pay lobola. He does not even dream of illegally crossing the border like his peers into South Africa to search for work. For someone on an artificial limb and crutch, walking the distance from his home to the river and negotiating a way past South Africa security teams, is impossible.
Dumisa and Lisenga are the first villages from the landmine-infested Zimbabwe-Mozambique border around Crook’s Corner, the southern-most part of one of the country’s remaining minefields. A state of war prevails in villages from Crook’s Corner, 160km east of Beitbridge to Sango Border post, 50km north.
At independence, Zimbabwe had six minefields covering an estimated 2 700km of its borders with Zambia and Mozambique. The biggest was the Musengezi-Rwenya minefield in Mashonaland Central province which was 335km long, followed by the Victoria Falls-Mlibizi field which was 220km in extent. The Crook’s Corner-Sango one was 50km. There was also the 50km Sheba Forest-Beacon Hill field, and Rusitu-Muzite Mission (75km) in Manicaland. Three kilometres of Burma Valley in the same province were also littered with anti-personnel landmines.
The Victoria Falls-Mlibizi field was successfully demined and handed over to the community in 2006. Zimbabwe National Army engineers have over the past three years or so, been busy on the Crook’s Corner-Sango minefield. Sango is situated in Gonarezhou National Park. The northern section of danger zone encircles the former Gonakudzingwa Restriction Camp where dozens of leading nationalists like the late Vice-Presidents Joshua Nkomo and Joseph Msika were held by the colonial regime of Ian Smith.
The army started their work from Crook’s Corner northwards. Its engineers have set up a camp at Gwaivhi Primary School. Might-Hope Demining Services International, a local firm, won a tender in 2009 to remove landmines from 25km of the stretch of the minefield, starting from Sango going down. The company has only conducted reconnaissance on the minefield to determine its size and density. It does not have $13 million required to start actual landmine clearing.
The company’s challenges in securing funding mirror the general challenges the national landmine clearing effort is facing since bilateral funding from countries like Germany and America was discontinued in the early 2000s over the land reform programme.
Landmines curtail people’s and animals’ freedom of movement, render large tracts of land unusable and curbs social and economic development, said Mr Wisdom Matongo (33), of Gwaivhi.
“Wild and domestic animals are worst affected because the minefields are unmarked,” he said.
“Many are hit and we simply watch helplessly. We cannot venture into the minefields to retrieve the animals lest we suffer the same fate. In March last year, a cow was hit and it managed to limp to safety but we had to finish it off. You eat the meat, but you don’t enjoy it.”
Before the March incident, a local man had been killed in a mine blast as he checked a snare he had set to trap game.
Ian Smith’s Rhodesian forces planted anti-personnel landmines during the liberation war along the country’s borders with Mozambique and Zambia in an effort to prevent infiltration by liberation fighters.
Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor estimates that Zimbabwe had 2,3 million landmines at Independence. Since then, 1 550 people have been reported killed or maimed, and 120 000 livestock have been killed, the global landmine watchdog says.
Zimbabwe signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997, ratified on 18 June 1998, and the treaty entered into force on 1 March 1999. In January 2001, the country enacted the Anti-Personnel Mines (Prohibition) Act, which incorporates the Mine Ban Treaty into domestic law.
Villagers in Lisenga grow crops on the Limpopo River’s floodplain not only because the lands are fertile but also because there are fewer or no landmines. Most of the people who live on the contaminated Zimbabwe-Mozambique border from Crook’s Corner to Sango are Shangaan.
Mr Michael Mlambo (48) has about two acres of land under maize. He has been farming the piece of land since 2001 and remembers how fearful he was clearing the land. It was a gamble, he said, akin to gauging the depth of a pool of water using one’s leg.
“We just cleared the land and saw that it was not mined,” he said, through an interpreter.
“If it was mined, perhaps I would be dead or disabled now. The problem is that even in areas where we are told have been demined, we continue to have victims. So the safest way is to avoid places you are unsure of.”
According to Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, mines have had a telling impact on Zimbabwe’s socio-economic development.
It says:
“Much of the timber in mine-affected areas is well past its maturity and has already lost its commercial value. It is claimed that mines have blocked access to 300 square kilometres of communal land, 107square km of commercial farm land, and 50 square km of game parks, plus an unknown quantity of tea and timber plantations and border posts. Zimbabwe has estimated that all but five percent of the mined area could be used for economic development.”
The organisation adds that mined areas are in rural areas inhabited by poor farmers whose livelihood depends on the land.
“It is estimated that mined areas deny farmers about 175 square km of fertile land of which 145 square km is in Mukumbura and 30 square km in the Rusitu/Muzite area. The Sango Border Post to Crook’s Corner minefield [covers] 22,9sq/km within the Gonarezhou National Park,” Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor says.
Although the presence of the silent assassins continues to cause discomfort, pain and death among villagers around Crook’s Corner, cases appear to have gone down in recent years. “I think it’s because of the regular awareness campaigns that are conducted,” said Mr Peter Mteliso, (50) headmaster of Gwaivhi Primary School.
“More people know the dangers posed by landmines and venturing into unknown territory. But animals being animals are affected.”
In Lisenga, people follow well beaten paths. An adventure can cost you a leg, or your life.
Mrs Dzokai Matiwaza (22) of the same village, said one of his brothers, Velias, lost a leg to a landmine blast some 10 years ago. She is happy that soldiers are clearing the mines but feels imprisoned.
“People talk about a free Zimbabwe,” she said, “but we are not free here. You can’t be free when your next step can mean injury or death.”