Time to deal with conservancies

redistribute the land and natural resources to the underprivileged blacks, the wildlife conservancies also needed to be compliant to the national issue.
In the past few months the wildlife-based land reform programme, the last vestige of conflict in the land reform programme, has hogged the limelight, for all the wrong reasons.
Heated debate in Parliament, litigation in courts and unbearable pressure on the vanguard of the natural resources, the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, all tell a story of the inconclusiveness of the implementation matrix of the project.
This is certainly because it is a technically difficult area in as much as it is sensitive.
By its admission, the Government delayed implementing the practical indigenisation of this sector due to technical complications and expertise required.
However, to avoid the hysteric hullabaloo about the wildlife-based land reform and avert litigation, we should all understand that there are very simple solutions, which might be unpopular.
Firstly, since under the land reform programme all the land belongs to the Government of Zimbabwe, it is better to surrender all the private wildlife conservancies to National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and allow the authority to lease the conservancies, using set barometers. 
Secondly, since all the wildlife belongs to national parks and is being held in trust by the farmers, it is simple for parks to take back what belongs to it and then lease out. What then is needed is for Government to re-kit, re-tool parks with high technology and financial muscle to enable it to monitor events in each and every conservancy.
Real villagers have been elbowed out by senior politicians, especially in the south-eastern lowveld, where the same politicians who benefited from the land reform and got sugar plantations are getting into wildlife conservancies. Poor villagers have been left clutching at straws.
Suffice to say the same senior politicians are also into mining at the expense of villagers. Those few villagers hand-picked as shareholders in conservancies are mere smokescreens.
The former white owners who should be sharing the resource with the indigenes, have taken advantage of the situation and demanded, even through the courts, to continue operating without complying with the law.
Legally, national parks is not supposed to issue hunting quotas and licences until these private conservancy owners comply with the regulations but the organisation is under pressure from litigants, who hide behind the disorganisation among the indigenes.       
Going the community share ownership trust way could another solution but still the ordinary villager in the South-Eastern lowveld feels there is the loophole of being disenfranchised.
Some 28 percent of Zimbabwe’s landmass is reserved for Wildlife, in itself an incredible statement how much importance the Government of Zimbabwe has given and continues to give to this National Asset.
If that statistic is correct, then Zimbabwe is great but if wildlife conservation is an asset the asset implies that it provides returns for those who own it, in this case the Zimbabwean people.
If the asset of Wildlife is well managed, then, the result is that this will maximise the return for the population in income and wealth creation, in job provision and enhancing the reputation of the country, thus driving tourism and related activities.
There is no doubt that the wildlife-based land reform programme is necessary but the conservancies must become the property of national parks and parks should be allowed to float them on tender even to communities.
The current scenario in which there has been a lot of litigation and confusion is not good for the prosperity of the industry. Villagers become hyper-aggressive when closed out and tend to poach.
National parks and Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources management have been known for their outstanding capability in conservation but it seems they are weighed down by litigation and the noise from would-be beneficiaries and former owners.
They are also weighed down by financial problems, otherwise they can compete with any country in the world in terms of conservation.
But since the land is already state property and wildlife is also the property of the state, it sounds more logical for all and sundry to just surrender to parks so that parks can lease them out on a fair basis.
The former owners must vacate and should only do business when the mess is sorted out. The greedy and corrupt must also be routed out and the villager must also be given a reasonable stake managed under some kind of the Communal Areas management programme for Indigenous Resources.
Time is moving and it is very critical and important for us all to identify with the solution that the problem.