Zimbabweans titter on eve of rains

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

RIGHT now Zimbabwe and other countries in Africa and elsewhere are on the eve of a rainfall season which must of necessity guarantee continuous human existence.

But lo and behold! Instead of rubbing their hands in great expectation of a bountiful rainfall season, some if not many farmers titter with worry as they get their farming instruments ready, on the back of weather forecasts painting a gloomy rainfall season with normal to below normal rainfall mainly in southern parts of Zimbabwe whereas in other areas of the country millions of people and livestock live. 

But all that gloom is in spite of information encoded on the minds of both formal and informal environmentalists exhorting human beings to co-exist, as it were, with nature as a paramount condition for people’s own continued existence — information at which some people, for reasons best known to themselves — which this pen attributes to congenital ignorance — continue blatantly to violate rules for the continued co-existence and survival of both human beings and nature as guaranteed by our Creator’s wisdom, witness a report in this paper three days ago about veld fires in Matabeleland North province  which destroyed a total of 112 000 hectares land on which some people subsist.

(Some people hunt with fire or use fire to clear land for  farming purposes or carelessly throw away burning cigarette butts into the bush, thereby starting veldfires.)

It therefore becomes imperative for the powers-that-be to enforce environmental regulations with probably stiffer penalties to instil the fear of God in blatant violators of assets such as land on which many, many people’s lives depend.

As the rainy season approaches and with leaner falls in parts of Zimbabwe the Government has assured the public that new and resuscitated dams are ready to provide water for irrigation in areas with patchy falls to provide water for irrigation as well as augmenting borehole water sources for domestic use.

In view, therefore, of errant human conduct vis-à-vis people’s co-existence with nature, this communicologist humbly believes that our Government, because of its unflinching desire and commitments for people’s good existence and progress developmentally, will ensure that the dams will be strictly policed so that they are not silted with, for instance, sand pumped into them in areas where alluvial gold panning is rampant.

The Government might also wish to look at the availability of adequate draught power in areas where the January disease and other livestock diseases have been reported so that appropriate measures may be  taken to enable farmers to till their land and in that way forestall the need to spend foreign currency on food exports, at the expense of domestic developmental projects in dire need of financing for their success.

And while at it, what has happened to the wide availability of that hardy animal, the donkey, which can withstand many difficult land and dry rainfall conditions and which for many years in the past many of our people before independence relied on for farming as well as transport to deliver their crops to markets or for general travel through difficult terrain with, for instance, children being accompanied by elders to distant schools riding on the backs of donkeys which were tethered on trees to take back home the riders after school?

Why, therefore, are the donkeys not being bred in large numbers in rural areas where they would come handy for tillage purposes as well as for travel?

People in rural areas are the kingpins upon which millions in our urban centres rely for the supply of food so they deserve special attention to enable them to do their bit in making the lives of all Zimbabweans happy.