Hunting of black rhinos on farms on the increase

Zimbabwe's policy of redistributing land owned by white commercial farmers has caused unmitigated "ecological disaster", according to an eminent conservationist.

Professor Johan du Toit, says wildlife populations have been overhunted in Zimbabwe after farms were handed over to black Zimbabweans.

He warned that the country's black rhinos, one of the species that attracts high-spending foreign tourists and hunters, is at great risk right now, faced with the spectre of extinction.

But he believes international help could avert the disaster.

Professor du Toit, director of the Mammal Research Unit, says commercial white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were home to many rare large mammals, including cheetah, black rhino and sable - a type of antelope.

"White-owned commercial farmland and ranchland in Zimbabwe supported a very significant proportion of the country's biodiversity. It has been severely impacted after land was thrown over to subsistence agriculture."

The Zimbabwe Government insists that prior to the agrarian revolutiion only about 30 percent of white-owned land was actually used for farming, the minister of Environment Francis Nhema said, dismissing the findings..

But the professor dismisses this, saying most of the arable land was cultivated, while the rest supported indigenous woodland that was used for grazing cattle, or for wildlife, or both.

"The issue is that dumping impoverished peasants on geometrically-plotted patches of virgin non-arable land, without any infrastructure, tillage equipment, venture capital, housing, water supplies, or training will result quite simply in an ecological disaster," says Professor du Toit.

"Wildlife populations are being overhunted and snared, habitat loss has been rapid, and the whole crisis risk getting exponentially worse."

Professor du Toit acknowledges that Zimbabwe itself cannot afford to provide that sort of infrastructure. But he believes the international community could step in and help. He says its too late to undo the damage, but there was need to save the little that left.

He believes Zimbabwe can still find a solution to cut its losses. But if it fails to do so, he thinks the future is bleak.

"We're going to lose some large populations and some important gene pools in the near future," says Professor du Toit.

There are some gene pools the country would be better off loosing. God help Rhodesia!

I feel sorry for the black rhinos. As for, the black Zimbabweans, screw them!

Are the whites who have been there 4 or 5 generations Zimbabweans? Or just Sir Robert's tribe that has been there for less time?

Yes, the vast majority of whites left in Zimbabwe have been there for a long time, but I'm not sure how many generations.

Bob's tribe, the Shona, have been there longer, but I'm not sure when they migrated down to that area. Here is an interesting article about the Shona.

Shona people

Here is a more detailed article on the history of the Shona.



The history of Shona Tribe of Zimbabwe

Shona people are internationally known for two art forms: stone sculpture and mbira music (mbira: an instrument made of a hollow gourd with metal reeds that the player plucks). The Shona are a cluster of peoples who have lived for about 2,000 years in a region of the southern Africa Plateau that includes most of ZIMBABWE and part of MOZAMBIQUE.

There have been many civilisations in Zimbabwe as is shown by the ancient stone structures at Khami, Great Zimbabwe and Dhlo-Dhlo. The archaeological ruins known as "Great Zimbabwe" have been radio carbon dated to approximately 600 A.D. Historic findings seems to point to the fact that the ancestors of modern day Shona people built Great Zimbabwe and hundreds of other stone walled sites in Zimbabwe. Bantu-speaking farmers, either Khoisan settlers or Iron Age migrants from the north, were the first occupants of the Great Zimbabwe site in the south of the country. Between 500 and 1000AD, the Gokomere (a Bantu group) enslaved and absorbed San groups in the area. As early as the 11th century, some foundations and stonework were in place at Great Zimbabwe and the settlement, generally regarded as the burgeoning Shona society.

The Shona tribe, believe in veneration of spirits. There is a line of thought that suggests that the Shona people are descendants from one group of families, that was ruled by one paramount Chief. This line of thought would justify the fact that such Shona High spirits as Chaminuka, Kaguvi and Nehanda command unquestionable authority over all Shona tribes. It is this that could have enabled the Shona risings of 1896-7, known as the First Chimurenga. Before the risings there where a number of mhondoros (Mhondoro is a Shona language term meaning the founding ancestor of a particular dynasty) in the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) but none had the authority to co-ordinate the various Shona tribes against the European settlers.

The Shona people as they are today are a fragmented horde of tribes with very tenuous bonds of unity between them. Most Shona people identify with a particular clan rather than with the Shona group as a whole, most Shona communities contain a mixture of clans. (Clan - group of people who descended from the same ancestor) The Shona consisted and still consist to this day two distinct families – the original Bantu occupants of the country and the conquerors – each which has split up into a multiplicity of tribes.

The original Shona occupants of Zimbabwe are all embodied under the umbrella name “Hungwe”. The conquerors of the Hungwe fall under the blanket name “Mbire”. It is believed that it was the Mbire who were the founders of the Mutapa Empire as well as the Rozvi Empire which was destroyed by the various Nguni tribes that passed through the land of Zimbabwe during the Mfecane wars. Namely, the Ndebele tribe, who now occupy southwest Zimbabwe, and the Shangane tribe in the southeast of Zimbabwe. The Hungwe settled in Zimbabwe for probably two to three hundred years before the Mbire arrived.

Its important to note that the difference between the present day Mbire (which refers to the Marondera – Wedza district and the people whose is mutopo is Soko), and the 1500 A.D. Mbire. In about 1500 A.D. the term referred to all the members of the invading family which took over the land from the Hungwe. The Mbire took over the land of Zimbabwe around somewhere between 1000 and 1050 AD. Their invasion from across the Zambezi river marked the beginning of the dynasty of the Mbire empire which is commonly known as Mutapa Empire (state). The Mutapa Empire or Mbire Empire covered most pasts of present day Zimbabwe . The empire incorporated most of the whole of Mozambique , South of the Zambezi river and north of the Sabi river down to the sea. Some of the present day South Africa tribes are known to have been segmented from the Shona (best known ones are the Venda and Lovendu). The expansion of Mbire Empire, include the following shona tribes Barwe, Manyika, Ndau, Korekore, Shangwe, and Guruuswa.

The Mwanamutapa (or Monomatapas) were the first major civilisation to become established in Zimbabwe. The Mwanamutapa empire, headed by a ruler of the same name, was founded about 1420 among the Karanga people and was centered at Great Zimbabwe. By the mid 1440's, the empire included almost all of the Zimbabwean plateau and extensive parts of what is now Mozambique. The empire was ruled in pyramidal fashion, with the Mwanamutapa appointing regionally based vassals. The wealth of this empire was based on small-scale industries, for example iron smelting, textiles, gold and copper, along with agriculture. At the height of Mwanamutapa state, it was part of a gold trade network that extended as far as China.

In about 1490 the empire split into two parts — Changamire in the south (including Great Zimbabwe) and Mwanamutapa in the north. The latter stretched from the Indian Ocean in the east to present-day central Zambia in the west and from central Zimbabwe in the south to the Zambezi River in the north. The regular inhabitants of the empire's trading towns were the Arab and Swahili merchants with whom trade was conducted. The empire was an important source of gold and ivory, the area attracted Swahili traders from the east coast of Africa (in modern Tanzania). When the Shirazis founded Sofala (in present-day Mozambique), the Karanga empire acquired an export market for its mining production. The ‘Monomotapa’, the Karanga leader, imposed a tributary relation on the neighboring Muslim nation as he had done with other minor cultures of the area. Thus, Karanga supremacy was established over a region including parts of present-day Malawi. The area around Great Zimbabwe became the trading capital of the wealthiest and most powerful society in south-eastern Africa of its era. The hilltop acropolis at Great Zimbabwe came to serve not only as a fortress but as a shrine for the worship of Mwari, the pre-eminent Shona deity.

In the early 16th century the Portuguese arrived in the form of traders and soldiers from Mozambique, and established contact with the empire. Between 1509 and 1512 António Fernandes traveled inland and visited the Mwanamutapa kingdom, which controlled the region between the Zambezi and Save rivers and was the source of much of the gold exported at Sofala. Soon after, Swahili traders resident in Mwanamutapa began to redirect the kingdom's gold trade away from Portuguese-controlled Sofala and toward more northern ports. Thus, Portugal became interested in directly controlling the interior. In 1531, posts were established inland at Sena and Tete on the Zambezi, and in 1544 a station was founded at Quelimane.

The Mutapa empire started its decline around 1500 AD, power struggles among the Mbire resulted in fall of the Mutapa state and the founding of the Rozvi Empire in the South West of present day Zimbabwe . Further splits resulted in the fragmentation of these empires, which led to the innumerable autonomous Shona tribes found in present day Zimbabwe.

In 1560 and 1561 Gonçalo da Silveira, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, visited Mwanamutapa, where he quickly made converts, including King Nogomo Mupunzagato. However, the Swahili traders who lived there, fearing for their commercial position, persuaded Nogomo to have Silveira murdered. The presence of the Portuguese had a serious impact that affected some of its trade and there had been a series of wars which left the empire so weakened that it entered the 17th century in serious decline. By the mid-17th century the Portuguese controlled Mwanamutapa empire.

By 1690 the Portuguese had been forced off the plateau and much of the land formerly under Mwanamutapa was controlled by the Rozwi. The Shona dynasties fractured into autonomous states, many of which later formed the Rozwi empire. Peace and prosperity reigned over the next two centuries and the centres of Dhlo-Dhlo, Khami, and Great Zimbabwe reached their peaks. The Mwanamutapa citadel and palace were taken over by the Rozwi, whose Changamira (king) extended his control over the mining area. The Rozwi empire did not however succeed in controlling an area as vast as the ancient Karanga had done.

As a result of the mid-19th century turmoil in Transvaal and Natal, the Rozwi Empire came to an end, this was due to the fact that The Matebeles led by Mzilikazi came and devastated the region. The Rozwi emigrated westwards; cities and farmlands, palaces and irrigation canals were abandoned and grass began to grow over the ancient walls of Great Zimbabwe. It was not until the late 19th century that the peoples speaking several mutually intelligible languages were united under the Shona name. There are five main language clusters: Korekore, Zeseru, Manyika, Ndau, and Karanga. The last of these groups was largely absorbed by the Matebeles (Ndebele) when they moved into western side of present day Zimbabwe.

Sorry Tom,

Totally misread your first sentence!

Just because somebody has been somwhere "longer" does not make them any more qualified to know whot's what...Congress for example!!! LOL!

quote:

Zimbabwe's policy of redistributing land owned by white commercial farmers has caused unmitigated "ecological disaster", according to an eminent conservationist.

As predictable as the rising sun.