20th October 2013
Natural
Resources and Tourism Minister Ambassador Khamis Kagasheki has found
himself in slippery ground, tasked with defending the country’s wildlife
and other natural resources but without the means to do it.
It has become increasingly obvious that the decimation of big game and especially rhino and elephants was being properly coordinated within the game reserves and national parks.
It is not a question of rangers failing to control poachers, despite that a section of the latter go around, with international wire reports saying that wildlife trophies have replaced piracy on seagoing vessels in the manner in which Al Shabaab collect funds for their wars.
It has become increasingly obvious that the decimation of big game and especially rhino and elephants was being properly coordinated within the game reserves and national parks.
It is not a question of rangers failing to control poachers, despite that a section of the latter go around, with international wire reports saying that wildlife trophies have replaced piracy on seagoing vessels in the manner in which Al Shabaab collect funds for their wars.
There are also unquestionably reliable
reports that within the Congo and into the forests of South Sudan, Chad,
and up to the Central African Republic, the now melting away fighters
of the Lord’s Resistance Army build sporadic camps, harvest trophies,
and when US drones start being seen overhead, move on.
Clearing spaces is becoming risky with
advanced surveillance and espionage techniques, in which case the scale
of ravages by Africa’s warlords shall start diminishing, but they will
not go without a fight.
That is also what is being experienced
here, that the pressures for harvesting wildlife are rising, for unmet
incomes and organizational needs, coordinated from above.
That is the only conclusion we can reach
in the face of repeated reports from environmental activists visiting
villagers in various areas especially around the Loliondo and Ngorongoro
precincts, who say that uniformed warders are seen shooting at
elephants or rhino.
While impersonation could work for
criminals robbing a bank in police uniform, why should tusk harvesters
need game warden’s uniform? In that case the minister’s time bomb that
regional crime officials in Arusha know more than they are saying about
the carnage in the northern safari zone starts making sense. Ambassador
Kagasheki decided to do a Pilate, washing his hands off the issue that
way.
The question is who else can take it up,
and the answer is definitely no, and for one reason, that this method of
harvesting animals is a result of the long standing dispute between
countries in most sub-Saharan Africa and environmental activists in
Europe and North America, as to programmed culling and sales of the
resources.
There was a time a conflict was brewing up
between the government and donor agencies on costs of maintaining a
huge stockpile of trophies worth Tsh11bn or so, and repeated CITES
(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) kept returning
the same answer. Conserve! Conserve! Conserve! Elephants will only die a
natural death.
This sort of breakdown of governance is
also being experienced in other areas, as criminality in one area
affects the mood in government generally, as all branches of government
finally depend on the police and courts to ensure that order is kept,
and governance imperatives of breaking local and international law must
sideline the police.
Having sidelined the police in the area of
wildlife, it is not difficult to see they are sidelined in the sphere
of drugs, or vice versa, and the higher the pressures are noticed for
illegality, the more such activities are conducted with impunity. So
despite the minister’s brave face on the matter, the question is: can it
start with the RCO, really?
Looking at the matter a bit closely, we
find the answer written all over the faces of top government officials,
as the president once said he had the names of drug barons, and no one
heard more on the issue.
In South Africa lately a fairly
recognizable artiste from Tanzania turned up with what was believed to
be heroine, but miracles do happen – it now appears there was a mistake
somewhere, and a rare powder was not being invoked.
What can be surmised out of this is that
the political and economic system is passing through a crude phase,
where its money needs are greater than loyalty to the ethics it is
expected to serve, thus the carnage and complaints as to who is
responsible. Social science knows what happens when lawlessness reigns: a
revolution, but peaceful or violent?
SOURCE:
GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
