On a shoestring
Text and Picture: Ian Michler. Article from the October 2012 issue of Africa Geographic Magazine.
During his recent five-month Tracks of Giants expedition, Ian Michler walked, cycled and kayaked through Zimbabwe en route between Namibia and South Africa’s eastern shore – and was pleasantly surprised to find at least one of the country’s flagship national parks is well on its way to recovery.
People around the world are familiar with the recent political and economic history of Zimbabwe. In essence, political expediency unravelled a functioning country in a manner that left its social, economic and constitutional fabric in tatters. By 2006, Zimbabwe had the fastest-shrinking non-war economy on the planet and within two years hyper-inflation was at an all-time high.
Despite the chaos, the politically connected and wealthy elite maintained their status. But the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe were less fortunate, and they had to make a choice. In the darkest years, more than two million left their homeland in order to earn a living. Most, however, opted to stay, making do with nothing more than their rudimentary belongings and huge doses of ingenuity, commitment and hope.
Literature and film have already recorded both sides of the historical perspective, as well as many of the personal stories, both tragic and heroic, that have emerged from the turmoil. Among the most remarkable of these are the accounts of the people, from the government as well as the private sector, who battled to keep national parks such as Hwange and Mana Pools functioning.
To fully appreciate their efforts, we have to understand the conditions they had to cope with. The extreme hardships lasted for longer than five years and until the Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped in 2008 the country was bankrupt in every sense of the word – there were no household commodities, no fuel and no vehicle spares, basic foodstuffs were in very short supply, most regulatory systems and businesses had collapsed, and the public transport networks had closed down.
Where goods were available for purchase, buyers had to contend with rapidly escalating prices that, during the worst periods, rose literally by the minute. Payments had to be made with ‘bearer cheques’ that had daily or weekly expiry dates (they were known locally as ‘burial cheques’), specially issued food or fuel coupons, or bags and bags of almost worthless bank notes, some of which bore a face value as high as Z$10-trillion.
For most people, the implications were beyond ludicrous – they were tragic. For those lucky enough to have a job, in many instances the cost of getting to work was higher than their salary. Those who could still afford to eat in a restaurant paid for their meal before eating it because it would be twice the price by the end of the evening. Severe limits on cash withdrawals meant that you had to go to the bank twice to get enough money to pay for a weekly grocery shop. As the hyper-inflation worsened and goods became scarcer, bureaucratic regulations became harsher, with permit after permit required to import even the most basic items.
In the years prior to the onset of the land invasions at least 22 ecotourism camps were functioning in and around Hwange National Park; by the mid-2000s, only three operators remained
These are no conditions under which to try to keep some of Africa’s most iconic national parks intact. It’s hardly surprising that the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks), like all other government agencies, was down to a skeleton staff. And because their salaries were almost worthless, many employees simply chose not to go to work. Those who stayed at their posts had to make do without rations, vehicles, communications or fuel.
The ramifications were no different within the private sector. For example, in the years prior to the onset of the land invasions in 2000 at least 22 ecotourism camps were functioning successfully in and around Hwange National Park. By the mid-2000s, after a number of years of plummeting occupancy rates, only three operators – Wilderness Safaris, The Hide and Somalisa Camp – remained. Although they had to scale back because of the dire conditions (annual occupancy rates ranged between 10 and 30 per cent), all three somehow managed to coax enough visitors through their camps to keep things going. They were able to hold on to key staff members by paying them with food parcels. To take care of the parks, the private operators teamed up with some dedicated officials and rangers from Zimparks and for many years they, along with a selection of outside agencies such as The Friends of Hwange Trust and a number of conservation NGOs, provided the vehicles and rations needed to keep anti-poaching patrols going.
While political stability and transparency in Zimbabwe still seem to be some way off, the country is well on its way to an economic recovery. Alongside this, the fortunes of some parks like Hwange have also improved dramatically. Those who stayed through the worst years of Zimbabwe’s recent past need to be acknowledged for the role they played in keeping these parks intact.
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