Project to destroy tsetse fly may bring disaster

Press, 4 February 1987, Page 20

Project to destroy tsetse fly may bring disaster

From

JAN RAATH,

of the ‘Observer’, in Harare

A project funded by the European Economic Community to wipe out the tsetse fly from Zambesi Valley in Northern Zimbabwe has resulted in a massive invasion of thousands of peasant farmers into an environment suitable only for minimal human settlement under rigorous controls, ecologists have warned. Parts of the valley — once one of Africa’s richest wildlife havens — are now “rural slums” where farmers fleeing overcrowded traditional lands have cut down trees, poached game to the point of extinction, and practised agricultural techniques certain to turn the bush into a desert scarred with eroded gullies.

The needle-nosed tsetse fly, with its venom that usually kills livestock and seriously debilitates humans, has been eradicated from much of the valley. But there is growing alarm that money given by the E.E.C. to Zimbabwe’s neighbours has not been utilised and no spraying has begun. With the tsetse fly unmolested and multiplying in Zambia and Mozambique, the prospects of reinfestation over the wide

river are now “very real.” For hundreds of years, the tsetse fly served as a natural barrier for the low-lying and oppressively hot middle Zambesi valley allowing only a small number of the Dema and Batonka people to eke out a living from already poor soils. Attempts by the Rhodesian. Government in the sixties to eradicate the fly foundered during Zimbabwe’s liberation war. With independence, the antitsetse campaign was restarted but received a considerable boost last year with the allocation of SNZ3O million to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. The money was granted only after serious controversy following press reports in Europe that the removal of the. fly would result in a serious degradation of the region if settlement on the “cow and plough” basis followed. E.E.C. and local veterinary experts allayed criticisms with assurances that only carefully supervised agriculture would be permitted. But in winter last year, aircraft equipped with ultra-low volume sprays sprayed the northern regions, laying down tonnes of insecticide over about 4000 square kilometres. Mr Dick Pitman, chairman of

the Zambesi Society, a body dedicated to the preservation of the area’s ecology, said: “What is happening confirms what we believed would happen all along. Without proper land use planning We will see heavy degradation of the cleared areas.”

“People have been coming in dribs and drabs as soon as the eradication programme started at independence in 1980,” said a Government wildlife expert who asked not to be named. “But after the winter spraying programme, the numbers have increased immensely.” The development of the Zambesi valley, regarded as a priority in the Zimbabwe Government’s first five-year national development plan, envisages 3000 people settling in the area.. But as yet, according to Ministry of Agriculture sources, no specific model of settlement has yet been agreed to. An African Development Bank Loan for SNZ2O million was approved in December for developing the area. But the peasants have jumped the gun. Local press reports say they have , been given the approval to move by district councils responsible for administering the areas.

Copyright — London Observer Service