A backdrop to the conservation battle in Zambia...

Nicholas F. Benton: China’s Resource Grab in Africa
Thursday, 25 October 2007
nfbenton@fcnp.com
My exclusive interview this week with a leading health official from the U.S. working on the AIDS crisis in Zambia, Africa, revealed conditions on the ground there almost too horrible to describe. There is no one critical problem there that is not interlinked with at least a half-dozen others and the conventional wisdom is that the best case scenario for a turnaround is at least 40 years away. But as far as the U.S. or any Western interests are concerned, that day will likely never come, since their current foreign policy vacuum in that region has left it to strident and persistent advances by the Chinese.

China is moving into the most ravaged areas of Africa with no humanitarian intent. On the contrary, the Chinese are capitalizing on the corruption at the top of governments there to trade financial payoffs for titles to massive chunks of land rich in untapped natural resources. The U.S. has turned its back to this process, from combined diplomatic, geopolitical and financial aid standpoints, because of its preoccupation with Iraq, the official said.

So the unspeakable human crisis there is not only a matter of concern for the people in that region, but for the wider global interests of the U.S., as well. The U.S. is stuck in the Iraq quagmire, having expended over $500 billion there to date, in an intended oil grab against perceived Russian and Chinese designs. Yet because of that, it is permitting access to even more vital resources in Africa and elsewhere to the same strategic competitors, over the poverty-stricken and disease-riddled rotting bodies of millions. It is impossible to imagine anything but a massive shift of focus by the U.S. and its allies to turn this regrettable inevitability around.

As it is now, up to 40 percent of the population of Zambia and surrounding countries is infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. In Zambia, because of AIDS, the average life expectancy has dropped from 57 to 37 years of age in 20 years. One out of every two children born there today will die from AIDS-related factors before age 24. The death rate has created a massive displaced children problem and the local government has no interest in setting up orphanages. Instead, these AIDS orphans either move in with extended family members, live on the streets or are periodically rounded up into military camps.

These children are then either recruited into the exploding trend of child soldiers used as fodder in genocidal tribal wars, or into global human trafficking networks, shipped around the world and forced to become sex workers. The primary destinations of these networks are the large coastal urban centers of the U.S., the official said. Neither condoms nor AIDS drugs are working in arresting the spread of HIV in Zambia, she added, noting that cultural mores and a pervasive sense of despair make them ineffective. People living in conditions of extreme poverty have no energy to think beyond how they’re going to eat from day to day, and have no sense that they could work for a better future for themselves, or their children, in the long term. There is simply no notion of opportunities for a better life. Foreign aids organizations are treated with great suspicion, with Afro-Americans from the U.S. being considered “white.” The suspicions are fueled by local witch doctors whose prescriptions for virility encourage sexual practices by adults with young children too heinous to describe explicitly. Polygamy, without the formality of marriage or commitment, is the norm.

Corrupt local leaders hold aid efforts at bay, demanding huge bribes and diverting resources for their own uses. And there is simply no way the U.S. or any other outside nation can carry out programs in those countries without the blessings of those leaders. There appears to be no sweeping proposal for a “silver bullet” to fix all this. The only way to start, however, would be for the global community, most importantly the U.S., to begin fixing its gaze on what’s happening there, not only from a humanitarian but from a geo-strategic standpoint.

BAA corporate members at the African front...

As a tiny corporate member of Business Action for Africa (BAA) actually working in the field as an investor and holistic developer in an isolated part of Zambia where some 5,000 or so people live on about 25 cents a day - in a country where Government over the last 20 years only spent 16% of its national expenditure on agriculture, health, education and local government, and where corruption is kept alive by the very process of donor aid, any effort to encourage corporates on the Corporate Social Responsiblity (CSR) front is laudable (I am trying to recruit corporates to invest in conservancies, based on a trust structure, where they can get involved on the ground). However, not much is being done to support us and the 25 centers in the field, all the endless talking, thumb-shakes and cocktails being swilled in London far from the front. Corruption is a case in point. BAA makes much of its anti-corruption stance, even reporting to the G8 on what a fine job it has done in Zambia, yet I see nothing of them here, nor do they bother to reply to my letters asking what it is they actually do here – let alone for their own members, one of whom is the subject of surveillance and harassment by the state security and immigration apparatus simply because he stands up for the poor and opposes illegal land alienations. But are they listening?

The donors and the multi-nationals, the quangos and international organizations are simply in bed with the Government, massaging the slumbers of the poor. These be the waPajero, a new species. What to do?

Zambia’s Wildlife Authority Board Chairman threatens investor...

Since the Mulungushi Truce Conference of 3 January, 2007 (see Bush Telegraph) - a meeting of hunting concession Community Resource Boards, safari operators and ZAWA, called by Minister Pande of the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources in order to arrange a truce in the mounting criticism of Government's handling of the hunting and conservation industry, only one meeting of the industry has been held, and that without the Community Resource Boards being present. If Government does not confer with its private sector partners, with its community partners, if it ignores its problems, is unsympathetic, then criticism will appear in the media, particularly in the greatest liberating influence known to mankind, the Internet.

The letter from the Chairman of the Zambia Wildlife Authority is chilling: "...show cause why the Board of ZAWA should not deal with your menacing behaviour in a manner and style that should put the scourge to complete rest, decisively and once and for all." Sounds like a death threat.

My reply follows below:

3 October, 2007.

Walusiku Lisulo
Chairman of the ZAWA Board
Your ref: WL/JJ/889

Dear Sir,

Your letter of 26 September was received by hand today.

Your charge that I am posting articles on the internet which are libelous of ZAWA, its Board and the Director-General, requires investigation. As you are making a general accusation, I would presume that you have at hand those articles you consider libelous and could point them out to me. Once we have something with which to debate, I will gladly attend a meeting with the ZAWA Board, attended of course by my attorney. You, of course, already have details of my dissatisfaction with ZAWA and its Board and are, I am sure, ready to supply answers and explanations – something long sought after and promised by you at the Mulugushi Truce meeting in January of this year, and at two subsequent meetings.

I must state for the record, that although I am not required to attend any meeting on the command of ZAWA, or the full Board, I shall do so in the interests of the truth and of conservation. As a conservationist of long standing in Zambia, what I do is only in the interests of Zambia, its people and its wildlife. I am prepared to defend that.

Your sincerely,


I.P.A. Manning

cc. The DG. ZAWA.
cc. The Minister. MTENR.
cc. W.M. Kabimba & Associates

Zambia’s Wildlife Authority again rides rough shod over hunting safari investors…

Zambia’s newspaper, ‘The Post’ of 3 October 2007, carries a Zambia Wildlife Authority tender for the granting of a “ Safari Hunting Concession in Nyampala Hunting Block: Munyamadzi Game Management Area”. Nothing unusual in that you might say, except for the fact that there still exists a legal concessionaire of Nyampala, Leopard Ridge Safaris. ZAWA appears to have forgotten that they removed the concession from Leopard Ridge without due process, that the concession was re-instated by the Lusaka High Court in favour of Leopard Ridge, and that they then appealed to the Supreme Court – the case which is to be heard on 23 October 2007. ZAWA’s legal advisor appears not to have informed his Director-General that such a tender prejudices the Supreme Court appeal.

And one must not forget that the Nyampala Community Resource Board, the partner in the Hunting Concession Agreement - along with ZAWA and Leopard Ridge, had obtained their own High Court injunction, allowing Leopard Ridge to continue hunting, later overturned on purely procedural grounds in the Supreme Court, a terrible blow against rural residents of hunting concessions. Of course, when this happened, ZAWA sent in a force of paramilitary and their own schutztruppe at 4.00 am into one of Leopard Ridge’s camps, ordering Leopard Ridge to close down and depart the area. I wonder what the client whom they had hunting thought of it all.

And Leopard Ridge is also due to appear in court again – along with a few other companies, including our own, in yet another action brought by the National Movement Against Corruption against us, despite them having already lost in the High Court (with costs) and, the Supreme Court. The case? We had overshot our game hunting quotas they charged, something unproven and untrue. But NAMAC, it appeared, believed that their real intention was to expose some corrupt elements in ZAWA who had done nothing about bringing us miscreants to justice. It is all a little far fetched.

As we speak, our lawyer awaits a bundle of documents from the NAMAC lawyer so that the fresh action may commence.

So, it appears that NAMAC, rather than fighting corruption, is an unwitting part of it. If you look at Leopard Ridge’s situation and the case of Ed Smythe – an operator who simply had his concession removed and given ‘administratively’ to someone else, it is hard to dispute. And who is it that funds NAMAC, supposedly there to fight corruption itself? The Danish Government.

Are they aware of how their money is being mis-used?

Zambia for the Zambians...

Sherry Thole, Chairman of the Implementation Committee of the USAID funded, Private Sector Reform Programme (PSRP) currently being hosted by the Zambia Business Forum, addressed its convention earlier this year, stating," Zambia for the Zambians!"

Zambia: Mwanawasa Assures Investors ?

The Times of Zambia (Ndola)
19 September 2007

Ndola
President Mwanawasa has assured investors wishing to come to Zambia of conducive policies and protection for their investment while upholding the interests of local people.

Comment by IM:
Amnesty International report that since the last election there is “widespread harassment and intimidation of people perceived to be critical of the government.”

Zambia whistleblower fall-out on the rural poor…

On the 20th August of 2007, senior representatives of the villagers living within the Luembe Chiefdom of Zambia, went to have their application endorsed for the formation of the Luembe Development and Caretaker Community Association. In order to do this, as required by the Registrar of Societies in Lusaka, they were compelled to obtain the signatures of the Nyimba District Council and the Nyimba Police. They duly obtained these, but, unusually – as it is not normally required, they were told by the Council to obtain the signature of the District Intelligence Officer in the Office of the President (OP), Nyimba branch. Then came the surprise, the officer, by the name of G.K. Mumba, stated that he knew that the group were connected with me, and that I had posted on my blogs the news that his office had recently gone in to Luembe to investigate our complaints of an elephant ivory and bushmeat poaching ring being operated by Zambia Wildlife Authority personnel. The village leaders were upbraided for having given secret information to someone who had then used it for ‘economic sabotage against Zambia’ by telling the world that the OP, as they are called, were investigating corruption. When asked how this was economic sabotage, Mumba replied that I had sought to dissuade hunting clients from coming to Zambia on safari by telling them of the poaching and other corruption.

The irony here is that as a result of being a whistleblower of the massive poaching ring operating in the district, I had also sought to publicize illegal land alienations of customary land and National Forest involving corrupt local forestry and wildlife officers, a corrupt Chief, corrupt elements within the Nyimba District Council, corrupt businessmen, and corruption in the Ministry of Lands. As a result, I had been accused by State House of plotting to overthrow the ruling MMD Government, of planning the destruction of the maize stocks of Zambia; accused by one of the Chiefs in the district of having committed game offences – though I had not ever hunted in his area; had my phones and emails tapped and my house placed under surveillance and, in my absence, my wife had suffered an invasion of the property by thugs; and then, in an act of sabotage which impacts both on our business, on the local community – as they share income from safaris, and on the good name of Zambia, had our client agents told that we were no good – immediate cancellations being the instant result. Whom is sabotaging whom, I ask.

Of course the Luembe community are awakening from their slumbers, now being aware of their rights under the law and the Constitution. Having got rid their chief for selling off their land, they found him reinstated without due customary process, and are oncemore fighting to have him ousted. Daily their wildlife resources and elephant are being plundered by the very people mandated to protect them. Not only has development aid passed them by, but they have to bear the yoke of malign interests seeking to further disenfranchise them. They now realize all this; hence their wish to form an Association, a perfectly normal democratic urge. But now the OP has put the spell on them.