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Opinion By Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Tree-planting is an important annual ecological activity in Zimbabwe, and involves many senior government officials, including both President Mugabe and the Vice-President, Cde Joice Mujuru.Emphasis is placed on the positive effects of trees on human lives. The negative effects of the destruction of trees are usually associated with primarily local and regional meteorological factors, especially the deflection of winds and rainfall patterns.

In addition to trees playing a significant role in wind deflection and, therefore, positive rainfall patterns, they are useful as sources of fuel, timber, fruits, medicines, construction material, landscape gardening, and industrial chemicals such as the tanning extracts from the wattle tree-bark or the silk worm from the Japanese mulberry, and as animal fodder.

Trees are also a source of social comfort in the form of shades in which people sit during the hot tropical sun. They offer good protection against violent, short-lived summer storms and hurricanes.

For the San (Bushmen), trees are helpful in cases of man-eating lions. This opinion article looks at how best tree-planting could be organised in Zimbabwe, especially in the rural areas where people rely heavily on them for fuel.

In the Sadc countries Zimbabwe is one of the fortunate countries that still have quite a few heavily forested areas. South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho do not have a single forest any longer. They rely on imports for their wood needs.

Swaziland has, however, man-made eucalyptus tree plantations stretching as far as the human eye can see, and exports the timber to South Africa and elsewhere.

Zimbabwe has similar plantations in Manicaland but on a much smaller scale. The plantations used to be quite an asset but are now more or less always attacked by veld fires caused by people looking for wild honey.

One of the major uses of the man-made plantations of both Zimbabwe and Swaziland is paper production. In 1982, Zimbabwe produced some 82,000 cubic metres of paper from its own plantations.

This is most relevant to the lives of the people in that the country’s reading and packaging material is from such paper. It is both cheaper and more easily available because it is domestically produced.

A look at the wattle tree sector is rather disappointing in that the industry has greatly shrunk since the 1940s and 1950s when it was at its highest. The contraction was caused by price fluctuations and falling market demand not only in Zimbabwe but throughout the world as  synthetic material replaced leather in that particular industry.

The wattle tree (referred to scientifically as “acacia mearnsii”) was introduced into Zimbabwe from South Africa had imported its seeds from Australia in 1860. In Zimbabwe, the area under the wattle tree was some 370,000 hectares in 1960. By 1992-93, it had decreased to 125,000 hectares.

Zimbabwe has a wide variety of wild fruit trees which include the well known muganu (mpfula) from whose fruit is made the famous sweet wine called ‘nkumbi’.

We should hasten to mention the ‘muzhanji’ whose fruits ‘mazhanji’ are seasonally found at every fruit and vegetable market placed in Zimbabwe.

Other wild fruit trees are mitamba, ntungulu, ntolido, mikuyu, zwigwa (umviyo) mkhwakha (umhwahwa), nsubvu (umtshwangela), mitobgwe (imixakuxaku). Nkumbankumba, ntewa (umklampunzi) and a range of wild fig trees. In addition to the above, we should add domesticated fruit trees such as mangoes and peaches.

These could be planted on communal lots with the supervision of kraal-head (bosebhuku). The sale proceeds of the fruits could be equally shared by the relevant community, leaving a revolving fund to keep on servicing the project or projects.

Headmen and chiefs could be ex-officio members or actual officials of such projects one of whose responsibilities could be to plant a stipulated hectarage of trees yearly.

Sitting councillors and relevant members of Parliament could source financial and moral support for such ecological communal projects.
The communal projects would not be meant to stop each individual from establishing his or her private orchard in his or her own field or residential yard. They could play a meaningful role in the national afforestation projects of Zimbabwe.

A glance at Zimbabwe’s demand for wood fuel shows that it must be in the region of most probably 12,000,000 cubic metres annually, having doubled from 6,226,000 cubic metres in 1989, some 24 years ago.

The rise is due to two factors: an increase in the country’s population, and the highly irregular supply of electricity, a development which has forced many people to switch over to the use of woodfuel.

In view of the possibility that the current electricity shortage will continue for the foreseeable future, it would be advisable to treat the tree planting policy with more seriousness than before. The Government would be very well advised to identify districts with acute woodfuel needs.

Each of those districts would then pinpoint localities within its borders with the most acute woodfuel needs, and tree-planting projects could therefore be sited and launched on such localities.

Short rotation fuel wood trees could be identified and procured by the appropriate government ministry. Chiefs, headmen and kraal heads would be actively involved and so would rural district councils.

The aim would be to have in eight to ten years many man-made plantations from which people in the rural areas could harvest wood fuel for a token charge payable to either the headmen or the chiefs or the district councils whoever or whichever would have been deemed the most suitable.

Care would have to be taken as to which type of trees to plant in each district as some trees grow much better in the lowveld or middle veld or highveld than others.

Some trees make very good fodder for such animals as goats which are in fact 95 percent browsers. The right kind of trees would have to be selected for areas with that important consideration in mind. There would be no point in planting ithetshane (nswazwi) or ugagu (mpangale) in a predominantly goat-rearing area as the animals would eat most of the leaves of those trees, negatively affecting their growth most of the time.

This and other technicalities can, however, be dealt with by appropriate experts. What is important in all this is to launch an effectively national afforestation scheme in every rural district to cater for both fruit and wood fuel harvesting.

While the planting of trees by some of Zimbabwe’s national leaders is exemplary, it should be followed by the masses getting involved in every district, with headmen and chiefs as well as councillors turning many parts of their districts into forests in their lifetimes.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo based retired journalist. He can be contacted on cell 073428136 or through email [email protected]