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Perspective Stephen Mpofu
Is dawn about to break on the African elephant to romp and flaunt those precious ivories in the wild with no intruders clutching high-powered rifles and stalking the jumbos on tiptoes? News from Asia — the lucrative marketplace for poached ivory — earlier this week must have sent waves of ecstasy across the African continent so rich in wildlife in the world and yet dogged by poachers threatening to wipe off the elegant game from the African soil for sale, particularly to finance insurgency groups causing mayhem in many parts of the continent today.

Hong Kong reportedly incinerated part of her stocks of ivory, while Japanese companies said they would now stop selling elephant products altogether.

A Zimbabwean government source said the reported moves were “most welcome,” but indicated that according to CITES, elephant culling to curb over-population and environmental degradation with proceeds from sales benefiting populations that cohabit with elephants was necessary and would have to continue to stabilise elephant populations.

What this implies is that consignments of ivory from culled animals would have to be certified as such in order for authorised sales to take place in designated international markets, while strict surveillance will be necessary to ensure that poached elephant tasks are not infiltrated into the official market.

Zimbabwe is one of African countries — others being South Africa and many other victim states in East and West Africa — where poachers have caused untold havoc on elephant populations for their ivory which is then spirited across porous borders and away to waiting dealers who ask no questions about the source of the contraband.

The stories from Asia suggest that much of the ivory finding itself on Asian markets is from poached elephant tasks and sold to raise funding for terrorist groups that are increasing phenomena destabilising countries as the insurgents seek to overthrow legitimate governments on religious ground, or driven by power hunger and also encouraged by imperialist forces venting vengeance on governments formed by revolutionary parties that fought and unseated white colonial regimes.

Some observers suggest that should sales of ivory products be drastically wilted down or stopped altogether in the huge Asian market, insurgent groups will be put out of business as they will be left with no financial resources or with insufficient funds to buy weapons with which they kill and maim their victims to the extent of making some countries affected virtually ungovernable.

Closer to home, one might ask where Renamo bandits, in Mozambique, for instance, get their money to keep the insurgents on their feet as a force that the government there has tried but so far not succeeded in routing it out to restore peace and security across the entire country.

The Lord’s Resistance Army which continues to give the Ugandan government sleepless nights, also stands out as a case study to discover its financiers add to the list of rebels operating in eastern DRC and in the Sudan’s Darfur region.

As the struggle by imperialists to maintain a political and economic stranglehold on Africa, especially where armed revolutions won independence and freedom for oppressed blacks, more terrorist groups might be set up to destabilise legitimate governments, with part of the funding for the violence surreptitiously coming from some foreign governments and part being raised through dubious means including sales of poached ivory and rhino horns popularly used as aphrodisiacs especially in Asia.

While CITES will obviously continue to allow governments to reduce elephant populations through culling, this pen humbly believes that strict monitoring regimes will become imperative in countries teeming with elephant to ensure that poached ivory does not get mixed up with ivory lawfully put on the market for bandits to continue to have a lifeline for their violent acts.

Surveillance will have to be directed to remote air strips in a country with large herds of elephant in parks or elsewhere in the wild to thwart any private aircraft flying in to smuggle poached elephant tasks out of the country, especially under cover of darkness.
Secondly, security checks should be carried out on bulky or suspicious cargo delivered to airports by air freight or other companies and individuals and certified genuine before being flown out of countries that boast elephant among its major tourist products so that smugglers have no way of succeeding with their crime.

Thirdly, of course, populations that live near or among wildlife should be conscientised to realise that they lay a claim to common ownership of elephant among other wild animals and that the onus therefore rests with them to protect those resources from which they derive revenue from sales of animal products, witness Campfire in Zimbabwe.

What this means in practice is that the villagers must jealously protect game by policing their environment and reporting, even apprehending suspected poachers and handing them over to the police for investigation.

The courts, too, must consider imposing harsh sanctions which will make potential poachers of wildlife think of alternative, innocent sources of income to support their families.

Above all, people should realise that a concentration of wildlife in any one part of the country does not mean regional or provincial ownership of the animal resources. On the contrary, the wildlife belongs to the entire country and should be used to benefit the nation as a whole — and this can only happen with a government overseeing the distribution of benefits derived from that resource.