Zimpapers Logo

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

IT just does not wash our officialdom, shouldered by civil society, rending the air and deafening ears about veld fires consuming our environment and then stopping there when words run out.

Now is the time for Zimbabweans, led by those charged to police the environment to walk the talk on this very matter of life and death, not just for Zimbabweans but for the rest of humanity, because veld fires also devour the climate that all global villagers must necessarily share for survival as long as earth exists in the current form in which the Creator designed it.

The death of 10 people, some of them incinerated beyond recognition in a veld fire at Esigodini this week, not only speaks volumes about the need for the powers-that-be and their subordinate agents — every patriotic Zimbabwean — to move out of our comfort zones and protect the environment with which our lives are intertwined to prevent any further calamities not just in our Zimbabwean society but in the entire global village in which the fires in point in this discourse have serious repercussions not just for human beings but for wildlife as well and the environment on which every living creature depends for the continuity of lives while we still tread on the dust that our heavenly Father created.

The sources of veld fires are clearly known to Zimbabweans with among them people lighting fires to smoke bees in order to harvest honey, but with the fire running out of control and destroying vegetation. 

Then we have hunters lighting fires with which to ride as if on horseback, after the quarry but without any compulsion to stop the veld fires in their tracks.

Next you (yes, you) have people out there in the country lighting veld fires in order to destroy dry grass for new succulent pastures to grow for their livestock but, unfortunately without the wherewithal to stop the fire spreading and wreaking havoc including the destruction of lives.

Some of the wildfires consume trees that play a huge role in the lives of Zimbabweans, with worldwide repercussions too.

It is imperative for all of us Zimbabweans to know the instrumental role played by trees in combating global warming and climate change under which humanity reels as of now.

Trees absorb and sink carbon gasses from veld fires and allied sources, thereby preventing the obnoxious smokes from rising higher and higher into the sky and thinning ozone, the layer that protects earth from the sun’s incinerating rays which if not warded off, heat up the earth to cause global warming as we experience it today with recurrent droughts that cause crops to wilt and die, resulting in food shortages as are being experienced across our country and elsewhere on the globe. 

Add to that disastrous situation destructing floods in different parts of the world with Idai cyclonic floods hitting and wreaking untold havoc in Manicaland province with telling after effects elsewhere in eastern Zimbabwe not so long ago.

So, then, you (yes, you) can see clearly the veld fires graph with the Esigodini toll impelling Zimbabweans to match our anti-veld fires rhetoric with practicable, bold measures to deal the death knell, so to stress, and bring the wildfires under control and in the process save lives which are interdependent with now beleaguered environment.

Most of the time one hears nimble talk about veld fires consuming such and such hectares of land and with farmers only being urged to provide fire guards but with not much visible action to curb further devastations of the flora and fauna under siege.

Environmental Management Agency (EMA)

The time appears NOW for the Environmental Management Agency to be armed with incisive teeth, so to speak, as right now that body resembles a toothless bulldog vis-à-vis its intents and purposes in so far as bringing to book people who wilfully start veld fires, with illegal gold panners standing as leading culprits here.

An urgent, imperative need appears to exist here for the legislature to arm EMA with punitive measures to inspire the fear of God among those who wantonly violate the environment with disastrous repercussions for greater humanity, as already tabulated above, so that our country may play its role in the world by superintending an orderly when illegal western sanctions finally come to an end and industrial activities resume in earnest with factory chimneys also modified to prevent them from spewing obnoxious gases into the atmosphere and in that way, help combat global warming and climate change.

Add to the modification scheme any coal plants existing in Zimbabwe and discharging carbon gasses into the atmosphere with ultimate disastrous consequences for our global village as a whole.

But, of course, the rot graph painted above in this discourse will remain incomplete for total remedial action to be taken against environmental violators as long as firewood vendors, whose personal pecuniary interests supersede the good of all humanity, continue to run riot, as it were, in woodlands dotted around the country comforted by a belief that they are far, far beyond the reach of the laws governing our motherland.