Limpopo Park Faces Problems in Collecting Firearms

Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)

June 7, 2004
Massingir

So far about 10 businesses, Mozambican and foreign, have expressed an interest in investing in the Limpopo National Park, according to the park's administrator, Gilberto Vicente - but the park is endangered by police and local officials who collaborate with poachers.

This park, covering much of the districts of Chicualacuala, Massingir and Mabalane in the southern province of Gaza, is the Mozambican contribution to the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, a wildlife and tourism venture between Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Vicente, who spoke to AIM in Massingir, said that the tender for building the main tourist camp would be launched in the next few months. Park technical staff were working on the map indicating where the main infrastructures, including lodges, hotels, restaurants and access roads, will be built. Their final document will be presented to the Tourism Ministry for approval later this year.

There is already plenty of infrastructure in the South African contribution to the project, which is the world famous Kruger National Park. Vicente said the Mozambican government should mobilise investors rapidly so as to guarantee accommodation for tourists, and the integration of the Mozambican park into the Transfrontier Park.

Negotiations are under way with telecommunications operators, he added, to ensure communications systems that will facilitate the project.

But one headache is the large number of firearms believed to be in the hands of the people living in and around the park.

Vicente feared that this security issue might hold back investors. "Tourism will be damaged unless the local authorities help us collect these guns", he said.

He said that 33 illegal firearms had already been seized, but added that the Massingir district authorities showed little interest in the issue.

"We are running into some difficulties in collecting the guns, because neither the police nor the administrative authorities want to collaborate with us", he accused.

Indeed some of the police seem to be cooperating with poachers rather than with the park. Last year, the police even arrested game wardens who had caught a poacher red-handed with dead animals and an illegal gun.

"I suspect there are some people in the district who are not in favour of the project", said Vicente. "We have to ensure that the investors and the tourists who will visit the park do not run the risk of being attacked because of the proliferation of firearms".

About two million tourists visit the Kruger National Park every year, and Vicente believed that perhaps 10 per cent of them would also be interested in visiting the Mozambican and Zimbabwean parts of the Transfrontier Park. Looking after hundreds of thousands of tourists would require stringent measures of security, he added.

To overcome the resistance of local peasants to handing over guns they use for hunting, the park administration is negotiating with the Christian Council of Mozambique to expend its "Transform Guns into Hoes" (TAE) project to Massingir, Mabalane and Chicualacuala.

Under this project, people are encouraged to hand over illicit weapons, on a no questions asked basis, and in return they are given agricultural implements or other means of production.

The district administration was unwilling to speak to AIM about Vicente's accusations, allegedly because the administrator himself was absent.

There are still 2,000 people living inside the Limpopo National Park, and the park administration wants to resettle them in other areas, outside the park, where there are good conditions for agriculture.

"The idea is not to expel people but to resettle them", he stressed. Fences would be erected to separate people from wild animals "so that they can carry out their activities without problems".

Thanks to importing animals from South Africa, Massingir now contains elephants, who could make short work of any peasant maize crops.

The administration wants the transfer to be voluntary, and so is working with local communities and government authorities to create social infrastructures outside the park area, in the hope that this will persuade people to move.

Meetings had been held with the communities inside the park, so that they could explain the conditions they required before they would agree to resettlement. Vicente said they had demanded from the government better housing, schools and health units.

But since the soils in the park are poor, many of the local peasants depend, not on agriculture, but on hunting. With the creation of the national park, hunting is now regarded as poaching, and there are few opportunities for hunting outside of the park.

One community leader, Jorge Magaia, told AIM there were indeed people who were creating difficulties, but he was sure that eventually they would understand that it will be better for their communities and for themselves if they move.

"Those people who live off hunting, and don't want to see anything improved in their lives or those of future generations are causing problems", Magaia admitted. "But it's always like this. When people are faced with something new, they don't accept it immediately".