ZIMBABWE SHOOT - ANIMALS and PICTURES plus ROYAL ATTRACTION

CAN YOU HEAR THE SOUND OF GUNFIRE?
Its coming from the game conservancies. Ask Webster Shamu, formerly Charles Ndlovu; he is named in the The Mail on Sunday as the Zimbabwean Minister who enables rich American and other hunters to bag big game in Zimbabwe - without much in the way of care for the seasons or the sustainability of the country's wild life. The paper suggests that the national exchequer - near bankrupt at this time - is not profiting much from the slaughter. Nathan Shamuyarira should reign in his entrepreneurial relative. The Mail on Sunday has done a great job exposing the slaughter and given its British readers a four-page report with full colour pictures from a very brave woman who pretended to be a hunter. There was no other way that she could have got her stuff out of Zimbabwe. It will be interesting to see the official response: the denials, the recriminations and the blame game that will almost certainly follow.

I have a feeling that wild animals facing death in Zimbabwe will get more sympathy from the Mail's readers at this time than the thousands of innocent men, women and children similarly threatened, but by the deliberate cruelty of their own rulers. Death by starvation and disease is already stalking the land and cutting down the population. But the point of this blog is one which I am sure has already been noted by anybody who cares two new pence about a once great little British former colony. The real interest in Britain and elsewhere, will centre on Chelsey and Harry. Pictured in the corner of the Mail's front page is Chelsey Davy, a stunning little Dolly Pardon look-alike (sans the wig)juxtaposed with a shot of her boyfriend, a Prince of the Realm. Harry is rakishly attired in a pirate's headscarf and wears a beautiful tan, a hot jersey and dark glasses. We understand that Chelsey's Dad was the founder of the hunting firm from which he (the Dad) has derived a part of his fortune but that he is `distancing himself' from direct association with the ongoing slaughter right now. The full colour, full page spread (doubled again in a centre spread) shows a dead, huge-horned buffalo bull, slain by a brave young American hunter who poses triumphantly with his quarry. (His courage, sad to say, is far outmatched by that of his countrymen and women facing real danger in Iraq). Altogether, it is a dreadful but timely expose of a whole can of worms, not least of which is the naked racism of the hunters towards their black workers, as reported by Caroline Graham.

For my part, I am amazed that in these times when animal rights and the fast-diminishing strongholds of wild life have come to occupy the consciousness (and often the conscience) of the so-called civilized world - that hunting wild life for sport is still in vogue. In my childhood I went out into the Rhodesian bush with my hunting father and thought it natural when he posed for a Kodak box camera with the horns of a bull kudu and carried home a little buck antelope to eat as venison or dried meat (`biltong') and sell the skin for a few shillings. Poorer, pre-war, Depression-hit settlers were mildly hungry. Richer folk had those wall decorations - the horns of big game festooning their homes, hotels and clubs. I had hoped that all that was custom and imagery of the past. As an adult, concerned with the protection of wild life I went out with dedicated professionals, participating in `schools in the bush' organized by the local Hunters Association. Their aim was to educate the Youth about the necessity of carefully conserving wild life for its own sake as well as for tourism's attraction - and for the happiness of future Rhodesian/Zimbabwean generations.

Its bad enough that people are starving now in Zimbabwe and having little choice in the matter of consuming their wild game if and when they can poach it. Far worse is foreigners killing for sport - and paying relatively cheap prices for their kills. Worse still is the fact that most of the profits from the slaughter are not going back as to villagers as they once did under an organized conservancy program, in a once-civilized Zimbabwe.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell