2002 Volume 4

While Marxist president Robert Mugabe was being applauded as a key note speaker at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, his supporters were slaughtering endangered wildlife and destroying huge forests and game reserves in Zimbabwe.

Some of the greatest game reserves in Africa have been in Zimbabwe. Now these wildlife sanctuaries are the scenes of unprecedented slaughter. Most of the wildlife has been senselessly slaughtered by blood-thirsty mobs of ZANU-PF's 'war veterans' and youth militia. Vast herds of elephant and the endangered Black Rhino, cheetah, leopard and antelope have been snared, speared, shot or blown up.

Just in the Save Valley most of its 1 200 elephant and Black Rhino have been killed. The game rangers have recovered over 1 089 dead animals from snares. They have also discovered over 27 000 snares, equating to about 40 km's of wire. These mine fields of cable snares, scattered throughout the game reserve, are strangling and starving their victims to death. In addition to snaring the animals, the poachers have been using packs of dogs to run the animals down. They are then speared or axed to death by mobs.

In Bubiana, an estimated 30 000 animals have been slaughtered in the last 18 months. Many have had only a limb cut off for the poachers' pot, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot. Bubiana has one of the largest rhino populations in the world, 50% of which are believed to have already been killed. In addition to the decimation of wildlife, the destruction of the habitat has also been severe. Bubiana has lost an estimated 240 000 trees, whilst 50% of Chiredzi's 270 000 acres have been destroyed. A whole ecosystem is being destroyed.

In the Kariba area, game rangers have found 33 elephant that had been shot, and 65 land mines have been lifted from game paths. The 5 000 hectare game sanctuary near Chiredzi has been entirely burned out.

The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force reports that, in the Midlands, four of the game ranches had lost 80% of their wildlife. On land that has been officially “fast tracked” by Mugabe's ZANU-PF government, there's no game left at all. In the Midlands, the game is being shot, not snared, and there are suggestions that the police and army are behind the poaching in these areas.

Along with the wholesale poaching, Marxist mobs have been engaged in wholesale theft, abductions and murder. Properties have been burned out, tourists have been chased out of safari camps, and game rangers have been disarmed, severely assaulted and even killed.

Incredibly, while President Robert Mugabe has been destroying what were once some of the most successful farms and game reserves in Africa, the World Summit on Sustainable Development actually had Mugabe address the Summit, with many enthusiastically applauding his racist ramblings. How can we take such a Summit seriously?

“How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished.” Jeremiah 12:4

"A good man is kind to his animals, but the wicked are cruel to theirs.” Proverbs 12:10