Farmers have to guard their livestock

18 Sep, 2016 - 00:09 0 Views

The Sunday News

THE story that Botswana has started shooting livestock, mostly cattle which stray from Zimbabwe into their country should not come as a surprise to farmers as this was widely reported in the national papers and an advance team even went out to make the farmers aware.
I have said it before and I will say it now, Botswana has legitimate reasons for taking such a drastic and seemingly unneighbourly stance. They are in beef export business and their business is constantly being threatened by nuisance neighbours’ livestock which violate biosecurity measures that they have to comply with to meet the export requirement.

While we sympathise with farmers along the national boundaries who share fences with Botswana who find themselves exposed after the fences were vandalised by elephants and in some cases by border jumpers and smugglers, we must contend with the simple stubborn fact that the responsibility of protecting the livestock lies with the owners.

Farmers simply have to move from the usual to the unusual way of protecting their animals from straying into Botswana or else they may soon lose all their investments. This calls for the affected farmers to raise their levels of alertness regarding the whereabouts of their animals, not the predominantly indifferent approach we see everyday where a farmer comfortably goes to sleep with no clue about the whereabouts of his animals.

If it means you have to herd your cattle or to escort them to the river for drinking, so be it. In some areas along the border the river which provides drinking points is right at the boundary or forms part of the boundary and hence animals easily stray after drinking.

If it means villagers come together and repair the damaged boundary fence, they must do just that. The tendency is to look to the local authority and Government to come and repair the fence.

It is their mandate but it will not be wisdom to sit and incur losses while waiting for a Government which we know has serious financial challenges to do the repair. This time calls for extraordinary measures for the affected farmers or else they may soon find themselves poor than they have ever imagined.

It is the simple practices that can make a difference between losing one’s livestock or not. Practices such as herding and kraaling animals at night can prove just what farmers need until a more permanent and farmer friendly solution is found.

Farmers should also be vigilant and guard against opportunistic tendencies from unscrupulous people. It is likely that stocktheft can suddenly be masked and escape under Botswana stray livestock shooting policy. Suddenly every animal that cannot be found is attributed to an unconfirmed stray livestock shooting.

Farmers therefore, need to be sure that losses are correctly attributed to the cause of loss or else Shanyawugwe which is infamous for endemic stock theft tendencies which are transgenerational, will relocate to the border areas and animals may start disappearing in droves all under the pretext of being shot in the neighbouring country.

Farmers let us protect our investment with all we have. Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.

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