The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
A STORY that appeared in the Chronicle last week about 12 carcasses of stolen cattle being exhumed at Plot 14 of Nkenyane area in Bubi District made for sad reading and should ignite new paradigms relating to combating stock theft.
Stock theft is one of the perennial headaches a livestock farmer has to deal with and it is a very painful experience to the farmer who has lost his/ her animals.
I usually interact with farmers who have lost part of their herd and are still frantically searching them many months down the line. I also get a lot of notices of farmers searching for their lost animals in various social media livestock platforms on which I am a member.
In all instances the stress that visits the farmer is unbearable and anyone who has lost even one animal at some point will tell you that this is one of the worst times for the farmer.
It is against this background that I completely empathise with the Nkenyane farmers and many farmers who have lost their livestock to cattle rustlers. Imagine one of the herdboys who had lost four animals has been paying for the animals through deductions from his salary and a simple calculation and assumption on figures shows that the boy would have to work for over three years getting deductions from his salary for him to clear the debt! My call therefore is for farmers to adopt a new anti-stock theft strategy. I will call this community participatory anti-stock theft efforts.
This calls for community members to be vigilant and inquisitive about anything that involves livestock, especially cattle.
You see a person you don’t know hoofing animals, you query. You see a truck loading and transporting animals you query.
My rural upbringing taught me that community members are so vigilant to the extent of recognising a footprint from a stranger in their area.
It is that kind of alertness that community members should adopt if we are to minimise stock theft. Community members should even consider designating some of their members as livestock police officers and their role being to observe and question any suspicious activity involving cattle.
Other community members can then report to them any suspicious activity involving cattle and they can investigate and if need be, report to their nearest police. The bottom line being that only community participation and community involvement will help minimise or even stop stock theft in our farming areas.
Expecting the police to be the only ones to stop stock theft will be asking for too much. Our police will help to investigate and arrest when a theft has already happened but they may not to be able to prevent it from happening. We need to prevent stock theft from happening. In that regard I applaud the people in Gwanda South who tried to stop a truck that was transporting cattle in their area.
