The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
THE brown earth and dry grass typical of savanna grasslands fades into an organised settlement as one enters Methodist Village which is a peri-urban settlement in the outskirts of Bulawayo.
As one moves into the area, they are welcomed by freshly dug wide and deep open pits that are haphazard and sometimes eats into the dust roads as the area has recently been besieged by illegal sand miners. The village is part of the sprawling Ward 17 under the jurisdiction of Bulawayo City Council (BCC) and has more than 100 homesteads and an estimated population of more than 600 people, at least according to Clr Sikhululekile Moyo.
The illegal sand miners also known as sand poachers have invaded the area like a swarm of locusts and are digging everywhere from villagers’ yards, fields and even graveyards with unrestrained arrogance and reckless abandon.
Investigations by the Sunday News revealed that there could be collusion between sand poachers and BCC rangers, some of whom own ramshackle trucks known in town as ‘wrong-turn’ or mahlabathi with a police officer at Pumula police station confiding that they once raised the issue with BCC but no action was taken.
“We raised an issue of a ranger who owns a truck that transports sand poached from Methodist but the authorities said it was difficult to nail him if the truck is not registered in his name and so it died a natural death,” said the officer on condition of anonymity.
The alleged collusion with BCC rangers has caused massive environmental degradation in the village and concern has been raised on how the activities have impacted the community’s safety in light of the deep scars they leave in their merciless trail of land degradation.
To them, the money they get from the sale of soil to people building houses in town is all that matter. They are oblivious of the disturbance they are causing to the ecosystem leading to increased risk of disasters and reduced capacity of the environment to meet social and ecological needs.
“We are faced with a big problem here. These sand poachers are digging everywhere. They have no respect for people’s properties and this is causing irreparable harm to the environment. From our fields they are encroaching into our yards and in some cases very close to graveyards. They will exhume our dead relatives if this is not put to a halt by the authorities,” said a resident of Methodist village Thamsanqa Mpofu.
One of the community leaders Mr Makoni Sibanda weighed in saying the sand poachers have dug wide and deep trenches which have become hazards to humans and animals. He said they have also destroyed roads that connect the community to essential services such as schools, clinics and shops.
“The boys are young and harsh. They have a moral code of gangsterism and they all look drunk whatever they smoke and/or drink. If you approach them, they are capable of injuring you without remorse. We appeal to the authorities to dispatch riot police or even the army to keep these guys away because the city council alone has failed to control their illicit activities. Our village is now a mess, littered with pits that threaten even our homesteads,” said Mr Sibanda.
The community’s livelihood is essentially founded on agriculture and the degree of land degradation taking place has a direct effect of losses in soil organic content, nutrients and its ability to store and regulate moisture leading to loss of productive capacity as it is too exposed. The environment scars that are left are also a danger to the community’s livestock and to the drunkards as they risk falling into the pits.
BCC Ward 17 councillor Cllr Sikhululekile Moyo confirmed the environmental degradation faced by the villagers and urged urgent action.
“We recently held a meeting in the village as BCC, Environmental Management Agency (EMA) and the police. The magnitude of land degradation over a short space of time is scary, it’s shocking. Those poachers are not playing, they are serious and as authorities we need to be more serious than them to stop this chaos,” said Cllr Moyo.
She said the illegal sand miners were digging in fields and yards, and fears were that houses would collapse while the open deep pits left were a danger to people and livestock and could cause landslides.
“It’s a very sad situation. Villagers are appealing for riot police or soldiers but the unfortunate thing is that these are our kids and relatives who are digging the sand working together with guys from town who then transport it to people building houses in town,” Cllr Moyo added.
EMA corporate communications officer Mrs Amkela Sidange said the demand for sand continues to rise most probably due to the continued development of infrastructure in towns and cities.
“This has fuelled sand poaching. But that is not what it should be because the laws are quite straightforward on the issues of sand mining indicating that local authorities should designate points for sand mining to allow activities to be done in a regulated manner and that is not harmful to the integrity of the environment as well as public health,” said Mrs Sidange.
She said communities in peri-urban areas like Methodist village anchor as resource areas for sand mining and were always at the mercy of sand poachers.
“We implore such communities to play ball than just complaining and shifting the problem. They should ring fence their resources working with local authorities and apply for and register sand mining points and go on to monitor and benefit from the resources,” she advised.
She added that some of the people in the affected communities act in liaison with the sand poachers where they Nicodemously provide labour and to date EMA has prosecuted about 250 sand transporters.
“This is a problem that needs all of us to work together. As an agency we will remain committed to enforce the law. I can confirm that we have been able to apprehend 171 sand poachers and most of these are found in major cities such as Harare and Bulawayo. We are losing land.
A recent survey revealed that 1 510 hectares of land has been degraded due to sand poaching and we are saying if we continue a business-as-usual approach we are going to lose more land that could be used for other productive uses such as grazing, settlement so we need to address these issues collectively,” she said.
Mrs Sidange noted that they were working in line with the pronouncements of the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) and pushing the government thrust of rehabilitating degraded land where they have been able to compute over 290 hectares in the third quarter that had been rehabilitated and was in the process of being put into productive use.
“We want to continue encouraging those that want to go into sand mining to regularise their operations with local authorities that are the gatekeepers of this precious natural resource. The local authorities should through their by-laws and in compliance with SI 7 of 2007 set aside sites for sand mining to allow sand mining to be done in a manner that doesn’t harm the environment.
“It will also allow the numerous people that need sand to take it from an area that is regulated for sand mining,” said Mrs Sidange in an interview with Sunday News on Thursday.
She further encouraged communities to remain gatekeepers of their natural resources saying it was only them that could take care of those natural resources. Research by the Sunday News revealed that a seven-tonne truck of river sand costs US$120 while the same load of pit sand costs US$80 from sand poachers while those that sell it in town legally demand an arm and a leg with prices almost trebling those of sand poachers.
