The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Reporter
THE southern parts of the country, particularly Matabeleland South Province and parts of Masvingo are famed for mopane forests and seasonally, thousands of people descend there to harvest mopane worms (imbrassia belina) known in Ndebele as amacimbi, madora in Shona and mahonja in Kalanga for consumption and for commercial purposes.
In a good season people travel from as far as Lower Gweru, Bulawayo, Harare, Nkayi, Beitbridge, Plumtree, Masvingo and Gwanda among other places to catch the highly nutritious mopane worms.
This year however, comes with a difference for villagers in Maphisa and other areas of Matabeleland South Province as they will for the first time in ages not have their environment damaged due to influx of people coming from all over the country to harvest the crawling gold nuggets — amacimbi due to Covid-19, a global pandemic that comes with stringent restrictions on travelling.
This will be a year that generations to come will talk about and even name it after the global Covid-19 pandemic. It is a year similar to the 1918 Spanish flue pandemic, where an estimated 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with the virus.
The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide.
Up to date 1918 is referred to as the year of the Spanish Flue. Coronavirus has so far infecting over 3,7 million people globally and recording over 260 000 deaths. A majority of countries worldwide are already at various levels of national lockdowns, as a means of containing the spread of the pandemic while global health experts work on establishing a vaccine for the pandemic.
The national lockdown and other conditions have somehow affected the travelling en mass of people from all over the country to areas where amacimbi are found where they would threaten the survival of the insect and the environment at large.
Over the years, environmentalists have raised a red flag noting that the delicacy is facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild due to over-harvesting and deforestation. The government and local authorities have tried to intervene in the haphazard harvesting of the delicacy, to protect the environment by attempting to introduce licences that will be issued to individuals intending to harvest amacimbi under areas of its jurisdiction as a way of monetising the venture.
However, these have all failed with people, over the years preferring to play cat and mouse games as they moved to continue harvesting the mopane worms. Due to this, some unscrupulous individuals would even resort to cutting down trees and going to harvest the mopane worms far off from the eyes of the authorities, a move which was unfortunately contributing to the problem of deforestation in the areas.
Sunday News, last week took a drive to Maphisa were once again there is an amacimbi galore. This year however, it’s a year with a difference as there are no huge crowds flocking to harvest the commercial delicacy. In fact, villagers are freely picking the worms from the ground, with no need to climb trees, let alone cut down these trees.
If the mopane worms themselves had a means of noting down their history surely, they would be remarking that this is the year they managed to live through their entire life cycle. So abundant are the mopane worms that even before reaching Maphisa, as one passes Kezi, they are seen freely crossing the road. The side of the road is littered with the delicacy, with women carrying bucket loads strolling back to their homesteads — as early as 10am, without need to spend the whole day in the bushes.
Villagers interviewed said they were happy that this year the mopane worms would benefit them more and contribute to the development of their communities. They said this year their ancestors will be appeased as traditionally; they were not meant to harvest all the mopane worms but leave some to live their whole life cycle but in previous years mopane worm poachers from outside the district would harvest everything.
“It is unfortunate that the nation is in mourning because of this coronavirus but in Maphisa we have a reason to smile because for once we do not have people coming from far off to poach our mopane worms, in fact we can do as we will this year, if we decide to let them be so be it, if we want to harvest then that is that, it is solely our decision.
“Previously, we could be having hundreds of people travelling to our district to poach the mopane worms. This resulted in us not only losing out because these people would actually claim our own territory and even chase us away from our land but further, they would damage our environment,” said Miss Prisca Moyo.
Another villager, Ms Simangele Nyathi revealed that mostly they were harvesting to feed their families as they could not travel to places like Bulawayo to sell the delicacy.
“While we are happy that no one is disturbing us in terms of harvesting the mopane worms, it is unfortunate that we will not immediately reap the financial gains because of the lockdown conditions set by the President, banning intercity travel, which would have enabled us to go and sell our wares.
“What we are therefore doing is to harvest them and store them in our granaries waiting for this issue to come to an end then we can be in a position to sell what we put aside. As we speak, I now have over 20, 50 kilogramme bags, of which I haven’t stopped harvesting,” she said.
Further interaction with the villagers revealed that they are also adhering to the prescribed Covid-19 prevention regulations. One villager, Mrs Primrose Danisa stated that they had developed a duty roster to harvest the mopane worms and in their activities, they were taking social distancing seriously.
“Health experts have come to teach us about this pandemic, of which we decided to also heed to their warnings. We have a duty roster to come and harvest, which is monitored by our village heads, not everyone can come every day, besides there are just too many of these worms for everyone.
“When we do the actual harvesting, we maintain social distancing and people have to put on face masks as required by law. It is easy to monitor this because unlike in previous years we all know each other hence anyone who seems to be going against these requirements, they are dealt with much easily,” said Mrs Danisa.
