The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
MR LOVEMORE Siampepu (68) has been living pretty well off his communal piece of land in Siabuwa community of Binga district in the sprawling Matabeleland North Province. The district has good natural soils and the rains have not been disappointing in the past years.
In recent years however, owing to the effects of climate change, the sky has been looking at them with a tired yawn. The sun has been rising with a fierce cruelty, throwing its rays at the brown earth and licking every drop of dew with an unrestrained glee and giving nothing in return. Cattle — the pride of many African families have been succumbing to the drought as pastures mourn and quiver at the monotonous glare of the sun while watering holes dry up.
To gray-haired village elders such as Mr Siampepu, the hot wind that is empty of any humidity is a bold sign of another drought and it spelt the genesis of the almost forgotten long arduous journeys to Zambia to get supplies of food from social connections.
Binga district is juxtaposed by the Sinazongwe district in Zambia which stretches far and wide to the north of the Kariba Dam. The mighty Zambezi River imposes itself between the two districts.
History has it that the two districts were one occupied by the Tonga people. There is a lot of commonality between the two districts. The people share a common language and culture. In fact, they are one large group separated by the colonial borders.
They are not the only ones divided by colonialism. The Venda in Beitbridge were separated from their kith and kin across the Limpopo in South Africa and so are the Manyika in Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province and their relatives in the Manica Province of Mozambique. These socio-cultural divisions were done for political expediency and they are a repository of what makes up the greater part of the 15 member Southern African Development Community (Sadc)’s communities.
Mr Siampepu has relations in Zambia. He says that is where most of the clan is and they usually get to visit each other in times of bereavement, in times of drought and during traditional family ceremonies, he has created social circles in Zambia and is not a stranger to the communities there.
“I have got relatives in Zambia’s Sinazongwe district just across the Zambezi River. Actually, that is where we originated from and we somehow got divided by the colonial boundaries. We were pushed further from each other when the Kariba Dam was constructed, otherwise we share everything except that the division created by the Zambezi River now defines our different nationalities,” he said.
Mr Siampepu has for the past two years been travelling to Zambia often. His major reason being that of getting foodstuffs from relatives as the country has been facing drought fuelled by the El Nino conditions which experts say are a result of climate change.
He is not the only one travelling across the borders in search of food. A number of villagers in the sprawling Binga district take advantage of their proximity to Zambia and their having relations to trek back and come back with bucketful of basic foodstuffs.
This is so because most of his relatives who are into subsistence farming got enough for themselves and extra which they are trading out. Some have been travelling to Malawi while others cross into South Africa using their cultural nexus which brings the entire Southern African region far beyond just being neighbours.
Mr Siampepu says although they are feeling the effects of climate change, he now connects more with his relatives in Zambia as they now visit each other more frequently than before to get supplies of basic foodstuff shortages from either country.
“You know they used to come and buy groceries here such as sugar, soap and cooking oil during dollarisation, now it’s our turn to go and get mealie-meal and maize from across the Zambezi. Their soils are fertile and the rains were enough to see through their maize crop,” he said.
He said the villagers were still trying to adjust to the changing rainfall patterns and the seasons thereof adding that it was difficult as rainfall has become haphazard and no longer systemic leading to an undefined planting season.
This, according to him, has led to consecutive droughts especially in Zimbabwe with a few lucky pockets getting a better harvest.
“It has become more of guess work than proper timing. We used to plant in November but this year we celebrated Christmas and New Year without planting. January used to be a dry month but now a number of areas received more rainfall in January. It’s all confusing,” he said.
Weather patterns in the past few years in the Sadc region has been characterised by extreme events such as cyclones, heat waves, extreme and consecutive droughts which are believed to be caused by changes in climate.
Although the changes are not confined to Sadc, the region is uniquely susceptible especially that its economies are agro-based.
Research has shown that in coming decades, the Sadc region will experience higher land and ocean surface temperatures than in the past, which will affect rainfall, winds, and the timing and intensity of weather events.
Climate change expert Barnabas Mawire says climate change poses a number of risks to Sadc goals for regional economic development.
“Increased frequency of floods, cyclones, and droughts may damage infrastructure, destroy agricultural crops, disrupt livelihoods, and cause loss of life. Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi are still counting losses incurred to Cyclone Idai as a result of climate change. The phenomenon is very real and Sadc needs to commit itself to adaptation and mitigation strategies,” he said.
It was his submission that there has not been progress in the area of educating communities in the region on climate change.
“The language of climate change has so many scientific terms. The terms need to be broken down and simplified, even putting them in various vernacular languages for the benefit of everyone. The communities should also develop an interest in weather forecasts. The region being an agro-based one should also invest in agro-meteorology technology so that the generality of the people are able to make informed agro-decisions,” said Mr Mawire.
He said the recent flooding in Madagascar and Northern Mozambique which are all members of Sadc speaks volumes of the region’s vulnerability to extreme weather conditions caused by climate change.
In her speech on the occasion to mark World Food Day last year, Sadc Executive Secretary Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax said the region must collectively strive for a hunger free world where everyone, everywhere, had access to food.
“We must put our efforts together, using our national and regional policies, plans and strategies to address poverty and hunger.
“Impacts of climate change to food security should not be underestimated, we must therefore, put in place measures to address the devastating impacts of climate change that threaten to undermine all the gains made so far,” she said.
The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified Southern Africa as being very susceptible to climate change.
It noted in its Fourth Assessment Report that, climate change is already changing the geographic distribution, frequency and intensity of weather-related hazards and threatens to undermine the resilience of poorer countries and their citizens to absorb loss and recover from disaster impacts.
“Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier” by exacerbating existing vulnerabilities. Throughout the region water resources management practices should be adapted to become less vulnerable to climate changes. Water management should also be promoted as a tool to improve climate resilience in the region,” noted the IPCC.
Southern Africa is one of the five regions in the world exposed to serious risk of flooding in coastal and deltaic area while water scarcity is also intensified through disrupted rainfall patterns, increased evaporation loss and increased water demand in all sectors.
Drought-prone areas of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe are likely to be more vulnerable to climate change than the more humid areas of Tanzania or Zambia.
Climate change director in Zimbabwe Mr Washington Zhakata said Sadc needed to strengthen the implementation of strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change.
He said the response strategy for the region was linked to national climate change response strategy and in Zimbabwe it hasn’t been approved by the Head of State.
“Mitigation measures include the adoption of more efficient uses of fossil fuels, the conversion to renewable energies such as solar and wind power, as opposed to coal and the expansion of forest areas and other sinks to remove greater amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However the switch to more appropriate sources of energy is not going to be easy if no funding is advanced.
“In that regard Sadc has not moved an inch in response to the global call for coal powered plants to be phased out,” he said.
Mr Zhakata said the reality of climate change should be spread to the rural communities in the region so that people appreciate what they were faced with.
He added that although all Sadc Member States were part of different conventions on climate change very little has been done as action was informed by national climate change response strategies which was often not taken seriously by Parliaments.
