Burn Not Our Beautiful Zim
Burn not our beautiful Zim
20 September 2012
published by www.allafrica.com
Zimbabwe –– ZIMBABWE is a very beautiful country — so beautiful that those people who are unfortunate enough to be born in countries with unfavourable climatic conditions have to finance trips to Africa particularly Zimbabwe to enjoy the scenic beauty of our environment. This is just the natural beauty of the country’s natural resources.
I am not referring to Zimbabwe’s summer characterised by lush green landscapes, when the land is being nourished by Mother Nature, for that will be too obvious.
I am talking about the country’s post summer beauty when most plants have shed their leaves or lost their chlorophyll.
But losing chlorophyll does not mean losing beauty but that the summer beauty is transformed into spring beauty.
Spring beauty is characterised by a golden brown veld.
The African grassland forming an attractive golden brown landscape decorated by gray plants that lost their leaves save for clusters of green perennial plants.
Throughout the veld, the African bush is further beautified by plants that are in the process of losing chlorophyll thus turning their leaves to a colourful yellow, brown or pink.
Looking across the landscape and beyond the valley, hills and highlands stand up like beautified promontories decorated by the combination of beautiful plants at different stages of development.
The landscape is also decorated by plants that flower this time of the year. You see decorations of yellow, white, red and pink flowers across the landscape providing a scenic view.
In the savannah grasslands, hordes of wildlife reside, there both big and small.
They reside in the grasslands where they hide from their predators or where they hunt their prey. Some people are not fortunate enough to see, to know or to have these creatures within their reach.
Most European children see snakes and some such creatures on TV or zoos. But Zimbabweans are fortunate to have these natural resources in their neighbourhood. But . . . here is a big but; a very unfortunate disaster is threatening the African ecology with extinction — veld fires.
Every year, almost at the same time and as if on cue, saboteurs start veld fires simultaneously that scorch the very beauty of Zimbabwe’s landscape to create a typical black Zimbabwe.
The beautiful landscape is turned ugly black with charred remains of burnt forests together with their contents.
The tall dry brown golden grass is turned to a black ugly carpet with logs smouldering for weeks. All the small wildlife that hide or reside in the grass is burnt without any surety of future propagation.
Insects and crawling creatures are being burnt to death every year leaving Zim- babwe emulating Europe in the scarcity of wildlife.
Very soon there will be no wildlife in Zimbabwe, for the few that survive the veld fires are turned prey by poachers and other predators. Zimbabweans are turning predators to their own environment.
If we are not careful, Zimbabwe will be worse than Europe in the long run because Europe has zoos and Zimbabwe has none. Europe has got wildlife from Africa including Zimbabwe but where is Zimbabwe going to get wildlife from when it becomes extinct, very soon?
Europe hasn’t got enough wildlife in their zoos to share with Africa — besides they aren’t that generous as to share with Africa anything at all even if they got it from Africa in the first place.
Zimbabweans are playing a dangerous game. The veld fire game is not funny.
As you drive along the highway, it is sad to see blackened Zimbabwe from charred remains of the veld fire.
In summer all plants drop seeds or whatever their species use as a means of propagation.
These young plants start to grow but they have to sleep in winter according to the law of nature when the veld is dry. What happens then?
They won’t survive their first winter or spring or dry season, for, while they sleep awaiting the passage of time waiting for next summer’s growth, they are obliterated by a conflagration set up by a human being turned saboteur.
Why Zimbabwe? Why are you blackening my country like this?
Why is everybody getting unconcerned — for year after year veld fires, are destroying my environment and people see them and they know it and turn a blind eye!
People know the disaster caused by veld fires but they don’t care, they don’t prevent future veld fires, they watch Zimbabwe burning from Zambezi to Limpopo.
Every spring Zimbabwe is experiencing a disastrous tradition of burn all, kill all, wildlife and property included. Can someone tell me why no action is being taken to prevent veld fires?
These veld fires are started deliberately and intentionally by saboteurs who want to burn the country dry and then say “Hey see what the black man is doing to beautiful Zimbabwe”. That is why there was a need for action against the perpetrators of these subversive and diabolic acts of sabotage.
But the authorities watch it spellbound — conflagrations continuing to lick Zimbabwe with hot tongues of flames destroying everything in their wake and disfiguring Zimbabwe’s looks.
Only huge trees which are beyond the reach of the tongues of fire survive but their stems will be blackened by the smouldering flames.
