SABLE Chemicals has indicated that it is likely to fire 200 workers from its ammonium nitrate fertiliser manufacturing plant some 15km outside Kwekwe, while Delta Maltings this week cut production levels by 20% owing to the debilitating power shortages.
BY BLESSED MHLANGA
Zesa, which is currently producing just 900MW instead of the required 2 200MW of electricity, has thrown production levels in most companies into disarray and plunged many homes into darkness.
Owing to Zesa’s failures many Zimbabweans have been forced to look elsewhere for their energy needs, particularly for basic cooking.
It is no surprise that with most people thrown out of jobs, solar panels or gas for cooking are out of the question, with most now turning to the cheaper and easilyaccessible firewood.
This move has put unprecedented pressure on the already dwindling forests and poking a bigger hole in the ozone layer and triggering climate change.
Far from the less understood subject of climate change many decent law abiding Zimbabweans have now turned to illegal tree cutting in violation of laws criminalising the cutting or transporting of firewood without permission. Apart from turning ordinary Zimbabweans into habitual criminals, who indiscriminately and illegally cut trees for energy, the power shortages have become a genuine threat to the country’s forests.
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Kwekwe mayor Matenda Madzoke, said deforestation within environs of his town had significantly increased over the past weeks, as demand for firewood rose.
“Our officers are constantly on the watch for people who are cutting wood in wet lands and farms around the city, leaving us under serious threat of land degradation. Although I don’t have figures I can tell you that the rate at which trees are being cut at the moment is alarming and we might not have any trees in the next two years if the power situation does not improve,” he said said.
Due to Zesa shortages, a number of farms in Kwekwe have become victims of wood poaching.
Poachers make the long journey into Woodlands farm, which is owned by retired brigadier Benjamin Mabenge, in search of firewood.
The women carry heavy logs on their heads, while little girls follow their mothers with lighter bundles in the scotching heat with no shoes to protect from the baking sand.
Most of these women are now making a living out of this illegal activity, selling the surplus at $1 a bundle of just five twigs.
Tendai Muswera of Mbizo says she now earns a little over $8 a week from selling firewood, but tells of the risks associated with the trade.
“We have to take care and evade council police and farm owners, some of whom let loose their dogs on us. If caught they confiscate our axes and the firewood. Some corrupt council officials even demand bribes,” she said.
At the height or economic meltdown in 2007 Mabenge was accused of fatally shooting Clement Takaendesa and seriously wounding Taurai Chigede, both suspected wood poachers in his farm, as the battle to keep forests in the area intact got nasty.
Two Zibagwe Rural District Council employees Islam Meso (34) and Maphupho Ndlovu recently appeared before Kwekwe magistrate Letwin Rwodzi facing charges of criminal abuse of office after they attempted to fleece wood poachers of $700.
State prosecutor Fiona Mukwena alleged that Meso and Ndlovu caught Garikai Chigwinya and Nicholas Matavire at Sunnyside farm and charged them with contravening sections 78 of the Forest Act, which makes it criminal to cut trees without a licence.
The council employees then demanded $700 in bribes, so they could release the two firewood hunters.
Stories of girls, who have been forced to have sex with municipal police or other government officials in exchange for their freedom after being caught “stealing” have firewood become popular in Mbizo, which is polluted with heavy smoke, not from the furnaces of Zimasco, but from fire cooking in over 30 000 households, thrown into the dark by a powerless power utility.
Terrified girls reportedly do not take up the matter with the police because they fear arrest for a crime forced on them by the incapacity and incompetence of Zesa.
Councillor Janet Ticharunga said she is worried that lots of young girls are forced into the dangerous forest after school in search of firewood.
“Instead of doing homework or playing with other children, small kids at the age of 11 are forced to go looking for firewood in dangerous woodlands,” she said.
MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu blamed Zanu PF, saying the problems at Zesa were a result of political incompetence and lack of planning by a government focussed on looting.
“Zesa has taken Zimbabweans to the days of darkness, where electricity is now an extremely rare commodity. The blame should actually be placed on the Zanu PF regime that has run down every facet of our lives, from agriculture, industry and even sport,” he said.
“This regime has never been capable of planning in advance. For instance, they knew as far back as 20 years ago that Zimbabwe was going to experience a serious deficit of electricity if the production capacity at Kariba hydro power station and the Hwange thermal power station was not significantly improved.”
Gutu said the government did not act to boost the country’s electricity production capacity until the situation has now literally gone out of hand.
“In fact, since 1980, there’s hardly been any major infrastructural development in this country. The Zanu PF regime has been pre-occupied with looting the country’s resources as well as amassing the personal wealth of individual regime activists and apologists,” he said.
