AS the general elections draw near, NGOs, donor agencies, churches and politicians, all jostle for attention as they sometimes go to extremes to outdo each other.
Some bring food handouts, clothing, seeds, agricultural inputs and short-term empowerment projects for women and other vulnerable members of indigenous communities.
All is done in peacock fashion as they try to get votes or lure the unsuspecting communities to favour their organisational handlers.
These donor-dependent communities in remote areas such as Binga, Hwange and Tsholostho, are in serious problems as untangling themselves from the shackles of the donor dependency syndrome is still a far-fetched dream and they remain vulnerable.
In one of his public lectures, about two years ago in Binga, Hwange and Tsholostho, the Chief Executive Officer of the Zimbabwe Heritage Trust (ZHT), Cde Pritchard Zhou, said there was need for these communities to untangle themselves from donors and NGOs who, over the years, held these communities to ransom.
He said the colonial mentality existed in most people hence they considered themselves inferior to their white counterparts.
He further explained, to the amusement of the audience, how black women now wanted to be white as evidenced by the wearing of artificial Indian and Brazilian hair and the use of skin lightening creams.
This mentality, Cde Zhou said, has entrenched itself in the majority of black people (the BaTonga included).
But, back to our story about BaTonga finding themselves between a rock and a hard place.
The river BaTonga, resettled in the 1950s, are just one of many African communities that have suffered from relocation by colonial governments.
Unlike the bushman and the Basarwa tribes who wonder in the Kalahari Desert for hundreds of kilometres in search of water and nutritious tubers, twigs and game meat for survival, the BaTonga people of the Zambezi Valley continue to face a serious dilemma of food and water shortages.
They have borne the brunt of successive droughts and endured hunger.
They have been incarcerated for poaching and illegal hunting in their territory.
With the onset of colonialism, traditional African wildlife and other natural resources management were rapidly replaced by European models which acknowledged little need for existing indigenous practices.
Wildlife and other natural resource management systems were practiced in rural Zimbabwe, and Binga in particular, long before the arrival of Europeans.
Strong remnants of this can still be seen today, revealing how tightly knit these systems were with daily social and cultural activities of the BaTonga.
The dependence of the BaTonga community on wild animals and plant resources, based upon collective access, allowed for the evolution of resource management systems.
Access to resources such as wildlife and forests for food, medicine and cultural purposes were controlled by local institutions and involved complex sharing and rotation schemes, bound by tribal laws and knowledge.
It was the nature of this ‘access’ to natural resources which formed the basis of unique socio-economic, cultural and political structures upon which the survival and propagation of communities depended.
There is substantial evidence to show that BaTonga had practised wildlife and natural resources conservation long before the arrival of safari operators and NGOs.
Prohibited from hunting for subsistence, the BaTonga were forced to cultivate the poor soils.
Colonial laws provided no compensation for the destruction of crops or physical injuries inflicted by wildlife.
The BaTonga expressed their desperation and alienation towards colonial policies by killing wildlife for food and money.
In response, they were labelled ‘poachers’ and their activities outlawed.
Rangers from Safari companies were given permission to kill and arrest these ‘poachers’ if they threatened the sanctity of the private-owned wildlife.
According to records at the Binga Magistrates’ Court, more than 700 BaTonga have been jailed for illegal hunting and poaching.
The Ministry of Health and Child Care records indicate that hundreds of women and children have died or have developed other deformities as a result of water shortages.
Media reports have also indicated that women travel more than 20km to the mighty Zambezi River to fetch water on a daily basis.
This is the daily dilemma faced by the BaTonga people living in the rugged terrain of the Zambezi escarpment.
They do not have fishing rights on the Zambezi River save for a few fishing camps hugely owned by other entrepreneurs from other provinces.
Elders have spoken of harassment at the hands of private game rangers when they are caught fishing on ‘their river’, hence they have resorted to netting fish during the night.
The few fish caught is sold at the famous Siachilaba fish market and Binga Centre or often exchanged for basic commodities like soap, sugar and grain.
There is unfair trade as the BaTonga are often shortchanged and not given equivalent amounts for their products.
Sadly, some are threatened with arrest and give away their products for free.
Tour and Safari operators hunting and fishing in Binga are among the major exploiters. Best tuskers have been shot in the province but profits derived from hunting have not cascaded down to the BaTonga.
They have become a tourist attraction as tour operators bring photographers who take pictures of ill-clad children and the famous ndombonda (inchelawa) smoking elderly women.
They make profit and just toss a few bottles of mineral water and dry biscuits to the excited women and children who will never see their pictures on famous international tourism posters.
Not to be outdone, international and local NGOs join the fray by publicising the BaTonga as ‘primitive and hunger-stricken’ people and use the opportunity to source funds from donor communities, which in most cases do not benefit the intended beneficiaries.
As a result, the BaTonga suffer in silence, since their removal from the shores of the Zambezi River.
There are many documented cases of human and wildlife conflict in Binga as warthogs and primates regularly raid fields, inflicting significant losses.
Elephant raids occur less frequently, but as they tend to happen just before crops are harvested, the damage is more noticeable — an entire harvest can be destroyed in one night.
The costs of these raids are not restricted to the loss of food. Children often stay home to guard crops and this impacts negatively on their education and future employment prospects.
Adults have been susceptible to stress caused by anticipating nocturnal raiders and have turned their hostility towards those they believe are responsible – not the animals, but the conservation and Safari operators.
The Government needs to modify the Wildlife Based Land Reform programme, the existing wildlife and natural resource policies to ensure equitable access to rural communities living among these resources.
In 1955, the BaTonga were removed from the land on which they had lived for many generations by the Zambezi River, on both sides.
When the Kariba Dam was built, their river became a lake.
They were resettled on inferior land, away from the river. Uprooted from their land, they left behind a way of life and a culture that was built around their closeness to the river.
The Zambezi BaTonga people lived for many generations by the fast-flowing Zambezi that in 1957 separated what was then Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now independent Zambia and Zimbabwe).
The dam, sited at Kariba gorge, flooded the whole of the Zambezi Valley upstream and compelled the resettlement of the whole population of both north and south banks.
More attention was paid to the animals, and rescuing them, than to people in an operation dubbed ‘Operation Noah’.
On both sides of the Zambezi, the BaTonga were the losers. They faced a tiring journey, usually on open trucks, to be resettled far away from the area where they had been born and grown up.
Once there, they had to build from scratch, clearing the bush and constructing huts.
The people of the north and south banks were cut off completely from each other.
Relatives were never to see or hear from each other again.
Many also lost highly productive alluvial fields on the edge of the Zambezi and had to take to dry land farming in the rugged foothills of the escarpment.
In August 1955, a momentous event occurred which was to bring about a dramatic change in the life of this marginalised people.
The District Commissioner and the Minister of Native Affairs of Southern Rhodesia travelled to the Zambezi River Basin to meet with BaTonga chiefs.
The chiefs and elders were informed that all BaTonga were to evacuate their lands and abandon their homes because the entire area would become a lake.
The BaTonga were soon to learn that this ‘resettlement’ would happen without their consent and in areas with poor soils for farming and limited access to water.
This displacement of about 57 000 BaTonga has been recorded in the Commissioner’s Reports and in extensive research studies done by anthropologists.
The BaTonga have described their life near the river, before being removed to make way for Kariba dam, as a time of ‘splendid isolation’.
This description needs to be understood in its historical context. With the exception of some men who went for work in the mines or in towns, the river BaTonga were basically isolated from the rest of the people of Southern Rhodesia and lived a very traditional way of life.
Being isolated had advantages such as being free to hunt without control by colonialist policies.
The river BaTonga took advantage of fertile gardens and fields along the banks of the Zambezi and also enjoyed a variety of ways to catch fish for relish.
They had their own leaders and life was governed primarily through the chief’s court and his police rather than by colonial authorities.
The relative absence of Government involvement left them free to honour their ancestral spirits and keep their traditions alive. Very close ties were maintained with their relatives and ancestral spirits on the other side of the Zambezi River.
However, the river BaTonga also suffered from their isolation. Left alone and neglected by the colonial Government, there were no schools, clinics or hospitals, even as late as 1957.
Infant mortality rates were extremely high, partly because there were no vaccinations availed to them.
They heavily relied on their traditional medicinal herbs for healing various ailments.
While effective in treating many illnesses, traditional healing was inadequate to respond to some major diseases.
Many suffered from serious eye problems, goitre and outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, bilharzia and measles.
Binga, today, is one of the districts that have been heavily infiltrated by regime change NGOs offering food, bicycles to schoolchildren, books and radios spewing Western propaganda to the BaTonga community.
They have been taught to hate the ruling party in exchange for food and other income-generating projects.
However, after Cde Zhou explained how NGOs were a mere regime change tool used by the West to divide Zimbabweans and to make them more dependent on handouts, it was also clear that despite the language ‘barrier’ their responses showed a people long suppressed and influenced by the NGO mentality.
The same NGOs want to benefit from BaTonga resources (fish, timber and cultural tourism, among other things).
Over the years, these seemingly happy people have been preyed upon by overzealous tourists, movie directors and newspapers which portray a different picture from the true BaTonga.
Newspapers also like to show pictures of bare-breasted BaTonga women, pounding grain, a baobab tree in the background, and perhaps one or two dirty, ill-clad children frolicking around the homestead of crude shacks perched on two-metre high stilts.
In addition, they capitalise on the prtrayal of he men – presumed to be sky-high on marijuana paddling skillfully up the crocodile infested Zambezi in ancient dugout canoes, probing for fish.
These rather exaggerated images or primitive simplicity and eccentric customs imply that the BaTonga are still a stone-age people, yet they are in fact a progressive people proud to be Zimbabwean.
NGOs and other donors must not be left to continue influencing the BaTonga in their continued push for regime change in Zimbabwe.