EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL BY WHITE LODGE OWNERS IN LOWER ZAMBEZI WONT MOVE ZAMBIANS
By Shalala Oliver Sepiso
There are pictures being floated around Facebook of the road works being done between Senjela and Kangaluwi Mine in the Lower Zambezi. The pictures were taken by white lodge owners who have an aeroplane that flies around the park. While they fly around that plane to spy on others, no one spies on them whether they are poaching, flying animals to South Africa or doing illegal mining. This is because they control all radios operated by game scouts and rangers in the park: the control room is based in the area the white lodge owners control. GPS trackers on motor vehicles patrolling the park are monitored by them. ‘ZAWA’ officers can’t monitor these guys.
They have managed to keep Lower Zambezi National Park out of reach for most Zambias through two methods: avoid working on roads into the park because this allows the average Zambian to drive into the park and view animals. Right now access is by plane. Who can afford? White foreigners. The other method is by making the rooms very expensive. Zambians generally cannot access these rooms. There is actually a third method which is to simply deny Zambians even when they have money. The then Acting President of Zambia Mr Guy Scott was once denied the chance to be in Lower Zambezi because he had “no booking”. The gall of these people! Such insolence in our country!
Now they are trying to stir this topic which died last year. Why? Because for the first time in 45 years, there shall be a passable road into Lower Zambezi, which will allow a local Zambian to drive into the national park using a normal car and view animals and then get back home in Lusaka without having to pay for expensive rooms. The lower tourist only has topay less than K100 for park-access fees. The lower Zambezi will now have black Zambians also seeing the animals. This annoys the racists among the lodge owners because they see Lower Zambezi to be theirs.
So I find the sharing of this montage and fhe attendant pictures quite silly. These pictures come from an article I think is biased and has no room for objectivity. How come the writer didn’t want to give us the people running the mine to have the right of reply but they started regurgitating old matters that have since between dealt with by courts and government?
The writers of the article seriously believe that Mana Pools, which is upstream of the mine can be affected by the mine? How? That emotional article does well for the white-foreign owners of lodges in the Lower Zambezi and doesn’t do it for the majority black indigenous Zambians who need the mine. Go to Luangwa or Rufunsa and bring me just one person against the mine. People are happy that there are finally jobs and they can benefit from the park without resorting to poaching, illegal moning or charcal burning.
That article and these pictures are even misleading the readers that there is a way of stopping the mine. No there is no way of stopping the mine. All routes were exhausted. The courts said the mine should proceed. Government, under both the PF and the UPND, said the mine should proceed. The best these guys can do now is having meetings with us as the mine and finding the best ways of mining to avoid or reduce impact on the environment.
However our designs and plans are robust enough to handle any fears raised. Most of the concerns they write about are outdated and don’t apply to the mine and it’s plans. They have never, I repeat, never ever sat down with us to find out what our plans are. This makes their write up and these pictures shared here propaganda by white-lodge owners who are propping foreign interests and not interests of Zambians.
And by the way, Zambians are the experts at what is best for them. Not foreign NGOs or foreign lodges whose businesses are run from London and Johannesburg and do not pay any significant taxes to help the poor people of Luangwa and Rufunsa. Tourism has failed to employ Zambians and has been so arrogant to even be accessible to rich Zambians with lodge owners preferring white visitors from outside the country.
If we are to see any modicum of objectivity in these guys’ reporting, allow us to publish a response with details that react to their article point by point
Alternatively, why don’t we appear on Zambian media and debate this matter? All they do is spread their gospel of doom on foreign platforms and authored by hired guns. The mine is by Zambians for Zambians.
What is hurting these white Zambians is that the black indegenous Zambians will now access the Zambezi valley by road and you the reader won’t have to spend a coin at their lodges. Lower Zambezi is no longer going to be treated like a private business by these foreigners. Zambians will claim their rights. That is the story told by those pictures and not the silly comments I am seeing by the pretenders.
As someone said: “Our national parks were becoming a shrine to apartheid where the rightful owners had no access. They need to move everyone with that mind set to a closed toxic ghetto so they can rock each other. I hope lessons are learnt here if the locals didn’t feel so marginalised and disenfranchised they would have lobbied the govt but they would be lobbying for some of the most obtuse and effing greedy sorts.”
Thank you.
