Diaspora Discourse: Playing Our Part In Climate Change Havoc

with Davison Muropa

When Maurice said “Isusu we don’t think about it because we don’t have tsunamis or tornadoes; so we don’t see climate change, “ how so right, but how so wrong he was." 

He was so right that Zimbos wake up in the morning just thinking of kungwavha - ngwavha, upping and downing to put food on the table.

That we are part and parcel of a greater ecological system seems to be beyond our vision, or our apprehension. 

We have these mantras like, tamba iripo, chamuka inyama, or they do thega and we go about our daily chores without a care in the world. 

But he was so wrong in that we are part of this inexorable March of the world and what we do or undo in tiny Zimba does have impact on Mother Earth and what the world is doing or has done has an effect on Zimba.

Not so much as individuals, but collectively as a nation, we need to take heed, notice the changes, hear what’s being said and play our part.

Zimbabwe’ s short history of just over a century has proved this point. 

When Africans were cattled into Reseves at the onset of colonisation, it took just a few decades for land degradation to cause ecological havoc in those God- forsaken habitats. 

By the time people like agricultural missionary Emory Alvord introduced concepts of conservation in the 1940/50s, with centralisation and contours (makandiwa), the damage had already been done. 

Land degradation in many Reserves never recovered. 

The land re-distribution of the 2000s, brought a second round of land degradation and if Zimbos don’t manage this period with the requisite land management, we will be in another dire straits in the next few decades.

The Zimbo population which was below a million as colonisation started, began to double every twenty years and now stands around 16 million. But the land mass is not getting bigger. 

We may not have tsunamis or tornadoes, but we have had cycles of droughts, floods and now the cyclone idais.

Our rivers such as the mighty Save have silted, forests like Chirinda and other vegetations are disappearing as land is opened up to cultivation and rampant unbridled chikorokoza/ gold panning. 

The Chinese have come and are mining everywhere including animal reserves takatarisa. 

All these activities have an ecological price to pay. We need to call govt to account. 

We will continue to think that climate change does not concern us, at our peril. 

Till next week, be blessed.

*Davison Muropa is a Zimbabwean based in Birmingham, UK.