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Zim barters 3.5 tonnes of ivory for guns
HARARE - The 3.5 tonnes of ivory sold for over US$450,000 by the bankrupt Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe to Chinese buyers in Harare on Monday is thought to have been part payment for military hardware set to be flown into the Zimbabwean capital soon, top official sources said.

Worth almost USD15 million, the one-off sale has been okayed by Geneva-based secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) amid protests from wildlife rights groups.

News of the illicit guns-for-ivory deal has rekindled fears among wildlife organisations that the Zimbabwean government's official claim to be a protector of the elephant is a sham.

Zimbabwe's tourist literature makes great play of a supposedly rising elephant population, but experts in the country believe the figures have been distorted as part of an attempt by Mugabe's cash-strapped regime to make Cites relax its ivory trading rules.

Brigadier Albert Kanunga, a retired army officer who heads Zimbabwe's department of parks and wildlife, appealed to Cites earlier this year for clearance to sell 10 tons of ivory, but failed in a complicated negotiation involving Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

Cites only approved the sale of 3.5 tonnes.

At about the same time substantial quantities of high-calibre ammunition allegedly went missing from the wildlife department's armoury near State House in Harare, coinciding with an upsurge in poaching in the Zambezi Valley bordering Zambia, where experts claim up to 200 elephants have been killed this year alone in prepartion of this sale.

The Zimbabwean government blamed much of the carnage on foreign animal rights groups, which it claimed were trying to thwart Mugabe's bid to have the Cites rules relaxed.

Ivory commands a black market price of more than US$100 a kilogram. Demand is greatest in Japan and China. The Beijing government is officially opposed to the trade, but wildlife experts in Harare say that unofficially, Chinese demand is high.

They identified a string of Zambian and Senegalese middlemen who, they say, arrange deals through the close-knit Chinese community in South Africa. The wildlife experts, many of them sacked by Kanunga's predecessor, Willas Makombe, claim Mugabe was approached by the Chinese shortly after his devastating loss in March elections.

Worried that his grip on power was slipping after almost three decades in power, he knew he might need arms in the build-up to the run off election, which he claimed victory from a one man presidential race boycotted by his rival Morgan Tsvangirai because of violence.

An earlier consignment of weapons loaded into a Chinese ship bound for Harare was turned away at the Durban harbour during the run up to the elections.

ZimDaily heard that the 3.5 tonnes consignment sold in Harare Monday was allegedly flown out of Harare's international airport yesterday. The military consignment will be flown in secretly to avoid the scandal that characterised the last consignment aboard "the Chinese ship of death."

ZimDaily heard Zimbabwe's wildlife department has just over 23 tons of ivory stored at its Harare headquarters, one ton less than when Cites last inquired in April. Officials said the missing ton had been legitimately sold on the local market to craftsmen.

But former wildlife department employees say the official statistics are almost meaningless, given that up to 50 elephants can be killed by poachers in a typical raid lasting between two and three weeks, bringing anything up to two tons of ivory onto the illegal market.

If Zimbabwe's claims to have an elephant population of 70,000 are anywhere near accurate, then scientists say natural rates of attrition would also yield several tons of ivory each year.

Other former officials said Mugabe would ideally like to sell off the country's entire stock because of the cost of maintaining it at a constant humidity and temperature. Only a handful of trusted officials - all loyal to Zanu-PF party - have access to the stores.


The bartering of ivory for military hardware comes amid a military embargo on the Mugabe regime banning gunrunning with the rest of the Western world. An acute forex crunch has forced the government to barter its stockpiles instead of paying cash for ammunition from China.

http://www.zimdaily.com
 

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