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OpenWild Animals Force Children Out Of Schools In Mbire
Some learners in the Kanyemba area, located in Mashonaland Central Province, are no longer going to school for fear they will be attacked by wild animals.
The area is located in the Mbire District on the south bank of the Zambezi River at the meeting point of the Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia borders.
Farirai Majaya, a parent from the Chapoto area in Kanyemba told The Standard that they would rather keep their children at home than put them in harm’s way by sending them to school. He said:
When they go to school, we are not guaranteed that they will arrive safely or they will be able to come back alive.
There is always that risk that they will encounter wild animals along the way and we can’t risk losing our children.
We know they deserve a better future, but the risk of sending them to school is just something we can’t afford.
It has become a common phenomenon that most children to abscond school and one of the major reasons is the fear of being attacked by wild animals along the way, especially during the rainy and harvesting seasons.
At Mariga Primary School which has an enrolment of over 300 pupils, more than half of the students are not attending school regularly.
Village head Clever Kaputi said the most affected areas are Mariga and Chiramba villages in Kanyemba’s Ward 1 area.
Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) secretary-general Robson Chere said:
We have had several cases of learners not being able to attend school due to human-wildlife conflict and this also applies to areas such as Kanyemba.
These cases also extend to areas such as Kariba, Siakobvu, Binga and Hwange.
Two years ago, there were cases of hyena attacks were recorded in Buhera, Manicaland Province and some of the victims were school children.
Tinashe Chisaira, director of Adovactes4Earth, a nonprofit environmental law, climate and wildlife justice organisation, said human-wildlife conflict can negatively affect school attendance, but in “rare circumstances”. He added:
The situation is obviously different in cases of certain problem animals such as the occasional man-eater, and the lion.
There is a need to come up with policies and actions that respect traditional wildlife habitats and migration zones and pathways.
Human settlements must not continue to encroach into wildlife areas.
The Parks and Wildlife Act classifies lions, elephants, hippos, leopards, buffaloes and rhinoceros as dangerous animals.
Statistics from the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) indicate that in 2022, the human-wildlife conflict resulted in the death of 66 people compared to 68 in 2021.
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