VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE – Balbinah Nyoni, 37, grew up in Sianyanga village, a rural area that lies in the semiarid region of Matabeleland North province in western Zimbabwe.
Although the province is home to the world-famous Victoria Falls, the people here suffer from long dry spells and high temperatures, thanks to climate change and environmental degradation.
Nyoni is tall and slim. She has eyes that draw everyone’s attention. Her skin is very dark, testifying to her ceaseless expeditions in the scorching sun to provide food and water for her family from the dry land. But her robust walk and rapid talk reflect her fighting spirit as she resists the daily fatigue that seems to sap the energy out of many women, men and children in Sianyanga.
Nyoni stares vacantly at the lifeless, dry lands in front of her and takes a deep breath. She says the land used to be beautiful and that a small perennial river flowed across her village when she was a little girl. Nyoni adds that livestock had plenty of food and water.
She says that there were many trees for shade, remembering how it was difficult to walk in the bush because of the dense vegetation. She says walking in the bush used to give her goose bumps because she feared snakes and getting lost.
“This is where we used to swim when we were young,” she says, trampling on the mounds of sand under her feet. “My friends and I used to come here to do our laundry, bathe and swim for hours.”
But now there is little sign that flora and fauna were once in abundance in this area. Nyoni sighs deeply and points to an old hut up the hill about 50 meters away where her grandmother used to live.
“She thatched that hut using grass that was harvested there,” she says, pointing to a piece of land about 10 meters away.
But the land she points to is bare. The soil is hard, and there are gullies.
Nyoni says she has witnessed drastic changes. It has become extremely hard for the people and livestock to live and thrive here. She says women and children bear the bulk of the hardships, as they are the ones who are involved in domestic work.
“I wake up very early to travel several kilometers to fetch water before it gets too hot,” she says. “By the time I return home, I will be so exhausted, but I still have to fetch firewood, prepare a meal for my family and do an endless list of other domestic chores such as cleaning and washing clothes.”
In light of these hardships, Nyoni says her community has realized the need to restore the land.
Local residents say that years of irresponsible agricultural practices have left the land dry and barren. A local organization has been employing alternative strategies, namely using livestock in community herds to restore land and natural water sources. The project has yielded results, which organizers say especially benefit women, the primary caregivers here. Organizers say the main challenge is getting the community to actively participate and work together. The organization has been training other nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, to expand the project’s scale. Meanwhile, the government has been working through various agencies to preserve Zimbabwe’s natural resources.
About 70 percent of Zimbabweans rely on farming for their livelihood, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Livestock and crop production are the most important agricultural enterprises because low and erratic rainfall make dryland farming risky in more than 80 percent of the country.
Lesizi Bhebhe, 47, another villager from Sianyanga, says she regrets the reckless manner in which she and her fellow villagers used to handle the ecosystem. She says poor agricultural practices and unplanned grazing have destroyed the land, and now the villagers are paying heavily for their irresponsibility.
“I was one of the culprits who destroyed this area,” Bhebhe says remorsefully.
Bhebhe, dark-skinned and pint-sized, says that when she was young, her family used to plough next to the Nalomwe River. This type of farming was highly productive, as the farm had abundant moisture. Her family also had a vegetable garden close to the river and enjoyed fresh vegetables throughout the year. But all that is gone now.
Deep and wide gullies are the scars left from Bhebhe’s land. There are some smooth granite pebbles, a sign that water used to flow over these rocks. Erosion has washed away the soil, leaving trees with exposed roots hanging on for dear life.
Bhebhe particularly remembers the 2004 water crisis in Sianyanga and surrounding wards.
“The borehole that was sunk by a local nongovernmental organization dried in 2004,” she says. “We used to wake up at 0400 hours [4 a.m.] to go and fetch water, and we would queue the whole day as families from distant villages were using that one source of water. Water had become a precious commodity that some families were even buying it.”
Bhebhe says families survived on an average of five liters, 1.3 gallons, of water a day for drinking and cooking.
“Our cattle were dying because there was no water in the rivers and streams nearby,” she says. “To save our livestock from dying, we were forced to take them to Gwayi River, 12 kilometers away from Sianyanga. The men would stay there for three to four months before returning home.”
Community members say the 2004 water crisis was a turning point in their decision to seek help.
As the heavy environmental catastrophe weighed on Bhebhe, Nyoni and their fellow villagers, a local organization moved into Sianyanga and other neighboring wards in 2006 to replicate a land restoration project it had been implementing at its learning site at Dimbangombe Ranch, located south of Victoria Falls.
Elias Ncube, 54, the training manager for the nonprofit organization, Africa Center for Holistic Management, says that previous attempts at land restoration focused on symptoms of desertification, such as rapid soil erosion and increasing droughts and floods.
He says that the government, NGOs and other stakeholders invested resources into combating these symptoms instead of addressing the cause. For example, he says that drilling boreholes in Sianyanga provided only a short-term fix for the water shortage because the boreholes eventually dried. Instead, his organization focuses on long-term solutions, such as covering the land to make sure that the soil retains water when it rains.
Ncube says water in Matabaleland region is scarce, and many boreholes continue to dry because the land is bare and very little water manages to infiltrate the ground. Therefore, he says the soil needs to be covered to reduce runoff and evaporation.
So the Africa Center for Holistic Management has introduced an alternative solution: bunching livestock, or grouping them closely together, to restore land and natural water sources.
Ncube says livestock harness the power of their hooves to break up hard ground, which allows soil to better absorb water, and compact soil, which encourages seed-to-soil contact, resulting in better seed germination. He says they also trample old grass, which would prevent new grass from growing, so that it lies flat on the ground, covering the soil and sealing in moisture. Their dung and urine also fertilize the soil, and planned grazing prevents overgrazing.
“Livestock can also lay down old grass so that the soil is covered and less prone to the process of evaporation,” he says. “And that animal dung and urine help enrich the hoof-prepared soil and their grazing, which is timed to prevent overgrazing of plants, keeps perennial grasses healthy, thereby minimizing the need to burn and expose soil.”
Before the initiative, the community used to burn the grass, a common practice in Zimbabwe. But the fires threaten biodiversity and have led to multiple fatalties.
Ncube says that animals are corralled in a field for approximately seven days, depending on the size of the herd and field, giving each animal adequate space to sleep. Sianyanga locals bring together their livestock to form a community herd, which currently consists of 100 cattle, 50 goats and eight donkeys.
Ncube says that this simple process has proven to restore degraded land and natural water sources. The activity also helps increase plants and wildlife.
“Our work at Dimbangombe learning site and in the Hwange communal lands has shown us that it is possible to restore the land and natural water sources to health,” he says. “We have learned that healing the land using livestock restores people’s dignity and hope.”
Bhebhe says the water crisis in her area has improved since they began to practice planned grazing, a procedure that involves an orderly series of grazing to give plants time to recover. The process gives plants a chance to grow and multiply, steadily increasing the amount of high-quality plants available per acre.
“I used to get poor harvest,” Bhebhe says. “But after using livestock to prepare my crop field, I harvested 150 kilograms of maize where I previously harvested 50 kilograms.”
Africa Center for Holistic Management is currently working with 10 communities, including Sianyanga, to heal the land, natural water sources and livelihoods. Farmers in these areas who have been using animals to treat their lands have seen boosts in crop yields, according to the data management department of the Africa Center for Holistic Management.
“Animal-treated crop fields in Monde, Sizinda, Dibutibu and Mabale in Hwange communal lands had higher yields than control crop fields,” says Doreen Murove, data manager for the Africa Center for Holistic Management.
Murove says her department used Monde, Sizinda, Dibutibu and Mabale to create a sample for gathering data to assess the impact of animal-treated crop fields.
“Maize harvested in the animal-treated crop field in Monde was 2 tons per hectare, while the field which was not animal-treated produced 0.1 tons per hectare,” she says. “In Mabale, the animal-treated field yielded 5.5 tons per hectare, while the control field produced 0.4 tons per hectare.”
In Sizinda, the animal-treated crop field produced 4.4 tons per hectare, while the control field bore 1.8 tons per hectare. In Dibutibu, the animal-treated crop field reaped 2.6 tons per hectare, while the field that was not animal-treated yielded 0.68 tons per hectare.
Bhebhe says more women are involved in the project because they are left to fend for the family when men travel out of town to look for work. She says HIV/AIDS has also left many households headed by women.
Communities have a community herd, and families maintain their livestock together under the planned grazing scheme. Bhehbhe says sharing the responsibility cuts down on the women’s work.
“We take turns to look after the animals, and this makes the work less strenuous, giving us the opportunity to do other chores at home,” Bhebhe says.
Ncube says the village may soon get water closer to home, thanks to the initiative, which should also make women’s daily routines easier.
“The situation has improved significantly with the introduction of planned grazing,” Ncube says. “The land is retaining moisture, and more grass is growing. Although the Nalomwe River in Sianyanga is still silted, the situation has improved a lot. The water table has risen, and villagers may soon be having more water close to their village.”
Ncube says the major challenge to the program’s success is persuading the whole community to actively participate, citing skepticism among some members. He says cultural beliefs also make it difficult for communities to work collectively toward achieving a common goal.
“Keeping and herding animals together is a challenge,” he says. “Some community members believe that other community members use witchcraft to prevent their livestock from reproducing. Others fear that their livestock will get diseases if herded with other animals.”
He says shifting these mindsets is essential.
Africa Center for Holistic Management is training other nonprofit organizations, such as Chikukwa Ecological Land Use Community Trust, Action Against Hunger Zimbabwe, World Vision Zimbabwe and Land O’Lakes, to use its livestock strategy to restore land and natural water sources.
The Zimbabwe government has mandated the Environment Management Agency to promote the sustainable management of natural resources and protect the environment through stakeholder participation. The agency is involved in projects, such as preventing wildfires across the nation.
