Mugabe's touch melts tourism

Safari park animals around Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, are going hungry as the country joins Africa's list of places to avoid on holiday.

While New Zealand's cricket team tours the country, its people are suffering through Government persecution, an economic meltdown and shortages of essential goods.

Once considered one of Africa's safer destinations, the problems have made travelling in Zimbabwe difficult for tourists, while the attractions that drew them also fade.

Hotels, their former colonial grace fading, have forsaken tourists to chase business among the small but growing number of aid workers.

The capital city has lost three of the top five attractions listed in the Lonely Planet travel guide to Zimbabwe. The remaining two are functioning, but to get to them tourists must travel through bulldozed suburbs and ruined farms.

At the Lion and Cheetah Park, on the outskirts of Harare, three main features have gone in the past year. Its cheetah and elephant disappeared after the farm where it is based was taken over in land confiscations driven by President Robert Mugabe's Government. Its last giraffe recently died.

The few staff remaining at the park say fuel shortages have meant a dozen lions and a handful of cubs have gone without food for days at a time. The animals, usually fed about 5kg of meat a day, are instead left to go hungry.

"There is no diesel, so it is not possible to bring the food," said one worker. "Usually it is one day, but sometimes it is longer."

The animals are listless, and staff have developed new attractions to make up for fewer animals and the drop in visitors. For a few American dollars they will take tourists into the cage to touch and stroke the lions.

Similar payments can be made to enter a separate lion cub cage, where visitors are encouraged to play with the four-month-old animals. The once-thriving cafe and restaurant trade is collapsing, with many menu staples unavailable except on a thriving blackmarket.

Street vendors and market stalls, which provided much of Harare's fresh produce, have been banned under Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina, which translates as either Operation Clean Up or Operation Clear Out Trash.

The same operation has destroyed the suburb of Mbare, described by Lonely Planet as an authentic African shopping experience. Hundreds of houses have been destroyed, and while most people have fled for the country, some of the more desperate have remained, contributing to a rocketing crime rate.

The once-bustling suburb, centred on a large bus terminal, is now empty of the strings of stalls selling everything from clothes and food to carvings and home appliances.

Tobacco industry employees, spoken to at the first test between the Black Caps and Zimbabwe, say the once busy tobacco auctions, a popular tourist attraction, have shrunk to inconsequence.

The amount of tobacco produced, one of the country's most important exports, had plummeted as farms were confiscated by the Government, leaving agriculture in the hands of people with little or no farming experience.

South of central Harare, on Chiremba Rd, the destruction waged on opponents of Mugabe can be seen at the entrance to the Epworth Balancing Rocks. Along the road to the park of uncannily balanced rock piles, which appear on Zimbabwe bank notes, are the remains of bulldozed suburbs.

Families huddle among the ruins of their homes, the only remnants in some cases being flower gardens, dying for want of water.

The rock park has suffered as much as the devalued Zimbabwean dollar. Some towers, formed over thousands of years, have been tumbled. Large areas of land are scorched earth, where scrub fires have broken out.

You should go to Victoria Falls, says one tour operator.

"The President, hey, he hasn't stopped the waterfall yet."

* David Fisher is a Herald on Sunday reporter