Wongai Zhangazha
PRISONERS in the country’s overcrowded jails may soon be fed with elephant meat if a proposal by the Justice and Legal Affairs ministry to curb the shortage of protein in prisons is accepted by government.
The ministry is proposing the culling of the “over-populated” elephants and supply the meat to prisons where inmates have had meals without meat for years. The country’s prison dietary requirements are said to be far below international standards and what is required by the law. Inmates alternate sadza with cabbages or beans as their main meal.
Unconfirmed reports were that prisoners had gone for four years without meat.
In an interview last week, Deputy Minister of Justice Obert Gutu said while “things have slightly improved in the prisons and prisoners are getting three meals a day”, there were still limitations in terms of the dietary requirements.
“The meals do not meet the approved dietary standards as stipulated by the law. In one of our meetings it was discussed extensively how the problem could be solved,” said Gutu. “It was at this meeting that the ministry and the Prison Services Commission considered elephant meat as an option. It was agreed that since experts say that there is an overpopulation of elephants in the country why not get some of the elephants and give them to prisoners as meat, since we don’t have the meat neither do we have the money to buy it. It was agreed to say let’s get into a deal with relevant authorities and arrange something.”
Parks and Wildlife Management Authority spokesperson Caroline Washaya-Moyo told the Zimbabwe Independent this week that they had not received any communication from the Ministry of Justice regarding the supply of elephant meat to prisoners.
However, the move to supply prisons with elephant meat was not welcomed by wildlife activists.
Johnny Rodrigues of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force slammed the proposal, arguing that the move would result in the extinction of elephants and in the long result in the “killing” of the tourism industry.
He said: “This is the most dangerous thing that they will be doing if approved. One of the biggest foreign currency earners in the country is tourism. How then can we steal from our own heritage? Why are we selling our future heritage down the drain? We should be looking after these intelligent animals so that they are not killed. Government should actually be putting in harsh laws to protect these animals.”
Rodrigues said despite claims by authorities that there were 100 000 elephants in the country, the number had gone down to less than 35 000.
Apart from food problems in prisons, jails are overcrowded and government is failing to provide adequate prison garb.
Gutu said they had agreed that prisoners should start wearing their own clothes to ease the uniform crisis.
“The uniforms are torn and we don’t have any new uniforms. It was agreed that they start wearing their own clothes except for dangerous prisoners and obviously we expect ZPS (Zimbabwe Prison Services) to use its discretion so that it will not pose a security risk,” said Gutu.
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