It cannot be an honest mistake. Trophy hunters don’t shop in a supermarket where a cashier forgets to ring up a loaf of bread.
This is Zimbabwe’s wildlife, our majestic game hunted for trophies worth thousands of dollars — and here, conveniently, “unaccounted for”.
The Auditor-General’s latest report has torn back the curtain on the Forestry Commission, exposing a pattern so familiar it almost feels rehearsed.
In 2023, a hunter completed a safari without paying US$18 330 in trophy fees. That is an elephant-sized gap in accountability, and it should have been caught at any point — in the booking process, in the field, or at the airport, especially if the hunter was one of the western billionaires who dominate this industry.
The fact that nobody along this long value chain of bureaucrats picked up this “error” tells its own story. For such a transaction to pass through untouched, there must be a chain of willing enablers.
This is not incompetence, but possibly a structured criminal enterprise that runs from the forests, where Forestry Commission bosses preside, all the way to other choke points where loot is quietly shared.
We have lived this script before, and in the pages of this newspaper, we have reported it. But we have been thanked with vile resentment. We saw such manipulation in the collapse of Zisco Steel, in the hollowing out of the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe, and in the diamond fields of Chiadzwa, where US$15 billion vanished — a theft publicly acknowledged by the former Head of State.
We saw it again in the recent gold mafia scandal, where looters still roam the streets. We even saw it when gold worth more than the value of a small-cap listed company was found in a handbag at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport — followed by a rare arrest and an equally bizarre release. It is a story repeated by the same people, ending in the same silence.
- Indian national nabbed over $6m heroin stash
- Property magnate mulls building US$30b portfolio
- Stage set for Rick Ross’s maiden Zim gig
- Ghanaian singer jets in for Zim maiden concert
Keep Reading
Trophy hunting should be one of Zimbabwe’s conservation crown jewels, generating up to US$40 million annually. Its revenue is meant to fund anti-poaching patrols, protect fragile ecosystems, and sustain community programmes such as CampFire.
Instead, like every other foreign-currency-heavy sector, it is becoming a magnet for those who see the state as a private piggy bank.
The Auditor-General’s warning was plain: “The Forestry Commission’s controls over the hunting bookings were inadequate.”
What happened was contrary to the commission’s hunting bookings policy, which requires clients to make a full payment before hunting. Still, I shudder to ask — what more is missing?
The Forestry Commission’s response was the usual bureaucratic fog: “Observation is noted. It is a case which we are currently pursuing.”
There was no outrage or remorse — no urgency. It was just the eloquent assurance that nothing will change.
Zimbabwe’s tragedies no longer shock us because they all follow the same choreography. A scandal is exposed, followed by brazen denials, then complete silence. Soon after, it is repeated. The actors change, but the play remains the same.
This is not simply about one missing payment or one dead animal. It is about a deliberate, sustained sabotage of the country’s capacity to protect its own resources. It is the quiet, steady bleeding of a nation until all that remains is the shell of its laws and the memory of its riches.
An elephant may have fallen here — but the real carcass is the rule of law, left to rot under the watch of those sworn to defend it.
