SHE received the news while she was on board a flight to Accra, Ghana, for a tertiary education conference.
In the fast-paced and unpredictable Zimbabwean political landscape, she must naturally have been unsettled by the content of the message delivered, probably through an e-mail, Whatsapp or text, to her by colleagues monitoring news from home.
But Oppah Muchinguri, Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education until July 6, 2015 when President Robert Mugabe made a few changes to his Cabinet, has gone through thick and thin.
She is a liberation war fighter.
And she has been a senior civil servant in President Mugabe’s administrations for many years.
While she engaged in important discussions towards the development of a solid global human capital system in West Africa that week, the world was turning upside down in Zimbabwe.
The unfolding crisis would demand decisive action once she touched home from Ghana.
Walter Palmer, an American dentist with an appetite for slaughtering African game and proudly displaying his trophies, had killed a famous lion at home using a bow and arrow, his favourite hunting tools, in what could probably have been a trip of a lifetime.
He had hunted the African lion in the heart of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, taken a few pictures with the carcass and sent them back home to Minnesota, USA.
So, this was the chaos that confronted Muchinguri on touchdown as she moved to take charge of Zimbabwe’s wildlife estates.
Poachers have wreaked havoc on game, killing lions for trade in a thriving but difficult to crack black market for trophies, hunted down elephants for ivory and literally launched a siege on all forms of endangered species, including rhinos and pangolins.
But it is the sad slaughter of Cecil the Lion, the iconic wildlife figure in Hwange, which brought both fond memories and a sad reality to the Minister.
She told delegates at the launch of the Sino-Zim Wildlife Foundation in Harare on Tuesday last week that the shocking death of Cecil the Lion, which triggered a series of global changes to the shipment and administration of African wildlife, had catapulted her to global limelight.
She liked it!
“It is exactly one and half months when I was on my way to Accra for a higher education conference when I received information that I had been reassigned to this particular Ministry,” Muchinguri said in a key note address.
“I was already on board. On my return, the first news that I was confronted with was the menace in Mazoe River. After three days, I was greeted by the death of our dear and iconic lion, Cecil the Lion, which we had kept for 13 years and for the first time I had to appear on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and CNN (Cable News Network),” Muchinguri, appearing a more polished public speaker than before, told over 150 stakeholders of the wildlife sector.
“You can imagine, for a new Ministry? I thought it was a difficult assignment,” said the Minister. She also appeared on SkyNews and Al Jazeera.
Her speech demonstrated how she had learnt fast, and is now capable of articulating the most critical issues dogging the country’s wildlife estates — undercapitalisation, deteriorating infrastructure, lack of financial support from government and the low revenue inflows into the Parks and Wildlife Authority of Zimbabwe.
This is against higher costs of conservation.
The Sino-Zim Wildlife Foundation met her half way last week, raising over US$200 000 at its launch and mobilising a range of equipment to assist in the administration of national parks.
Chairman and founder of the nongovernmental organisation, Li Song expressed concern over the mindless slaughter of animals by poachers in Zimbabwe.
“Let’s live in harmony with wildlife under the same blue and clear sky,” Song declared.
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