Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Nhema participates in renaming regional historic site

Nhema participates in renaming regional historic site
BD/Our reporter
Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:06:00 +0000

The concept of creating transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) is recognised as important tool in promoting the conservation of biodiversity and endangered ecosystems. Sadc Member States have demonstrated their commitment to the conservation of biodiversity by signing the Protocol on Wildlife Conservation and Law Enforcement in 1999 and ratifying it at the end of 2003.

THE Minister of Environment last month helped put a piece of the Boundless Southern Africa jigsaw puzzle in place with the renaming of the Limpopo-Shashe Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) to the Greater Mapungubwe TFCA.

Francis Nhema and his counterparts Kitso Mokaila of Botswana and Buyelwa Sonjica of South Africa announced the new name where the mighty Limpopo and Shashe rivers meet and the three countries converge, the most northern tip of South Africa.



The renaming was deemed appropriate as all three countries already have sites called Mapungubwe and all three encompassed the famous Mapungubwe dynasty.
Mapungubwe in SA, a World Heritage Site, was the epicentre of an advanced kingdom, the forerunner to Great Zimbabwe about 300km away. The gold objects from three royal graves on Mapungubwe Hill, such as the famous rhinoceros, beads and bowls, prove the advanced nature of the society.

Similar artifacts are still being discovered in all three countries and much of the hill has yet to be properly explored and is closed to the public.

Substantial marketing has been done to put Mapungubwe on the tourism map. The 38000ha Mapungubwe National Park in SA has undergone significant upgrades, with the finishing touches presently being applied to a state of the art interpretation centre.

Both the Mapungubwe sites in SA and Botswana are mapped on the geographical positioning system (GPS) and the site in Zimbabwe will be added.

The story of Mapungubwe — by no means complete — has been pieced together since the site was rediscovered in 1933 by a farmer. The flourishing Iron Age metropolis on the Limpopo River was ruled by an African king around 1200AD.

The area had already been inhabited for at least 300 years by an Iron Age community and became rich through trade as far afield as Egypt, India and China. The inhabitants’ identity remains a mystery, as does the origin of the name Mapungubwe.

At last month’s signing, the ministers met up with the Boundless Southern Africa Expedition team led by Kingsley Holgate. The team will travel 10000km through all of the TFCAs. The objective of the expedition, which set off from the Tourism Indaba in Durban in May, is to raise awareness about TFCAs and promote tourism and investment opportunities in these areas as well as the Soccer World Cup.

Boundless Southern Africa is the brand that was launched last year to raise the profile of the seven TFCAs, which are /Ai/Ais/Richtersveld, Kgalagadi, Kavango-Zambezi, Greater Mapungubwe, Great Limpopo, Lubombo and Maloti-Drakensberg.

In 2005, the nine Sadc countries of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, SA, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe endorsed a TFCA Development Strategy for 2010 and beyond.

The main objective is to increase the tourism potential of southern Africa by consolidating marketing, infrastructure development and investment promotion efforts of the TFCA initiatives. When complete, an enormous swathe of land across all nine countries will make up the biggest conservation area in the world.

Boundless Southern Africa is one of the legacy programmes for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, which is tasked to benefit southern Africa and Africa as a whole. TFCAs provide the mechanisms for sharing the tourism benefits of the 2010 event to the region.

Labels: ENVIRONMENT, TRANSFRONTIER CONSERVATION AREAS

posted by MrK @ 2:48 PM