Chiefs in Luapula province have formed a company called Bangweulu Investments Limited with the aim of opening up fish farms and restocking the water bodies whose resources are fast depleting :
Chief Mwansakombe said the company was formed by traditional rulers in Samfya and surrounding areas after carrying out a series of consultations with officials from the Zambia Development Agency (ZDA), the department of fisheries. This was done through the Programme for Luapula Rural and Agriculture Development (PLRAD). Chiefteness Mulongwe of Mbabala Island, senior chief Mwewa, Chiefs Kalima Nkonde and Bwalya Mponda, are the board members of the company whose offices would be opened in Samfya district soon.
Chief Mwansakombe said the traditional rulers resolved to promote the fishing industry, employment creation and better fishing methods around Lake Bangweulu and other water bodies.Chief Nsamba said Bwangweulu Investments intend will train all the locals who would be engaged in fish farming activities. This would include looking after the fish which would be placed in special cages and placed in the lake. “As a way of promoting a sense of ownership we intend to contract people working in community groups to manage the fish which would be placed in cages,” he said He observed that the use of cages stocked with fish placed in the lakes, was being used in Siavonga area in Southern province and it had proved to be a viable way of fish farming. He said once the business was fully established Bangweulu Investment intends to partner with some people living in fishing communities.The firm would develop out-grower schemes whose fish farming projects it would be supported. The people from the out-grower schemes would be empowered with knowledge on the dangers of using bad fishing methods. Luapula fishermen use unorthodox means such as mosquito nets to catch fish.
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The idea that the Chiefs, working through their company, Bangweulu Investments, will be able to turn around the fishery without the protection of the group interest is debatable. In the Bangweulu-Mweru-Luapula fishery, where resources were never common property before colonialism (as David Gordon in his book Natchituti's Gift explains) complex tenure systems linked to clan groups governed the use of the lands, lakes and lagoons. These rights were largely sidelined by the colonial authority when a chiefs’ commons was created as a result of the appointment as chiefs of senior members of Paramount Chief Kazembe’s family. A dual control system then operated with the colonial appointed chiefs and headmen placed in charge of people, but with the traditional guardians of the resources still in control of nature. However, social networks based on entrepreneurial Big Men and their families and evangelical Christian Churches had begun to challenge the authority of both colonial chiefs and owners, and State attempts to intervene in the economy and environment in the form of marketing boards, nationalisations, closed fishing seasons, and restricted areas failed due to a lack of capacity alongside the resilience of trader-fisher networks.
Were my old friend and game scout, Cotton Mateyo, still alive when finally on his Chipuna as Chief Bwalya Mponda, I would have advised him to resurrect his ancient guardians and to place the fishery under a Landsafe. Without this, Bangweulu Investments will sink without trace - sunk doubtless by a Chipekwe.
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