Owners fume over cattle branding

The "hands off" attitude of Swazis regarding their cattle, which are cultural icons, yielded a bit to the needs of law enforcement Wednesday with the launch of a new cow-branding law in the southern Shiselweni region. The law will go nationwide after an education campaign to introduce reluctant farmers to their new responsibilities. "I know each of my cows by sight. I give them names, and they respond to their names - I have no need to burn their hides. This is an insult to my masculinity," Sipho Dlamini, a smallholder farmer in rural Mliba in central Swaziland, told IRIN. A Swazi man's wealth and social status are immediately displayed by the size of the herd in his kraal. The average herd is six cows. King Mswati III is the country's largest cattle owner, with a herd estimated at over 10,000 by the Swazi Observer newspaper, which is owned by the royal conglomerate, Tibiyo TakaNgwane. "Branding is needed to reduce the risk of cattle rustling," Minister of Agriculture Mtiti Fakudze told farmers at the Mphisi Farmers Training Centre on Wednesday. The Royal Swaziland police force said cattle were driven over the border to Mozambique or South Africa by thieves. Even when recovered with the assistance of neighbouring national police, identification could be problematic. However, cattle rustling is not a threat to human life, unlike the daily danger presented by untended cows on the nation's highways. "Considering how important cows are to Swazis, and the cultural value we place on them, it is discouraging that so many farmers still think this country exists in the 19th century, when the kraal gate was opened in the morning and the cattle found their way home at dusk after grazing in a land without fences or motorways," said a source with the National Road Safety Council. The Ministry of Works and Construction has long lamented the theft of barbed wire along all new highways. The wire, intended to keep wandering cattle away from high-speed traffic, ends up protecting crops from other people's cattle. "The theft is being done by the same owners who let their cattle roam free without herd boys tending them," said former MP Nthuthuko Dlamini. One well-known if unstated reason why Swazi farmers have resisted the prospect of branding their cattle is that it would allow police to identify the owners of animals that cause traffic accidents. "Cow owners disappear when the cattle they allow to roam free are responsible for road fatalities. Families of victims, and the Highway Fund, which must compensate relatives of family members who die on the roads, can sue the owners for damages," said the Highway Safety Council official. Eighty percent of Swazis live as peasant farmers on communal Swazi Nation Land under palace-appointed chiefs, and all Swazis claim their rural family homesteads as their principal residences. Cattle are omnipresent throughout the country, but the Central Bank of Swaziland reported that human population pressures had reduced the number of cows from 600,000 eight years ago to a half-million - closer to the number of cattle that national pasturelands can adequately support. "The number of cattle has been declining in recent years due to contraction in the country's rangelands, resulting from the allocation of more land for human settlements. Further, the high cattle densities in the country have meant that there has been persistent overgrazing and soil erosion, especially on Swazi Nation Land," said the bank. Even though foot-and-mouth disease has been eradicated in Swaziland, drought, particularly in the eastern lowveld, had "significantly reduced the number of cattle", the bank noted. Among the low winter-beige hills of Mliba surrounding his mud-and-stick homestead, farmer Dlamini was incensed that government, in his opinion, was intruding into a Swazi man's most sanctified domain with the unprecedented requirement of cattle branding. "The answer is for the soldiers to shoot the Mozambican cattle rustlers - not for me to burn my cows," Dlamini said. Mandla Dlamini, an agricultural field officer not related to the farmer, said, "Their resistance comes from their fear of change. Branding cattle means cattle herding must be seen as a business, and is no longer a pointless pastime where cows are kept as pets and never slaughtered. Branding cattle commits the owner to taking his cows seriously and, judging by how underutilised our meat processing plants are in the country, this is something that Swazi farmers, despite all their boasts about the size of their herds, don't really do."