A hidden supply chain turns wildlife into anonymous food, exposes consumers to uninspected meat and leaves the buyers who drive the trade largely beyond prosecution.
By Tendai Makaripe
The evidence that helped convict two wildlife rangers weighed 72.5 kilograms.
Laboratory tests gave the butchered pieces a name: impala.
Acting on a January 2025 tip, investigators found meat at Bumbusi Camp in Hwange National Park and at assistant camp manager Talent Muzamba’s home.
According to court evidence, Muzamba identified ZimParks rangers Never Mathe and Tasara Chuma as suppliers.
Hwange provincial magistrate Rumbidzai Kabasa-Bonzo convicted Mathe and Chuma of hunting in a national park without a permit.
Each received an effective 18-month prison term and a $3,000 compensation order.
The case succeeded because investigators preserved the meat, identified its species and connected it to an unlawful kill.
Illegal game meat becomes harder to prosecute with every step towards the consumer.
Removing the head and hooves, drying the flesh or mixing it with livestock turns an animal into an anonymous product.
Using interviews in Gokwe, Kariba and Siakobvu, court records and peer-reviewed research, 263Chat traced the transformation from kill to customer.
The evidence reveals a trade driven by household need and commercial demand, moving meat outside veterinary inspection while many buyers escape prosecution.
Zimbabwe permits the sale of legally sourced game meat; this investigation concerns animals killed without permits and sold outside inspection and traceability systems.
Dazzled, chased and trapped
One hunting method begins with a beam of light.
A Gokwe hunter whom 263Chat is identifying by the pseudonym Simbarashe said hunters used powerful torches to disorient animals before releasing dogs.
He feared being recognised could expose him to retaliation within the secretive trade.
“We use very strong torches to dazzle the animals, and when that is done, the dogs go after the animals,” Simbarashe said.
Hunters also set traps on wildlife paths.
Simbarashe said the traps sometimes killed animals hunters neither wanted nor could use before they returned to check them.
A 2025 study in Environmental Management interviewed 133 illegal hunters and 40 anti-poaching rangers around Save Valley Conservancy.
Among the hunters, 87% reported using dogs, 65% used snares and 96% targeted impala.
An earlier Oryx study recorded 84,396 snares removed and at least 6,454 wildlife deaths at Save Valley from 2001 to 2009.
During a four-year subset, 58.8% of 2,398 snared carcasses were rotten or scavenged; hunters recovered only 13.9%.
The figures expose the waste built into unattended traps: many animals die without becoming food or income.
Villager Tapiwa Murungweni described an even less selective method.
“Some people in the trade I know poison water holes where animals come to drink water,” he said.
Other villagers separately told 263Chat that hunters used cyanide. Tatenda Muzanenhamo said he repeatedly saw discarded cyanide containers in the bush.
“The containers are always lying around. Cyanide is readily available because it is used to purify gold by gold miners in the area,” he said.
These guys don’t hesitate to kill as long as they get what they want,” he said.
Muzanenhamo’s account supports the villagers’ allegations without proving cyanide killed a particular animal.
Their testimony raises a further danger: poisoned carcasses entering the food chain.
Butchered in the bush
Murungweni said hunters butchered carcasses in the bush, beyond veterinary inspection and regulated slaughter facilities.
When poison was used, hunters discarded only the portions they believed were contaminated, he said.
“They know which areas are affected by the poison, and they throw away those parts,” he said.
Asked what protected hunters and consumers, he replied, “Haaa, ndezvemusango, baba” – loosely, “These are things of the bush, sir.”
He described no testing, protective equipment or refrigeration.
A veterinarian at a Zimbabwean university said the hunters’ judgment offered no reliable protection.
263Chat withheld his name because he feared professional repercussions.
“Cutting away the parts hunters believe contain poison does not make the remaining meat safe,” he said.
“Cooking or drying may destroy some microorganisms, but neither method should be trusted to neutralise an unidentified poison.”
Bush butchering creates another risk: soil, dirty water, faeces, flies and unclean equipment can contaminate meat, while bacteria multiply without refrigeration, the veterinarian said.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission’s international meat-hygiene code calls for hygienic dressing of wild game and inspection for disease, poisoning and environmental contaminants.
Legal, inspected game meat is not inherently unsafe, the veterinarian said.
The danger is meat whose origin, cause of death and handling cannot be established.
In Zambia, the World Health Organization reported that 26 people developed sores after eating meat from three wild hippopotamus carcasses during a 2023 anthrax outbreak. It does not prove Zimbabwe’s illegal game meat carries anthrax; it shows the risk of eating animals of unknown health status.
After butchering, hunters tied the pieces with rope or bark fibre and carried them out of the bush, Murungweni said.
How an animal becomes a goat
Removing a head, hooves and other identifying features can make wildlife meat difficult to distinguish from legally slaughtered livestock.
A ZimParks investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity said some offenders exploited that uncertainty.
“Some offenders disguise impala meat by mixing it with meat from a slaughtered goat,” he said.
“They may carry the goat’s head with the consignment, creating the impression that all the meat came from the domestic animal.”
Drying reduced the meat’s bulk and altered its appearance, making it easier to hide in luggage, he said.
“We once arrested someone who had a huge travelling bag full of elephant meat mixed with clothes,” the investigator said.
He said carriers often travelled after midnight, when they expected fewer road checks.
A waiting market gave the concealed meat a destination.
A market waiting
The Save Valley study found that 96% of interviewed hunters cited household consumption, but 93% also sold game meat and 61% received orders before hunting.
Villages were the most frequently reported market, while 62% identified restaurants and butcher shops as buyers.
Subsistence and commerce overlapped; in many cases, demand preceded the kill.
In Siakobvu, community member Sekuru Tavaziva described dried meat sold in small quantities.
“They sell the meat at $1 per plastic packet,” he said. “It is mainly dried game, and people buy it because of the health benefits associated with game meat.”
He did not know the packets’ weight and said sellers never answered his questions about safety.
The investigator distinguished hunting zones near park boundaries, where hunters could escape quickly, from community meeting points connecting hunters and buyers.
He identified Chitekete and Sandura in Gokwe as alleged meeting points.
In Kariba, the reporter sometimes posed as a prospective buyer because people involved in the trade distrusted strangers.
A restaurant worker said the owner relied on a familiar supplier who mainly brought impala, although she did not know where he obtained it.
“He only trusts his source and no one else,” she said.
The reporter did not witness a delivery or establish the meat’s legality. The account shows how trust can shield a possible supply relationship but does not prove an illegal transaction.
The same secrecy makes it difficult to connect food on a plate to an animal killed in the bush.
Where the chain breaks
In court, identifying the species is only the first link. Investigators must connect each hunter, carrier, seller or buyer to an illegal kill or transaction.
“We have been losing a lot of cases,” the ZimParks investigator said. “It will be upon us to prove that it is buffalo, but at the same time it will be very expensive to do so.”
The Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust said its laboratory spends about $100 on reagents per species-identification sample, before preservation and transport. Some exhibits must be flown there, the investigator said.
DNA can name the animal. It cannot show who ordered, transported or bought it.
“Evidence of sale – receipts, witness testimony and undercover purchase records – is often missing,” wildlife lawyer Ever Vimbai Chinoda said.
Poor exhibit records can also create doubts about contamination or substitution, she said.
“Prosecutors may prove poaching but fail to connect transporters, middlemen or retailers to the original illegal act,” Chinoda said. “This breaks the chain of liability.”
The Parks and Wildlife Amendment Act, gazetted as Act No. 4 of 2025, defines trafficking to include unlawfully selling, buying, importing or exporting wildlife meat, including attempts and preparatory conduct.
It reaches beyond hunters but still requires evidence of each person’s involvement.
“End-users are rarely prosecuted, even though demand fuels the trade,” said Chinoda, who called for investigations tracing orders, payments and profits.
Save Valley researchers reviewed 260 cases involving 351 defendants recorded between 2015 and 2017 at Chiredzi Magistrates Court.
Ten percent were withdrawn before plea, while 40% ended in fines or community service. Fines ranged from $20 to $200; 54% of interviewed hunters reported at least two arrests.
The cases predated the amendment but show how arresting hunters without following the market leaves the wider chain intact.
263Chat sent ZimParks questions about the trade in late July 2026. Public relations manager Luckmore Safuli said the authority was pursuing the matter, but it had not provided substantive answers by publication in September.
Following the whole chain
“An impala dies, and the country does not stop,” environmental scientist Oliver Mutopo said. “A wildebeest disappears, and there is no global campaign.”
Yet these species feed predators, support tourism and help hold ecosystems together, he said.
Enforcement alone cannot remove the pressures drawing hunters into the trade. Simbarashe said unsuccessful farming pushed him towards quick income.
“I tried farming but wasn’t really successful, so I chose something offering quick money,” he said.
Poverty does not excuse illegal hunting, but it creates vulnerabilities buyers can exploit where communities bear wildlife’s costs without seeing credible returns.
ZimParks recorded 2,090 human-wildlife conflict incidents in 2025 including 62 deaths, 81 injuries and 801 livestock losses. Crop destruction added to the burden.
“When families do not see tangible returns from conservation, they may be more susceptible to recruitment by illegal syndicates who promise quick financial gain,” said Lungile Sibanda, who was acting director of CAMPFIRE Association Zimbabwe when interviewed.
Sibanda called for transparent ward-level revenue records, direct household benefits, timely relief for wildlife losses and conservation-linked livelihoods.
Namibia offers both a model and a warning. A 2025 study of its communal conservancies found that stronger local management and financial governance were associated with higher income, but researchers said benefit distribution still needed improvement.
The Hwange case showed what preserved evidence and species testing can achieve. Lasting success requires affordable forensic capacity, investigations that follow orders, payments and buyers, and transparent benefits and timely relief for communities.
Until both happen, the next impala may already have a customer before the flashlight turns on.
