Heading into town on Saturday 20 October, I was surprised to see tree branches blocking access to Haile Selassie Avenue from the traffic circle at Longacres. Not having time to glance up the road whilst trying to dodge some of the Corolla Crowd who were doing their strange manoeuvres, I continued on in the direction of Rhodes Park for my meeting. Having completed that I returned to Longacres to see how things were going with ‘our rhino’

Imagine my dismay when I found, on ‘the rhino’s’ doorstep, the City Council pruning … NO, they were not pruning. They were HACKING the branches of the trees that line the sides of Haile Selassie Avenue. Not only did they hack the branches but they have left the wounds open leaving those fifty or sixty year old trees (they were enormous when I was a child) open to attack from bacteria which could eventually kill them. The only sin that I could see that these trees have committed is that they give lovely cool shade to Lusaka’s residents who wait for, embark on or disembark from buses at the bus stops underneath them.

Was it not just two weeks previous that Lusaka Mayor, Daniel Chisenga, stood under those very trees in the October heat whilst he visited the rhino statue to help reinforce Kachere’s message of protecting the environment? Or was the Mayor’s visit just a photo opportunity?

Are these trees not almost the next door neighbours to the offices of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Wildlife and Environmental Conservation Society of Zambia? The irony of it!

And here we have volunteers from Lusaka 100 worrying about beautifying our city, yet the City Council who are supposed to be the Guardians of our city are out annihilating some of the cities few remaining trees?

The LCC website tells us that ‘it is a serious offence for anyone to cut trees in Public Area without permission from the Council’. [Sic]

I guess that by now you might have gathered that I am spitting mad. So mad that I am forming an ad-hoc spur-of-the-moment protest group – CADOOTS – Citizens Against Destruction Of Our Trees – and I am going to bombard the Council with letters of complaint. If you want to be in cahoots with CADOOTS, letters should be addressed to the Town Clerk, Lusaka City Council, P O Box 30077, Lusaka.