In the half-light of dawn along the unfenced Zimbabwe-Botswana border, villagers from Maitengwe moved in small groups, scanning the scrubland for hoofprints. They were not looking to herd their cattle, they were trying to recover them.
“They hit five homesteads in one night,” said farmer Richard Masunda from Maitengwe - a village on the Botswana side of the country’s border with Zimbabwe.
Our reporters came across this party early one morning, in March this year. They were investigating how cattle theft cartels operate in these remote borderlands.
“We even know (the thieves’) names: Godo, Mpume, Mgcini. But they’re still out there, and they know the terrain better than we do. We’re out here every morning, trying to pick up signs of where they went.”
On the other side of the border, villagers are equally frustrated.
“We report. They’re caught. Then released,” said headman Joe Tshuma from Madlambudzi village in Bulilima District, Zimbabwe.
“How do cattle get past police roadblocks at night? The law said you can’t move them after dark. So how? Something’s not right.”
Their desperation highlights a growing regional crisis. One that has prompted a high-level response. Cattle rustling, a deeply entrenched historical issue in this region, has risen in scale and sophistication along the Zimbabwe-Botswana border, inflicting profound economic and social harm on affected communities.
For generations, livestock have represented not just wealth but a way of life.
“They steal our cattle, and we’re left with nothing,” said Mr Tshuma.
“This is how we pay school fees. This is how we eat and survive.”
It is a crisis that deeply affects both countries. In 2023 alone, Zimbabwe’s Anti-Stock Theft Unit recorded 11,313 cases of livestock theft, with cattle theft specifically increasing by 11 percent from the previous year.
Botswana reported nearly 9,750 incidents.
But the situation in the remote borderlands between the two countries is especially punishing for the communities living there.
Unlike general stock theft, which typically occurs within a single jurisdiction and allows for relatively straightforward police investigation and recovery processes, cross-border rustling traps victims in a jurisdictional grey zone.
Once cattle are moved across the unfenced border, the chances of tracing or recovering them become almost non-existent.
Governments agree to curb cross-border smuggling
Responding to the growing crisis in the border regions, the Governments of Botswana and Zimbabwe signed a high-level Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) last year.
It promised increased information sharing, joint enforcement operations, and harmonised legal frameworks to dismantle the syndicates that steal and smuggle cattle across the porous border.
But on the ground in the border regions, village leaders, like Richard Masunda and Joe Tshuma, say little has changed. Despite diplomatic agreements, cattle continue to vanish, and known rustlers remain free.
Now, an investigation supported by the Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project (SA AJP) has found that some members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police, specifically general duty officers tasked with clearing livestock for movement, are themselves enabling the very smuggling networks they are meant to police, working in collusion with rustlers to keep the trade alive.
The problem of police collusion with cattle rustlers is spread across Zimbabwe. Yet, the testimony of a former police officer - whose work used to stretch across vast swathes in the border areas of Matabeleland South - suggests that if the Governments are to curb these crimes in the areas where victims are most vulnerable, they must tackle police complicity and corruption first.
Zimbabwean police abuse their powers to help rustlers
At the heart of the problem lies Zimbabwe’s livestock clearance system, a paper-based process meant to prevent cattle theft and control the spread of disease.
Before cattle can be moved by road within Zimbabwe, whether for sale, slaughter, or across provincial lines, ownership must first be confirmed by a village head or other trusted community witness.
This is followed by a veterinary inspection to certify the animals as disease-free. Only then should the police issue the final movement permit.
But in practice, the system is routinely undermined: police officers have been known to issue clearances without checking documents or requiring witnesses, often in exchange for bribes.
The result is a clearance process that rustlers have learned to exploit — a mechanism designed to protect livestock owners has instead become one that enables their loss.
This reporting team gained rare access to Khami Maximum Security Prison in Bulawayo with permission from the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services. There, they conducted interviews with two convicted livestock rustlers, one of whom is a former police officer.
The officer agreed to the interview, only on condition that he not be named. He said he will one day be released from prison and would like to start a new life. He would not like to be identifiable as a convict, he explained.
At the time of his arrest in 2022, he was a constable stationed in Tshanyaugwe area, one of Zimbabwe’s cross-border cattle rustling hot spots in Matabeleland South Province.
The officer, now serving 18 years for stock theft, had been systematically involved in the area’s rustling trade over time, exploiting his position to operate with impunity. Cattle theft attracts a mandatory minimum sentence of nine years. He also was sentenced for abusing the office.
“It was easy money,” he said.
“There’s a process. The village head confirms ownership, the vet inspects the animals, and then we, as police, issue final clearance. In some cases, we saw that the papers weren’t complete, the due process was not followed, but we turned a blind eye. For a bribe, of course.”
He adds that syndicates were clever, winning officers over slowly with small favours and deceptions.
“They would offer us transport when we had no vehicles to go to the next village to clear livestock. In some instances, they would send someone new and clean for clearance of livestock, who wouldn’t raise eyebrows at the police station. Some of these guys had been at it for years; they know the tactics.”
The cop said police officers who played along were rarely criminals to begin with, and were slowly enticed into the corruption.
“They start small. First it’s just a ride they offer you so that you can go and clear the livestock. Then a little cash. Before you know it, you're part of it.”
A racket spread across Zimbabwe, sometimes with cops as kingpins
Another inmate who agreed to speak was Jonathan Mahlangu. He was arrested and tried for the theft of 14 donkeys in Lupane Matabeleland North is also serving time behind bars at the Maximum Prison.
Despite his imprisonment, Mahlangu still pleads his innocence. In his account, it was a police officer who duped and corrupted him and not the other way around.
“The officer told me I’d just be delivering animals,” he said. In Mahlangu’s case he was hired to transport donkeys, not cattle.
“He cleared everything, signed and stamped the documents that seemed genuine to me. My name was on the forms. I asked why my name was on the form and he explained the process to me and l
believed him.
I thought it was legal because this is a business being run by a police officer, and l would collect some of the donkeys for resale at the police base where he used to work. The documents (looked) genuine ... to me and the local headman.”
Still, Mahlangu was arrested while the officer behind the scheme went free.
He wept as he narrated his ordeal.
In a statement released in April, Zimbabwe’s National Prosecuting Authority announced that two other police officers had been convicted for stock theft, this time in the east of the country near the border of Mozambique.
They were sentenced to nine years each. In another case, the alleged kingpin of a cattle rustling gang, Zvishavane police officer Kudakwashe Chigwa, was arrested in 2023. He was found to have been instrumental in manipulating the “clearance” of stolen cattle.
Confirmation from a vet and former cop
Dr Enat Mdlongwa, the provincial veterinary officer for Matabeleland South province in Zimbabwe, which is a flashpoint for cross-border rustling, confirmed that the livestock clearance process - over which Zimbabwean police in the area have significant influence - is exceedingly vulnerable to corruption.
“We see cases where police have already issued clearance, and then the buyer comes to us afterwards,” he said, adding that this is a sure red flag.
“That’s not how it works. First, the village head must confirm ownership. Then we inspect the cattle. Only after that should the police give their go-ahead. If you skip that, it's mischief.”
Dr Mdlongwa acknowledges that despite knowing the law is being broken, enforcement often fails.
“Some buyers know they can bypass us,” said Dr Mdlongwa.
A retired mid-ranking police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed during an interview that the clearance process is vulnerable to corruption.
“It’s still all paper. You get one form for ten cattle from the local vet and these rustlers can re-use it five times, if no one cross checks. They’re supposed to leave clearance forms at the abattoir (when cattle are delivered for slaughter). They don’t.”
He highlighted reliance on stamps and handwritten slips as a loophole that is fertile ground for forgery. Forged documents sometimes bore counterfeit or fraudulent police stamps, he said.
“Some of those stamps ... I don’t know if they were faked or just bought off someone, but they looked real. Some dared to write on paper, not the clearance form, have it stamped, and what puzzled us is that the butcher or abattoir officials would accept such. And that’s the danger.”
Vigilante groups form in face of police inaction
According to Zimbabwe Republic Police Spokesperson, Commissioner Paul Nyathi, the force is aware of the problem of officers working with rustlers.
“We’ve had officers not following procedures. Others, sadly, have worked hand in hand with rustling syndicates. Some have been prosecuted. The law will take its course,” he said.
Still, victims say few ever face justice — and that the same names resurface again and again.
The formation of the Maitengwe Anti-Crime group in 2018, a citizen-led border patrol effort involving villagers from both Zimbabwe and Botswana, underscores the desperation. With flashlights and resolve, they walk the border at dawn and dusk.
“They have their own syndicate. They come at night, hit four or five homesteads,” said Masunda, from Maitengwe village on the Botswana side of the border.
“We’re left with nothing. No food, no school fees, no ploughing. Some of the villagers who lose their cattle to rustlers cannot come to terms with the loss and maybe that’s why they die prematurely.”
The inter-governmental MoU signed in early 2024 was a first step toward tackling cattle rustling, a broad agreement outlining intentions for cross-border cooperation on livestock movement.
Months later, with cattle theft still ongoing, both countries signalled an intention to expand the agreement with a more formal framework. This would seek to establish clear roles and mechanisms for enforcement across borders.
As the two countries inch toward finalising the framework’s implementation, residents like Headman Tshuma watch with cautious skepticism.
“We’ve heard the promises before,” he said. “They sign papers, shake hands, then we go back to losing everything.”
For families like that of Innocent Ngwenya in Nsubula village, Plumtree, Zimbabwe, the toll is severe.
“Seven cattle, gone in one night,” he said.
“My eldest son had to leave school. No cows means no ploughing, no food, no future. The rustlers didn’t just take meat. They took our lifeline.”
In the end, whether the framework becomes a force for change or just another forgotten paper trail will depend not on summits or signatures, but on whether stolen cattle are recovered and corrupt officers held to account.
*This investigation was produced by the Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project (SA | AJP), a project of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation funded by the European Union. The article does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
“They hit five homesteads in one night,” said farmer Richard Masunda from Maitengwe - a village on the Botswana side of the country’s border with Zimbabwe.
Our reporters came across this party early one morning, in March this year. They were investigating how cattle theft cartels operate in these remote borderlands.
“We even know (the thieves’) names: Godo, Mpume, Mgcini. But they’re still out there, and they know the terrain better than we do. We’re out here every morning, trying to pick up signs of where they went.”
On the other side of the border, villagers are equally frustrated.
“We report. They’re caught. Then released,” said headman Joe Tshuma from Madlambudzi village in Bulilima District, Zimbabwe.
“How do cattle get past police roadblocks at night? The law said you can’t move them after dark. So how? Something’s not right.”
Their desperation highlights a growing regional crisis. One that has prompted a high-level response. Cattle rustling, a deeply entrenched historical issue in this region, has risen in scale and sophistication along the Zimbabwe-Botswana border, inflicting profound economic and social harm on affected communities.
For generations, livestock have represented not just wealth but a way of life.
“They steal our cattle, and we’re left with nothing,” said Mr Tshuma.
“This is how we pay school fees. This is how we eat and survive.”
It is a crisis that deeply affects both countries. In 2023 alone, Zimbabwe’s Anti-Stock Theft Unit recorded 11,313 cases of livestock theft, with cattle theft specifically increasing by 11 percent from the previous year.
Botswana reported nearly 9,750 incidents.
But the situation in the remote borderlands between the two countries is especially punishing for the communities living there.
Unlike general stock theft, which typically occurs within a single jurisdiction and allows for relatively straightforward police investigation and recovery processes, cross-border rustling traps victims in a jurisdictional grey zone.
Once cattle are moved across the unfenced border, the chances of tracing or recovering them become almost non-existent.
Governments agree to curb cross-border smuggling
Responding to the growing crisis in the border regions, the Governments of Botswana and Zimbabwe signed a high-level Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) last year.
It promised increased information sharing, joint enforcement operations, and harmonised legal frameworks to dismantle the syndicates that steal and smuggle cattle across the porous border.
But on the ground in the border regions, village leaders, like Richard Masunda and Joe Tshuma, say little has changed. Despite diplomatic agreements, cattle continue to vanish, and known rustlers remain free.
Now, an investigation supported by the Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project (SA AJP) has found that some members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police, specifically general duty officers tasked with clearing livestock for movement, are themselves enabling the very smuggling networks they are meant to police, working in collusion with rustlers to keep the trade alive.
The problem of police collusion with cattle rustlers is spread across Zimbabwe. Yet, the testimony of a former police officer - whose work used to stretch across vast swathes in the border areas of Matabeleland South - suggests that if the Governments are to curb these crimes in the areas where victims are most vulnerable, they must tackle police complicity and corruption first.
Zimbabwean police abuse their powers to help rustlers
At the heart of the problem lies Zimbabwe’s livestock clearance system, a paper-based process meant to prevent cattle theft and control the spread of disease.
Before cattle can be moved by road within Zimbabwe, whether for sale, slaughter, or across provincial lines, ownership must first be confirmed by a village head or other trusted community witness.
This is followed by a veterinary inspection to certify the animals as disease-free. Only then should the police issue the final movement permit.
But in practice, the system is routinely undermined: police officers have been known to issue clearances without checking documents or requiring witnesses, often in exchange for bribes.
The result is a clearance process that rustlers have learned to exploit — a mechanism designed to protect livestock owners has instead become one that enables their loss.
This reporting team gained rare access to Khami Maximum Security Prison in Bulawayo with permission from the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services. There, they conducted interviews with two convicted livestock rustlers, one of whom is a former police officer.
The officer agreed to the interview, only on condition that he not be named. He said he will one day be released from prison and would like to start a new life. He would not like to be identifiable as a convict, he explained.
At the time of his arrest in 2022, he was a constable stationed in Tshanyaugwe area, one of Zimbabwe’s cross-border cattle rustling hot spots in Matabeleland South Province.
The officer, now serving 18 years for stock theft, had been systematically involved in the area’s rustling trade over time, exploiting his position to operate with impunity. Cattle theft attracts a mandatory minimum sentence of nine years. He also was sentenced for abusing the office.
“It was easy money,” he said.
“There’s a process. The village head confirms ownership, the vet inspects the animals, and then we, as police, issue final clearance. In some cases, we saw that the papers weren’t complete, the due process was not followed, but we turned a blind eye. For a bribe, of course.”
He adds that syndicates were clever, winning officers over slowly with small favours and deceptions.
“They would offer us transport when we had no vehicles to go to the next village to clear livestock. In some instances, they would send someone new and clean for clearance of livestock, who wouldn’t raise eyebrows at the police station. Some of these guys had been at it for years; they know the tactics.”
The cop said police officers who played along were rarely criminals to begin with, and were slowly enticed into the corruption.
“They start small. First it’s just a ride they offer you so that you can go and clear the livestock. Then a little cash. Before you know it, you're part of it.”
A racket spread across Zimbabwe, sometimes with cops as kingpins
Another inmate who agreed to speak was Jonathan Mahlangu. He was arrested and tried for the theft of 14 donkeys in Lupane Matabeleland North is also serving time behind bars at the Maximum Prison.
Despite his imprisonment, Mahlangu still pleads his innocence. In his account, it was a police officer who duped and corrupted him and not the other way around.
“The officer told me I’d just be delivering animals,” he said. In Mahlangu’s case he was hired to transport donkeys, not cattle.
“He cleared everything, signed and stamped the documents that seemed genuine to me. My name was on the forms. I asked why my name was on the form and he explained the process to me and l
believed him.
I thought it was legal because this is a business being run by a police officer, and l would collect some of the donkeys for resale at the police base where he used to work. The documents (looked) genuine ... to me and the local headman.”
Still, Mahlangu was arrested while the officer behind the scheme went free.
He wept as he narrated his ordeal.
In a statement released in April, Zimbabwe’s National Prosecuting Authority announced that two other police officers had been convicted for stock theft, this time in the east of the country near the border of Mozambique.
They were sentenced to nine years each. In another case, the alleged kingpin of a cattle rustling gang, Zvishavane police officer Kudakwashe Chigwa, was arrested in 2023. He was found to have been instrumental in manipulating the “clearance” of stolen cattle.
Confirmation from a vet and former cop
Dr Enat Mdlongwa, the provincial veterinary officer for Matabeleland South province in Zimbabwe, which is a flashpoint for cross-border rustling, confirmed that the livestock clearance process - over which Zimbabwean police in the area have significant influence - is exceedingly vulnerable to corruption.
“We see cases where police have already issued clearance, and then the buyer comes to us afterwards,” he said, adding that this is a sure red flag.
“That’s not how it works. First, the village head must confirm ownership. Then we inspect the cattle. Only after that should the police give their go-ahead. If you skip that, it's mischief.”
Dr Mdlongwa acknowledges that despite knowing the law is being broken, enforcement often fails.
“Some buyers know they can bypass us,” said Dr Mdlongwa.
A retired mid-ranking police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed during an interview that the clearance process is vulnerable to corruption.
“It’s still all paper. You get one form for ten cattle from the local vet and these rustlers can re-use it five times, if no one cross checks. They’re supposed to leave clearance forms at the abattoir (when cattle are delivered for slaughter). They don’t.”
He highlighted reliance on stamps and handwritten slips as a loophole that is fertile ground for forgery. Forged documents sometimes bore counterfeit or fraudulent police stamps, he said.
“Some of those stamps ... I don’t know if they were faked or just bought off someone, but they looked real. Some dared to write on paper, not the clearance form, have it stamped, and what puzzled us is that the butcher or abattoir officials would accept such. And that’s the danger.”
Vigilante groups form in face of police inaction
According to Zimbabwe Republic Police Spokesperson, Commissioner Paul Nyathi, the force is aware of the problem of officers working with rustlers.
“We’ve had officers not following procedures. Others, sadly, have worked hand in hand with rustling syndicates. Some have been prosecuted. The law will take its course,” he said.
Still, victims say few ever face justice — and that the same names resurface again and again.
The formation of the Maitengwe Anti-Crime group in 2018, a citizen-led border patrol effort involving villagers from both Zimbabwe and Botswana, underscores the desperation. With flashlights and resolve, they walk the border at dawn and dusk.
“They have their own syndicate. They come at night, hit four or five homesteads,” said Masunda, from Maitengwe village on the Botswana side of the border.
“We’re left with nothing. No food, no school fees, no ploughing. Some of the villagers who lose their cattle to rustlers cannot come to terms with the loss and maybe that’s why they die prematurely.”
The inter-governmental MoU signed in early 2024 was a first step toward tackling cattle rustling, a broad agreement outlining intentions for cross-border cooperation on livestock movement.
Months later, with cattle theft still ongoing, both countries signalled an intention to expand the agreement with a more formal framework. This would seek to establish clear roles and mechanisms for enforcement across borders.
As the two countries inch toward finalising the framework’s implementation, residents like Headman Tshuma watch with cautious skepticism.
“We’ve heard the promises before,” he said. “They sign papers, shake hands, then we go back to losing everything.”
For families like that of Innocent Ngwenya in Nsubula village, Plumtree, Zimbabwe, the toll is severe.
“Seven cattle, gone in one night,” he said.
“My eldest son had to leave school. No cows means no ploughing, no food, no future. The rustlers didn’t just take meat. They took our lifeline.”
In the end, whether the framework becomes a force for change or just another forgotten paper trail will depend not on summits or signatures, but on whether stolen cattle are recovered and corrupt officers held to account.
*This investigation was produced by the Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project (SA | AJP), a project of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation funded by the European Union. The article does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
