ABSTRACT
Mafungautsi forest offers a variety of resources, including pastures for grazing animals, thatch grass, broom grass, medicinal plants, honey, mushrooms, firewood, construction timber, game meat, edible mopane worms (Imbresia belina), indigenous fruits, and herbs. This 82,000-hectare forest is located in Gokwe Communal area, Midlands province, Zimbabwe (Figure 11-1). The majority of stakeholders around Mafungautsi belong to two main ethnic groups, Ndebele and Shona, with the rest belonging to four other ethnic groups—Shangwe, Chewa (immigrants from neighboring Malawi), Tonga, and Kalanga. Except for the Shangwe, the rest of the ethnic groups are immigrants to the area. It is in this area that CIFOR’s adaptive collaborative management research is being carried out (also see Chapter 6).
