14/02/2016
Dust,dust and yet more dust. Choking, swirling, dry dust envelopes, every crack every nook filled with the wretched stuff. The heat of yet another blistering dry day in Africa, it is the 10th of October 2030. My 66th year passed in the same manner as all the others, the last 26 celebrating with my children,the joy of my existence,only this time marred with a great loneliness and indescribable sadness.
I gaze out of the window of my Land Rover. In the distance I spot Mango, my loyal and indisputable companion with whom I have spent the last 30 years, trudging through a mire of thick grey dust, ankle deep, he moves without the spring in his step, without the purpose that was once so familiar. As he approaches me, his gaze, communicating the same sadness and desperation that I feel, falls upon me, only now it is a gaze filled with the added look of the defeated, the vanquished. In his deep baritone he speaks " yena ifile, yonke" They are dead, all of them. I do not answer him for I cannot, I dare not. It is over, the last of the cattle have been taken in this, the third year of drought. Memories of the 2015 drought had initially flooded back and now replaced by conditions unparalleled in our lifetime, conditions that no domestic animal could survive, indigenous wildlife could have but most of that has gone. Cattle, sheep even the hardy, indomitable spirit of the the goat was broken, as was Africa and much of its people. Rural communities had long since left for the cities, it was, they thought, hoped, their only savior. It was not to be and never could have been, city life in Africa was never meant for rural people. People of the wilds, the land, the true African who's roots anchored deep, over millennia in the bushveld, miombo woodlands, acacia savannah and arid deserts of a once, bountiful continent.
Mango's was the last of the 30 families I once employed on my 25000 hectare ranch. I could not look at him, he stood silently staring into the distance, our futures once assured of being intricately woven,now uncertain and as bleak as the landscape that stretched out before us.
I gestured for him to get into the vehicle. As I drove back to the farmhouse, we climbed the crest of a hill, a hill that we had crested in happier times more than I can remember. As we reached the summit I stopped, shutting off the engine, I opened the door and stepped down onto the dusty track.Removing two ice cold beers from the Engel mounted in the load bed, I beckoned to Mango to accompany me. A short walk through the remnants of what was once a huge maroela forest brought us to the edge of a sandstone outcrop. I gazed across the vista, previously studded with maroelas,bands of thick green mopane blending into riverine habitat with cathedral-like Jackalberry, leadwood and winterthorn trees standing sentinel over the famed,green,greasy Limpopo river. Wildlife abounded, thousands of head of wild African animals, fed, breathed, procreated and lived in complete harmony with each other and with us. Our hunting off take, controlled, monitored and sustainable. Game capture, supplying reclaimed habitat with new game populations regenerating those that had dwindled to points of extinction centuries before. All generating finance to maintain this wonderland, employ and feed the families that worked for us. This, all directly.
Indirectly,those that supplied groceries, farming equipment, real estate,animal feed, air charters for the abundant tourists,printing businesses,butcheries, hotels, transfer companies, schools, the list endless but all benefactors of this single piece of African wilderness, practicing age old conservation methods with immense success.
I opened the beers and handed one across to Mango, sat across from me on a natural step of sandstone. The cold liquid slaking not only our thirst but bringing with it momentary respite from the blinding heat.
What now lay before us barely comprehensible. Grass long since gone, topsoil broken and chopped into fine talcum by cattle's hooves, the hundreds that had meandered blindly searching for food in a wilderness that was never meant for them. The red marks dotted across this vista so easily mistaken for termite mounds, the desiccated hides of dead domestic stock. Stunted mopane scrub, obliterated,the huge trees that lined the river skeletal, dead, their bark long since stripped.The view across miles of miles of a once pristine Africa,now resembled a scene akin to a First World War battle field. Complete with the huge grey carcasses of the tanks capable of such destruction, they marked the portrait below in their hundreds upon hundreds, elephants, starvation taking them slowly at first but now, daily they added to their depletion. All else had long since gone.
Beyond the Limpopo, our neighbors, Botswana, they too in the throes of total wildlife habitat destruction and loss, as was much of sub Saharan Africa.
Since the ban on hunting in 2020, this and the lack of foresight by African governments to take on sensible management practices with our elephant herds, with pressure from the West, so called " conservationists" self gratifying and treacherous, participating in banal television shows addressing faceless millions ignorant to the ways,culture and methods of Africa.
Yet emotion and ignorance manipulated by these self serving bigots have been singularly guilty of the greatest crime ever committed against that which they had believed they were helping, Africa's wildlife populations.Replacing wildlife with domestic stock, a reversal back to an earlier time.
In 1977 the East African country Kenya declared a total ban on all hunting, wildlife there perished to a percentage point of it's original numbers. Yet we did not learn from this tragedy. The same forces through corruption, self interest, propaganda, blatant lies and more than any other factor the emotional blackmail of countless millions of the uninformed, sentenced our beautiful wilderness to death.
Beyond the river an unaccustomed sight, tendrils of smoke pouring out of the village fires, the remnants of rural folk that had not made the trek to "civilization" rural folk whom had benefited from the proceeds of hunting: employment, schools, clinics, fresh water and hope of a brighter future,all gone.Now encroached in what was once wildlife habitat of monumental proportion, it all gone and there, the termite mounds too,dotted the landscape.
My eyes moist, it must be the smoke.
Below us, movement, four elephant bulls edged out of behind a cluster of shredded baobab trees, one particularly large bull.
Motioning to Mango I started to move off the hill angling down to the bulls. Soon we were mere yards from them, silent and hidden.
He stood, tired, his massive frame covered with loose grey folds, hanging. His head abnormally large, attached to what was once a huge and powerful body. The sunken temples, ruhmy eyes, alone reflected his age, on the ground piles of his dung, filled with undigested vegetation confirmed that which his physical presence did not. His teeth had long since worn down, his 5th set of molars, mere stumps in a cavernous mouth.
Resting his huge head against the old baobab, upon that which still held much of his original magnificence, the two pillars now, a blend of black, custard and cream, the long shafts, once carried in his head with ease, now took all of the old bulls remaining strength to lift.He leant the weight of himself against them, their blunt ends pressing into the soft flesh of the tree. His huge ears, like the worn sails of some old and forgotten galleon that had sailed the world, flapped softly in the suppressive heat of the mid afternoon. The low grumbles that emanated from deep within him were returned by those that watched him. The 3 young bulls had been with him for many cycles of the moon,driven by an ancient force, they deserted him not yet they too, skeletal and weak.
In the clear blue sky, high above the scene below, vultures circled.
The smoke now burning my eyes,we left and headed back to the Land Rover.
By Paul Stones
THE SYSTEMIC DEMISE OF HUNTING AS A CONSERVATION TOOL, WILL ENSURE THE ABSOLUTE DEMISE OF WILDLIFE IN AFRICA 14th February 2016 Paul Stones
