It is not an enviable position Superintendent Pieter Lategan, commander of the South African Police Service’s endangered species protection unit (ESPU), finds himself in (“`Cream Poachers’ are greatest threat to Africa’s wildlife”, Monitor, April 1 to 8).
Lategan’s struggling unit was thrown a $460 000 lifeline by an ostensibly harmless supporter. This came about in the form of Operation Jumbo – a contracted investigation into the status of elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade in 10 African countries.
Who can blame Lategan for grasping the opportunity with both hands? But it is a great pity, then, that the anti-poaching law enforcement officer should have such great difficulty in distinguishing between friends and enemies.
Lategan lashes out at “certain NGOs” – singling out, for some obscure reason, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, accusing it of putting his unit “under attack”, allowing “the work of nature conservation law enforcers to be sabotaged”.
He states, correctly (our organisation was one of the NGOs), that the concern was the potential damage that could be caused by Operation Jumbo. We are seeing the damage before our very eyes:
l The funding of Operation Jumbo was kept secret to such an extent that the ESPU Trust, which specifically raises funds for the ESPU, was not aware of it. According to Lategan, but unbeknown to the trustees, the trust is even the recipient of the capital portion of the Operation Jumbo donation.
l The secrecy aspect is magnified by the fact that a representative of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), the NGO which funded Operation Jumbo, is on the board of the ESPU Trust.
l The operation has been the subject of a hearing by the parliamentary portfolio committee on environmental affairs and tourism, and has been referred to the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism with a brief to consider a commission of inquiry.
l Either the commission or the NGOs were lied to in that Lategan and Ifaw have different answers as to whether Ifaw was privy to a preliminary report on the operation.
l There are equally disparate answers as to whether Operation Jumbo was an Ifaw or an ESPU initiative.
l The hastily compiled (a condition of the contract with Ifaw) and modified report has been vilified across the board by conservation authorities and NGOs alike.
l Photographic and video material gathered by the investigators is now in the hands of Ifaw.
l The association of the unit with an organisation diametrically opposed to official South African policy on sustainable wildlife utilisation has raised many eyebrows.
The damage is magnified when Lategan insists there is nothing amiss with accepting funds from an overseas organisation such as Ifaw (the organisation has twice been denied membership of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature).
Lategan himself defines “Cream Poachers” as being after “money, money and money again”. He is right – it is all about money. Large amounts of it, raised in the name of conservation, misrepresenting images and information From page 34
to prise loose many millions of dollars from unsuspecting, well-meaning people all over the world. The sum of $460 000 is an investment with potentially enormous returns for Ifaw.
Asking for a range of corruption investigations, as Lategan has done, is hardly going to repair relationships between the ESPU and neighbouring countries.
Corruption was never alleged by any of the NGOs (although Lategan has openly accused them of corruption). The concern was, and remains, the damage that the source, nature and funding of the report would do (and now has done) to the ESPUand to wildlife law enforcement in general.
The concern has been raised that perhaps this is not entirely coincidental: it could be part of a carefully orchestrated plot to discredit and disable South Africa’s law- enforcement capacities in the run-up to the next meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), due to be held in Kenya next year.
Can South Africa put forward any trade proposals to Cites if its law-enforcement capabilities are demonstrably weakened?
Lategan is turning his back on his strongest allies – the conservation NGOs based in South Africa which have the interest of the country, its animals and his unit at heart.
These NGOs represent a network that could immediately and substantially strengthen his worth and the success of regional conservation into the next millennium.
Lategan said himself that most elephants are killed for meat and because there is “simply no reason to protect them”.
Unless we can give African communities a reason to protect their elephants and other animals, no law enforcement will stem the tide: the people of Africa need to perceive some value in their wildlife in order to protect it.
It is this very concept, of responsible custodianship and sustainable utilisation, which is the target of so much misguided input from overseas NGOs which have no grasp of the realities we face in Africa – and, to be frank, little experience in this regard.