Loose cannon Robert Kirby
January 8 1655
“One of the salt-gatherers came to report to us that they had shot a rhinoceros in the salt-pans; it was still alive and had sunk so deep into the mud of the salt pans that it could not extricate itself. So out of curiosity we went to the place, about four or five miles from here. Finding it still alive, we had it shot dead; but had the animal been on hard ground, we should not have been able to do it much or any harm at all by shooting, as more than a 100 shots had to be fired before we could kill it. Many of the bullets rebounded from its body, particularly from its side, so that we had a piece hewn out of its side with axes and then, by shooting it between the ribs and into the guts, we managed to kill it.”
When it comes to reporting on the molestation of wild animals, Carte Blanche would have had a field day in the 17th- century Cape Colony. Jan van Riebeeck and his band were at continual war with their terrifying new wilderness. Many measures were taken against its denizens, including rewards for the shooting of leopards, lions, “wolves”, instructions to destroy the “numerous snakes” on Robben Island.
Lots of fear and plenty of greed inspired the need to obliterate wildlife, an established ethic early in South Africa’s colonial history. This might help set all the recent brouhaha about the Tuli elephants in some sort of perspective. For if ever there was something guaranteed to solicit all the do-gooders and charlatans out of their holes, it is the championing of a cause such as this one.
You sit in front of your television, watching them as they slither over the latest eco-disgrace. Your emotions are mixed: gape-mouthed amazement, embarrassment, nausea. To the extent that I often wonder whether the subversive intention of television uncloakings, like the latest Carte Blanche one, is in order to show us what a pathetic bunch of poseurs are those who have anointed themselves honorary custodians of the earth, correspondents to all its misbehaviours. Be it canned lions, stolen hospital bedlinen or bottled spring water, those who usually defend, discuss and expand on these are a truly awful assembly.
On Carte Blanche last week they had some repellent fellow from the World Wide Fund for Nature, trying to worm his way out of the fact that his organisation had, a year ago, approved the brutal elephant-training techniques used by the mahouts of the East. Also heard were the apologists for the dubious effectivity of the NSPCA. Everyone blamed everyone else. Inevitably, grim examples of lawyer-life crawled in. Then up came some squintbrain claiming that more important than anything else was the “bad image” of South Africa being cast overseas. Never mind what a friend of mine described as the terrifying Orwell-speak of one contributor: “These charismatic megafauna?”
It is also disputable that, as someone contended, this kind of investigative programme once again portrays an “advantaged white” South African population purblind to its encompassing human tragedy. Responses to the elephant scandal may have been anthropomorphic to a degree, but so cynical a political evaluation is easily as obscene as the practice it is intended to decry.
Any long-term preservation policy for our wildlife will have to be in resolute federation with commercial and political amusements. To the wide majority of South Africans the sentimental approach has most appeal; arguments for the preservation of natural heritage for its intrinsic worth are, by dint of reality, condemned to failure. Have a peep at what’s left of Dukuduku forest if you don’t believe that. The practical way to “save” elephants is by exploiting elephants. And anyway, as much as Riccardo Ghiazza’s overtly crude methods might sicken us, what he does is considerably less horrific than the capture of primates in tropical Africa. At least Ghiazza doesn’t chop up his elephants for sale as “bush-meat”.
What the Tuli scandal really exposes is the sore lack on the part of the government of any discernible restriction of this sort of practice. Almost completely unimpeded by official restraint, hundreds of thousands of South Africa’s wild creature continue to pass through Johannesburg International airport annually. Wildlife trade is extremely big business. And, as in the case of the Tuli elephants, it will take weeks and weeks of media outrage to arouse the politicians.
For once this one is safely over, they will hibernate again. Of that we can be most certain.