Farwell, farewell, you old rhinoceros

(Originally appeared in Without Prejudice Magazine, September 2012)

I. P. A. Manning

The rhino is a homely beast,

For human eyes he's not a feast.
Farwell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
Ogden Nash - The Rhinoceros

The old rhino, bless his harrumphing heart, is far from well on World Rhino Day. The
slow and steady assault for his horn over the centuries for dagger handles, for muti,
his hide for kibokos - has turned to madness. They cant even wait for him to die. Just
hack it off and run, screaming,Balega!
We are now truly denizens of the Plundercene epoch.
Where once he was found over much of Africa the moist forest excluded he is
now down to 5, 000 or so pert-mouthed gleaning black rhino, and 19,000 grazing
white rhino so named because of his wijd lawn-mower mouth. Most of the white and half of the black, are in South Africa, 75% or so in the national and provincial
protected areas, the rest on private land; but daily at least one is parted for ever from
its horn. Over the last five years the number poached has gone from 83 in 2008 to a
projected 532 at the end of 2012. What happened? The answer is that the rhino
suffers the dreadful congruence of the unprincipled Asian boom with that of those
supreme harvesters of the production of others, statist South Africa and its
increasingly dysfunctional institutions and nine supposedly semi-autonomous
provinces - basket-cases in the main. The chance of putting an end in a kleptocracy to
the rhino slaughter on state land is slight perhaps in Kwazulu where they were saved
in the first place. But what of the massive private game estate and communal land?
Here at least the rhino must be secured for posterity; yet the 20 million hectares of
game ranch is increasingly beset by land grabs, criminal horn harvesters, the
Provincial Confederacy of Dysfunction, and by CITES (Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora) itself producing ever more
bureaucracy and trade restrictions. Then there are the sorcerer inspired bestial attacks
on the rancher, his family and his staff already having reduced the general farming
community from 400,000 farmers to 40,000. Because caring for rhino brings all kinds
of trouble some ranchers now sell their rhino, or the land as well, or move back into
cattle or sunflowers; or join the container diaspora.

The saving of the white rhino and its increase is one of the great conservation success
stories. Down to a few dozen in Zululand a century ago, the Natal Parks Board began
an intensive programme of translocation and protection after WWII. However, in
1968 when they issued a safari hunting quota for their 1,800 rhino, investment flowed
in for the rhinos conservation, lending impetus to the game ranching revolution and
providing fertile ground for the massive rhino population increase and other wildlife
that resulted. It was the hunting industry that did it.
In old British East and Central Africa decolonisation and the departure of the white
man and his Magna Carta conservation model created the necessary conditions for the
new killing fields, the actual slaughter precipitated by the Mama Ngina inspired
closure of hunting safaris in Kenya in 1977 and the removal of the bwana from the
bush. Alas, the indigenous guardians of nature, the hunting-conservation sects such as
the aChiwinda that might have opposed the slaughter had already been destroyed by
the Muslim arab slavers and ivory traders up to 1885, and then withered away under
colonialism.
By 1993, twenty years after the start of the carnage, the black rhino was extinct in
Zambia; 20,000 and more gone to China, their passage observed with supreme
disinterest by a dysfunctional and corrupt Government and by cowardly grass-chair
paleface conservationists; an achingly sad day for our stewardship of nature
culture.
What to do? The mantra of course will always be for more fortress conservation
endeavour from the great and the good, for a mini donor-aid industry spewing out
more toys and 4 by 4 supports, neglecting those that live next to the conservation
enclaves, that great shimmering expanse of masenke tin-shacks or neglected land
where there will never be any jobs, only the monthly ANC grant from the Big Man
at Tuinhuis. The conservation of rhino requires a fresh approach.
The rhino will only be saved if it has value within a highly controlled marketing
system where an alliance has been forged between the market and the producer. This
was foreseen ten years ago when CITES was first implemented in South Africa with
the creation of the Chamber of Wildlife, a national organisation supposed to represent
all the private game estate, and as well the customary and communal land where
wildlife populations could be built up and managed in public-private partnerships
between rural communities and investors. Here too was the answer to land reform.
Sadly it was killed stone cold jug dead by the professional hunting industry,
unenthusiastic about getting involved with communal and customary land. Now,
given the land reform pressures, they see that it has to be done. The organisation
representing the game ranchers, Wildlife Ranching South Africa have made it known
that they are prepared to help convert the 12 million hectares of unutilised nonagricultural communal land to game ranching through various kinds of smart
partnerships.
Rhino conservation must adopt the de Beers Central Selling Organisation model. We
must open a national rhino stud-book and register every rhino on private land,
followed by state and communal land. The Rhino Selling Organisation, empowered
under national legislation, will then issue the annual offtake quota, hold quota

auctions, deal with CITES and control the market. The rhino, on fenced land, may
well have to be declared a domestic animal; unthinkable I know.
First we need to capture the necessary two-thirds support from the CITES Conference
of the Party members to move the rhino out of its Appendix I and II straightjacket. If
not; South Africa must withdraw from CITES. The time is up.
Recently I attended the TRAFFIC presentation in Joburg on the Vietnam South
Africa rhino criminal trade with friends whose McKenzie Foundation part funded the
TRAFFIC study. There I met again a former colleague from the Zambian Game
Department and later WWF International member who for a while part funded my
doomed attempt to save Zambias rhino 25 years ago. A painful memory.
Those caring for rhino now need to be bold and assertive. It is time for the kommando
to saddle up.

I. P. A. Manning is an environmental activist and writer who as Chief Technical

Advisor to the Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism oversaw the initial
implementation of CITES in South Africa and the founding of the Chamber of Wildlife
(1998-2000). In Zambia in the late 1980s he had lobbied government to establish a
project to save the fast disappearing black rhino. In 1988-89 he headed up this
project but, unaccountably, the government failed to support the project, and local
and international funders (WWF included) withdrew their support. Shortly after,
Manning was refused permission to continue working in the country. By 1993 no
viable population of rhino existed.