DENIAL AND WHITEWASHING IS PUSHING THE RHINO SPECIES TO EXTINCTION

We will not deny, nor will we diminish the acknowledgement of the importance of the good work carried out by those who are genuinely employed to protect our endangered species.

However, no one can deny that the poaching numbers over the past few years are quite simply indicative of the devastatingly low numbers of South African rhino remaining in the Kruger National Park.

Twelve years ago, Animal Rights Africa published a report called Under Siege: Rhinocerosses in South Africa. The authors warned that rhino poaching had reached a fifteen year high and that there were justifiable concerns about South Africa’s ability to protect and manage the rhino population.

The motivation for the report was that between 2007 and 2009 rhino poaching had accelerated six times the amount of the previous eight years South Africa had become the conduit of most of the rhino horn leaving the African continent.

The threats to rhino were linked to South Africa’s undeniable, uncompassionate conservation policies of overt consumptive use and trade and inadequate policing, enforcement measures and lack of resources to protect rhino.

The sale and hunting of rhinos in South Africa, the report stated, was driven by commodification, commercialisation and profit rather than by compassion and robust science.

The report concluded that South Africa was the last bastion for the white rhino but that the hunting, insufficient anti-poaching capacity, promotion of consumptive use, trade in rhino, the demand for rhino horn and the inadequate record keeping abilities, threatened the survival of the species.

Between 2010 and 2020 8454 rhinos were poached in South Africa. In 2019 a letter was sent to Minister Barbara Creecy, from a group of wildlife conservation organisations known as the Wildlife Animal Protection Forum of South Africa.

In the letter reference was made to the fact that South Africa has undergone a period of systemic political corruption, commonly referred to as state capture. There has been no official-led investigation in our environmental sector, we would be foolish to believe that this area was not heavily compromised.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit uncovered evidence of high-level political connections to the rhino poaching crisis in South Africa. The investigation raised serious questions about the involvement of a South African government minister and members of a Chinese presidential delegation in the illegal rhino horn trade.

A rhino horn trafficker told Al Jazeera about his close connections to Minister of State Security David Mahlobo, who ran the country’s intelligence services.

Last week, during the Zondo Commission of Enquiry into State Capture, evidence was led on the activities of the State Security Agency. A review panel was appointed in June 2018 to assess the structure of the SSA relative to its mandate. A key finding of the panel was that there was political malpurposing and factionalisation of the intelligence community over the past decade. An unidentified witness stated that abuse of the agency’s mandate to enrich Jacob Zuma occurred under their leadership. The former minister of state security David Mahlobo is accused of being among those who collapsed the State Security Agency.

The South African government has chosen to ignore the more than 700 000 signatures of people asking for a ban of the domestic trade in rhino horn. On the 5^th of April 2017 the late, Minister Edna Molewa announced, after she lost a series of court cases, that she planned to permit the trade in rhino horn, she could easily have reinstituted the moratorium on the domestic trade in rhino horn in the correct procedural manner.

We do not believe that we can rely on the South African government, or in fact the opposition political parties in South Africa, to save the rhino from extinction because currently they are wedded to extractive, unsustainable and unethical conservation policies.

There is a complete lack of political will, the wave of crime and corruption continues unabated and the arrogant belief that consumption can save species despite scientific evidence to the contrary leaves us with no option but to seek creative alternatives elsewhere.

The future of wild life, nature and our own human existence is literally under threat. What is needed is an urgent and total overhaul of policy and legislation and a totally different way of viewing wild life and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity.

IMAGE CREDIT: SANParks