Jay Naidoo’s eco-ideology is a bizarre animist fantasy in which humanity is not allowed to touch holy Mother Nature, except by Her permission. It is entirely divorced from the reality of practical policy-making.
Former cabinet minister Jay Naidoo wrote a strange open letter to environment minister Barbara Creecy, on the date comments closed on her department’s Draft Policy Position on the Conservation and Ecologically Sustainable Use of Elephant, Lion, Leopard and Rhinoceros.
The Draft Policy Position (the title of which we could snappily abbreviate as the DPPCESUELLR) is a somewhat regressive document.
Among its many flaws, it seeks to ‘put an immediate halt to the domestication of lions and the commercial exploitation of captive lions, and establish a process to close captive lion facilities’, as well as to ‘reverse the domestication and intensification of management of rhino’.
Both these policies will likely have unintended negative consequences for lion and rhino populations, respectively.
Negative consequences
About 80% of all South Africa’s lions exist ‘in captivity’, which simply means ‘on private game farms and not in national wildlife parks’. Since these national parks are at carrying capacity, there is nowhere to move these supposedly ‘captive’ lions. Ending the ‘commercial exploitation’ of these lions is likely to end with their deaths.
The reasoning behind this policy is specious. It amounts to a knee-jerk dislike of the idea of domesticating or commercially exploiting lions, simply because they are lions and not some other animal, such as antelope or sheep.
The DPPCESUELLR waffles on about cultures being ‘spiritually aligned’ with lions, which is woo-woo nonsense. It should be perfectly possible to clean up the lion ranching industry without destroying its lions or its contribution to the economy and employment.
By prohibiting the commercial exploitation of these lions, the policy reduces their economic value to nil, which is a death sentence, and also reduces the value of land under game, which might tip thousands of hectares currently under game towards far more environmentally destructive livestock ranching or crop farming.
The same is true for privately-owned rhino populations. These are far more secure than the populations in national parks, and their sustainable commercial use can fund the protection and conservation of the species as a whole. The DPPCESUELLR grudgingly acknowledges this, but promptly says that these rhino should be returned to the wild, and intensive breeding must stop.
It also takes off the table the idea of lobbying the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to legalise trade in ivory or rhino horn, and instead favours the braindead idea of burning existing stockpiles of these valuable products in the hope that international animal rights groups will donate some small fraction of their true value to South African conservation.
It does recognise the principle of ‘sustainable use’, as well as ‘legal, humane, regulated and responsible hunting’, although its policies take them out of private hands and vest these rights in the hands of our competent, efficient and well-run government.
The fisking
But this isn’t intended as a critique of the DPPCESUELLR. I’ve written before that Creecy appears to have been railroaded by animal rights activists.
Let’s rather turn to fisking Naidoo’s open letter. I’ll use bold italics to indicate his words, and interject my responses in plain text.
Dear Minister Creecy,
Something very important is happening in our country. And it relates to our Constitution, which guarantees all South Africans a constitutional right to “ecologically sustainable development”.
That word “ecological” is everything.
No, it isn’t. It is one of three things, the other two of which are ‘sustainable’ and ‘development’. The purpose of that construction is not to focus only on development, or only on ecology, but to consider ecological sustainability as a constraint on a developmental optimisation problem.
Having had the responsibility for South Africa’s Reconstruction and Development Programme as a minister in Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet, I speak from experience in appreciating that all development is ultimately unsustainable if it is not ecologically sustainable.
Name-dropping Nelson Mandela. As someone who attended Nelson Mandela’s inauguration at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, I heartily approve.
Naidoo’s observation is trivially true, and therefore meaningless. The definition of ‘sustainable’ is, ‘able to continue over a period of time’, and in an environmental context: ‘causing, or made in a way that causes, little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time’.
If it isn’t ecologically sustainable, it isn’t sustainable, and therefore, it is unsustainable. A deep insight, this is not.
The new environmental position presented by you, Minister Creecy, is a lynchpin in turning around how we should look at economic development going into the future. I applaud the policy position that: “Communities living with wildlife are placed at the centre of our thinking, with a focus on enhancing human-wildlife coexistence.”
It is far from clear that the DPPCESUELLR should turn around how we look at economic development, but Naidoo is entitled to his opinion. I disagree. That said, I, too, applaud the idea of putting communities living with wildlife at the centre of our thinking.
That is where your policy holds the key, Honourable Minister.
Admirably obsequious.
“Ecological” is a concept that supersedes human logic and a narrow focus on what human needs are.
It what, now? Does Naidoo mean to say it ‘transcends’ human logic? Not that that would make the sentence any less nonsensical.
Our challenge is to use human logic and reasoning in order to achieve both ecological sustainability and development, not to simply bow to the notion that ‘ecological’ trumps everything.
A ‘narrow focus on what human needs are’ also encompasses the need for ecological sustainability. After all, we live in nature, and we grow our food in nature, and we derive our material welfare from nature. A healthy, productive environment is key to satisfying human needs. For some reason, Naidoo manages to separate the two entirely, and view them as conflicting opposites, which they are not.
It represents the laws of the ecosystem, the laws of Nature. Simply put, if we do not uphold these laws as we redefine our human laws and legislate for the future of South Africa, our species will perish. We are facing a real extinction event. And not just ourselves – every species.
This is just dramatic (and apocalyptic) handwaving. He doesn’t define these ‘laws of the ecosystem’, or ‘the laws of Nature’. I’m sure he doesn’t mean the law of universal gravitation, the conservation of mass and energy, the laws of electrostatics, the laws of thermodynamics, or the laws of motion, but that human development is subject to these laws is another trivial truism.
He seems to share the exaggerated extinction hysteria that has gripped the world in the last 50 years, and glibly extends that to human extinction, even though not a single plausible scientific forecast projects such a calamitous event.
Maybe he’ll expand on the laws of Nature later.
As we reflect on our past 27 years of democracy, Minister; you and I and 60 million fellow South Africans must ask ourselves: What is it that we missed? What do we have to unlearn? And what do we learn anew?
What is it that we missed? What do we have to unlearn? And what do we learn anew? Done.
Global legislation today has begun to recognise that true governance depends on restoring our right relationship with Mother Earth. That we have no dominion. We cannot continue to abuse the rights of other species, slaughter forests and wage war on Nature. We have to build intelligent cooperation so that all species coexist peacefully.
Actually, we do have dominion over nature, whether Naidoo likes it or not. We hold its survival or destruction in our hands, and only by our own actions can nature survive and thrive.
In various religious doctrines, humanity is explicitly given dominion over nature and appointed as its custodian. In my own secular worldview, humanity has a practical responsibility to conserve nature in such a state that human flourishing is not endangered.
Conserving nature for its own sake falls far higher on Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but is very much worth pursuing, provided it does not encroach on the right of others to fulfil their own needs.
So what is the right relationship? What are the governing laws of Nature?
Nature is a great teacher. She is abundant.
No, she is not. If she were abundant, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Natural resources are scarce. That is the entire purpose of economics, to satisfy human needs and desires by the optimal use of scarce resources which have alternative uses. That is also the entire purpose of conservation: to protect our scarce natural resources.
If nature were abundant, it wouldn’t need conservation.
Her purpose is to seamlessly serve all of her creation.
Anthropomorphising nature never ends well. Nature has no ‘purpose’. It exists. If nature’s purpose was to ‘serve all of her creation’, why does nature routinely kill indiscriminately? Does it move in mysterious ways? Does it have a plan?
The idea of nature’s ‘creation’ gives it the aspect of a religious deity, which it most certainly is not.
It is a natural gift economy, true ubuntu, whose culture is the interconnected symbiosis in creating an ecosystem that sustains all life.
A gift economy? Really? So I can just take what nature offers? Great. That justifies breeding charismatic apex species for profit, without having to worry about niceties like compensating nature or sustainability.
Ubuntu is that recognition that we are indivisible with all of life, including the rights of animal species, trees, mountains, rivers and oceans and the very land itself.
Actually, that is not what ubuntu means. Ubuntu says nothing about all of life, animal species, trees, mountains, rivers, oceans and the very land itself. Ubuntu, or to give it its longer Zulu rendition, ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’, means that a person is a person through other people.
It is actually a quaint expression of tribalism, not a universal philosophy of humanity, and while it sounds deep and meaningful to socialists, it actually denies individual agency and autonomy and fosters communal dependency.
Creecy’s DPPCESUELLR also invokes ubuntu, in seeking to ‘restore a transformative African approach to conservation and sustainable use’, whatever that means. Notably, ubuntu does not appear in the Constitution, and Creecy does not have a mandate to regulate conservation and sustainable use to be ‘consistent with ubuntu’.
Everything has a consciousness.
I’ll grant that defining consciousness is hard, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that a rock does not have consciousness. Neither does a river, a tree, or indeed most of nature. Consciousness, depending on how you define it, is either unique to humanity, or limited to the higher animals.
The reason radical environmentalists try to assign consciousness to non-human, non-animal, or even non-biological objects is to lay the foundation for the notion that everything in nature has independent legal rights that are equivalent to those of humans.
This is, of course, an entirely untenable notion, for it would mean never being allowed to cut down a tree, or eat an animal, or build a bridge over a river, or cut a pass through a mountain, or even eat plants.
These inherent ecological laws that you seek to achieve within the principles of your new policy document for conservation are not only for South Africa’s iconic species, but for all species and all cultures.
Creecy’s policy specifically addresses elephants, rhinos, lions and leopards. She did not write any ‘inherent ecological laws’, let alone ‘for all species and all cultures’.
It is appropriate, therefore, that your policy references the terms “indigenous” and “ubuntu”.
If, indeed, you carry these concepts into policy and implementation, South Africa and the global community can look forward to a future that carries the true principles of South Africa’s laudable Constitution into actual application.
The concept of ubuntu helps define true African community identity, and signifies that the “wholeness of an Africa can only be complete when the human-spiritual-nature alignment is achieved”.
Again, Naidoo riffs on a fanciful interpretation of ubuntu that goes far beyond its origins in communal tribal living.
He places quotation marks around that last bit, but an online search for that phrase finds only Naidoo’s article. Perhaps it comes from some obscure book.
Either way, it is meaningless gobbledygook. What is wholeness and why should that be a desirable state for Africa? Does it mean we should all be the same, and do as we’re told? And what is ‘human-spiritual-nature alignment’?
In my philosophy, the spiritual does not exist. For other people, it is subjective and wildly varied. A Christian, a Buddhist, a New Age mystic and an African animist will have entirely different views of spirituality, and, for that matter, of the proper ‘alignment’ between humanity and nature.
Does Naidoo believe he speaks for everyone?
Similarly, the term “indigenous” refers to: “one who is of the Earth, and who serves the Earth, recognising the dignity, freedom, mutuality, continuance and flourishing of planetary life and health, of which humankind is an integral part”. (Worldwide Indigenous Peoples Governance Charter, World Peace and Prayer Day 2020.)
That is not what the term indigenous refers to. The word ‘indigenous’ is ‘used to refer to, or relating to, the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else’.
That some conference of crypto-mystics calling themselves ‘the StarLion ancestors from the White Lion Heartlands’ said otherwise, is neither here nor there.
Besides, with such a definition, does that mean that only people who live where they were born have a relationship with Earth or a responsibility towards Earth?
What is special about people who live where they were born, in any case? Is there some fatalistic curse of which I’m not aware that tethers people to the geographical accident of their birth? Humans have spent thousands of years learning how to pick up sticks and move to where the natural, social or economic climate better suits them. Does this sever them from some ancient mystical identity? Does never moving give you some sort of superiority?
In this sense, all South Africans of all cultures can potentially uphold the principles of ubuntu, when honouring the human-spiritual-nature alignment of collective identity.
We’re all different. We’re all individuals. There is no ‘collective identity’. Everyone has the right to live their own life on their own terms. Anything else makes a mockery of the idea of freedom.
Of course that does not preclude forming social relations, caring for family, friends and community, and caring about nature, but the idea that we’re just mindless cogs in a greater collective identity is abhorrent.
Nature, not humanity, is the source of life. It is the responsibility of human leadership, therefore, to ensure the continuum of natural heritage through conservation principles in service to Nature.
I know a lot of people that would say God, not Nature, is the source of life. So again, Naidoo does not speak for everyone.
What does it mean to ‘ensure the continuum of natural heritage’, in any case? To my secular mind, life obviously has its source in nature, and life is impossible without a healthy and productive natural environment, but that merely means that we ought to take care of that natural environment, and ensure that it can continue to serve this purpose.
Instead of living in service to nature, humans have evolved the faculties to harness nature to our service. Our challenge is to do so wisely, responsibly, and sustainably.
This is the foundation of conservation in line with indigenous principles, both African and global, that the policy identifies as significant contributors.
There is no ‘foundation of conservation in line with indigenous principles’. Conservation is a thoroughly modern idea, born of advanced civilisation.
Some less developed societies lived in some sort of harmony with nature, albeit only because their population size or technological sophistication limited the damage they could inflict.
Most treated nature as an inexhausible cornucopia to pillage and plunder, on one hand, and a deadly enemy to be afraid of, on the other. Our indigenous ancestors hunted species to extinction. They razed forests to build cities and great fleets. They got killed by predators, floods, volcanoes and simple exposure.
On occasion, a king like Henry VIII would command that new oak forests be planted in order to supply wood for the fleets of future generations, but that’s as far as conservation went before the 20th century. There are no ‘indigenous principles’ for conservation.
The purpose of conservation is to serve Nature, thereby enshrining Nature’s rights to regeneration as a living heritage for future generations.
No, that is preservation. The purpose of conservation is to ensure the sustainable use of nature by humans, for activities such as farming, hunting, logging, mining, or development.
As it stands, however, the policy document can only achieve its stated objectives if it is fully committed to the regenerative principle central to true conservation.
Shutting down the captive breeding centres and the heinous lion-bone trade is the only ethical and ecologically responsible option. But it is only the beginning.
No, it is far from the only ethical and ecologically responsible option. It is the only option if you’re an animal rights extremist and a preservationist, but then you need to deal with the ethical and ecological consequences of turning 12 000-plus valuable lionine assets into valueless feeders. Who is going to feed those lions? Who is going to give them space to roam? And if the plan is to euthanase them all – the DPPCESUELLR is awkwardly silent on the topic – then how does that fit into your ethical and ecological worldview?
Witnessing the scale of suffering of the 45 emaciated, burnt and wounded lions in the Free State last week — and reading the descriptions of the distraught SPCA officers who described this as one of the worst cases of animal cruelty they had ever witnessed — is a brutal reminder that the legislation around this needs to be accelerated.
Anecdotes of abuse are not representative of wildlife ranching. You could equally well hold up abused children as an argument that parenthood ought to be outlawed, and only the state should be allowed to raise children.
When something is wrong, you take steps to correct that wrong. You don’t need to ban everything in order to do so. All that is required in cases such as the one Naidoo cites is to enforce existing animal welfare laws.
It is notable, of course, that existing animal welfare laws failed to prevent this tragedy. What makes Naidoo think that more laws will make a difference?
In spite of some stated intentions to the contrary, the policy still adheres to a consumptive and exploitative economic model and falls short of committing to regenerative conservation methodologies.
To be a genuinely indigenous-inspired environmental model, this policy has to set its sights beyond “sustainable use” and “sustainable development” to regenerative methodologies that are leading global conservation strategy today.
Indigenous peoples all used nature, to some extent. It is how they survived, and thrived. There is nothing ‘indigenous-inspired’ about prohibiting sustainable use.
Everything that lives in nature engages in consumptive and exploitative use of natural resources. The human challenge, which is ours only because we enjoy consciousness, is to ensure that our use of nature minimises environmental degradation, and that, where possible, we maximise environmental restoration.
“Sustainable” would indicate that the current levels of our environmental decline and rampant species extinction are acceptable — this is far from the case.
It indicates nothing of the sort. If the status quo were acceptable, we wouldn’t be talking about how to achieve ecologically sustainable development.
The current climate and environmental catastrophes we face render mere sustainability — maintaining the current world crisis on the brink of system collapse — insufficient.
Naidoo again appears to be confusing sustainability with sustaining the status quo, which is not what it means. Sustainability means the ability to carry on human activities that have an impact on nature long into the future.
This policy seeks to, first, prevent “the loss of biological diversity” and second, “ensure continued and future benefits that are fair, equitable and meet the needs and aspirations of present and future generations of people”.
That’s more like it.
In today’s global ecological crisis, responsible governance structures are recognising that sustainability is not attainable through extractive and consumptive-use economies. Sustainability is only attainable through the responsible application of regenerative economic principles. These principles are leading global conservation strategy and implementation today.
Which governance structures? Responsible in whose opinion? Naidoo is making bald assertions here that simply don’t hold up.
There is nothing in regenerative economic principles that prohibit consumptive use, for example. All that is required is that what is consumed in due course gets replaced by natural processes. That is what sustainability means.
Those same principles also do not prohibit extractive activities, either. They caution against excessive extraction, and recommend balancing extractive activity with constructive activity, but it’s not like, say, mining has no place in a regenerative economy.
The restitution and benefit-sharing of previously disadvantaged communities should not be premised on further exploitation of natural resources. Rather, restitution and regeneration of rural communities should take place simultaneously with environmental regeneration.
Our entire lives are premised on exploitation of natural resources. We ought to caution against excessive exploitation – that is, exploitation that exceeds nature’s capacity for replenishment, or our own capacity to help it replenish.
As rural communities restore their own indigeneity, they are able to restore their environment because their welfare and that of their environment are entirely interdependent.
How do you ‘restore indigeneity’? What does that even mean? Speak English, man!
Accordingly, the term “use” with regard to iconic animals and Nature in general is inconsistent with authentic indigenous practice, since “all species are to be treated with the respect due to family members, elders, or ancestors”.
This has never been ‘authentic indigenous practice’. Authentic indigenous practice has been to ‘use’ species, whenever possible.
Again, Naidoo is cribbing from the Worldwide Indigenous Peoples Governance Charter, which is so suffused with modern-day animism that it is largely unintelligible.
Its meaningless definition of ‘Nature’s Law’ is: ‘The eternal codes governing natural Creation which ensure the dignity, freedom, mutuality, continuance and flourishing of planetary life and health, of which humanity is an integral part.’
That Charter seeks to impose a religious doctrine on people, based on concepts like Mother Earth (Gaia), Great Spirit, and the Cosmos, all of which are supposedly sentient. Under this fanciful doctrine, we are required to ask permission from Nature, and receive it, before taking anything from it.
Only 4.4% of South Africans believe in traditional African animism. Most other South Africans would reject it as heresy. To the rest of us, it really is just mystical claptrap.
What is of great concern to me, Minister, having spent many decades working and learning from indigenous communities, is the position taken in your policy document where “community” and “indigenous” are conceptualised as disadvantaged, needy and lacking resources. While historical erosion of indigenous peoples’ value systems creates challenges to indigenous community regeneration, commercial trophy-hunting practices and other extractive use of wildlife, proposed in this policy, would further undermine cultural identity and the self-determination and self-sufficiency of such communities.
If you end commercial hunting, two things will happen. First, you’ll destroy the 72% of the wildlife ranching industry’s revenue that is derived from foreign and domestic hunting. That, in turn, will destroy the 16% of revenue derived from live sales, since nobody will buy game that doesn’t pay its way. An additional 7% is made up of meat sales, which will also have to fall by the wayside, since ‘use’ is a dirty word in Naidoo’s lexicon.
That leaves only 5% of the wildlife ranching industry’s revenue derived from eco-tourism. But this will also die, since game animals earning only 5% of their potential do not earn their keep, and most game ranches will be turned over to crop or livestock farming.
In the process, thousands of jobs will be lost, and the value of the wildlife that previously sustained the ranching economy will be nil. Local communities, driven by need, will likely hunt the herbivores for food, and kill the carnivores because they pose threats to lives and livestock. How regenerative does that sound, Jay?
Unlike the colonialist legacy which separates people from their culture and cultural connection with our natural environment, authentic African and global indigenous communities should rightly be recognised as authorities with the potential for self-sufficiency in relation to regenerative land use, for the reason that they serve Nature as a living sentient holistic system, and recognise that in so doing they serve a Higher Authority.
Here we go with the sentient crap again. Nature is not sentient.
What ‘Higher Authority’? Who elected him/her/xir/it?
If Naidoo is going to insist on playing the divisive ‘us versus the colonialists’ game, let’s just point out that the vast majority of people in South Africa, and indeed the world, who give a rat’s arse about the environment are wealthy ‘colonialists’. They are also the ones who primarily fund environmental and conservation organisations.
The large-scale ecocide throughout Africa should put to rest any notion that ‘African and global indigenous communities’ are authorities on anything to do with the environment.
However, turning this into a racial class-conflict is what Marxists do. Unlike Naidoo, I’m not a Marxist, and I don’t seek to stir conflict between peoples.
I would propose not trying to exclude anyone from conservation based on their ‘indigeneity’ or otherwise, and instead trying to make conservation an all-inclusive enterprise that appeals to our common humanity, our common economic interests, and our common sense of decency.
South Africa’s historic model for wildlife management has been one of exploitation of land, animals and local communities. While it was relatively successful in helping to set aside large tracts of wilderness land for conservation purposes, …
Yes, it was extraordinarily successful, not only at setting aside large tracts of wilderness land for conservation purposes, but also for bringing many animal species back from the brink of extinction. And all of this happened because private game ownership became recognised in law, giving them commercial value they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
…it was based on a colonialist trophy-hunting paradigm, benefiting the elite at the expense of the majority, alienating communities from their wildlife, and commoditising their living heritage.
Naidoo, probably considers the wealth of game farm owners exploitative (without thinking too hard upon his own extraordinary wealth). That’s because to socialists, economics is a zero-sum game. If one person benefits economically, then it must, necessarily, be at the cost of others. That is not true, however.
Naidoo casually (and callously) ignores the 140 000 decent jobs that the game ranching industry provides. He ignores that these jobs pay better than agriculture jobs.
And even though the game farm owners and hunting outfitters are likely richer than their employees, Naidoo fails to recognise that everything a rich person spends translates into jobs for others.
Someone has to build their houses and swimming pools. Somebody has to mend their fences and provide their security. Somebody has to manufacture their furniture, their golf equipment, their vehicles, and their triple-ply toilet paper.
And what rich people don’t spend gets invested, mostly in either government debt, funding social programmes, or in stocks, capitalising companies that in turn employ people. Rich people are inherently valuable to an entire economy.
Ironically, Naidoo’s preservationist view of nature really does alienate communities from their wildlife. It will ensure that communities have no stake in wildlife or its survival, and have no stake in the health of the ecosystems that surround them.
Going forward, it behoves government to set aside wilderness-for-wilderness sake, while shifting from an exploitative to a regenerative model, thereby reviving indigenous and local community wellbeing, which, in turn, will support the dignity and wellbeing of iconic animals.
Going forward, it behoves government to govern in the interests of the people. Presently, the government protects about 5% of South Africa’s surface area. More than three times as much, 17%, is protected by owners of private reserves and game farms.
Making that land valueless by making the animals upon it valueless will not bring about a ‘regenerative model’, nor do anything for indigenous and local community well-being.
Dominion-based models do not serve Nature’s law. To kill in order to conserve is neither logical nor ecological. To “conserve” means to cherish Nature as a precious living legacy for future generations, and thereby reinstate a loving and respectful interrelationship.
Because we have fenced off wild nature, we must actively conserve it. To actively conserve it, we must maintain ecological balance that nature can no longer maintain because of our interference.
Unless Naidoo is willing to tear down the fences, farms, roads and powerlines that define modern civilisation, there is no alternative to active wildlife management. And that, sometimes includes killing some animals for the greater good.
Culling overpopulated species is one such case, where the stability and health of an ecosystem must be prioritised over the immediate interests of individual animals. Hunting is another such case, where the revenue generated sustains vast tracts of land under thriving game populations, where otherwise there would be livestock ranches or crop farms.
Ecological sustainability is dependent upon restoring “the dignity, freedom, mutuality, continuance and flourishing of planetary life and health, of which humanity is an integral part”. (Worldwide Indigenous Peoples Governance Charter)
Given the great many holes in Naidoo’s reasoning, I think we can comfortably conclude that he has no idea how to achieve ecological sustainability.
I draw on the wisdom of Gogo Rutendo Ngara, chairperson of the Credo Mutwa Foundation:
“From a universal indigenous conservation perspective, iconic animals should be protected, not as commodities in cages nor stuffed on walls, but as a living heritage performing their unique vital roles both within the biodiversity of their natural ecosystem, and ‘alive and well’ within the hearts, minds – and souls – of humankind. Heritage animals are essential for the well-being of any culture that respects and celebrates Nature.”
Ah, yes, appeal to the wisdom of the chairperson of the foundation of a witch-doctor who believed that a reptilian race controls the world and who supported apartheid.
Nobody is proposing to do away with ‘heritage animals’. The entire purpose of sustainable use is to ensure that they survive, and continue to play their role not only in their own ecosystems, but also in the cultural heritage of South Africans.
Honourable Minister, this policy has the potential to establish South Africa at the forefront of global conservation strategy, allowing us to join the ranks of the pioneering legislators in New Zealand, Ecuador, India and the Netherlands.
However, in order to achieve the policy’s stated objectives and outcomes, there are a number of inconsistencies that must be addressed. To achieve “secured, restored, and rewilded natural landscapes with thriving populations of the elephant, lion, rhino, and leopard as indicators for a vibrant, responsible, inclusive, transformed, and sustainable wildlife sector”, it is essential to incorporate regenerative economic models that are leading a progressive conservation strategy globally today.
He is right that there are inconsistencies in the policy, and he is right that the policy does not appear to grasp how to achieve its lofty aims. What is clear, however, is that Naidoo, and the Worldwide Indigenous Peoples Governance Charter, have even less of a clue.
Jay Naidoo, Elder
Ivo Vegter, Younger.
No, really, he insists on describing himself as ‘elder’, as if he is entitled to respect simply by virtue of his age? He is not a member of The Elders, so he merely pretends to a tribal, patriarchal authority that frankly, he does not have.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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Image by Valiphotos from Pixabay