Saving the White Lions

by Linda Tucker

  First Greg showed me the massive White Lion male, housed here illegally. I met this great presence face to face through a diamond-mesh fence—a monarch-in-hostage—and, in an instant, I recognized him: King of kings, a presence of majesty and high consciousness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before. His authoritative presence seemed to maintain sanity for all the stricken animals in this merciless prison. Not surprisingly, the canned hunter had named him Rambo, but Greg renamed him Aslan, after the Christ-like lion in the Narnia series. This was a fitting name, particularly as I knew from ancestral guidance that as-lan means “starlion.”

  Greg told me this magnificent White Lion was one of twenty-two cubs born in this breeding program, all tawny or golden in color. But, then yesterday, another cub suddenly appeared: snow white.

  A baby lioness born in Bethlehem on Christmas Day! When Greg gave me this news on arrival, I suddenly realized: this sacred birth is the fulfillment of Maria’s prophecy!

  Sacredness is present in Nature, no matter how humans try to destroy it. And now, for one rash moment as I sit in this ghoulish place surrounded by living animals waiting to become stuffed trophies, I consider sharing with this trophy hunter the knowledge I’ve gained about the White Lions—their role as angelic beings of pure light sent to save humanity at a time of crisis. If he could only see the signs Nature is gifting him, might he relent—and redeem himself?

  From my deck chair, I observe this man, marching on his stout rugby-playing legs down to his fishpond on his front lawn—rifle in hand, raised skyward. He points it and lets off a couple of resounding shots. A flutter of brightly colored feathers, and two kingfishers drop from the skies. The symbology of the kingfisher is of Christ consciousness (the Fisher King) in Nature. Watching this senseless act reminds me that the task ahead is monumental.

  Is this man the mastermind behind this horror, I wonder, or is there someone or something else controlling him? I feel shaken to the marrow of my bones—and lift my eyes again to find the trophy hunter’s wife, prancing toward me, past her cages of innocents, with a young cheetah cub on a black leather harness. The sensitive creature is shaking uncontrollably in shock and fear.

  Greg Mitchell informed me earlier that this cheetah cub and its mother were removed from the wild just days ago. The mother died last night in her cage from shock. The thought of what will become of this cheetah cub in the grip of this pitiless animal-laundering industry wracks my body with helpless distress. I’m shaking like she is, and I need to muster every ounce of strength to control my emotions.

  The hunter’s wife comes closer. She’s in a country-girl floral frock, with a broad-rimmed hat (Christmas being summer in South Africa), but her eyes are metallic and her grip of greeting is viselike. Having heard I’m doing an article on White Lions, she introduces herself, boasting:

  “We got lucky over Christmas. You know how much that thing’s worth?”

  She’s referring to the little downy cub I held in my arms only a few hours ago: the love of my life, the child I will fiercely protect like a mother lioness, come what may.

  Gold, frankincense, and myrrh I will give to this little one, leaving them hidden under the straw of her box. But I will not make the naive error of sharing my belief with the robotic woman, staring me in the face at this moment, unblinking. She may have dollar signs in her eyes, but she must never ever know how much this little cub is worth to me.

  TWO MONTHS SINCE MY VISIT TO BETHLEHEM. It gives me strength to remember Credo Mutwa’s first words when I informed him of this baby cub’s miraculous arrival on December 25, 2000. He announced, “Ah! She has come. The one for whom the African elders have been waiting: Marah, mother of Ra, the sun god.”

  Maria Khosa celebrated the news of Marah’s birth in a secret shamanic ceremony, the details of which I was not to share with others. However, she was insistent that I speak out about the White Lions and their urgent meaning for humanity at this time. Ever since Ingwavuma’s death, she’s been urging me that the secret knowledge I’ve uncovered in my studies over the past six years is ready to be published. Now she’s emphatic. According to her, it’s time the world knows the truth.

  Credo Mutwa issued the same imperative. He said it is “critically urgent” to get the White Lions’ message out to the world, now, without delay. In one of my earliest meetings with Credo, I remember how he indicated that long stories hidden in the oral tradition of the mandated storytellers have no ending. Like a scroll from his memory bank, he then unrolled the story of the White Lions for me as it was recorded in oral records from the distant past right up to the present day, where it lay poised, ready to unroll into the future. Now more than ever, it feels that I am part of the scroll of the living White Lion legend.

  After nearly a decade, my book, Mystery of the White Lions, is complete and finally going to press. But the story isn’t over. It’s just begun.

  And there’s an imperative now, like never before. Once she knew of Marah’s arrival, Maria warned me that saving the Sacred One will seem an impossible task, but I may not falter. Like a hungry lioness on a hunting mission for her young, I may never lose sight of my goal, however many opponents stand in the way of my reaching it.

  Accordingly, my focus has been unwavering, but over the past two months since my meeting with baby Marah, I’ve been wondering how to take the next steps. I don’t have the authority to intervene in practices that are legalized in our country, but I can’t live with myself if I do nothing about them.

  Since I returned to Africa nearly seven years ago, Maria Khosa’s training has been illuminating and liberating, but now I feel caged and suffocated, pacing back and forth, back and forth, like those lions behind bars who’ve haunted my memories since childhood.

  And I know now that the pledge I made with all my heart to Marah—to release this sacred lioness from brutal imprisonment and return her to her rightful birthplace in the wild—is essentially the same pledge I have made to my own spirit: to resist confinement and entrapment, always, and remain forever free.

  CHAPTER 8

  Marah’s Star Rising

  THREE MONTHS AFTER MARAH’S BIRTH. MARCH 21, 2001. I now have a clear plan of action.

  In the intervening period, I was busy establishing, and formally registering, a nonprofit organization called the Global White Lion Protection Trust, with the objective of protecting the critically endangered White Lions as a global heritage, as well as preserving the cultural knowledge that upholds them as sacred. The objective of the trust is to secure Marah’s freedom and return this iconic lioness to the land that is her birthright. In order to embark on such a mission, however, I need a credible organization behind me.

  I determined from Greg Mitchell that Marah and Aslan are half siblings, since they share the same father but have different mothers. Their mothers were both golden lionesses who originated from the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve after having been tragically stolen from the wild bushveld there.

  Their father, Zeus, was also acquired in an illegal deal, not directly from the wild but from a well-known South African zoo, which was keeping him as a stud. They suspected the tawny male was carrying the white gene after he was brought to their premises with a bullet lodged in his body, following a failed trophy hunt in the Timbavati region.

  It’s not impossible that Zeus is directly related to my own lion, Ingwavuma. According to Maria Khosa, although Ingwavuma was the dominant male in the region, he originally had a brother. Significantly, his sibling disappeared from the wild at around the same time Zeus appeared at the zoo with gunshot wounds in him. It’s likely that the zoo’s second-tier personnel were colluding with the canned hunters, because an under-the-counter deal resulted in Zeus being removed from the institution one night, to an unknown destination. Having since met with the head of the institution, I determined that the director and his colleagues were persuaded by their staff that Zeus had died. When I informed him otherwise, the director expressed total surprise that the zoo’s lion was
, in fact, being held by third parties from the canned-hunting industry, alive, for speed-breeding purposes.

  It has become clear to me that I need to gain the support of these governing authorities if I am to succeed in my strategy. The director of the zoo is a large, meticulously groomed man of Zulu descent, without any formal background or qualifications in animal husbandry. When I first met him in his offices, I noticed from the framed certificates that lined the walls that he directs many emerging black-empowerment businesses, and he’s clearly collecting more. For him, the zoo seems to be just another commercial enterprise.

  At each of our several meetings, the director was dressed in a different Armani or Lagerfeld silk suit, with crocodile-skin shoes, a conspicuous gold watch on his wrist, large gold chains around his neck, and gold rings on several fingers. I would have thought he’d surround himself with advisors from his own people, but instead his henchmen all seem to be Afrikaners of the staunch militaristic variety, as if having these relics from the past on his staff somehow raises his status and power.

  It wasn’t an easy negotiation. At first I thought I’d have a lot in common with the director, given his Zulu background. Several of the medicine people with whom I’ve studied are Zulu, including Credo Mutwa and Selby Gumbi, and their cultural beliefs with respect to the White Lions are profound and illuminating. As soon as I started sharing the rich cultural material surrounding these legendary animals with the zoo director, however, he cut me short with a sarcastic smirk. I imagined he might object to my knowing more about his own culture than he. That would have been understandable. I now appreciate that he neither knows nor cares about such things.

  During the anti-Apartheid struggle, a generation’s education was disrupted not only by violent upheavals in the police-occupied townships, but also by the dictum “freedom now, education later.” The youth’s freedom struggle, combined with migrant labor and a litany of Apartheid devastation, delivered a crushingly negative impact on traditional culture, a loss that will take decades of dedication to recover. This man, however, is no ex-cadre of the freedom movement. He is simply a capitalist skimming the benefits of postcolonialism.

  Nevertheless, over several intensive meetings, I finally managed to secure a written agreement from the designer-clad director and his colleagues to ensure Marah’s protection. The zoo plans to execute a police raid into the canned-hunting camp to seize Zeus and his offspring. Where compassion failed, their monetary stakes finally swayed them to take action. In the event of their police raid being successful, and on the basis of my having provided them with the inside information, the director has agreed to grant me first rights of adoption over Marah. He also agreed to a price fix for Marah, in accordance with current international trading rates for White Lions. It’s creepy to think the most sacred animal on Earth is regarded as having a kind of stock market value. And it’s somehow even creepier that her trading price is astronomical, due to White Lions being so rare and only found in hunting/breeding camps and in a few zoos across the globe, including Siegfried and Roy’s Mirage Gardens in Las Vegas. Naturally, I agreed to the price. I would have agreed to anything. Maria Khosa—whose information comes directly from ancestral guidance, not materialistic considerations—predicted that the international trading value of White Lions would skyrocket once my book was published. So her instruction was to secure the sacred lioness’s safety at all costs and tie up the deal without delay.

  I am pleased with the progress but also saddened by my failure to secure a further deal for Zeus’s other offspring—in particular Aslan. All my efforts were stonewalled by the zoo authorities; so I have to accept the limits of my hard-earned victory and retreat to fight another day for Marah’s siblings.

  My action plan for Marah’s rescue was clear in my mind, but the zoological institution is the party taking the next steps, so I have to rely on their nail-bitingly slow process to run its course and pray for the best outcome.

  APRIL 22, 2001. Almost exactly four months after Marah’s birth, and I am housesitting a friend’s trendy upmarket apartment in Johannesburg, more than seven hours’ drive from Maria’s bushveld village.

  It’s midafternoon. The pages of my book are finally rolling through the press and my head is reeling. I’ve held my manuscript of Mystery of the White Lions back from publication for so long, questioning and doubting what the world would make of this unusual material. Now, at last, I’ve committed to the idea of disseminating it publicly, after being urged to do so by Maria and Credo, following Ingwavuma’s death. Over the period of almost a year, I approached one publisher after another, only to find that the material had no proper place. Some publishers told me the information was ahead of its time. Others instructed me to remove the secret shamanic material since it was incomprehensible to the modern mind. They told me to cut the material by half. By contrast, Maria and Credo urged me to get it out to the world as if my life—and many others’—depended on it. Finally, after dozens of publishers’ rejections, I decided I’d raise the funds to publish it myself, if necessary. At that moment, I got the green light from a publisher called Earthyear, who offered to publish it pretty much on my own terms. To me, what is important is the opportunity to disseminate a message in Maria’s honor, the woman whose lionhearted actions saved my life and whose Earth wisdom changed my consciousness.

  I know that delivering the book into the public domain will be another turning point. I will be required to defend every word I have written, however intimate the truths are to my own life.

  My cell phone rings with an undisclosed number, and I imagine it’s my PR agent, newly appointed by my publisher. Turns out it’s a family member of Maria Khosa’s, and my first response is to ask how my teacher is doing. Stunned, I drop the telephone and crumple, weak and defeated, into a chair. I’ve just received the worst news: Maria Khosa is dead.

  I dedicated my book to Maria and Ingwavuma, my two most powerful teachers, the Lion King in the ancestral realms and the Lion Queen in human form. Now both were gone.

  With my city friend away for a two-week business trip, I’m alone in this empty apartment. Just as I’ve achieved the immovable goal my teacher placed before me, she’s shifted the playing field. Weeping furiously, I remember that old saying: the teacher always leaves before the student is ready. I stare out of the window at the once-familiar city scene of Johannesburg’s high life, gasping for breath, knowing that somewhere in the industrial center, my book’s pages are being churned through the printing presses in preparation for being bound, covered, stacked, and delivered to the world. Maria’s name will live on through them, but I’m not ready for my beloved teacher’s sudden departure. I want to flee and hide. I’m not ready. I’m simply not ready!

  FOLLOWING THE LION QUEEN’S DEATH, the unbearable months have been filled with agonizing doubts. How can I take over her mantle? A white woman from a Western background? So today, May 15, 2001, I am meeting with Maria Khosa’s family. From the glances among her family members, I feel painfully self-conscious being her successor, without any direct bloodline or cultural link—and most of all, without Maria Khosa present to explain her unlikely decision in identifying me as her inheritor, her star daughter.

  The family tolerates my presence. I’ve come over to pay my respects numerous times, but I feel painfully self-conscious being her successor at the closing ceremony in honor of Maria. I look around me. Not all the family members allow eye contact, and my instincts, all the more exposed and raw at this time of grieving, pick up what I detect is racial antagonism. I imagine them thinking: What is this strange woman doing here? Who does she think she is? Among the Khosa family are three women in traditional sangoma attire, swathed in bright fabrics with ostrich-plume headdresses and strings of beads around their wrists and ankles. As we gather around Maria’s grave, the drummers begin to strike up a familiar drumbeat. It is the pulse I know so well from Maria’s own shamanic trance rhythms, and for a moment I feel myself transported back into her presence.

&n
bsp; The drumbeats rise to a crescendo, echoing and pounding against the earth, pounding in my head. The three medicine women’s heads are rocking as, one after the other, they go into a state of trance, shivering and quivering as the ancestral spirit enter them. When the pounding of the drums suddenly subsides, the imposing voices of the ancestors come through, with greetings and blessings for kith and kin. Gathered around the grave, everyone is in hushed silence, pressing in as the three medicine women’s bodies become channels for the ancestor’s message. I can’t understand the words being pronounced in the ancient Tsonga language, but Maria’s nephew, Axon Khosa, a princely man with generous features, translates what’s being said for me.

  Suddenly the frequency alters, and an upgrade and surge of urgent energy comes through the voice of the lead sangoma. It is a new ancestral voice, one I’ve never previously heard, yet one of highest authority and strangely familiar. The message is so forceful and commanding it seems everyone present cowers under its fierce instruction. I wait for Axon to translate for me, but he doesn’t attempt to do so. Glancing in his direction, I note he’s hanging his head, as if chastened. I realize with a primal jolt that the message is coming from Queen Maria herself. None of the family looks me in the eye, and it is only after the ancestral authority recedes that Axon speaks again.

  “Mother Maria, our ancestor, has said the family must support you and protect you, because …,” he pauses momentarily, casting his gaze around his people, “you are her daughter and you are Queen Maria’s titleholder.”

  I STAND BEFORE THE MICROPHONE, in front of about 150 people. My book launch, barely five months after the gut-wrenching news of Maria’s death, marks a turning point in my life. The Zulu medicine man Selby Gumbi, dressed in a priestly snow-white caftan with sunray golden braiding in celebration of the White Lions, has just introduced me in glowing terms. I’m humbled, dazed, but I fall back on my former modeling training to keep my composure, as I walk up to the microphone and hold it to my trembling lips.