Elephant Dawn

  A month later, Minister Kasukuwere took a vicious public swipe at Johnny Rodrigues. The Bulawayo Chronicle quoted the minister as saying: ‘What does Rodrigues know about animals, a Rhodesian Selous Scout who wants to tell us how to run our animals in this country. He used to kill our people during the war of liberation. That’s what he only knows and we are saying this to him: mind your own business chief, the days when you used to kill Africans are over. Shut up, we’re now fed up with you.’

  The tragedies in Hwange didn’t stop. One night in April, Australian wildlife conservationist Greg Gibbard from Perth (affectionately known as Gibby)—who worked inhouse for the Painted Dog Conservation project—was brutally murdered with an axe at the project base, by a disgruntled black Zimbabwean ex-employee. Gibby was 61. I didn’t know Gibby all that well but we’d shared a few drinks over the years and always stopped for a chat whenever we met on the roads. I could only wonder what causes such deep-seated hatred and rage. This sort of brutality was shocking, but nothing in Hwange surprised me anymore.

  Despite stories that more than 80 young elephants were now in bomas ready to be exported, the Parks Authority had captured no more than the 34 youngsters that Johnny initially reported. Those that didn’t die or escape were still being held in cramped bomas inside Hwange National Park. Through all of the early months of 2015, I’d kept up frequent communications directly with Minister Kasukuwere. He’d retained enough respect for my work and knowledge of elephants to at least keep tolerating me, even if he was now standing firm. Once it became clear that the export was definitely proceeding despite global concern, my focus switched to encouraging Minister Kasukuwere to at least leave the weaker elephants behind. I knew that Roxy Danckwerts, who recently founded the Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery (an extension of ‘Wild is Life’ on the outskirts of Harare), would take on the care of any left behind. She, too, was liaising directly with Minister Kasukuwere and we had begun liaising with one another.

  In early July, 24 of the young elephants were airlifted to China. Photographs later revealed their distressing plight: a life of captivity, with no adult bonds or parental guidance, ahead of them all. Three luckier ones remained in Zimbabwe. At least one of these three was of an age where it still would have been suckling frequently from its mother at the time of capture. Named Annabelle, Matabele and Kukurakura, these elephants are in the care of Roxy and her team and could do with your support. Please look them up and follow their progress. One day, when they’re old enough, we all hope it will be possible for them to be returned to the wild.

  Meanwhile, Johnny reported that Cecil the lion had been killed by an American sport-hunter, and there was unprecedented world outrage. While the American dentist who carried out the despicable deed was the focus of international anger, it was the Zimbabwean professional hunter who escorted this client who was always more to blame. The American was under his control and guidance, after all. Although Cecil certainly wasn’t the first majestic lion to be shot in Hwange, his death struck a chord, particularly over the way he had been hunted.

  Finally, unethical sport-hunting in Zimbabwe, and particularly in Hwange, was in the international spotlight. A second Zimbabwean hunter was subsequently reported to have been arrested after also presiding over the wrongful hunt of a lion. The Parks Authority publicly named him as Headman Sibanda, who had threatened me. Men like Sibanda though, are far too well connected. Despite all of the talk, nothing much is likely to change, at least not for long, in Hwange while so many unethical hunters are around. Following Cecil’s death, some international airlines changed their policies and now refuse to carry the remains of sport-hunted animals.

  When a photographic safari guide was subsequently tragically killed by a male lion inside Hwange National Park in late August while escorting a group on foot, Zimbabwean journalists wrote of the spirits being angry and of ‘Cecil’s revenge’. The guide’s name was Quinn Swales. He was the nephew of my friends Keith and Raynel.

  Then in September All the President’s Elephants screened on television in Hungary, bringing my life and work with these extraordinary elephants back to the fore. People always ask about the decree reaffirmation and Lady in particular after watching this documentary. Sad memories flooded back as I answered a torrent of emails.

  As if all of this wasn’t enough, by late September another series of horrendous cyanide poisonings in Hwange and around the country led to more elephant deaths. Once again, the poachers were after ivory. More than 70 elephants were reported to have been killed by cyanide in just one month, and that number kept rising. At the same time, some rotten cogs in the wheels of the Parks Authority were arrested for ivory smuggling. The Hwange Main Camp ecologist, one of the most senior of the Parks people on the ground, was among them. Thefts from Hwange’s ivory strongroom had also been discovered. Corrupt Parks staff, and some policemen, were finally being exposed as ivory smugglers, and I for one was not even a little surprised.

  During October, Zimbabwe was again in the spotlight over another appalling hunting incident. This one didn’t occur in Hwange, although it certainly could have had the magnificent elephant bull found his way there. In a legal, escorted hunt in the south of Zimbabwe, a German sport-hunter killed an elephant with tusks that almost reached the ground. This elephant bull had wandered into the wrong country. A CNN reporter described the elephant as looking ‘prehistoric, almost like a woolly mammoth’. In fact, he was said to be the largest elephant bull found in Zimbabwe for decades, perhaps more than 30 years. All hunters know how rare such a specimen is these days. And they blew him away. To put his head on a wall.

  To top all of this off, Zimbabwe confirmed that it will continue to rip young elephants from their families to meet demand from zoos. And it plans to continue lobbying to sell its ivory stockpiles.

  During 2015 all of my Cabinet contacts, except for Saviour Kasukuwere, were among those who were either expelled or suspended from the Ruling Party for allegedly plotting a coup to oust President Mugabe. Even Didymus Mutasa, once one of Mugabe’s closest confidantes and the man who’d helped arrange for the initial and subsequent decrees for the Presidential Elephants, was expelled and described by the president as a ‘stupid fool’. Francis Nhema, who appears in All the President’s Elephants on behalf of the president, was suspended for five years, losing his ministerial and Cabinet seats although, bizarrely, he’s been allowed to remain as a ZANU-PF member of parliament.

  Minister Kasukuwere has since been promoted. He no longer has anything to do with wildlife, having been handed the higher-ranking ministry of Local Government. He also currently holds the powerful Ruling Party position of National Political Commissar, the person expected to ensure that ZANU-PF wins elections. It is now more clear to me than ever that during my last year in Hwange, and especially during my last few months, all of my high-level contacts were too preoccupied with internal politics, jostling for power and positions, to do the right thing by elephants.

  Minister Kasukuwere has since thanked me and acknowledged my work and commitment to Zimbabwe’s elephants. Several times over this past year he has declared, ‘You will be back.’ He will probably think differently after he reads this book.

  Wilderness Safaris’ guide Lewis Mangaba, who introduced me to Cecil the lion, has also told me that I’ll be back. ‘Thank you for all you have done for our beloved Zimbabwe,’ he wrote in an email. ‘You at least did something, and that energy no one can destroy. Hope you will soon pack your bags and be on a flight to Zim to be among the elephants that you love. I strongly believe you will be back. Peace and love be multiplied to you.’ Like so many ordinary Zimbabweans he cares little for black–white hatred.

  Roxy from Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery wrote to me about the lucky three elephants who weren’t sent to China, encouraging me to visit. ‘Can’t wait for you to meet this trio Sharon. You have helped both them and me so much over the past few months . . . Elephant hugs to you!’

  Others still want to see me elsewhere. My long-distance
friend, Ayesha, who lives near Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa, urged, ‘Hurry up and finish that book so you can come and have ellie time in Addo. There’s ocean AND ellies here. Perfect for you!’

  Carol emailed (still promising to leave Zimbabwe any time now) to say, ‘I am just glad you are not still here in the country, facing it all on the ground.’ And she had good news too. ‘Tim Tams are back on the shelves in Harare!’

  Shaynie really wants me to be missing it all, but I can’t give her that assurance. My Zimbabwe friends though—both elephant and human—are in my thoughts, every day.

  Lol and Drew didn’t end up moving to South Africa after all. Lol met back up with a Dutch friend, Jacques, who grew up in Zimbabwe and who she first met when she was ten years old. They married in Harare in December 2015 and are making plans to live in the UK, and later in the Netherlands.

  Very soon after in December, my dad died. I’m thankful to have had fourteen months living close by him. The day before he passed away in his high-care nursing home in Toowoomba, he asked me, as he had on previous occasions, to read to him from my manuscript for this book. I told him with a smile that he must be ‘verruckt in the kopf’! He squeezed my hand as I told him too that Andy would be waiting to meet up with him, just as they had on my dad’s beloved Fraser Island in 1999 (the year before Andy died). My dad is buried in cattle grazing country, in the grounds of a quaint little white, wooden church where I once went to Sunday school. When, shortly after his funeral, Australia’s weather forecasters began reporting a monsoon trough in the Gulf of Carpentaria moving towards Queensland and likely to develop into Cyclone Stan (my dad’s name), family and friends all smiled.

  Tragically, by January 2016, poachers with cyanide had infiltrated the key home-range of the Presidential Elephants. One carcass was confirmed poisoned, but I fear the number of dead could be much higher. Bodies, as I know only too well, are not always found. Just as disturbingly, a new orphan arrived at the Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery. He was found covered in blood (probably his mother’s blood), roaming terrified through the township of Dete, just down the road from where I used to live. Three female elephants had reportedly been shot in the area, and this little elephant was certain not to be the only orphan roaming around. These are horrifying developments. Some people in Zimbabwe like to say that all is okay with the Presidential Elephants. But the only way to know what has really happened to them over the past few years is for me to one day—if sanity ever returns to the country—try to carry out a detailed survey of the seventeen extended families in order to determine who is now missing from each one.

  Later, it was very encouraging to see All the President’s Elephants as a finalist in the International Elephant Film Festival—‘the best of the best’ elephant films in the world from the past nine years—an event that involved both the United Nations and CITES. As a finalist, it will now be showcased extensively throughout the world, with specifically targeted areas to include the African nations, China, the United States, Vietnam and Thailand, where ivory trade is high. It’s also hoped that screenings to school children in African nations where poaching is high, will help them fall in love with elephants.

  If you’d like to support anti-poaching efforts in Zimbabwe, please go to the Perth-based SAVE Foundation website www.savefoundation.org.au and select ‘Donate Now’. If you specify ‘Presidential Elephants’ as your reason for giving, president Nicholas Duncan will ensure that 100 per cent of your donation (converted into needed equipment) reaches reputable anti-poaching teams on the ground. Donations made in Australia are tax-deductible. You can also make contact with me directly via www.sharonpincott.com and Facebook.

  Some experts predict, based on current trends, that elephants could be extinct in the wild within the next couple of decades; potentially within my lifetime. When you see great numbers of elephants in countries such as Zimbabwe and Botswana, this seems impossible. But elephant poaching has reached unsustainable levels. If there are some 400,000 African elephants left in the wild today and 30,000 continue to be killed annually for their tusks, their future certainly doesn’t look bright. Elephants live a whole decade and more before they give birth. And then they give birth only every three to four years on average. Recovery, therefore, is not rapid. Raw ivory is reported to be bought from poachers for less than US$100 per kilogram—and sold to Asian countries, where demand remains high, for more than twenty times this amount. The future actions of countries like China are key to the survival of elephants in the wild.

  People frequently ask me what they can do to help the plight of the world’s elephants. Not everyone is ready or able to fully immerse themselves in their own dedicated journey on the ground. If you are, prepare yourself for the roller-coaster ride of hope and heartbreak. If you aren’t, you’ll find plenty of conservationists around the world who could do with your moral, and if possible your financial support.

  The photographic tourism industry is so important to Africa’s wildlife, so long as it is properly controlled. Before you book anywhere on the African continent do check that you’re supporting reputable lodges that are, in turn, putting a percentage of their profits back into supporting the wildlife, and also the impoverished communities who live among these wild animals.

  Those activist and advocacy groups around the world who professionally lobby governments and decision-making bodies rely on you, the concerned public, to add voices to their campaigns.

  While it is easy to heap all blame on African countries such as Zimbabwe, it must always be remembered that if there is no demand for the likes of ivory, elephant hunts and live young ones, there is no market. We must also remember that governments have to somehow find the money to support the running and protection of wildlife areas. There is no single simple solution, especially in places where corruption abounds. But unless we all take time to do just a little for our threatened and endangered species, their end could certainly be near.

  My own journey with elephants is set to continue.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Without the presence of these people in my Hwange life, my years with the elephants would have been so much harder—Dinks (Deline) Adlam, Shaynie (Charmain) Beswick, Ayesha Cantor, Val De Montille, Bobby Dempsey, Ernie and Carmen Deysel, Eileen Duffy, John and Del Foster, Craig Haskins, Mandy Keating, Miriam Litchfield, Gladys Mbomba, Carol McCammon, Andrea McKain, Busi Ncube, Caleb Nel, Henry and Natalia Nel, Jabulani Ngwenya, Karen Paolillo, Greg Rasmussen, Julia Salnicki, Lol (Laurette) Searle and her son Drew, the late Barbara Strydom, Dee (Desree) Strydom, Keith and Raynel Swales, Marion Valeix, CJ (Cynthia) and Herbie van den Berg, and Esther van der Meer and husband Hans Dullemont. Your part in my story will be remembered always. To those who have become dear friends, I’m forever thankful. Also to Corinne Carthy (nee Doneux), Susan Grady (nee Heming), Sue McMurchy, Christine Turner and Anne Waldie (nee Dobson) for support and friendship spanning 30 years.

  Extra special thanks must go to Shaynie Beswick, who provided me with a Bulawayo base, even during the years when she was barely there (and really should have cancelled her lease), from where I shopped for supplies and recovered my spirit. Special thanks, too, to Carol McCammon, who also opened her home to me whenever I managed to get to Harare. To those in Hwange who helped ensure that I at least had a roof over my head, I’m grateful. And to all who lent a hand over the years, including Nicholas Duncan and those associated with the SAVE Foundation of Australia (these days known as the SAVE African Rhino Foundation), and others associated with the Matabeleland branch of Wildlife Environment Zimbabwe, you made a difference in my Hwange life. To Mandy Keating, endless thanks for Facebook assistance when my internet access was so poor, and for your ongoing website contributions.

  To all of the elephant-lovers and advocates around the globe, the world would be a much poorer place without you. To the many hundreds who provided moral support, frequently taking time to drop me a note of encouragement, I thank you. To those who found their way to the Hwange bush
carrying a little something to warm my heart, I will always be grateful for your thoughtfulness and laughter. Small things really did help to make some of the big things bearable. To the Button-Voorn family, the Green family and the Strachan family in particular, I will never forget our days together with the elephants.

  Without placing you at further risk, I put my hand on my heart and remember those, especially in the Wildlife Ministry, Parks Authority, Forestry Commission, police and photographic safari circles, who were supportive and understood well the difference between right and wrong, even when others beside you did not and it wasn’t wise for you to say so. To you I say—Ngiyabonga. Wazvita.

  I take this opportunity to make special mention of a stranger who was kind to me beyond measure. Roberto Sabatino stepped up to the mark in South Africa when the thoughtful Ayesha Cantor secretly put out a plea for laptop assistance for me after a power surge destroyed mine. I’d never had any prior dealings with Roby and had no idea who this generous, unassuming man was. The laptop was only six months old when I realised that I had to leave Hwange, and Zimbabwe. I contacted Roby before leaving, to make a plan. His gracious words touched my heart at a time when my faith in humanity was wavering: ‘The laptop was a gift, it is yours to keep. It was the least I could do for all the amazing work you have done with elephants . . . I expect nothing in return . . . [A] smile is priceless for me. I believe a little kindness and compassion can go a long way in this world.’ I have cherished Roby’s words, as much as I have his laptop (on which I wrote this book).

  My sincere thanks to Deb Fleming, ex-Australian Story executive producer, and my publisher Rebecca Kaiser from Allen & Unwin for help and enthusiasm in making this book a reality. It was my Zimbabwean friend Val De Montille, still living in Brisbane, who helped these introductions along. To Bobby Dempsey, who rode with me through all the months of oftentimes difficult writing. Further deep gratitude to Rebecca and Bobby, and also to Aziza Kuypers and Andrea McKain for gentle guidance and wisdom while editing. Many thanks to Allen & Unwin publicist Sarah Haines for enthusiastically embracing this book, and to Angela Handley for kind assistance.