Saving the White Lions

by Linda Tucker

  There’s a long pause.

  “It seems Maria required no acknowledgment during her lifetime,” I hear myself speaking boldly and purposefully, inadvertently casting my eyes to the ceiling, with its many recessed electric spotlights, as if searching for the stars. “I hope she can hear me now when I say: I owe her my life.”

  As I describe how much this inspirational motherly person means to me, it’s all I can do to stop myself from breaking down. I feel the full responsibility of Maria’s royal mantle now on my shoulders, invisible yet so weighty. The past few years of quietly working in secret with this great woman and other shamanic teachers are over. Maria warned me once my book was disseminated, my private life would be altered forever. But she also indicated there was no alternative. To do the work required of me by the White Lions, I had to take their message to the world. Now, with the family’s sanction and acknowledgment, my responsibility feels all the more heavy.

  Immediately after Maria’s unexpected death, I had to focus on strategizing for Marah’s release. I knew that once material I’d guarded so fiercely finally went public through my book, the battle lines for the White Lions would be irreversibly drawn. Already, with my work hot off the press and available in the public domain for but a matter of days, I’ve come to see how my published words can be twisted and deliberately misrepresented, or how my mission can be both misunderstood and exploited even by my supporters. Earlier today, my publicist, who said she’d wanted to surprise me, carted several newborn cubs to this venue, to be touted as live exhibits. I was furious. The thought of those little creatures being passed around the crowded auditorium for hundreds of guests to handle and gawk at, as a promotion for my work, totally sickened me. I intervened immediately—and no doubt made some enemies for my pains.

  As for the canned-hunting operators who generously coughed up these cubs, I’ve just cost them a commercial opportunity. No doubt, they won’t forgive or forget easily. Over this past decade, I’ve been lying low. Now, for the first time, as I’ve stepped out into the public arena, they must be gauging exactly what kind of opponent they’ve spawned in me. With a shudder, I think of those poor little cubs being carted back to the captive camps by angered breeders who feel cheated and obstructed.

  Still, while some allies may have been lost, others are stepping up in support. Dr. Ian Player, the octogenarian world-conservation gladiator, has been a heroic figure of mine since childhood. When he agreed to give the keynote address at my book launch, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Right now, I’m listening spellbound as he delivers an impassioned speech in support of my work. His wisdom from a lifetime of conservation battles and victories gives me context as I stand on the threshold of this public life. I realize with a sense of profound relief that I’m not alone. This path has been trodden by lionhearted generals before me.

  EQUINOX, MARCH 18, 2002. I’m in a procession of tribal elders circling a crystal stone circle that was arranged by Maria Khosa while she was still alive. Four months ago, I received a message from Maria Khosa from the ancestral realms. She indicated that I was to summon a gathering of eighty-eight shamans from around the globe to witness “and celebrate the birth of the Blue Star,” which she prophesized would take place in the heavens on this very day.

  Although the Blue Star pertains directly to the birth of Marah and is allied to the Star of Bethlehem, she said it also signifies my initiation into the role as Marah’s mother, Keeper of the White Lions. Transmitted through the lead medicine woman of her family while in a state of shamanic trance, Maria’s instructions for this undertaking seemed so monumental when I first heard them, and the objective so far-fetched, that my logical course of action should have been to decline. But caution was never Maria’s philosophy, and if she could walk among an unruly pride of lions when they were justifiably angered and dangerously aggressive, with only the star-spangled skies to guide her way, I felt I had little choice but to follow in her footsteps in the sacred lands of Timbavati, looking to the heavens for the sign she prophesized.

  As usual, given my cautionary academic background, I tried to do my homework. With my uncle being South Africa’s chief astronomer, my first step was to contact the astronomical associations and observatories around South Africa, but no one had any inkling of a new star in the making. My inquiries on the matter to NASA revealed that they have no method or technology to predict the birth of a heavenly body, only its death by witnessing and measuring its process of decline. There has been no way of hedging my bets that this event prophesized by the ancestral realms was actually going to happen in our world. So, like Maria on that fateful night of my rescue, I have simply had to go on faith.

  Today, after several months of preparation, I have gathered shamans from around the world, along with midwives from the animal kingdom, who Maria had informed me would come forward, both seen and unseen, to honor this moment in celebration of the birth of the Blue Star and my initiation as her successor.

  Maria wanted this event to take place on the White Lions’ ancestral territories, but the governing bodies of the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve run the wildlife reserve like a military outfit, with entrenched protocols and prohibitions. They do not welcome indigenous peoples, nor their “strange” shamanic practices. Fortunately, Jason has joined my efforts in putting the event together and helped me find ways to quietly bend Timbavati’s rigid regulations. There’s no way on earth I’d have gained access to sacred soil without his assistance.

  A few days after my initial call, the NASA contact reported that gamma ray impulses had been detected in the area around Sirius. I was flabbergasted! It was from Sirius that my ancestral source told me the Blue Star would be born. This was monumental news—an occasion fit for celebration and homage—linking the African legends with Egypt, and corroborating the secret knowledge shared by Maria and Credo about the White Lions’ origin in the Sirian star system.

  It didn’t pass my notice that Maria’s message also referenced the Star of Bethlehem, which was born and observed by the three wise men an entire astrological age ago—approximately two thousand years prior—and which represents the birth of the new era. Astrologically speaking, the Southern Hemisphere is on the brink of the Age of Leo, while the Northern Hemisphere is on the brink of the Age of Aquarius.

  So at this most auspicious moment, on this sacred site of great power and White Lion guardianship, a small group of sangomas and environmentalists have gathered to join me in the heartlands of Timbavati to pay homage to South Africa’s unique living treasure: the starlions of Timbavati, and their Queen Marah, whose messianic birth coincides with the turning of ages.

  Most have traveled from foreign lands to participate, not knowing what to expect. I feel profoundly humbled. Three kings from the local tribes have joined the occasion: King Solly Sekhoro, King Thobejane, and Axon Khosa, Maria’s nephew and King Kapama’s grandson. There are no donkeys, and we are not gathering around a manger, but I am acutely aware too of the animals that have assembled for this occasion, just as Maria indicated.

  A couple of hours ago, as we trudged down Timbavati’s white river sands, we passed the tracks of a leopard (Maria’s totem), an antbear, an eland, and a cheetah, and just before we arrived at the site, an elephant matriarch appeared from behind a huge marula tree, majestic and calm, as if overseeing the procession. Maria said that any of the eighty-eight places not taken by human pilgrims during the ceremony would be filled by a representative animal, and sure enough, the presence of animals was all around us.

  By the time we reached the site, darkness was falling, so we are all carrying lanterns, creating a glittering, serpentine procession encircling and then settling down around the medicine wheel. Now the darkness is complete. I step into the center of the stone circle, to hold the axle point, as Maria instructed me. The intense silence is broken as the characteristic drumming of the medicine women starts up. The darkness deepens. Then silence again, tremoring, as animal sounds echo on all horizons. We hold this space
for an immeasurable term, suspended in time.

  Then suddenly, there’s a flash of green-blue light across the heavens!

  It’s much brighter than a falling or shooting star, and its illumination lingers several seconds spanning the heavens, then flashes again.

  Marah’s star is rising in the heavens. The next step is her freedom on Earth.

  TODAY, THREE MONTHS AFTER MY BOOK LAUNCH, I am one dramatic step closer to freeing Marah. I’m sitting with Dr. Ian Player in the lounge of Johannesburg’s sumptuous Saxon Hotel, where he is being hosted as a guest speaker. Ian has become my mentor and close advisor in conservation strategy and strike tactics, and our relationship has strengthened into a deeply entrenched support base.

  Since that first sighting of the blue flashes across the heavens, the same dramatic pyrotechnics have been seen again and again in the Timbavati heavens—fifteen times in all, by seven different eyewitnesses who reported the times of the sightings to Jason. He himself was one of the main eyewitnesses, as his tracking of lions night after night under the starry Timbavati skies means he’s ideally located to spot these dramatic occurrences. They took place over the period of several successive days, protracted birth pangs, it seemed, until all of a sudden they stopped, and the star itself was visible flickering blue in the skies. The unusual stellar event was then reported in astronomical journals. The miracle of this cosmic blessing, and its unlikely prediction months before the event, should have given me a moment to pause, but I’ve been fully focused on an action plan to save Marah.

  Every day since Christmas in Bethlehem has been one day closer to achieving my strategic goal. I’ve only had one further encounter with my little lioness. On September 21, 2001, when Marah was nine months old, I visited her in a grasslands field while the canned-hunting camp owners were away at a game auction. Released from her cage by Greg Mitchell, Marah ran, bounded, frolicked, and played with me; we romped and tumbled over each other, again and again. It was so exquisitely joyous; nothing in my life will ever compare with that experience of love and freedom. We knew each other from lifetimes ago: my daughter, my sister, my mother. But I remember equally the pain when I had to return her to her cage. So brief our joy, one afternoon’s escape. After that life-changing experience, I returned to my Johannesburg hotel and wept, reaffirming my commitment to Marah’s best chances of rewilding, to her wildness. To ensure I did not contribute to her dependency on humans, I could never again play or frolic with my little lioness.

  I’ve shared the story of the Blue Star with Ian. He’s a deeply spiritual man, but he’s also a military-style tactician and pragmatist. In the lead-up to this week’s landmark events in the strategy for Marah’s freedom, he has advised me well. He and I did not accompany the police on their raid into Bethlehem to free Zeus and Marah, but we set it in motion through pressure on the zoo. Sitting here in the Saxon Hotel, we are anxiously awaiting news of the outcome, but there’s been a stony silence ever since, with the zoo answering neither Ian’s nor my calls.

  Unfolding the national Sunday paper, now, I discover with a shock its headlines announcing this police raid:

  Rip-Roaring Custody Battle

  “Hmm,” Ian observes me closely. “I’ve stopped trying to warn you off making bold and risky decisions. You’re a living example of the heroine-savior archetype. You have to save. You don’t even expect people to thank you for your sacrifices—you’ll make them regardless. It’s your nature. So my best bet is to support you.”

  “I’ll do anything for Marah. Anything,” I respond, glancing at my watch, as my imagination ranges over the dramatic events that took place in Bethlehem, to which the papers only allude.

  My cell phone is ringing. It’s Saaywitz, the zoo’s attorney, who was present at the time of the police raid. He describes how the canned hunter was “apoplectic with rage” and proceeded to release his lions from their cages in a frenzied attempt to stave off the zoo officials. He admits he’s never been in such a bizarre situation in his life, and he recounts more soberly how he himself was “almost beaten to a pulp” by the canned hunter and was only saved after shifty-eyed exchanges with members of the local police force, who, rather than arresting the canned hunter, only warned the incensed man to back off for his own good. Saaywitz tells me he smells collusion between the canned hunter and the local police force.

  Whatever the allegiances the outcome is a mess. The good news: Zeus was seized and confiscated, and his noble head was saved from ending up a stuffed trophy. However, in all other respects, the zoo has botched the raid and failed to retrieve Zeus’s cubs. Both Marah and Aslan, as well as all their golden siblings, remain in the clutches of one of the most disreputable and mercenary industries on Earth.

  With a sinking heart, I realize that yet another follow-up strike of sorts will have to be launched. This time, the accompanying police officers will have to come from another province, so as to avoid the close affiliations becoming apparent between the mafia-like canned-hunting operators and sectors of South Africa’s national police force itself.

  CHAPTER 9

  Adversaries

  THERE’S BEEN A BREAKTHROUGH, BUT NOW a new opponent has raised its ugly head. Earlier this month of May 2002, a second zoo raid into Bethlehem took place, following information that the canned hunter was parceling out Zeus’s cubs to his canned-hunting buddies in order to disguise their whereabouts. The raid succeeded in confiscating Marah and Aslan, as well as a handful of Zeus’s golden cubs. However, in a shocking betrayal, the zoo has since made yet another under-the-counter deal with the canned hunters, and traded Aslan, as well as all his golden siblings, back into the notorious canned-hunting industry. Only Marah was excluded from this mercenary deal, because of my preexisting contract with the zoo.

  Marah’s rescue represents the first of many impossible missions accomplished, but the future of Marah’s family, and most particularly, her half brother, Aslan, trapped in the Bethlehem killing camps, remains desperately bleak.

  Along with this brutal twist of fate, I have unexpectedly found myself face to face with a lethal new adversary, the zoo veterinarian. In contrast to other vets I know, who tend to be gentle people and who treat animals like extended family, Dr. Cloete is a specialist in taxidermy and animal trade. What’s more, this stocky taxidermist holds a dubious position in veterinary services, whereby he is allowed to trade animals without recourse to permits or accountability, an ideal platform for animal laundering, in which he appears to have had unfettered engagement.

  From that first day of introduction, when Dr. Cloete marched over in combat fatigues tucked into tiny pork trotter cowboy boots and vigorously shook my hand, I intuited it was not going to be a happy partnership. To serve his own ends, Cloete has exposed my identity to the canned hunters, targeting me as the leak responsible for the raids into their stronghold. The climate has become explosive and unpredictable, with the canned hunters incensed.

  My close ally, Greg Mitchell, warned me that, by taking on this corrupt vet, I am pitting myself against an entire industry—one that kills for a living. Now that the perpetrators have identified me, I need to watch my back.

  But my friends are in greater trouble than I am. Since the second police raid on Bethlehem, which freed up Marah, Greg himself has had to appear in court to give evidence on the trial. In the lead-up to the first court hearing, his house and vehicle were trashed, and sinister messages were left on his phone. Then a helicopter repeatedly started circling, lower and lower, over his house. During the last years of Apartheid, Greg was conscripted and trained in a special unit of the South African defense force (the fabled “101 Battalion,” known for its black ops into hostile territories led by Khoisan indigenous trackers), so his approach to the intimidations of the chopper was to go outside and point his rifle directly at it. But he wasn’t as prepared for the next steps. Shortly after his court hearings, Greg himself made a daring escape out of the Bethlehem canned-hunting camp, together with eight of Marah’s golden siblings. H
is motives were sound, but unfortunately his plan went horribly wrong. Despite the fact that he had purchased the lions, as well as a sanctuary of some five thousand hectares to ensure their well-being, he was denied a permit to relocate them to this land.

  He then spent nine months repeatedly applying for permission, in vain, with the rescued lions cooped up in miserable captive conditions, awaiting transfer. Finally, out of patience, and desperately concerned for their welfare, he relocated them to his wildlife sanctuary. Since then, tragically, on the grounds that Greg didn’t have formal permission to transfer the cubs, they were seized by Nature Conservation officials and returned to canned-hunting holding pens, using aircrafts owned by none other than the operators from whom Greg had rescued the lions in the first place.

  Greg is not alone. My activist friend Gareth Patterson, the well-known lion conservationist who took over some of George Adamson’s famous lions after George’s assassination, also had his life threatened after he published a grim exposé of the canned-hunting industry, entitled Dying to Be Free.

  Another lion custodian, Simon Tricky, who approached me after he rescued some golden lions carrying the rare White Lion gene, and who had courageously provided some of the names in Gareth Patterson’s exposé, was rewarded for his pains by having his prize lion shot with a crossbow, and disemboweled, in retaliation.

  A few weeks ago, I myself started to receive sinister phone calls from unidentified parties telling me to back down or “someone might get hurt.” They forget that a mother’s love will stop at nothing to save her young.

  MONTHS AND MONTHS OF PATIENT NEGOTIATION with the zoo have led nowhere. Today, in my effort to free Marah, I’ve been sitting in the zoo conference room for seven hours, in tense negotiations with Dr. Cloete and the zoo director in his Pierre Cardin suit and snake-skin shoes, with our respective hardcore lawyers on either side of the table.