by Linda Tucker
After getting Maria’s urgent notification in my dream, I immediately called a strategic trustees meeting in order to reallocate these newly arrived funds—knowing only too well that the trustees would be convinced by results, not daydreams. The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 a.m.
While I am the person driving my cause, there are many respects in which I no longer make decisions on my own. The Global White Lion Protection Trust has a board of trustees and two separate councils of advisors, who have been appointed specifically to give guidance. It is an organizational structure, which I set up based on Ian’s sound advice. After a half century of experience in founding and managing nonprofit organizations, he urged me to keep my decision-making caucus lean and mean: a small circle of trusted trustees. That way, decisions can easily be put into action without endless, debilitating debates. But in addition to the trustees, I have two advisory councils: an experts council and an elders council. The first comprises experts in their field—lawyers, conservationists, financiers, and political leaders—while the second comprises indigenous elders from different continents—sages who advise on aspects of good governance and the cultural and spiritual importance of the White Lions. While they don’t have voting rights, both councils’ guidance is paramount and informs all critical decision-making. However, it is the second council, the wise, indigenous elders, whose wisdom I hope to draw on during this meeting since they would best appreciate that my directives in this matter came from ancestral realms. Sadly none of the elders are available at such short notice, but I’ve just learned that a couple representatives of our experts’ council will be attending today’s meeting. Given my audience, I have to be all the more logical and persuasive in my rationale.
I try to calm my breathing as I sit on the high-ceilinged veranda of Harold Posnik’s house. From Harold’s veranda, I can see his converted garden cottage, which houses the White Lion Trust’s office. Harold generously offered these premises without charge after assessing the pressure I was under in respect to fundraising. Although I was introduced to him just over a year ago, Harold instantly saw the issues for which I’d been campaigning all these years and committed to help. He is like a brother to me, and after all the lonely crusading, that’s a great comfort.
I glance at my watch, wondering where he is. I’d hoped to sound him out on this critical issue before the trustees arrive in a half hour’s time. He’d be relieved to hear the good news: our first meaningful donation toward acquiring the property has finally come through. But I doubt he’ll see the sense in suddenly reallocating those funds toward an entirely different purpose, unless I talk him through the fencing argument very thoroughly. The electric fencing of game areas represents a massive component of overall cost, so naturally, this question needs to be weighed very carefully. Having operated as a lone warrior for so many years, using the trunk of my car as my traveling office, I can’t quite get used to the idea that I have a highly effective support system to fall back on.
But how can they support my proposal? If I sink these donated funds into the fencing, where will I find the outstanding amount? I feel that familiar tension gnawing at the pit of my stomach. Waiting for Harold to arrive, I pour myself another cup of tea from the tray and watch the pale wisp of steam spiral up before dissolving into the atmosphere.
Harold’s premises have changed my life. His garden, as it happens, is so close to the zoo that I should be able to hear Marah’s former brethren, the golden lions, roaring from my office desk. That’s if this were the Timbavati wilderness. But it is central suburban Johannesburg, throbbing with traffic on Jan Smuts Drive, one of the busiest roads in the city, so there is no detectable sound at all from the zoo, just over a kilometer away, which, in some ways, is a relief. Nevertheless, the unheard, unseen presence of the living creatures incarcerated there helps motivate my every decision, including the one I have to push through in the upcoming meeting. Marah was once held in those dungeons. I may have secured her release and relocation to a safe haven, but the Queen of Lions is still in captivity, and the longer she remains there, the less likely she is to ever survive in the wild of her natural Timbavati kingdom. All the more reason to press ahead with the meeting.
Harold ambles onto his veranda. We give each other a hug and he settles on the couch opposite me looking serious, his graying, dark hair catching the morning light. He pretends to be tough, but he has a warm heart and a priceless wit. He made his money through aviation—as executive director for aircraft maintenance—then investing in properties and retiring before fifty. While he might live in this gracious and stately Victorian house with an impeccably designed garden, the man himself is something of a rough diamond. Precisely because he’s loaded with street smarts, I identified him as my most trusted financial advisor.
I explain, “Realistically, erecting the fence’ll take a couple of months, by which time the property deal will be finalized, and we could, in principle, move Marah and her cubs onto the land, without delay.”
“Great thought,” he concedes. “Problem is the cost of building the electrified fence would clear out our coffers—leaving us unable to buy the land!”
Naturally, he’s expressed the obvious.
“Great we’ve finally received our first significant donation!” he continues. “But the fourth month is over; now the fifth is ticking!”
“We’ve got to get this fencing up immediately if we’re going to get Marah out in time,” I urge.
“What’s the urgency?” Harold asks. “I don’t get it.”
“I’m no longer the only one bidding for the property,” I explain.
“Don’t tell me the canned hunters have wised up to your scheme,” he demands.
“Afraid so.”
Harold is feisty and straight-talking, and, like Ian, an Aries personality. But while Ian is an old Trojan with a big vision and long-term strategic battle plan for conservation, Harold enjoys below-the-belt tactics in the fray of battle. Both share a concern for my welfare and safety, however, and I know it is secretly one reason Harold offered me his low-profile suburban garden premises. Invisible to the outside world, it is not the sort of place that can be accessed by the public or sabotaged by opponents to my cause. My itinerant existence was successful for the same reason—small likelihood of any antagonist guessing that all my top-secret files were being carted around in my car’s trunk! I intend to keep it that way. After hearing of the breakin and trashing of Greg Mitchell’s premises last year, his files and hard drives stolen in an attempt to bring him down, I keep an even lower profile. I also ensure that duplicates, in fact triplicates, of all important documents are stored in safe keeping in several different locations.
“So how d’you know the canned hunters are bidding against you?”
“Jason overheard some inebriated comments in The Fort,” I explain.
“Local Timbavati pub?”
“Yeah. It’s a kind of den of iniquity. Usually all the talk’s about rugby, rifles, and hunting, but now the topic seems to be my unwelcome arrival in the region.”
“Hmm.”
“Main hostility’s coming from the godfather of the canned-hunting mob, and others have teamed up with him.”
“Damn it, that’s not kosher; they’re onto you already,” Harold says. “I don’t wanna unnerve you, but the stakes were probably too high from the outset. You’re tackling too big a fish with too small a net.”
Harold generally gives me encouragement, but today he can’t disguise his concern.
“Well, stakes are raised even higher now, Harry,” I concede, “because they’ve started placing offers way in excess of my own.”
“Don’t let them get cute with us. Remember: until your option runs out, your claim over the land is secure,” he reminds me. “Just sit tight, and get your butt into gear.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
When Harold’s worried, he makes the same point several times over. He is making that familiar point again about the men’s pubs i
n this part of the bushveld being the local equivalent of bars in America’s Deep South.
“Watch the testosterone and racial tensions in those places,” he’s reiterating. “Women—like yourself—and black Africans are at serious risk. And probably Jews too.”
As for risk, he didn’t have to spell it out. Jason informed me that a young six-foot-four game ranger friend of his had been beaten senseless for arriving at The Fort accompanied by a black colleague. And in a separate incident, another particularly good-looking and seriously heterosexual game ranger was so badly smashed up in a pub brawl that he lost the use of one eye and had his face scarred for life, all because it was arbitrarily decided by the mob that he must be gay.
“This background is important, Harry,” I concede. “But today I really need your help and guidance on the strategic financial decision in advance of the meeting—”
Too late—the doorbell rings. My grace period is over, and I have to prepare to motivate this strategic action step that I know is right—at an intuitive level—whether or not it makes sense at an immediate logical level.
Harold’s housekeeper opens the door, and Marianne van Wyk steps in first. An impressive lady in her fifties with a pronounced Afrikaans accent, she lives in a two-story mansion full of animals and favors maroon and turquoise for her interior décor. Not long ago, I decided to appoint her as a trustee of the White Lion Trust, after she proved her credentials in levelheaded crisis management and astute business practice. She always arrives at least five minutes early. Today, unfortunately for me, she is fifteen minutes early.
After Marianne has settled in, the doorbell rings again, then again, as one after the other of the lawyers on my experts council arrive. One is a contracts specialist, and the other an envirolawyer and CEO of South Africa’s top legal firm.
I make them comfortable, and the doorbell rings again. It’s Thembi Mahlangu, the second trustee, arriving late. An eloquent, beautiful woman of Sepedi royal descent, and with a strong, quiet manner, she joins us. After the usual formalities, we begin the proceedings.
I explain the timing is very pressurized for gathering outstanding funds for the land, but that the need to secure the premises and permits for the lions’ transfer is more urgent—and in order to do so, we need to erect electric fencing immediately.
Marianne speaks first, with a robust exclamation of disapproval.
“Yuslike,” she says, using a colloquial Afrikaans expression of shock and dismay. “You’ve just got the first bit of money for the land; now you wanna throw it all away again.”
Her argument, as expected, is that any decision over the fencing should wait until after the purchase of the property. So I provide my most reasonable response, “I wouldn’t call it ‘throwing money away,’ Marianne. It’s part of a careful strategy to enable the lions onto the land at the earliest opportunity.”
“First things first.”
Marianne’s position is understandable. With her sound business background, she must view my proposal for use of the funds as premature and rash.
“Why risk money that’s desperately required to purchase the land?” Harold speculates.
As the trust’s financial advisor, he’s shrewd, and he thinks out of the box. But based on obvious financial considerations, the input he offers simply supports Marianne’s skepticism. I regret I didn’t have a chance to cover the ground with him earlier, so I attempt to do so now.
“We have to erect boundaries, fast. The intention’s less to keep the lions in than intruders out. And the immediate objective is to gain an official permit, so we have permission to release the lions on the land—at our first opportunity.”
I pause, hoping these imperatives hit home.
“And in practical terms, the fences need to be of a very high standard,” I explain, “to satisfy the Nature Conservation authorities.”
For the record, I take this opportunity to point out that the permit procedure for reintroducing the White Lions to their ancestral lands was initiated by Jason Turner on our behalf, more than a year ago, and he’d been processing it with dedication ever since—on the strength of which we could expect our official approval shortly. The trustees note that Jason deserves a special letter of acknowledgment.
“Good news is Jason’s been painstakingly following due process. But we won’t be issued a permit without first gaining approval of the fencing,” I continued. “It’s a necessary prerequisite.”
Marianne, of course, reminds me of our unimpressive fundraising record. “Yuslike, my friend!” she says. “So you’re telling us we must sink hard-earned funds into land we don’t yet own—and we might never own?”
I hear her, but that same pressingly urgent inner voice that Maria Khosa trained me to trust keeps telling me I should delay under no circumstances.
I look to Thembi for backup, but she’s sitting in silent thought.
Of course, it’s vitally important to consider the lawyers’ informed positions. Coming from a conservative background, the contracts lawyer offers an abundance of caution, which doesn’t support my argument. The other lawyer, Coenraad Jonker, simply observes and listens intently to the whole scenario. An unpretentious young man with a brilliant, unflashy mind, he had catapulted to the very top of the most distinguished and ruthless legal firm in this country. Renowned for weighing and assessing and mediating all possible options, he tends to take fearless, uncompromising action and never look back.
“Without the fencing in place, we’re in no position to move Marah to the land,” I summarize. “This remains our primary goal of course—and time’s running out!”
In this cosseted, wood-paneled interior in the center of Johannesburg suburbia, I am conscious that my last comment may have sounded melodramatic. But the blistering overhead sun that will scorch the Karoo desert in less than one month’s time is just one reminder of the fraught situation in general. In addition, the hotel tycoon who owns the land has begun charging exorbitant fees to accommodate Marah and the pride, evidently hoping that if I’m unable to pay, he’ll keep the lions himself. And I am unable to pay. The pressure’s building up.
There’s silence around the table. From Marianne’s posture, everyone can see she’s by no means convinced.
“I’m going on gut instinct here,” I add. “There’s an open window of opportunity now, but I’ve got a terrible hunch it’s about to close.”
“If you’re wrong, you’d lose the whole deal,” Marianne points out.
“Time’s of the essence,” I continue the same plea. “We have to go on faith that the rest of the funding will come in time and on time.”
I’m stumped. I can give no further arguments for taking this action. I know these words sounded feeble to the skeptical mind.
“I’ve got a problem with this,” Marianne announces. “Your view, Harry?”
“It is problematic,” he replies, the third time he’s repeated this phrase in the meeting.
“Thembi?”
Thembi’s no pushover. In the past, she’d shown that she’s unswayed by the opinion of others, unless totally convinced by the authenticity and value of what’s being proposed. She looks thoughtful.
“I’m considering,” she responds in a soft voice.
I observe her closely, no assistance likely from these quarters.
All I can do is call for a brief adjournment before a resolution is passed.
I’m exhausted. Harold and Marianne have been echoing and outdoing each other, like two trainee fighter pilots, competing in the same aeronautical show. And not only me—everyone present must have been suffering from buzzing in their ears.
I watch them shuffle off into Harold’s drawing room, where delicious morsels have been arranged on platters. I head out into the gardens to clear my head. All morning, I fought to hold this position, but, alone on my walk around Harold’s garden, I am having my own doubts. Why, after all, is this action so important to me? It is a grim paradox that my pursuit of Marah’s freedom even necessit
ates the construction of predator-proof fencing. It doesn’t make sense. So why am I advocating it? I feel my whole body weakening. As I stroll under the shaded oaks, I should be strengthening my line of rational argument, but instead my mind is filled with all the emotional and gruesome images I’ve personally witnessed over the years—of harm done by electric fences. Endangered species, such as leopards, tortoises, and rock pythons, electrocuted on the wires. And other animals, trying to escape, like inmates from a high-security prison, killed against them. Then the scene I’ll never forget on my recent trip with Jason: the rarest of rare, a pangolin, curled up in a ball around the lowest electric strand, as a natural reflex, dying an agonizing death from its repeated charged currents. We managed to unclamp this little creature’s tortured body from Timbavati’s fence line; it was still alive, but there was nothing we could do to save it, and it finally died in my arms.
It appalls me to think of these executions taking place all over the world, wherever electric fences have been erected by insensitive humans. And here am I trying to advocate for the urgent erection of more fencing, which may lead to similar casualties on the lions’ sacred lands! What an awful thought.
