by Linda Tucker
Sitting around the table are Jason’s colleagues, hunched over steaming mugs of coffee, rubbing their hands together from the cold.
“Join you in ten minutes for the meeting,” I say as I head out of the kitchen to the shower room.
In the icy shower water, I have little encouragement to linger. So, pulling on woolies and a fleece over my khaki clothes, I return to the breakfast table, where Jason is preparing the practical steps for the day. He’s poured me a hot mug of coffee too. I clasp both hands around it for warmth.
The dogs settle on their mattresses on the kitchen floor. Since leopards still roam the area nocturnally, Jason and I decide it is safest to keep both dogs inside at night. Glancing affectionately at Cibi, I remember how poignant it was to learn that during the period when she was chained, she broke free several times after sensing a prowling leopard in the vicinity—and managed to escape the predator, even dragging a chain around her neck! Her tenacity is an inspiration to us all.
“What a survivor!” Jason praises her with a big hug.
He’s the only person I know who treats dogs as if he’s one of their pack. He buckles down to their level, kissing and cuddling Cibi and Sam in turn, and rubbing noses.
He finally stands up again and, walking over to the table and taking his files out of his rucksack, prepares to plan the day with his colleagues.
“Okay,” he says, decisively. “First priority’s to sort out the radio communications network. For some reason, it isn’t operating today.”
Despite his easygoing temperament, I can see the strain starting to show on Jason’s face. It is also a reflection of my own inner tensions, which I’ve been trying so hard to keep in check. Month after month has dragged by since moving onto the lands. My days have been fraught with worry and strategy, and many nights are sleepless. I miss Mireille’s warm presence, even though she makes sure to call for an update nearly every night. There’s always plenty of feedback for her—the burning of firebreaks, clearing of alien plants, patching of erosion sites. What I’m struggling to keep secret from her are the thatched rondavels Nelson and Nelias are lovingly constructing for her return—beautiful rounded huts built through traditional Tsonga techniques, with traditional African screeded floors. They spend a couple hours each day building, between their early morning and afternoon security sessions. Meanwhile, the rest of us focus on getting everything possible in place for the lions’ release from the boma, so we are ready and prepared as soon as the moment arises.
A lot has been achieved, but in some respects, there’s been no progress at all. We are all playing a waiting game. Sometimes, the only way I can deal with the seriousness of the situation is to see it as a game—a chessboard of opposing pieces, played out one dangerous move after another. Strategically, we have to close ranks and hold a defensive position, ensuring all our key pieces are in place to protect our Queen. Over these past months, our lawyers have persistently continued sending letters to the authorities, respectfully requesting issuance of our outstanding permit. At the same time, the most litigious of our opponents has stepped up their demands on the authorities—threatening to take the department to court if these authorities don’t shut down our project. All the while, the final permit remained unissued.
Meanwhile, over time, Jason has gathered a scientific team around him in support of White Lion conservation, specialists in their field who give their time freely and voluntarily. Their support is deeply gratifying and helps us focus on priorities. Thomas, an ecology student from Canada, has joined Jason’s team as his scientific assistant. He’s a tall, lean, good-looking youth with heavy eyebrows and a scarf flung around his neck against the morning chill. He’s also an excellent scientist, but from my perspective, Thomas’s cynical, rational mind sometimes gets in the way of his higher logic. I notice that Xhosa is not with our team this morning. He’s probably already at his computer, checking through emails. I myself am hesitating about going to my office, bracing myself in case there’s some menacing fax lurking in the machine.
“So what new missile d’you reckon’s gonna be hurled at us today?” Thomas inquires, with an arched eyebrow but no emotion.
“More of the same,” Jason responds, with a gentle smile. “We’ll just continue to get on with the job.”
“Well, at least we can’t complain it’s boring,” Thomas retorts. “Being under constant enemy fire.”
Over the last months, legal missives have been rapidly exchanged, like cross fire from the trenches. I feel out of my depth in this tortuous legal arena. Despite legal letter upon letter, the painstaking process of permit issuance, which was so debilitatingly slow over the lead-up to Marah’s relocation, is at a total standstill countrywide. So, despite the tenuousness of our situation, which risks officialdom arriving at our gate at any moment with a court order to remove our lions from our land, I have absolutely no shadow of doubt in my mind that I made the right decision to stick to my guns and bring our pride home. Failure of heart would have denied Marah her freedom, forever. While I know this for sure, it hasn’t been easy.
We are holding firm, but we have no way of knowing from where and how the next attack will be launched. Or what new ploy might emerge to stall or even shut down our program. We’ve regularly made efforts to follow up with the government department, but our White Lion file keeps getting mysteriously “lost” in the works. In fact, we’ve had to submit and resubmit our case several times over—a box file, hundreds of pages thick. It’s been particularly unsettling to discover that information from our several files lodged with the department “somehow” found its way into the hands of opponents. The hunting fraternity has since used this material as leverage against us in subsequent letters of demand. They’ve also handed it over to their local poison-pen journalist.
Unfortunately, the front-page headlines six months ago had been one of many such nasty stories over the intervening period. Not surprisingly, it turns out the journalist in question is, in fact, the mouthpiece for some particularly vicious and frustrated pro-hunting entities who have made further published inroads in attempting discredit us on home territory.
While every day has seen a new drama in our neighborhood, there’s still no resolution from the authorities. Without a permit, all they need do to render us “noncompliant” or “illegal” is to do nothing. The only grounds the authorities offer our lawyers for delaying our permit is that some of our neighbors have lodged complaints that our land isn’t large enough for free-roaming lions.
“Interesting argument,” I muse out loud to Thomas. “Particularly since not one of these neighbors have ever lodged a complaint about the canned-hunting operations keeping lions in small cages-for-killing on their borders.”
“We’re applying for sanctuary status, right?” Thomas asks.
“Yes. Fifteen hundred acres doesn’t represent the full extent of White Lions’ original kingdom. True,” I continue, “but it’s a safe haven. And it’s the heart!”
Routine daily events provide some comfort from the unmitigated stress, and it’s heartening to watch Jason take his work file out now for his colleagues and proceed to list the actions for the day in order of priority.
“What’s the status on the thorn-tree barricade?” Jason asks.
“Complete—as of yesterday,” responds Thomas ultra-efficiently.
“That’s a relief. Worth all the effort and torn uniforms?”
Jason’s referring to a massive undertaking, which involved setting up a bush squad of field workers—mostly volunteers, together with some paid contractors from the local Tsonga community—who spent the past couple of months dragging hewn thorn trees and stacking them against each other to form a long barrier.
The barricade was lined up inside the fence itself—about ten meters in—and was part of a carefully laid strategy for protecting the lions. This monumental job is finally complete.
I open my briefcase and double-check the names on the paychecks one more time—Nelias Ntete, Nelson Mathebula,
and eight other names from the Tsonga and Sotho people: the bush squad, who will be returning from the field at the end of the day. It’s been challenging working on a shoestring, but this month there’s just enough income to pay our contractors well. And it was the same the last month, and the month before. There’s nothing left over to pay Jason, and he doesn’t expect payment, but that can’t go on forever.
I look up at him appreciatively. Together with his team, he’s scrutinizing the map of the property, rolled out on the kitchen table.
“Once the lions are roaming freely,” Jason explains, “the primary risk areas are here on the west and here on the northern frontier, where our electrified fence borders a dust road. These perimeter fences pose a serious danger zone, because they can be easily accessed by humans. But the thorn-tree barricade should act as a protective screen.”
“Hope it keeps Marah and cubs away from dangers at their external boundary,” I add. “And out of sight from any humans accessing the boundary road.”
“Can’t pussyfoot around when it comes to saving lions,” comes a smart comment from Thomas.
“Too true, Tommy,” Jason concurs. “So, in terms of prepping the environment for Marah’s release, we’re more than ready. Our only headache is waiting for the permit. Big headache. For our reintroduction program to be successful, timing’s absolutely essential.”
The threat of possibly losing Marah and cubs, combined with the endless incapacitating delays in securing the final permit for her release, has worn me down. In all these agonizing months of waiting, there’s been no tangible shift, only legal pressures intensifying, and the department’s tone toward us hardening, as coercion from our pro-hunting neighbors amps up. We’ve managed not to lose ground in the face of threats from adversaries and intimidating letters, but without the go-ahead from the authorities, it’s difficult to gauge how we might drive the process forward.
Having the backing of a legal firm with such a formidable reputation provides some relief: their name alone on a litigious letterhead has kept the onslaught at bay. But I’ve come to the conclusion there’s much the lawyers don’t understand about the nature of the White Lion project. Bottom line is: we don’t have the luxury of time.
All the while, Queen Marah waits.
There’s a twang of electric wires and a sudden scuffle.
“At least the dogs can practice their hunting techniques!” I observe.
Outside the kitchen window, Sam and Cibi have charged after a family of warthogs, the local version of the European wild boar, which have wandered out of the winter landscape into the farmyard in search of greener pastures. The hogs scatter, dogs after them. I’ve trained both Sam and Cibi not to chase animals in the surrounding bushveld wilderness, but in their home territory—Base Camp and its surrounds—they have free rein. Chasing warthogs, however, can be risky, as these fierce little pigs have been known to unseam or disembowel dogs with their vicious tusks. Fortunately, the hounds come trotting back, grinning with victory.
The constant daily list of vital improvements and preparations for the lions’ free roaming on these lands is never-ending: the security measures, fence maintenance, erosion control, and many other aspects of habitat management. But in the absence of resolution from the authorities, there’s nothing more we could do for the lions’ urgent release except wait. We’ve looked at the challenge from all angles. Without a way forward, the uncertainty is becoming intolerable. Personally, I’d be prepared to put up with the department’s indecision, if it weren’t that these delays could have a hugely negative impact on Marah’s future survival in the wild.
The team is wrapping up their plans for the day when Xhosa steps out of our office and gestures to me. Something’s not right—he looks like a bear with a sore head today.
“Be with you as soon as I can, X,” I respond.
He doesn’t look happy, but there are other urgencies that must take priority—most immediately, paying the staff.
At the end of another month, it’s pay day again. Nelson and Nelias have been waiting outside for some time, dressed to the nines in preparation to head home. If I don’t pay them now, they’ll miss their bus home, which travels on this remote route only once a day.
I call them in to join Jason and me for a quick cup of coffee. Nelias is in his neatly pressed Sunday best, standing hat in hand. Nelson is all smiles and brawn, muscles rippling through his T-shirt and crisp denims. These two dedicated men are the backbone of this project; it would be impossible to implement the next steps without them.
From the beginning, directly after taking them on, Jason and I decided to double their former pay. I wished I was in a position to pay more—both men are worth their weight in gold. Nelson proved his loyalty, courage, and total dedication in the years he worked for my family; and Nelias, to my mind, is an invaluable asset. How do you put a value on this elder’s support? He’s one with this ancestral land, its wildlife, and its very lifeblood. Over the past few months, I’d come to regard this simple laborer as one of the most dignified and intelligent men I’d ever met. Without his tracking skills, our project would be at much greater risk. Even Jason, who’s worked with many skilled indigenous trackers from different tribes, including the Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert and the Zulu from Natal, confirmed that Nelias’s tracking abilities were exceptional. His understanding of Nature and her ways are unsurpassed, and I’ve seen him read her signs like a book. Yet Nelias is illiterate and can’t spell his own name.
We discovered this at the end of our first month here, when we were issuing him his first paycheck. He couldn’t sign his name, but he confirmed that an inscribed name on the envelope, in the handwriting of the previous owner, was his name.
The previous owner, the hunter-farmer’s wife, had told me his name was Alice, and she and her husband had called him by that name for a half century. After I queried this as an odd name, she insisted, and wrote his name down on the envelope for me. She didn’t know his surname, but not knowing the staff’s surname isn’t so unusual in the old South Africa, with its Apartheid mindset.
Turned out he had been called by the wrong name for most of his life, but, poignantly, Nelias’s dignity was such that he was prepared for Jason, me, and our team to continue to call him by this ridiculous misnomer until we saw from his ID papers that his real full name was actually Nelias Ntete!
I observe Nelias for a moment, standing upright and proud, beanpole thin, enjoying the light banter and the strong coffee into which he is dunking his buttermilk rusk. In African culture, calling someone by a woman’s name would add insult to injury. Yet I marvel how Nelias embodies natural strength and quiet dignity and how even this unimaginable insult has not affected his true identity.
I hand over the two paychecks, which Jason has reviewed for me. Nelson will keep his safe under his mattress to share with his girlfriend who is coming to visit that weekend, and Nelias will hide his in his shoe so that no tsotsi (thief) could steal it from him in the minibus taxi on his way back to the community township where his family lives. For the next month, we’ve committed to take Nelias into town to assist him in opening a bank account for the first time in his life.
Jason cracked a joke in Zulu—something about tracking Nelias all the way home to Swaziland if he leaves the country with all that money in his shoe—and the three men simultaneously break out into peals of laughter.
Nelson finishes his coffee and washes his mug, leaving with a wave and a broad smile. Nelias does the same, stepping out into the broad daylight with Jason, who’s offered to give him a lift to Hoedspruit, an hour away, where he’ll catch his taxi back to his family.
Xhosa emerges from our office room again. I have the same nagging feeling something is seriously wrong, and now I determine to act on it. Entering, I sum up Xhosa’s mood in one glance: dead serious. At first I imagine he must have checked the fax machine before me, but there’s no fax in his hand. Then I see the registered letter. Grim-faced, he hands it over, explaining that la
st thing yesterday afternoon, while Jason and I were out monitoring the lions, a registered parcel suddenly arrived, hand-delivered by a conservation official at our gate.
“Did the official come onto the property?” I demand, my heart plummeting like never before.
“No—handed it to me through the gate, and I signed for it.”
“Oh, Heavens, X! They didn’t physically deliver the summons onto the property, as we’ve been warned?”
“That’d have been over my dead body!”
“Hopefully that won’t be necessary,” I retort sarcastically, desperate and angry at the thought that thirteen precious hours have passed. “Why didn’t you alert me before?”
“Tried, but couldn’t reach you on the radio network—lines were down! I haven’t told anyone—my rationale was that you should be the first to know. I didn’t want people panicking, but I’ve spent a sleepless night, worrying—”
“Okay, okay!” I interrupt. “Give me that.”
Snatching the sealed document from him, I see at a glance that the envelope, with its official crests, and stamps, and signatures, is marked “Final Warning.” I have to hang onto the nearest chair for support. Like a death sentence, the thought that this official letter might be the dreaded summons announcing the confiscation of the lions splits my head in two.
I open it. As it turns out, this “Final Warning” demands that our lions be removed back to the province they come from, failing which, action will be taken against us. It’s one step away from the summons I’ve been dreading—the drastic measure from the department that tore Greg Michell’s lions from his safe haven and dumped them back into the killing industry. I know only too well that he never got them back to safety, despite taking the matter to the highest courts in the land. Xhosa stands beside me in silent consternation, chewing his nails through his cut-off woolen gloves. Seated, without gloves, I’m doing the same, my mind in turmoil. Finally, once I’ve reconstituted my thoughts, I come to a firm resolution.
