Zuma qualifies for Wild Stuff in Africa.

As the name implies, this blog is about wild stuff in Africa, with 'wild' in the context of 'wilderness'.

I don't do politics, but I do feel compelled to take a closer look at what this Wild Man of Africa has just done.

The Wild Man of Borneo was a saint compared to our own President Zuma. In one final foul swoop this despot has now driven a potentially great country right out into the wilderness of the worst banana republics.

There are millions waiting to be raked off in the shady SAA deal, and possibly billions off the even shadier R 1 trillion nuclear deal with the Russians. When our capable minister of finance attempted to put the brakes on the insanity, he got himself fired for daring to stand up to Zuma and Dudu. He was replaced with an unknown yes-man who could not even manage a small municipality.

This resulted in the bottom dropping out of the economy, and the Rand plummeting into freefall. Someone must have pointed out to the laughing man that he had now gone too far, so he started slamming the screen doors on his sinking submarine by getting rid of his newly appointed minister as well.

Maybe Jan van Riebeeck had torpedoed his sub...

Seems Zuma is falling on the Spear of the Nation.

Fields of flowers destroyed at Langebaan.

Who on earth allowed this?!

Who could have given the go-ahead for this

to be ripped up and transformed to this?

While behind me...

...lo and behold the silly sign they had the audacity to put up

An environmental no-go area? (Environ-) Mental indeed - you could get run over by a bulldozer.

Just outside the beautiful town of Langebaan, on the road to the West Coast National Park, this particular hill and valley used to be famous for the floral cloak it dons every spring. Visitors from far and wide annually flocked to this spot to look at the splendour of the floral display.

This piece of land should have been a heritage site, and protected as such. Who gave the final go-ahead for this development? What was the motive? It can only be a politician. This decision will cost him or her one hell of a lot of votes.
Is there anyone out there who can put a name to this person? The time has come to name and shame.

The developer? Developers do what they do - develop and make money. Nothing wrong with that.

But it should never have been allowed on this irreplaceable piece of land! I believe they are putting up sixty residences. How will any of the new owners ever be able to sleep in their new homes. Imagine living on the graves of millions upon millions of wild flowers that are gone forever.

Shame on you, whoever you are. You are a disgrace.

Aliens committing suicide

Rust fungus creating havoc:

During the nineteenth century Acacia seligna, better known as Port Jackson, was introduced to the Western Cape for soil stabilisation. It was also deemed to be beneficial as animal fodder and for fuel wood. It must have seemed a good idea at the time.

This alien tree soon started invading the delicate fynbos systems of the Cape and there was no stopping it. Both physical and chemical control failed miserably as the Port Jackson marched forth relentlessly on its road of destruction.

In 1987 a rust fungus was introduced, which infected only the Port Jackson and no other species. The fungus itself does not kill the plant, but invokes a potent infection stress. In reaction to this severe stress the Port Jackson forms galls, with which it eventually strangles itself.

The spores of the fungus are spread widely by the wind.

The life expectancy of a Port Jackson tree has dropped from fifty years to less than ten...

On a different front a specific weevil which feeds only on the seed beds of these trees has also been recently introduced.

Hopefully the fynbos will soon reclaim these barren areas.

Printed format

For those who still prefer the feel of paper and the smell of glue:

All five the novels in the Sam Jenkins Series are now also available in printed format from Amazon.

Media Frenzy

Cecil who?

I am not a hunter. I don't even like hunting. But I am not a lunatic or a zombie either.
Read a little. Look up some stuff on Google. Educate yourself a little and start thinking for yourself - don't simply swallow everything the media pushes down your throat. It is nothing but opium for the masses.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily the media can whip up a storm in a tea cup, leaving the frenzied masses foaming at the mouth with indignant fury.
All just because someone had given the lion a name. Every single day we are bombarded with hunters posing with their kills - rhino, elephant, leopard, giraffe, greater kudu, you name it. If the 'hunter' is some scantily dressed eye candy there might be a ripple, but otherwise nothing... But make it personal by giving the victim a name, and all hell breaks loose. The righteous masses, most of whom have no understanding of the concepts of 'sustainable use', 'ethical hunting' 'extinction' or CITES, jump on the band wagon with unbridled fury.

Whether this hunt had been ethical remains to be seen, but time will tell.

While everyone is still ranting and fuming, I have a message for you from my friend Arthur:

"The night after Cecil was killed, poachers crossed the border into the Tsavo National Park and slaughtered five elephants in minutes. All five died in a radius of fifty yards. The tusks were hacked out, and rangers found the carcasses and the orphan the next day.
Spare a thought for my nameless relatives."

Did you see anything about this in the media?

Neither did I.

The swear word is "poaching", people. That is where the danger of extinction lies. An elephant is poached in Africa every fifteen minutes.

Now that is something to go ballistic about.

 Do I hear your voice out there?

Killed for a four inch horn!

Some two years ago a friend of mine had all the rhinos on his farm dehorned for fear of poaching.
Removing the horn of a rhino is as painless as a haircut and has no effect on the social structure, feeding habits or fighting habits of the animal. Fighting still occurs with the same frequency and ferocity as before, but serious injuries and fatalities are reduced to zero.
Once the horn has been removed, it starts growing back at a rate of approximately 5cm per year. Just like hair, albeit a little slower.
On a visit to the farm my friend pointed out the remains of a rhino that had been poached a couple of weeks ago. The savages actually killed this rhino for the sake of two year's worth of horn growth. I made it my mission to find and assess every other rhino on the property.
Not one of them had a horn exceeding four inches (10cm)!
Over and above the monetary implications (half a million bucks down the chute for the owner), that was a prime breeding stock cow and all her potential offspring are gone forever.
Bloody savages.

As the old saying goes: if you keep on doing what you've always been doing, you will keep on getting what you always got.

Isn't it time to try a totally different approach? There are thousands of rhinos in privately owned breeding programs in this country. Lift the ban on the trade of rhino horn and the supply/demand balance will collapse. The bottom drops out of the price, and poachers will no longer be prepared to run the risk for a pittance. With rhino horn cheap and freely available, buyers will soon realise that they have been conned all along - the stuff is useless as aphrodisiac and has zero medicinal properties.
The rhinos are happy: they are no longer threatened and keep growing new horns to be harvested from time to time, like sheep being sheared for their wool. No harm in that.
The breeders are happy: at long last their considerable investment is beginning to pay off.

And who knows, maybe the rhino will eventually claw its way off the endangered species list.

I'm just saying...

Missing slideshow

The link to the slideshow in my previous posting has become dysfunctional. Please go to the Youtube link instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdgX7JUoK9I

Thank you for pointing it out, and thanks for all the views.