Rhino Poaching
South Africa’s Financial Mail placed their analysis of Africa’s rhino poaching industry on their cover this past week in a rare break from the mass media’s casual and convenient avoidance of engaging on the issue of the profit driven exploitation of the continent’s wildlife heritage. One can only hope that further sustained exposure on this form of human barbarism will yield louder calls for more proactive governance from the South African (and other affected/effected African “democracies”) authorities from both a legislative and criminal justice perspective.
Rhino Poaching: "Evil will prevail when good men do nothing"
Whilst acres of overzealous column inches are wasted on the analysis and counter-analysis of the anatomy of stupidity known colloqually as Julius Malema Africa’s rhino population continues to be plundered, raped & mindlessly consumed in the service of foreign (mainly Asian & Middle Eastern) currency. The numbers are frightening & startling: where in 1970 the continent housed some 65,000 black rhino there are now only an estimated 3,610 surviving descendants. Yes, things are indeed dire when numbers are rounded to the nearest 10 not the nearest 5,000. Small mercy perhaps that those 3,610 are up on 1992′s low-point of 2,500 when the future of their species ongoing existence on this planet was in serious jeopardy in the midst of the political firestorm that engulfed the nation in the transition from minority white rule to a democracy born but 2 years later.
What excuses there may have existed in the strife torn years of the 1970s and 1980s ring hollow 17 years into freedom for all South African human beings. One fears that one evil – that of white supremacy – has given way to a far more malignant entity (for Africa’s dwindling rhino’s at least) in a putrid & inhumane combination of apathy & willful ignorance on the part of political power structures & the public who serve as (unwitting but culpable all the same) accomplices in the violation of creatures whose freedoms & rights merit at the very least that dolled out to the freedom fighters of decades past.
Join the fight against the willful destruction of Africa’s natural endowment of wildlife wonder – Say No To Hunting on African Safaris - the Facebook Cause worth getting involved in. More voices, more noise - hopefully more sanity.