Peter gave this talk at the IWA show in Germany earlier this month.

THE POLITICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURE OF HUNTING IN AFRICA

I am an African. Although my skin is white and I speak English, I am an African, an eleventh generation African.

As the executive chairman of the fifth largest gold mining company in the world, Randgold, I listed our non South African gold mining interests situated in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Namibia, Tanzania and Ethiopia, on the London Stock Exchange, under the name of Randgold Resources. And so it was that for many years I traveled extensively in west, south and east Africa on business.

I shot my first antelope, a grey rhebuck, when I was nine years old and hunting has been a passion of mine ever since. I have been on well over a hundred hunting safaris in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Benin, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic and Gabon.

In other words, out of the 36 countries that make up a Sub-Saharan Africa, where 99,9% of all hunting takes place on the continent, I have traveled widely in 16 of them. I do not mean to imply by this, that I am an expert. In fact, I am extremely wary of being called an expert. After all, an “ex†is a has been and a “spert†is merely a drip under pressure.

No, it is hard to be definitive about anything in Africa. In fact, if Africa does not confuse you, then I would like to suggest that, in all likelihood, you are not properly informed. Similarly, if you don’t love Africa and hate it at one and the same time, then you have probably neither spent enough time nor visited enough places on the continent.


In my 24 year career as a turnaround specialist, I and my partners have come to the inescapable conclusion that every organization, whether it is a church, club, company or a country, needs four things in order to be successful, namely, leadership (and preferably strong, decent, fair and visionary leadership), a written plan for the future (if it is not written it is merely a hope, wish or prayer), an effective and cohesive management team who have been directly involved in the compilation of the plan they are being called upon to implement and an action plan which breaks the overall plan down into small, measurable, bite size bits (because, quite simply, if you do not measure something on a short interval control basis, you will not obtain the end result you desire).

In the first two decades of independence in Africa, there were some 40 successful coups and countless other attempted coups. During this period, Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian author, wrote that, “the trouble with the Nigerian is simply and squarely the failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There’s nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadershipâ€. The same could have been written about any country in Africa and then and now.

In Angola, for example, oil production rose six fold after 1983. Between 1997 and 2002, the oil sector generated nearly $18 billion. Yet what happened to the income was shrouded in secrecy. An International Monetary Fund report in 2002 showed that 22% of government expenditure between 1996 and 2001 was “unexplainedâ€; a further 16% was listed as “extra-budgetaryâ€. Using IMF figures, a Human Rights Watch report published in 2004 calculated that between 1997 and 2002 an amount of $4,2 billion went to “unaccounted for†– an average of $ 700 million a year, nearly 10% of gross domestic product, roughly equivalent to the total sum spent on education, health and social services over the same period. What had occurred, said the report, was gross mismanagement and corruption on the part of Angola’s leaders.

The British high commissioner in Kenya, Edward Clay said in a speech to business leaders in Nairobi, in July, 2004, that the names of honest ministers and senior officials would fit on the back of a postage stamp. He went on to add that, “It is outrageous to think that corruption accounts for about 8% of Kenya’s GDP. Kenya is not a rich country in terms of oil deposits, diamonds or some other buffer which might say featherbed a thoroughgoing culture of corruption. What it chiefly has is its people –their intelligence, work ethic, education, entrepreneurial and other skills.

Those assets will be lost if they are not managed, rewarded and properly led. One day we may wake up at the end of this looting spree to find Kenya’s potential is all behind us and it is a land of lost opportunity.

We never expected corruption to be vanquished overnight. We all recognized that some would be carried over to the new era. We hoped it would not be rammed in our faces. But it has: evidently the practitioners now in government have the arrogance, greed and perhaps a sense of panic to lead them to eat like gluttons. They may expect we shall not see, or will forgive them, a bit of gluttony because they profess to like Oxfam lunches. But they can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes.â€

Africa’s leaders plundered their own countries almost without exception. Karl-i- Bond, a former prime minister of the Congo testified before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa and stated that between 1977 and 1979 Mobutu had withdrawn $ 150 million in foreign exchange from the central bank and deposited it in his private accounts. In 1981 he had ordered the central bank to transfer an additional $30 million to his personal accounts abroad and, at about the same time, 20,000 tons of copper, worth about $35 million, was privately sold for his benefit. “The budget and the mining revenues are really the private pool of funds for Mobutu and his friends,†an official from the International Monetary Fund observed. By the nineteen eighties, Mobutu had become one of the world’s richest men and his fortune was estimated at $5 billion.

I can go on and on ad nauseum in this vein but so much for the issue of leadership.

As for planning, I have yet to come across an African country with a written strategic plan for the future. Yes, of course politicians talk a lot about what they are “going†to do, especially election time but these are generally wish lists at best. South Africa has produced things called GEAR and ASGISA but these have been vague political warblings along the lines of President Mbeki’s much touted African Renaissance which exists, I am afraid to say, more in his imagination than anywhere else.

As for the management teams, Chris Allen, an academic researcher, summarizing a series of investigations into parastatal organizations in Benin, wrote that, “the institutions were found to be hierarchical, authoritarian and highly bureaucratic, leading to failure to perform the essential tasks, to waste and inefficiency. The personnel, apart from being in many cases unqualified or ill-qualified, tended to be idle, undisciplined, arrogant and above all corrupt, so that fraud as well as inefficiency abounded within the parastatal sectorâ€. These people and their equivalents in the civil service are a country’s management team.

Claude Riviere, who was a sympathetic critic of Guinea’s economic policy wrote to that, “To set up a cannery without products to can, a textile factory that lacked cotton supplies, a cigarette factory without sufficient locally grown tobacco, and to develop….a forest region that had no roads and trucks to carry its output – all of these were gambles taken by utopian idealists and ignoramuses.â€

A few years ago, I was approached by a major South African bank to investigate what had happened to some
$160 million lent by them to the Tanzanian government to establish a parastal gold mining industry. The Tanzanian government formed a committee consisting of the governor of the reserve bank, the attorney general, the permanent secretaries of mines and defense as well as one or two others to assist me. By being generous in the extreme, I could trace some $26 million of the loan. The rest of the money had vanished into the pockets of a number of private companies as well as one of the main members of the committee.

In a nutshell, in my intimate dealings with nine African governments including countries in west, south and east Africa, I have never come across anything resembling an action plan for the implementation of any government policy and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, no African country has ever had one. In my own country, where we have passed nearly two pieces of new legislation a week for 14 years, until recently, we have never attempted to calculate the costs to the country of implementing these laws, let alone whether the country has the capability to do so. Our new Firearms Control Act is a case in point and 14 months after submitting my application to renew the licences of my firearms previously licenced under the old act, I am still waiting.

The results speak for themselves, the initial spurt of industrialization soon petered out after independence. Manufacturing output in the nineteen sixties, starting from a low base, expanded by 8% a year, outpacing the average for developing countries. In the nineteen seventies manufacturing growth reached only 5%. By the nineteen eighties much of Africa was facing “de-industrialisation.†Foreign investors looked to more promising markets in Asia and Latin America. The only segment of industry that continued to attract investment was mining and oil. However, the Nigerian writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa wrote, “Of all the countries who had black gold, Nigeria was the only one that had succeeded in doing absolutely nothing with itâ€. And we are talking here of $ 280 billion.

Before and shortly after independence, agriculture was Africa’s principal economic sector. Four out of every five people were engaged in agriculture. But Africa was the only region in the world during the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies where food production per capita declined and it still continues to do so. According to the World Food Council, the fall amounted to 7% in the nineteen sixties and 15% in the nineteen seventies. Between 1973 and 1980, about $5 billion in aid flowed into agriculture, half of it from the World Bank which calculated in 1985 that 1/3 of its agricultural projects in West Africa and more than ½ of its East African projects had failed.

Consequently, between 1970 and 1980, black Africa’s external debts rose from $6 billion to $38 billion. By 1983 it was $86 billion in debt and so it has continued. As Martin Meredith wrote in his magnum opus, The State of Africa – A History of 50 Years of Independence – and I have borrowed heavily from his work, “The impact on ordinary life was calamitous. Hospitals and clinics ran short of medicines and equipment; schools lacked text books; factorys closed through lack of raw materials or spare parts for machinery; shops were plagued by shortages; electricity supplies were erratic; telephone systems broke down; unemployment soared; living standards plummeted. The African child death rate is 2/3rds greater than in South Asia, three times higher than in Latin America and 25 times higher than in the developed world. In about 1/3 of African countries, less than half of the child population received primary education. In only six countries are more than 20% of the age group attending secondary school.â€

Compounding all the difficulties that Africa faces is an ever growing population. From a little over 200 million in 1960, the population by 1990 had reached a 450 million. On average, African women bear six children. Even with higher mortality rates, that means that Africa’s population is growing by more than 1 million a month and, despite the AIDS pandemic, the population is still growing albeit at a slightly slower rate.

The impact of population growth and land use has been especially damaging in the years since independence. Between 1973 and 1988, for example, Africa lost as much as 15 million acres of pasture. Woodlands were cleared to provide land for cash crops. The Ivory Coast, for example, possessed 29 million acres of forest in 1960 but only three and a half million acres by 1980. The French agronomist, Renee Dumont, estimated that 74,000 acres of rainforest disappeared every month.

In 2006, I spent a month hunting in the rain forests of southeastern Cameroon. Everywhere I went I saw signs of destructive logging. I was told that the logging companies were limited to cutting down one hardwood tree per hectare and yet, in many instances, I saw many hectares of previously pristine rain forest cleared of ALL trees. And this does not take into account the innumerable access roads carved through the rain forest nor the debris I saw left behind by the logging companies in the form of empty fuel drums, plastic bottles and, worst of all, steel cables, which the commercial meat poachers gratefully unravelled to make snares to use in the forest along the newly cut access roads.

A massive international rescue operation was launched in an endeavor to reverse the crisis in Africa. In the ten years after 1973, some seven and a half billion dollars of aid was poured into the Sahel region alone. Which reminds me - there are two kinds of AIDS in Africa. The first is the well known pandemic and the second stands for, “aid intercepted and deposited in Switzerlandâ€.

However, by the nineteen eighties, the future was spoken of only in pessimistic terms. Edem Kodjo, secretary-general of the OAU, told African leaders that “Our ancient continent is on the brink of disaster, hurtling towards the abyss of confrontation, caught in the grip of violence, sinking into the dark night of bloodshed and death…..Gone are the smiles, the joys of lifeâ€.

The brain drain out of Africa gathered real momentum at this time. In the 30 years between 1960 and 1990, it was estimated that some 100,000 trained and qualified Africans chose to work abroad. Between 1986 and 1990 alone, some 50,000 to 60,000 middle and high level state managers left Africa.

In my own country, according to official figures, over 1 million people have emigrated since independence in 1994. This figure does not tell the whole story, however, as many young people, my own daughter included, merely leave without formerly emigrating and simply do not return.

In 1989, the President of the World Bank, Barber Conable, wrote that: “The development of many Sub-Saharan African countries has been quite unnecessarily constrained by their political systems. Africans can and must tackle this issue. Indisputably, three decades after independence too many African countries have failed to produce political and economic systems in which development can flourish…. People need freedom to realize individual and collective potential…. Open political participation has been restricted and even condemned and those brave enough to speak their minds have too frequently taken grave political risks. I fear that many of Africa’s political leaders have been more concerned about retaining power than about the long-term development interests of their people. The cost to millions of Africans…. has been unforgivably high.â€

Instead, what we find is that, by 1990, not a single African head of state had allowed himself to be voted out of office in three decades. Of some 150 heads of state who had ruled African states, only six had voluntarily relinquished power. They included Senegal’s Leopold Senghor, after twenty years in office; Cameroon’s Ahmadu Ahidjo, after 22 years in office; and Tanzania’s Julius Nyere, after 23 years in office. Daniel arap Moi’s response four years into his presidency was to turn his country into a one party state by law. In 1984 he is quoted as saying “I would like ministers, assistant ministers and others to sing like a parrot after me. That is how we can progressâ€.

I think it was the journalist, Paul Johnson, who wrote words to the effect that, when the history of the world is ultimately written, nowhere will it be seen to the same extent as in Africa, that politicians have been prepared to sacrifice their countries and their people’s future at the expense of reaching an accommodation with their political opponents.

In 1993, Herman Cohen, a former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Africa gave evidence before the Subcommittee on Africa at the House of Representatives as follows: “To say Zaire has a government today would be a gross exaggeration. A small group of military and civilian associates of president Mobutu, all from the same ethnic group, control the city of Kinshasa by virtue of the loyalty of the 5000 man presidential guard known as the DSP. This same group also controls the central bank which provides both the foreign and local currency needed to keep the DSP loyal. While the ruling group has intelligence information about what is going on in the rest of Zaire, there is no real government authority outside the capital city.â€

This state of affairs exists throughout most of Africa today. For example, in 2002, I hunted in the northeastern Sahara region of Chad. At this stage, the whole of the fifth largest country in Africa possessed a grand total of 350 kilometres of tarred road. I would hazard a guess that there are more tarred roads in the district of Nuremburg than in the whole of Chad.

Late one afternoon, after returning from a hunt for Barbary sheep in a remote part of the Ennedi Mountains, we were ambushed by three nomads who shot at us with AK 47s, on full automatic, at a distance of no more than 150 metres. What saved us were two things, firstly, they established the ambush along our inbound tracks made earlier that morning as we drove into the mountains whereas, on a return, we did not follow these tracks but drove further down the floor of the wadi. Secondly, my guide was a highly experienced ex-French military instructor and, instead of turning directly away from the nomads who were running towards us as they fired, which would have presented them effectively with a stationary target, he kept on driving at an angle away from them and their bullets all struck in the dirt behind the tailgate of our vehicle.

The next night, Goran tribesmen attacked a village some 18 kilometers from our camp and killed 78 Zakawa tribesmen, women and children. We were obliged by the military at Fada to leave the area immediately and learned only then that the soldiers manning the fort at Fada were all members of the Zakawa tribe. The month before they had arrested 42 Goran tribesmen suspected of fomenting a rebellion in the region, lined them up against the wall of the fort and executed them. We came to the conclusion that the raid on the village was a revenge attack and that the attack on ourselves was an attempt to steal our vehicle and weapons to use in the massacre as the raiders had attacked on camels. None of these events was reported in the local or international media and, on a return to Ndjamena, no one appeared to know or care about any of these events.

They say, “the fish rots from the head†and it is true. With time, gradually, the culture, attitudes and habits of leaders percolate downwards. The famous author, Paul Theroux traveled from Cairo to Cape Town using public transport and, in 2003, published the book, Dark Star Safari. Theroux had in his youth been a Peace Corps worker and had taught in Uganda. Many of his views garnered on his travels agree with my own observations. For example, he writes that, “The strong impression I had was not that the places I knew were worse off but that they had not changed at all. After 40 years of experimenting with various ideologies and industries they were back to farming by hand and pounding maze into flour, living on porridge and beans. Nothing was new except that there were many more people, grubbier buildings, more litter, fewer trees, more poachers, less game.â€

Giorgio Grasselli, in his award winning book, African Sunsets, published in 2005, writes about the time he worked for ten years in north central CAR, in the area bordering the Bangoran River that belonged to the Northern Region Development Program (known in French as PDRN). At the time, everywhere else in CAR wild life was increasingly under threat while this area represented an extreme exception in that the wild animals were actually increasing in number!

The cornerstone of the program adopted by the PDRN in the region was similar to the Camp Fire project originally developed in Zimbabwe and the only one that had a chance of success, partly because it was simple for local people to understand. People of the villages in the selected area were the sole beneficiaries of the resources of the area and, therefore, it was in their interest to collaborate in protecting and increasing these resources.

Grasselli wrote that, “Initially, it worked very well. After five years the project had produced more than satisfactory results, demonstrating to the most skeptical that the goal could be achieved. The European community approved the financing of the second stage. This was most necessary in order to consolidate the success of the program and safeguard its future.â€

At the same time another magnificent wildlife-rich area existed in the north of the country, called the Manovo/Gounda/Saint Floris National Park. It was the only territory equipped to host a fair number of photographic safaris. However, it was also subjected to the cruel effects of intense and indiscriminate poaching activities. These were perpetrated particularly by the Sudanese poachers who, in a short space of time, almost annihilated the entire elephant population there……

However, the heavy investment – which had now lasted for over fifteen years – by the European community through the PDRN program, enabled one area in the Central African Republic not only to safeguard, but also to increase its wildlife heritage.

I quote from Grasselli again,“It has shown how local populations, through the community hunting zones operation, can gain great advantage from the careful management of the wildlife through conservation…. it has shown Central Africans how they need to operate in order to achieve these results…… Consequently, it may be that the PDRN will withdraw in the not too distant future, completely handing over responsible to the Central Africans to continue on their own, together with the buildings, the mechanical and other equipment as well as the logistical facilities. When, and if, that happens, I fear that will bring total collapse on this expensive but exciting and positive experiment…..My pessimism – or is it the realism – can foresee that the whole Bamingui-Bangoran area will end up the same as the other beautiful provinces of Central Africa, totally destroyed.â€

On my first hunt in CAR, I was having a shower in the open air bathroom attached to my hunting chalet in the main camp when I noticed a caravan of camels and donkeys, accompanied by many armed men. In total, and I counted fifteen men and dozens of camels and donkeys. I also noticed that each camel and donkey was loaded down with at least two elephant tusks. I snuck back into my chalet and took photographs of the passing parade.

Obviously, passing so close to a well known and well established safari camp was a deliberate and provocative show of force. My guide immediately made contact with the French army stationed in Bangui via radio. They promised to launch an attack at first light the following morning as the caravan was still some 80 kilometres from the Sudanese border and they would not be able to cover this distance until late the following day. The next day we waited in vain for the military to arrive. They never did. Later we were told that the French military required approval from the CAR cabinet before they could launch a raid and they had not been able to obtain such approval. We were also told in confidence that a senior cabinet minister was in cahoots with his Sudanese counterpart and, together, they actually funded the poaching bands that were ravaging the eastern side of CAR.

I wrote about these events in a magazine article and sent copies of the photographs to WWF in Geneva but never heard from anybody. It was as if no one wanted to know what was going on.

Last year I hunted in the same area that Giorgio Grasselli described. His worst fears have been realized and the area is the palest shadow of its former self. After 21 days of hard hunting I saw a grand total of three giant eland herds containing only one shoot able bull. A friend who accompanied me managed to shoot a mediocre bull on the nineteenth day while I went home empty handed.

My guide told me that, prior to our arrival; he had found two horses in the veld. Not knowing to whom they belonged, he took them back to the main camp thinking that he and his fellow guides and might be able to use them. A couple of mornings later they were woken to find that their camp was surrounded by a dozen armed men. They demanded their horses back, said they were poaching elephant in the area and warned the guides to stay out of their way.

In order to combat the heavy poaching in the area, the safari companies, with the approval of the government, which was all the help they received from government, employed an anti-poaching squad, and with good reason. Despite the local villages earning 70% of all trophy fees directly and receiving the lion’s share of all meat hunted, every bako, or finger of forest along the banks of a river that I hunted, showed signs of poachers. We found their camps, their tracks, fresh blood spoor of animals they had shot and wounded and, once, a group of porters acting as bearers for the poachers.

So, is there no future for hunting in Africa? Certainly not if African governments have any say in the matter. Certainly not if reliance is placed exclusively on international NGOs. Fortunately, there are major private sector examples which provide some hope. In the nineteen sixties, the quagga and blue buck were already extinct in South Africa. Four other species were well on their way to joining them. There were only 19 bontebok left in the Western Cape. Of the teeming herds of black wildebeest, only 34 existed on three farms in the Free State. There were only 11 Cape mountains zebra alive of which only 5 were females and 28 white rhinoceros were counted in the whole country although I know that one of the game wardens in Natal hid some away when the count was made.

At that time, there were also only three game ranches in South Africa. Game was seen as a nuisance. It competed with domestic livestock for water and grazing and was shot out for this a very reason. It had no commercial value.

Given the banning of hunting in Kenya and Tanzania at the time, many hunters sought new pastures and some were enticed to South Africa. Suddenly, game acquired a commercial value. Suddenly, game was worth keeping.

60 years later, a quiet, conservation revolution has swept through southern Africa embracing also Namibia and, to a lesser extent, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana. In South Africa today, There are over 9000 game ranches, covering over 16 million hectares - nearly three times the 6,4 million hectares of all the national and provincial park’s put together. Last year, some 8 300 international hunters visited South Africa. According to Government statistics, which are no longer kept, international hunters spend, on average, R100 000 or $13 000 per visit. In other words, last year, these hunters contributed an amount of nearly $110 million to the local economy. A study last year by the University of Free State showed that the domestic meat hunting market was worth over $ 460 million per annum. This is especially important if you realize that the money is spent mostly in rural areas which are the most economically deprived in our country.

Interestingly enough, those animals which have been hunted most assiduously have recovered best. For example, there are now nearly 14,000 white rhinoceroses in SA. There are more than 22,000 black wildebeest scattered throughout the country and in Namibia where they did not exist previously. Unfortunately, Cape mountain zebra are still protected and there are only about 1100 in the world, of which, I am proud to say, I have 42 on my own game ranch. Similarly, bontebok, which have been huntable for only the last seven or eight years have reached some 3500 in number but these numbers are now improving annually.

There is a book with which you may be familiar, called Rowland Ward’s Records of Big Game. It is 116 years old and is the oldest source of recorded details of the horns, antlers and tusks of game species. In this regard, it is fair to say that, where the standards of horn, antler and tusk measurements are improving over time in a particular area, that conservation of game in that area is also improving and the converse is also true. It is instructive to note, therefore, that there were 40 new entries of horns and tusks entered into the top ten in respect of 16 species of game in southern Africa in the four years preceding the publication of the 27th edition of the Records Book in 2006, as opposed to only 24 new entries of horns and tusks in the top ten in respect of all the game species for the rest of Africa combined.

Of the other four countries, namely, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mocambique, after South Africa, Namibia has experienced the most progress and government is actively involved in encouraging and promoting hunting on both private and state land. Last year, some 6300 overseas hunters visited Namibia and introduced nearly $80 million into the local economy.

In October, 2007, I hunted in Gabon on land set aside and game fenced by a mining company in the south east of the country. This is an experiment being shared by government, the mining company, a French safari outfitter and the Wildlife Conservation Foundation formed by the late Prince Abdorrezah Pahlavi. Last year, this experiment generated more profit than the previous attempts at harvesting red river hogs, the growing of mangoes and bananas, fish farming and game viewing combined over the previous 12 years.

I am also aware that a similar private sector attempt was successful in Burkina Faso until a cabinet minister unlawfully expropriated the venture and I have recently been told by a friend active in the country that moves are afoot to establish a similar venture again.

Over the last 50 years, governments throughout Africa have conclusively proven that they are completely incapable of providing the bare minimum of infrastructure to enable their citizens to maintain the life that was theirs 50 years ago, let alone to enable them to grow and develop. If left to African governments, all wildlife in Africa will eventually be eaten. In my opinion, there is no political or environmental future for hunting in Africa other than in private hands. I thank you for your patience and for listening.

Flack is dead on with his comments.

This should be required reading for every hunter heading to Africa and every "conservation" organization that wants to "do good deeds" there.

I fear that that the various kleptocracies will win in the end.....

I'm only part way through his speech (which I will have to finish later) but I wanted to say his argument is precise, clear and spot on. I will print this out for my files.

I met Peter Flack in Reno at the SCI convention and I must say he is very much a gentleman.

I have always said I if I could have dinner with any two men it would be Peter and Craig.

And this surprises us how? Poor Cecil Rhodes must be rolling over in his grave. jorge

A must read for everyone.

quote:

Originally posted by PSmith:
I met Peter Flack in Reno at the SCI convention and I must say he is very much a gentleman.

Ditto. A real gentleman.

Southern Africa may well have had its issues in pre Mandela and Colonial times, but all in all, it seems it was a better place for all concerned, black and white.

At the risk of sounding racist, which I am not, it is my opinion that the instant Great Britain and other European powers divested themselves of African territories, their goverments began an immediate downward spiral. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, etc. all closed hunting withing 15-20 years of independence. I have only hunted two African countries (RSA & Tanzania), and I have witnessed governmental rules that even makes an American (with our ridiculous politics) shake his head. I hope for our sake, and for the sake of all African game that means so much to us all, that people the caliber of Mr. Flack, who can orate publicly much better than myself, can sound the wakeup call for the entire continent.

BN

While our head of state is term limited, this could be written about most politicians everywhere

quote:

I fear that many of Africa’s political leaders have been more concerned about retaining power than about the long-term development interests of their people. The cost to millions of Africans…. has been unforgivably high.â€

Instead, what we find is that, by 1990, not a single African head of state had allowed himself to be voted out of office in three decades. Of some 150 heads of state who had ruled African states, only six had voluntarily relinquished power. They included Senegal’s Leopold Senghor, after twenty years in office; Cameroon’s Ahmadu Ahidjo, after 22 years in office; and Tanzania’s Julius Nyere, after 23 years in office. Daniel arap Moi’s response four years into his presidency was to turn his country into a one party state by law. In 1984 he is quoted as saying “I would like ministers, assistant ministers and others to sing like a parrot after me. That is how we can progressâ€.

quote:

As Martin Meredith wrote in his magnum opus, The State of Africa – A History of 50 Years of Independence – and I have borrowed heavily from his work

I just finished this book, a 680+ page litany of facts and figures that Flack barely scratches the surface of with his comments above. Quite a depressing read it is.

I think that our own government here does a poor job of game management. They send out surveys instead of spending hunting license money to find out how many wolves etc are affecting populations. I think most pollititions [sp?] everywhere are in it to line there own pockets no surprise there. Regards

What really rang true to me was Mr. Flack's statement about having a love/hate relationship with Africa. That's exactly how I feel and have felt since the late 80's.

I have seen first hand over several years the propensity many Africans have for killing each other in wholesale lots. I was involved in relief operations for eight years in some of the most hostile areas on the continent, and the inevitable truth finally hit me. No matter the tonnage of food we hauled into Sudan or Angola and a few other spots, no western enterprise, whether it be an NGO or a western government, can save the Africans from themselves. We worked very hard at great personal risk and it was to no avail.

Without good leadership, Africa is doomed to remain as it is or deteriorate even further. And honest, effective African leadership is a futile dream.

As another poster said, I am not racist, having been a minority white among a majority of blacks in many countries, but the fall of colonialism has resulted in a rampant binge of self destruction all across the Continent. It seems that controlled tourist hunting is the only bright star shining in Africa today. Let us hope that it continues unabated.

Yeah , jetdrvr, that's how I was trying to say it!!!

Another good piece of reading is the Brett Kibble story.What he doesnt mension in his speech is that rand gold went bankrupt thanks to him.I dont know him but after reading that book i look at Peter Flack in a totaly different light.In all the local hunting mags he is also claiming to have shot the new number one bongo,when he knows very well that there are bigger ones in the SCI record books.Its almost like he is saying since he bought rowland ward that SCI doesnt count anymore.

"Another good piece of reading is the Brett Kibble story."

Where can I find a copy?

Bill Quimby

Hi Bill i dont know were you are from but the book is available at just about any book store in South Africa.Most of the first chapter is all about Peter Flacks wealings and dealings

I guess I will just roll up my pants legs as the stomping of the grapes (sour) is just about to start. Jimmara nice of you to show up now with this new found info.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmara:
Hi Bill i dont know were you are from but the book is available at just about any book store in South Africa.Most of the first chapter is all about Peter Flacks wealings and dealings

Hi Jimmara:

I'm in Arizona and had never heard of the book until your post. I've known Peter Flack for maybe 10-12 years, so I "Googled" his name and Randgold to see what you meant. Granted, I haven't read the book, but it appears Peter has a reputation in the South African mining industry for making stagnant and failing businesses profitable and was in the process of doing this with Randgold when he was forced from his CEO post by a guy named Brett Kebble. Kebble apparently was a real scumbag who went on to steal millions from shareholders -- and put Randgold in the tank -- before someone shot him in his car on one of your expressways. Is my summary close? I read someone was arrested and charged with the murder, but I couldn't find any reference to the outcome.

Bill Quimby

I find Peter Flack's assessment of Africa pretty realistic although the ineptitude of African governments is not put in contrast with the ones in Europe and North America. After all our government is not that great either. By definition a government is a stupid, non-responsive over bureaucratic and worse of all totally over priced entity. Having said all that African governments must get a 2 on the scale of 1 to 10. Our own governments range from 4 to 5 in my opinion.

He is also right that by and large the future of African hunting is private enterprise.

Dang that should be "worst"!

quote:

Originally posted by billrquimby:
"Another good piece of reading is the Brett Kibble story."

Where can I find a copy?

Bill Quimby

Hi Bill you can find the book at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/177007306X.

It should be an interesting read but the bigger picture still remains to be painted, there is a lot of goings on that are scary, take South African police commissioner Jackie Selebi, he WAS the head of interpol and has recently been forced to resign due to links in the criminal underworld and that has been tied up into the Brett Kebble saga.

A lot of what Mr Flack says is true, think of South Africa's President being implicated in an arms deal where massive corruption has been dug up....

Lets see what happens here in South Africa, the fish does rot from its head down, and the nether regions are rotten... I love my country, the land and the people and as Mr Flack said "if you don’t love Africa and hate it at one and the same time, then you have probably neither spent enough time nor visited enough places on the continent." lets leave it at that

IMHO, Namibia is Africa's best government so far in terms of the support it gives to tourist hunting. But even there, wrangling over the proper role of minorities in the industry has stymied the granting of government concessions.

Botswana is too rich from other sources of income to support hunting for economic reasons. I fear that Khama junior will ban it outright, as he is apparently overly influenced by animal rightists, more properly called environmental extremists.

In most other countries, I am afraid that support for hunting is chiefly bought and paid for through graft and corruption. Better that than that the game should be exterminated, or so says yours truly.

There is precious little in the way of conservation based, or even pure economically based, support for hunting in Africa, outside of private enterprise, of course.