From The CEO's Desk

Dr David Mabunda

Poaching in the Kruger National Park has clearly become one of the greatest conservation challenges of our time, , and is something we as SANParks are determined to deal with head on. I recently had the oppertunity to be involved in a five - hour helicopter pursuit of suspected poachers over densely vegetated terrain in the park. Over and above my long past association with the KNP, the experience of this pursuit gave me an additional appreciation of the difficulties that are faced by our rangers in this enviroment. Not only do they have to cope with the inhospitable and sometimes impenetrable terrain, but they also have to deal with heavily armed poachers who are backed by a sophisticated and well - resourced machinery. I am of the view that sometimes the category of "enviromental crime" and the term "poaching" do not fully cover the nature of what we are dealing with. Rhino poaching has become linked with organized crime syndicates, which have a national, regional and international character. We are dealing with a crime syndrome that is akin to crash - in - transit heists and the activities of the international drug cartels. Despite our best efforts in 2012, the number of rhino killed in Kruger continued to escalate, as they did nationally. What we have had to recognize is that we are in a war situation, requiring military measures to stem the tide of rhino mortalities. We have therefore appointed retired SA National Defense Force Maj Gen Jooste to head up a revamped command structure, which will give operations on the ground that extra momentum to contain the threat. We have also entered into partnerships with DANEL (a public-owned arms manufacturer), the Paramount Group (a private-owned arms manufacturer) and the Ichikowitz Family Trust to enable us to deploy cutting-edge technology in assisting the fight against this crime. As with many modern wars it is not just the will and determination of the forces on the ground, but also the ability to develop and utilize advanced technology, that will determine the eventual outcome. We acknowledge, of course, that the long-term solutions lie in dealing with the markets for rhino horn, and within the terrain of international relations, both in Asia and closer to home in respect of our neighbor Mozambique. In relation to the letter we recognize that the concept of Transfrontier Conservation Areas has brought benefits to conservation and to improving international relations. In the case in point, however, the dropping of the fence between the KNP and Mozambique has proved our weakest line of defense against incursions into the park by gangs of poachers. I will refrain from quoting the adage, “good fences make good neighbors", but suffice to say we are compelled to look at all options in order to defend the eastern boundary. You, the public, have been especially supportive throughout this ordeal, and I would like to extend a special word of thanks to all those who have given their time and resources in helping us to deal with this scourge. We know we will not eliminate it in the immediate future, but we are aiming to reverse the trend and at last see a reduction in the rate by the end of the year. We owe it to both current and future generations to ensure that we do not fail in this difficult and yet worthwhile Endeavour.

SANParks Times newspaper March 2013

More Great Photo's by Ronesh Parbhoo In The Kruger National Park



Beautiful Male lion



Elephant Eating



Giraffe with a African sunset



Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 24)( Page 7 ) The Last Trek

Crouching under the waggon I watched it and saw the little streamlets, dirty and debris laden, steal slowly on like sluggard snakes down to my feet, and winding round me, meet beyond and hasten on.  Soon the grass-tufts and higher spots were wet; and as the water rose on my boots and the splash beat up to my knees, it seemed worth while making for the tent of the waggon.  But in there the roar was deafening; the rain beat down with such force that it drove through the canvas-covered waggon-tent and greased buck-sail in fine mist.  In there it was black dark, the tarpaulin covering all, and I slipped out again back to my place under the waggon to watch the storm. We were on high ground which fell gently away on three sides--a long spur running down to the river between two of the numberless small watercourses scoring the flanks of the hills.  Mere gutters they were, easy corrugations in the slope from the range to the river, insignificant drains in which no water ever ran except during the heavy rains.  One would walk through scores of them with easy swinging stride and never notice their existence.  Yet, when the half-hour's storm was over and it was possible to get out and look round, they were rushing boiling torrents, twenty to thirty feet across and six to ten feet deep, foaming and plunging towards the river, red with the soil of the stripped earth, and laden with leaves, grass, sticks, and branches-- water-furies, wild and ungovernable, against which neither man nor beast could stand for a moment. When the rain ceased the air was full of the roar of waters, growing louder and nearer all the time.  I walked down the long low spur to look at the river, expecting much, and was grievously disappointed.  It was no fuller and not much changed.  On either side of me the once dry dongas emptied their soil-stained and debris-laden contents in foaming cataracts, each deepening the yellowy red of the river at its banks; but out in mid-stream the river was undisturbed, and its normal colour--the clear yellow of some ambers--was unchanged.  How small the great storm seemed then!  How puny the flooded creeks and dongas--yet each master of man and his work!  How many of them are needed to make a real flood! There are few things more deceptive than the tropical storm.  To one caught in it, all the world seems deluged and overwhelmed; yet a mile away it may be all peace and sunshine.  I looked at the river and laughed at myself!  The revelation seemed complete; it was humiliating; one felt so small.  Still, the drought was broken; the rains had come; and in spite of disappointment I stayed to watch, drawn by the scores of little things caught up and carried by--the first harvest garnered by the rains. A quarter of an hour or more may have been spent thus, when amid all the chorus of the rushing waters there stole in a duller murmur.  Murmur it was at first, but it grew steadily into a low-toned, monotoned, distant roar; and it caught and held one like the roar of coming hail or hurricane.  It was the river coming down.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 21)( Page 1) Monkeys And Wildebeeste

Mungo was not a perfect mount, but he was a great improvement on Snowball; he had a wretched walk, and led almost as badly as his predecessor; but this did not matter so much because he could be driven like a pack donkey and relied on not to play pranks.  In a gallop after game he was much faster than Snowball, having a wonderfully long stride for so low a pony. A horse made a good deal of difference in the hunting in many ways, not the least of which was that some sort of excursion was possible on most days.  One could go further in  the time available and, even if delayed, still be pretty sure of catching up to the waggons without much difficulty. Sometimes after a long night's trekking I would start off after breakfast for some `likely' spot, off-saddle there in a shady place, sleep during the heat of the day, and after a billy of tea start hunting towards the waggons in the afternoon. It was in such a spot on the Komati River, a couple of hundred yards from the bank, that on one occasion I settled down to make up lost ground in the matter of sleep, and with Mungo knee-haltered in good grass and Jock beside me, I lay flat on my back with hat covering my eyes and was soon comfortably asleep. The sleep had lasted a couple of hours when I began to dream that it was raining and woke up in the belief that a hail storm--following the rain--was just breaking over me.  I started up to find all just as it had been, and the sunlight beyond the big tree so glaring as to make the eyes ache.  Through half-closed lids I saw Mungo lying down asleep and made out Jock standing some yards away quietly watching me. With a yawn and stretch I lay back again; sleep was over but a good lazy rest was welcome: it had been earned, and, most comforting of all, there was nothing else to be done.  In the doze that followed I was surprised to feel quite distinctly something like a drop of rain strike my leg, and then another on my hat. "Hang it all, it is raining," I said, sitting up again and quite wide awake this time.  There was Jock still looking at me, but only for the moment of moving, it appears; for, a minute later he looked up into the tree above me with ears cocked, head on one side, and tail held lazily on the horizontal and moving slowly from time to time. It was his look of interested amusement. A couple of leaves fluttered down, and then the half-eaten pip of a `wooden orange' struck me in the face as I lay back again to see what was going on above.  The pip gave me the line, and away up among the thick dark foliage I saw a little old face looking down at me; the quick restless eyes were watchfully on the move, and the mouth partly opened in the shape of an O--face and attitude together a vivid expression of surprise and indignation combined with breathless interest. As my eyes fairly met those above me, the monkey ducked its head forward and promptly `made a face' at me without uttering a sound.  Then others showed up in different places, and whole figures became visible now as the monkeys stole softly along the branches to get a better look at Jock and me: there were a couple of dozen of them of all sizes. They are the liveliest, most restless, and most inquisitive of creatures; ludicrously nervous and excitable; quick to chattering anger and bursts of hysterical passion, which are intensely comical, especially when they have been scared.  They are creatures whose method of progress most readily betrays them by the swaying of a branch or quivering of leaves, yet they can steal about and melt away at will, like small grey ghosts, silent as the grave. I had often tried to trap them, but never succeeded: Jantje caught them, as he caught everything, with cunning that out-matched his wilder kindred; pitfalls, nooses, whip-traps, fall-traps, foot-snares, drags, slip knots of all kinds, and tricks that I cannot now remember, were in his repertory; but he disliked showing his traps, and when told to explain he would half sulkily show one of the common kind.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 20)( Page 4 ) Jantje

One day I was watching the ants as they travelled along their route-- sometimes stopping to hobnob with those they met, sometimes hurrying past, and sometimes turning as though  sent back on a message or reminded of something forgotten--when a little dry brown bean lying in a spot of sunlight gave a jump of an inch or two.  At first it seemed that I must have unknowingly moved some twig or grass stem that flicked it; but as I watched it there was another vigorous jump.  I took it up and examined it but there was nothing unusual about it, it was just a common light brown bean with no peculiarities or marks; it was a real puzzle, a most surprising and ridiculous one.  I found half a dozen more in the same place; but it was some days before we discovered the secret.  Domiciled in each of them was a very small but very energetic worm, with a trap-door or stopper on his one end, so artfully contrived that it was almost impossible with the naked eye to locate the spot where the hole was.  The worm objected to too much heat and if the beans were placed in the sun or near the fire the weird astonishing jumping would commence. The beans were good for jumping for several months, and once in Delagoa, one of our party put some on a plate in the sun beside a fellow who had been doing himself too well for some time previously: he had become a perfect nuisance to us and we could not get rid of him.  He had a mouth full of bread, and a mug of coffee on the way to help it down, when the first bean jumped.  He gave a sort of peck, blinked several times to clear his eyes, and then with his left hand pulled slightly at his collar, as though to ease it.  Then came another jump, and his mouth opened slowly and his eyes got big.  The plate being hollow and glazed was not a fair field for the jumpers--they could not escape; and in about half a minute eight or ten beans were having a rough and tumble. With a white scared face our guest slowly lowered his mug, screened his eyes with the other hand, and after fighting down the mouthful of bread, got up and walked off without a word. We tried to smother our laughter, but some one's choking made him look back and he saw the whole lot of us in various stages of convulsions. He made one rude remark, and went on; but every one he met that day made some allusion to beans, and he took the Durban steamer next morning. The insect life was prodigious in its numbers and variety; and the birds, the beasts, and the reptiles were all interesting.  There is a goodness-knows-what-will-turn-up-next atmosphere about the Bushveld which is, I fancy, unique.  The story of the curate, armed with a butterfly net, coming face to face with a black-maned lion may or may not be true--in fact; but it is true enough as an illustration; and it is no more absurd or unlikely than the meeting at five yards of a lioness and a fever-stricken lad carrying a white green-lined umbrella-- which is true!  The boy stood and looked: the lioness did the same. "She seemed to think I was not worth eating, so she walked off," he used to say--and he was Trooper 242 of the Imperial Light Horse who went back under fire for wounded comrades and was killed as he brought the last one out. I had an old cross-bred Hottentot-Bushman boy once--one could not tell which lot he favoured--who was full of the folklore stories and superstitions of his strange and dying race, which he half humorously and half seriously blended with his own knowledge and hunting experiences.  Jantje had the ugly wrinkled dry-leather face of his breed, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones, and little pinched eyes, so small and so deeply set that no one ever saw the colour of them; the peppe  corns of tight wiry wool that did duty for hair were sparsely scattered over his head like the stunted bushes in the desert; and his face and head were seamed with scars too numerous to count, the souvenirs of his drunken brawls.  He resembled a tame monkey rather than ahuman creature, being, like so many of his kind without the moral side or qualities of human nature which go to mark the distinction between man and monkey.  He was normally most cheery and obliging; but it meant nothing, for in a moment the monkey would peep out, vicious, treacherous and unrestrained.  Honesty, sobriety, gratitude, truth, fidelity, and humanity were impossible to him: it seemed as if even the germs were not there to cultivate, and the material with which to work did not exist. He had certain make-believe substitutes, which had in a sense been grafted on to his nature, and appeared to work, while there was no real use for them; they made a show, until they were tested; one took them for granted, as long as they were not disproved: it was a skin graft only, and there seemed to be no real `union' possible between them and the tough alien stock.  He differed in character and nature from the Zulu as much as he did from the white man; he was as void of principle as- well, as his next of kin, the monkey; yet, while without either shame of, or contempt for, cowardice; he was wholly without fear of physical danger, having a sort of fatalist's indifference to it; and that was something to set off against his moral deficit.  I put Jantje on to wash clothes the day he turned up at the waggons to look for work, and as he knelt on the  ocks stripped to the waist I noticed a very curious knotted line running up his right side from the lowest rib into the armpit.  The line was whiter than his yellow skin; over each rib there was a knot or widening in the line; and under the arm there was a big splotchy star--all markings of some curious wound.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick ( Chapter 18 )( Page 4 ) Snowball and Tsetse

Tsetse, who in the ordinary way regarded the spur as part of the accepted discipline, promptly resented it when there seemed to him to be sufficient reason; and when Hall, astonished at Tsetse's unexpected obstinacy, gave him both heels, the old horse considerately swung round away from the river, and with a couple of neatly executed bucks shot his encumbered rider off the raised pack, yards away on to the soft grass-- water-bottle, rifle, bandolier and man landing in a lovely tangle. I then put old Snowball at it, fully expecting trouble; but the old soldier was quite at home; he walked quietly to the edge, sat down comfortably, and slid into the water--launching himself with scarce a ripple just like an old hippo.  That gave us the explanation of Tsetse's tantrum: the water came up to the seat of my saddle and walking was only just possible.  I stopped at once, waiting for Tsetse to follow; and Hall, prepared for another refusal, sat back and again used his spurs. No doubt Tsetse, once he knew the depth, was quite satisfied and meant to go in quietly, and the prick of the spur must have been unexpected, for he gave a plunge forward, landing with his fore feet in deep water and hind quarters still on the bank, and Hall shot out overhead, landing
half across old Snowball's back.  There was a moment of ludicrous but agonised suspense!  Hall's legs were firmly gripping Tsetse behind the ears while he sprawled on his stomach on Snowball's crupper, with the reins still in one hand and the rifle in the other.  Doubled up with suppressed laughter I grabbed a fist full of shirt and held on, every moment expecting Tsetse to hoist his head or pull back and complete the disaster, while Hall was spluttering out directions, entreaties and imprecations; but good old Tsetse never moved, and Hall handing me the rifle managed to swarm backwards on to Tsetse's withers and scramble on
to the pack again. Then, saddle-deep in the river--duckings and crocodiles forgotten--we
sat looking at each other and laughed till we ached. The river was about three hundred yards wide there with a good sandy bottom and of uniform depth, but, to our disappointment, we found that the other bank which had appeared to slope gently to the water edge was in fact a sheer wall standing up several feet above the river level.
The beautiful slope which we had seen consisted of water grass and reed tops; the bank itself was of firm moist clay; and the river bottom close under it was soft mud.  We tried a little way up and down, but found deeper water, more mud and reeds, and no break in the bank; there was not even a lagavaan slide, a game path, or a drinking-place.  There seemed to be nothing for it but to go back again and try somewhere else. Hall was `bad to beat' when he started on anything--he did not know how to give in; but when he looked at the bank and said, "We'll have a shot at this," I thought at first he was joking.  Later, to my remark that
"no horse ever born would face that," he answered that "any way we could try: it would be just as good as hunting for more places of the same sort!" I do not know the height of the bank, as we were not thinking of records at that time, but there are certain facts which enable one to guess fairly closely. Tsetse was ranged up beside the bank, and Hall standing in the saddle threw his rifle and bandolier up and scrambled out himself.  I then loosened Tsetse's girths from my seat on Snowball, and handed up the packed saddle--Hall lying down on the bank to take it from me; and we did the same with Snowball's load, including my own clothes, for, as it was already sundown, a ducking was not desirable, I loosened one side of Tsetse's reins, and after attaching one of mine in order to give the necessary length to them threw the end up to Hall, and he cut and handed me a long supple rod for a whip to stir Tsetse to his best endeavours. The water there was rather more than half saddle-flap high; I know that because it just left me a good expanse of hind quarters to aim at when the moment came. "Now!" yelled Hall, "Up, Tsetse!  Up!"; and whack went the stick! Tsetse reared up, right on end; he could not reach the top but struck his fore feet into the moist bank near the top, and with a mighty plunge that soused Snowball and me, went out.  The tug on the leading rein, on which Hall had thrown all his weight when Tsetse used it to lever
himself up, had jerked Hall flat on his face; but he was up in a minute, and releasing Tsetse threw back the rein to get Snowball to face it while the example was fresh. Then for the first time we thought of the crocodiles--and the river was full of them!  But Snowball without some one behind him with a stick would never face that jump, and there was nothing for it but to fire some scaring shots, and slip into the water and get the job over as quickly as possible.