De Graaf bred the lions for slaughter

Lawrence Seretse | Monday December 9, 2013 14:55

 

The lions that were given to Minister of Agriculture Christiaan De Graaff under dubious circumstances have been exported to South Africa at a game farm that specializes in canned hunting. De Graaf sold a pride of 22, among them the offspring of the male and female pair given to him for free by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) under circumstances that no one can explain soundly.

On 25 October 2013, De Graaff sold 22 lions to the Makhulu Game Farm near Boshof in South Africa's Free State Province. Employees at the facility that is owned by Henk J. Vorster openly discuss how the lions are hunted before their skeletons are sold to Asian buyers. In 2012, Vorster conducted five canned lion hunts at his facility. As a major predator breeder, he also supplies other canned hunting farms in his country's North West Province while some are bred for sale to international zoos.

At Vorster's game farm, a popular local tourist venue some 80km from Kimberley, we found 18 young lions crammed in a small quarantine enclosure of about 30m by 30m this week. With no shade and only a tiny zinc-roofed hut to protect them, they were panting furiously in the blazing heat. Other camps held fewer lions, full-maned males and white lions. The excrement is only cleaned every two weeks, according to staff, and the stench from this and the carcasses of donkeys fed to the lions was overwhelming.

Many of the young lions are hand-raised and respond to calls from staff members who said until recently there were 300 of the big cats on the farm. There are only 200 or so now, including the 22 imported from De Graaf. When a lion is sold to a trophy hunter, it is moved into a larger camp across the road and 're-wilded' for at least three months. 'Some are sent to other hunting farms, most often near Tosca in North West Province,' one of the staff members said.

After the trophy head is taken from the body, the bones are removed and the rest of the carcass is buried, they said. According to figures released by the South African Environment Department last year, the skeletons can fetch up to R80,000 and often end up being ground into potions for fake tiger wine or tiger cakes. Vorster, who has a spares shop in Hartswater and several other farms in addition to Makhulu, refused to speak to the media about the lions this week. 'I am breeding them, but it is a private business and has nothing to do with you,' he said tersely.

According to Werner Bšing, the environmental management inspector at the Free State's Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, Vorster is an 'approved predator breeder in our province and his facility is up to standard'. Permits had been issued to move the 22 lions from Botswana to the Free State, he said.

This week, Botswana's Minister of the Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Tshekedi Khama, was dismissing the whole saga. He reasoned that breeding the lions was becoming too expensive for Minister de Graaf, hence the exportation. In an interview on Tuesday, Tshekedi said government had helped with the exportation process because Botswana has no release or rehabilitation programme yet for the species. He added that there were fears that if the beasts were restored to the wild, they might become problem animals again and probably get killed.

And the government could not very well help De Graaf with the breeding because of the steep costs involved. 'We could not participate in the feeding because it was so expensive,' the minister noted. 'So we had to assist him export them.'

Tshekedi still remained inconsistent with his responses regarding the ownership of the lions. He shifted from his early position that all the animals belonged to the state to revealing that De Graaf was the sole owner of all the lions that were exported from Phologolo Safaris, including the pair that government 'donated' to him to rehabilitate in 2005, as Mmegi investigations had found. 'They were given to him and they are his, ultimately,' he stated. 'It was his financial decision to sell them and we were not involved in that operation.'

Minister De Graaff has always held the position that all the lions were his, yet Tshekedi rubbished the claim on a radio talk show a few weeks ago. In the midst of all this contestation, De Graaff sold 22 of the lions to Henk Vorster, the South African game farmer in South Africa's Free State Province. It is not known where the other batch went since there were more than 32 beasts at the minister's ranch.

Mmegi exposed De Graaff's involvement in breeding and hunting lions last September. An investigation revealed that in 2005, DWNP captured and donated two 'problem' Kalahari lions, a male and a female, to De Graaf's company, Phologolo Botswana Safaris. The lions were kept at his Tautona Lodge in Ghanzi, and had multiplied to 32 by the time he sent the controversial shipment to South Africa in October. As it turns out, this is not the first deal De Graaff has done with commercial game farmers in the South African province. In 2011, he was given permits to export 26 lions to a farm called Smal Deel Unissen. He refused to answer media questions about his lion deals.

 This week, Tshekedi said the donation of two lions to De Graaff was informed by the fact that the Minister of Agriculture was already breeding lions, 'He then offered to take them, which was more of a natural decision since he owned some at his farm,' Tshekedi said. 'He them bought some from South Africa and they multiplied.'

 Tshekedi claims that by selling the lions to Vorster's farm, De Graaff was actually returning the beasts where he had initially bought them and denies knowledge of any canned hunting practices at Vorster's facility. He maintains that the department responsible for wildlife in South Africa's Free State Province has assured him that it did due diligence on the recommended farm and it was free of canned hunting.

'This is the information I was given and led to trust,' he told Mmegi this week. 'I am not aware of any canned hunting that could be going on there. We hold it that the facility was a rehabilitation facility for these animals, and if I was lied to, then investigations will have to be done. I will not keep quite because we agreed to conditions.' He added that irrespective of jurisdictions, his office would lodge an investigation to verify the truth about the farm where de Graaf's 22 lions have been exported.

Tshekedi took the opportunity to express his disapproval of canned hunting. 'I do not agree with keeping predators in captivity,' he said. 'They are cute when young, but when they grow, people turn their backs on them and then they become problem animals. I do not like the practice at all!'

A spokesperson of South Africa's Department of Water and Environmental Affairs, Albi Modise, said Vorster's importation of the lions was legal in terms of national and international biodiversity regulations. The department is in the process of developing a new biodiversity management plan that may prohibit lions and leopards in wild populations being introduced into captive breeding facilities, Modise said.

But it is legal to sell and export the bones of hunted lions, he said, provided the necessary permits have been issued. 'However, once the lion bones have been exported, the department has no control over the fact that Asian traders sell lion bones as tiger bones,' he added.

At the height of the lion controversy following the Mmegi expose, the opposition Botswana Congress Party Youth League called on De Graaf to resign as Minister of Agriculture. 'De Graaff should resign, be investigated or be fired,' said the league's president Dithapelo Keorapetse.

'The lion scandal is mysterious and (it) doesn't make sense why a wildlife officer would donate precious government animals to a private citizen. It also doesn't make sense why a government minister would accept a donation of wild animals belonging to the nation.'

Wild and Free South Africa, a Durban based wildlife NGO, raised the alert when De Graaf's 22 lions were exported across the Ramatlabama border gate last month. 'Botswana recently announced a moratorium on hunting, but in South Africa the wildlife farmers cannot get enough stock because from the time a cub is born until it is hunted or killed to harvest its bones, a lion is worth a pile of money to its owner,' said the NGO's chief executive, Margot Stewart.

According to figures released by the Professional Hunters' Association of South Africa in November, registered lion hunts showed the largest increase of any species from 2011 to 2012 - from 445 to 596 lions. Revenues generated had increased from R77 million in 2011 to R122 million in 2012, at an average of R203,000 per lion.