BY JOHN NASH

There is a CITES meeting in Panama this month, ostensibly to discuss global wildlife protection and trade. Like many before it, it will be infested with top-table eco-parasites sucking a living out of the more serious adult matters, led by Animal Rights Extremists and Big International NGOs all busy buying poor delegates’ votes as usual. Suspiciously coincidental, on 25th November, there is yet another UK Parliamentary pretend “debate and vote” aimed at forcing through a Ban on the UK Importation of Hunting Trophies without any scientific basis. Yes, I know…(sigh). However, it affects us all.  

We must persevere in shining the light because shyster Eduardo Gonçalves, sole officer, operator and apparent only beneficiary of Ban Trophy Hunting (a financially secretive company and interceptor of donations that might otherwise have actually helped wildlife) is, as we speak, going into warp-3 deceit in anticipation of another harvest of ill-gotten cash from interfering in rural people’s hard-working lives and wellbeing. 

He and his cronies are extremely rude about hunters, field sports and gamekeepers – they chose rude rules of engagement, so we are fully entitled to reply in kind. 

Having all the frenzied determination of a man with a very runny tummy trying to pick the lock of a lavatory with a piece of wet string, Gonçalves also owns a neck of finest brass – who else goes to incessant lengths telling the world that “trophy hunting income doesn’t benefit African locals”, then apparently trousers the money given to him to solve the problem!

You see, oily Ed doesn’t actually save any wild animals, none, and never has done – although he has made a damn good living (and lots of powerful and famous friends) over the years through his deceitful “animal welfare” absolution service. It’s as easy as one, two, three. 

One – Invent, then “expose” with hysterical pretence, the fake news that trophy hunters are “secretly” killing off endangered wildlife (even though they aren’t, and trophy hunting is no secret). 

Two – Convince uninformed animal lovers that the “doomed trophy animals” must be urgently saved (even though the animals that need urgent saving aren’t actually the ones being sustainably trophy hunted). 

Three – Sucker the animal lovers into giving you loadsa money to “save the doomed animals by banning trophy hunting” (even though it won’t save anything).  Kerching.  Easy-peasy.  Money for nothing.

As if giving oily Eduardo your precious money will save any animals. It never has and never will, but his duped donors buy the belief that they have helped animals, while he’s happily laughing all the way to the bank, counting his swag. Did you spot the clever switch? It’s actually a modern pig-in-a-poke, a variation on the shrewd fox-hunting ban that enriched campaigners but has been such a disaster for UK foxes. Gonçalves learned this magic trick when he was CEO of LACS, the care-in-the-community organisation for lobotomised urban brats.

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. (Thomas Gradgrind in Dickens’ Hard Times)

On balance, his Ban Trophy Hunting campaign won’t ever save any endangered animals because modern trophy hunting isn’t the cause of any extinctions and Oily Ed doesn’t fund any conservation programmes anyway. In fact, his idiotic ban will do the opposite, putting rural people, animals and vital conservation at risk, first in Africa, then here in the UK. If he is not exposed and stopped now, Gonçalves (“My campaign is to ban trophy hunting worldwide”) will soon be another urban parasite of UK field and farm management, deer and pheasants.  

The deception is hardly surprising because Oily Ed is a smoothie, not an ecologist and probably wouldn’t know a badger from a baboon. His hunting ground is our UK Parliament, where he and his devious accomplices brazenly lie about trophy hunting in debates (it’s all in Hansard), deny Africans and scientists a voice, cancel critics, distort the facts and even tried to stitch up the hunting industry in an EFRA kangaroo court. If they had to swear an oath to tell the truth, the whole lot of ‘em would be in the Tower by now. Oily Ed floats on Westminster privilege like a theremin. 

So, with another UK political trophy ban vote looming, Gonçalves is busy feeding his stink-rats and firing up his flagship boiler, the Mirror:

“We are committed to reporting the news accurately…we also have a duty to establish that the sources we use are reliable” (They should read Proverbs 19:9 – “A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish”. Personally, I am amazed they haven’t all been struck by lightning by now).

Anyway, suitably primed by oily Ed, the manky Mirror stirred into action on November 8th, belching the holy fire of false indignation and the smoke of obfuscation in a piece by its Deputy Political Fakir, Bent Gaze: 

Ex-President Ian Khama of Botswana, no less, has sent a video to Oily Ed, urging UK MPs to ban the importation of hunting trophies in order to “stop the slaughter” of his county’s wildlife. A proper ex-African President, no less. Crikey – he must know the truth, eh?

He sure does.

The problem is he just doesn’t speak all of it. There is no “trophy hunting slaughter” in Botswana. On paper, the Mirror’s Khama story would be more use in Khama’s khazi than in a wildlife debate.

A ban on trophy hunting imports will hurt the people, the animals and conservation in his own country. 

Representatives of millions of rural Africans (ordinary rural people, who, unlike presidents, actually live with dangerous wild animals), as well as eminent scientists and locally-involved people all keep asking Gonçalves and his misled MPs and virtue-signalling slebs to stop their nasty, self-serving trophy ban campaign. They accuse him of neo-colonialism and racism by trying to impose his damaging foreign eco-dogma on them.

Faced with real Africans and proper scientists in the field pointing out his deceit some time ago, he first tried a rather transparent trump – using a collage of photos of bemused Africans (in non-hunting Kenya?) fakishly holding up his brand message, all suspiciously lettered by the same hand. When that stunt didn’t work, he produced his now famous, red-robed Chief of the Masai, Mr Boniface Mpario, who apparently leads the Masai from his home in Hampshire, overlooking the rolling savannahs and thundering wildebeests of the Solent. Now Oily Ed has organised his next cunning stunt, the ex-President Ian Khama video, via the Mirror’s campaign of deception.

Oh, erudite readers of CSM and sane Members of Parliament, you are not only having wool pulled over your eyes – Gonçalves, Khama and the Mirror are pulling a whole flock of the odiferous and wooly ruminants over your heads like a huge, greasy sack. You see, ex-President Lieutenant-General Dr Ian Khama is an exile. He doesn’t live in Botswana. As they say, in those parts (in Setswana) – “He stuffed up. Big time”.  Are you sitting comfortably?  You’ll love this…with links for disbelievers…

In vast, dry Botswana, the delightful and friendly rural Batswana meet in public Kgotlas (village councils) to work out problems by general consensus. MPs are informed about their decisions by the village Chiefs, and thus truly democratic grassroots consensus goes to their Parliament. It is an important participatory foundation of life there. It always has been. That’s why Botswana is such a stable, peaceful and wonderful country to visit.

However, when Ian Khama was President, in 2014, he ignored truth, custom and the constitution by suspending all hunting on public and tribal land by Presidential decree. He didn’t bother to ask his people. No kgotlas. No village chiefs. Nada. He just went and done it, Guv. If you wanted a tourist concession, you had to apply to the Government department – run by his brother. The foreign NGOs and political campaigners, none of whom know arse from elbow in either rural conservation or economics, were orgasmified with delight. They feted Khama’s masterful “animal welfare” leadership with luvvy awards and he got a freebie Doctorate (in politics) from a Korean Uni.  

However, one award was not quite so welcome. In 2016, Ian Khama also got a “Racist of the Year” award from Survival International for his treatment of the Kalahari San “Bushmen” or Basarwa, who, he is quoted saying, are “backward”, “primitive” and, rather unkindly, “lower down the evolutionary ladder” (and you didn’t think people of colour could be racist?  Ha. Time to smell the coffee while you’re down on one knee, brother).

Back in 2002, even the UN  condemned him. In the heart of Botswana lies the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a vast reserve created in 1961 to protect the traditional territory of the 5,000 Bushmen and the game they depend on.

Then diamonds were discovered there in the early 1980s. In three big clearances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, virtually all the Bushmen were forced out. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health post were closed, their water supply was destroyed and most of them were threatened and trucked away.  At the same time as preventing the Bushmen from accessing their water, the government drilled new boreholes for wildlife and allowed a safari company, Wilderness Safaris, to open an eco-tourist camp in the reserve. While Bushmen nearby struggled to find enough water to survive on, rich eco-guests could sip cocktails by the camp’s swimming pool. Dumped outside the reserve, in camps, the Bushmen were still hunter gatherers, but any Bushman found hunting game for food was in very deep doo-doo and likely to be shot on sight by Khama’s police.  Animal rights usually turn out to be human wrongs.

Meanwhile, in the North of Botswana, other villagers, who relied on visiting trophy hunters for their jobs, income and meat, were badly affected by Khama’s hunting ban, too. Just five communities in the Okavango Delta lost 200 irreplaceable jobs and millions of £££ in income between 2013 and 2015.  Further north, Mababe community, who earned £170,000 and 54 jobs plus all their protein from hunting before the ban, saw it drop to £50,000 and 8 jobs from eco-tourism, with no protein, after the ban. Why? Because hunters pay well and employ skilled people as trackers, skinners and other traditional functions. They also provide lots of free meat, while eco-tourists merely stop, take photos, wave nicely at the cute children and drive off, leaving them in a cloud of dust.

So why did Ian Khama ban hunting and visit his Khamageddon on so many of his people? The talk in Botswana was that Ian Khama banned hunting in order to grab all the hunting grounds for eco-tourism and exclude its citizens so that he could organise a near monopoly with his friend and eco-business associate Derrick Joubert, establishing camps and lodges all across the country. It appears the only green they were really going to conserve was the stuff in their bank accounts. And you thought this was all done to protect wildlife? Welcome to the real world.

Banning regulated hunting doesn’t save wildlife. It does the opposite. Without value, people don’t care about the local wildlife. Wild African animals kill people, eat their crops and destroy their wells. But, when locals receive an economic benefit from wildlife, they look after the natural habitat, can afford fences and rock armour, prevent poaching and see animals as a beneficial resource rather than beautiful, untouchable pests. With regulated hunting, local control and fair sharing, poverty and hunger are alleviated, the wild animals are looked after, and the numbers increase.

Khama stepped down at the third next election and has apparently done a runner. He is now an exile, accused of all sorts of mischief. His elected replacement, the  impressive present President of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Eric Masisi, is sorting the mess out and, at the request of his people, has lifted Khama’s unilaterally imposed ban on trophy hunting. Affected villages can now sell hunting permits (subject to sustainable scientific government quotas) for local animals in order to provide jobs, income, meat and compensation for those bereaved or affected by wildlife conflict.  

He is purging Khama’s bent tourism sector and has begun taking back lucrative concessions in the Okavango Delta that former president Ian Khama’s friend and business partner Derek Joubert allegedly profited from illegally,  According to local sources, Joubert promised to compensate people affected by his eco-takeover of their hunting grounds but compensation never materialised either. As a result of the Presidential clean up, the growing monopoly grip of the Khama brothers and their self-serving chums on Botswana’s tourism is now dwindling by the day.  

Enter stage left Khama’s “Stop the slaughter” crocodile-tears video, probably less about saving Botswana’s wildlife and more about his attempt to bamboozle UK MP’s into helping him destroy Botswana’s valuable hunting industry – a move that, by sheer coincidence, you understand, might just help him get back his Texas sized “animal sanctuary”. 

So you see, Dear Reader – Khama chameleon, Oily Gonçalves and the manky Mirror’s misleading mendacity are birds of a feather.  

Vultures.

John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa.