STILL no conclusive answer as to what killed the 281 elephants in the Okavango Delta. The authorities have ruled out poaching, as the tusks were intact, as well as anthrax, starvation, viral disease and pesticides.
“Well”, said a fellow stoep-chatterer, “Botswana has 130,000 elephants so it is not a threat to their population.” Dangerous way of thinking. The Tsitsikamma once teemed with elephants, and how many do we have today? One. It was home to thousands of buffalo – Buffalo Bay was named after them – and how many do we have today? None. In the old book Timber and Tides, Winnie Tapson writes of “great batteries of guns” that fired into these herds for 200 years. Dutch settlers, ivory hunters and British colonials. There was a hunter named Marais who apparently killed 99 Knysna elephants in the 1870s. For a bet “he undertook to pluck the hair from the tail of his 100th elephant. But the wind not being favourable, he perished.” Serves him right. By 1885 all buffalo had been wiped out and elephants reduced to about 400 to 500. In 1876 a Captain Harrison urged the colonial government to protect the Knysna elephants, but the government did not think it necessary. I was ashamed to read of my ancestor’s brother, John Metelerkamp, who, with other “young bloods of Knysna”, Archie Duthie, Rolf Thesen and PC Harran, decided to hunt a “veritable patriarch” bull elephant in 1882. The number of bullets they shot into that animal was horrific. “Screaming mad” the wounded animal charged and fled again and again, each time being shot by a “volley of bullets”. Eventually he was leaning against a yellowwood tree, dying, but still three times he charged from the tree, until finally “collecting all his strength, he made his last rush at his enemies”, and they killed him. Only in 1908, when the herd had dropped to 20 elephants, did the government protect them under the Royal Game Act. Then in 1920 scientists at the South African Museum wanted a Knysna elephant shot “for scientific purposes”. With a herd of only 20, they wanted one to be killed. What sort of science was that? A Major Pretorius was given a permit to shoot one bull elephant, but he shot two, the second apparently in self-defense. A forester in the party shot a female “after she had shown resentment at having her calf attacked by beaters’ dogs.” The calf was later found dead. “The terror-stricken herd fled and another dead calf was found on Takkies Eiland soon after. The herd did not return to the scene of the massacre for many years.” It was a blow from which the Knysna elephants would never recover. There is a photograph of Pretorius sitting on one of the dead elephants. I look at it and think: “If only they had acted differently.” No point thinking like that. The trick is to think like a person 100 years from today. What would they wish we were doing differently now, to ensure their future world was not harmed?
