Saving the Last Rhinos Read online

  I couldn’t have done it without Tolly. He was brilliant. He could not read or write – in fact, he could only count to five – and yet he knew every animal by sight. At times we would be driving a herd of more than four hundred to the dip and he’d tell me one was missing. I would say no, they’re all there. He would shake his head, muttering that the one that always walks at the back, or the one with the red patch, or the one with the bent horn, was not in the herd.

  We’d go back and search the camps and, without fail, Tolly was right. We always found the goat he had described, whether it was lost, sick or, sadly, dead.

  I still find it incredible to think that the entire herd of unruly creatures was run by myself, barely a teenager, Tolly, who was lame, and my border collie Kola, who slept by my bed each night. Kola had never been formally trained, yet he could corral the animals as expertly as any of the top sheepdogs in Britain.

  Despite his injuries, Tolly lived until he was eighty, dying soon after my fiftieth birthday. He was one of the best; my finest mentor and friend, even with our age difference.

  What I didn’t realise at the time was how much dealing with goats drew me deep into the ancient spirituality of Xhosa culture. A goat to both Zulu and Xhosa tribes is more than just a sturdy animal uniquely adapted to the harshness of this continent. It is a mystical creature used in rituals and ceremonies. Ancestors are extremely important in all African cultures, and almost all my buyers were black South Africans wanting quality goats to commune with the spirits of their forebears through sacrificial slaughter.

  I did on occasion send my animals to the abattoir, but was so upset at seeing them driven into the slaughterhouse that I gave it up. The slaughterhouses also paid peanuts. A Xhosa wanting a goat as lobola, or bride-price, to impress a future father-in-law paid far more than any abattoir catering for the white market.

  Even that was hard for me. I hated to see my animals tethered by the neck and led off down the road. I had constantly to tell myself that I was a businessman, not a pet breeder.

  At that stage, I was also still running wild with Xhosa boys on the farm, hunting, fishing and unravelling mysteries of the bush with barefoot botanists who may not have known any Latin names, but sure as hell knew how to live off the land. I discovered how to dig deep in the soil for succulent bulbs that could be squashed for drinking water and then the pulp could be eaten. I learned how to pick prickly pears without getting ripped by cactus thorns and how to smoke out a beehive with a match and tattered piece of hessian to get the honey.

  We would be gone for days, but this was no camping with fancy tents, fleece-lined sleeping bags and blow-up mattresses. We sheltered in an old rusty water tank with a hole for a door. The days were blazing hot, but the nights often cold with thin frost crisping the ground. We huddled around red-glowing log fires, roasting small animals or birds we had shot for dinner, then creeping exhausted under a shared blanket on the hard earthen floor.

  My friends were almost always older than me. Some were abakhwetha, teenagers who had just been through a circumcision ceremony known as Ulwaluko, which in Xhosa culture is the transition from youth to adult. Sometimes they showed me their recently circumcised manhood, which looked extremely painful. I believed that I too would have to undergo an Ulwaluko before becoming a man, and was not looking forward to it. The Xhosa youths laughed when I told them that. Ulwaluko was not for white boys, they said.

  I also learned how to hunt with my black friends, first with catapults, then, as we got older, with .22s and a .410 shotgun for guinea fowl and other game birds.

  But I soon discovered the hard way that my love for animals would kill my love of hunting stone dead.

  It was one of the most traumatic and long-lasting lessons of my life.

  CHAPTER TWO: Hunting for the Right Answers

  For those of us living in the outbacks, hunting was wired into our DNA.

  Although the area was no longer the frontier – and had not been so for more than a hundred and fifty years – the pioneer spirit still prevailed powerfully. More and more land was being cleared for agriculture, but there was a lot of wild game in the remaining bush and virtually all farmers hunted to some extent.

  At Leeuwenbosch, we were no different except that we were possibly more organised than most. On the first of July each year, my dad and his many friends would congregate at a safari camp called Ashcombe to take part in a large hunting festival that became a tradition.

  It was started by my grandfather Victor Fowlds and his neighbour Guyborn Slater in 1938. However, in Victor’s case it was more for family reasons than hunting as his mother was not well and he didn’t want to holiday far from home in case she took a turn for the worse. Instead, he decided to set up a hunting camp at Ashcombe, 7 miles away on the other side of the road, so he could have a break from the long months of farming but still be close by in the event of an emergency.

  Initially the hunts lasted for a weekend or two, but the fame of Ashcombe soon spread far and wide as the word got out that this was no ordinary jaunt in the bush. It was more like something out of a Hemingway novel with tents, caravans, long-drop toilets, outdoor showers and log fires with iron grids for grilling slabs of venison. But unlike Hemingway’s books of romanticised Africa, this was the real deal with rough-and-ready men clutching frosted beer cans or whisky glasses with ice tinkling and swapping yarns about their escapades of the day. On some nights the entire district would arrive for festivities and music lasting long into the night. It was a big deal to get the nod to go on an Ashcombe hunt and we had people from all around the world joining us. If you declined, you were not asked again. Few declined. This was the safari of the year.

  The schedule never varied. Hunting took place on alternate days with long racks of South African jerky called biltong being cured on the rest days. My grandfather also insisted on a camp rule that every morning was started with a cold shower, which was something you would not have found on a Hemingway safari where Swahili servants ran hot bath water in canvas tubs for the bwana and memsahib.

  My dad carried on the Ashcombe hunts for another ten years after his father died, and I remember as a boy going on those safaris and loving every minute. However, even in those days, I enjoyed the convivial fireside chats, the stories told by thorn-scratched men of the bush, the lively banter and sheer exuberance of living outdoors far more than the actual hunting.

  The hunters often used dogs as much of the growth was so thick as to make tracking almost impossible. The indigenous Eastern Cape bush, called Albany thicket, is among the most impenetrable vegetation in the world. It’s a type of dense scrubland consisting of short thorn trees, shrubs and creepers that can reduce visibility to a few yards. In 1919, Major P. J. Pretorius – one of South Africa’s most famous hunters whose exploits inspired Wilbur Smith’s novel Shout at the Devil–was hired by the provincial government to shoot elephant herds in the Addo area to make way for farmland. He described the bush as plucking a tract of the toughest, most torturously tangled jungle in wildest West Africa, and dumping it in the Eastern Cape.

  Among the more colourful characters of the Ashcombe safaris was my great-uncle, Dudley Fowlds. On one occasion he was part of a group beating the bush to spook buck into an open area, when something struck him in the neck.

  It was painful, but nothing could stop him from the chase and he continued beating until he had finished his section of thicket.

  He sat on a rock in the blazing sun and one of the other hunters glanced at him and remarked, ‘Dudley, you’re looking a little white, boet.’ (Boet is the Afrikaans word for brother, a generic term for friend.)

  ‘Ja. I think I’ve been shot.’

  There was blood gushing down his neck.

  ‘How does it feel?’

  Dudley touched the wound, looked at the blood on his hand and said, ‘It feels a bit warm.’

  It then transpired that he had been shot – clipped in the back of his neck from a ricochet accidentally fired by another hunter.

  Dudley was driven to the local doctor, who told him he had no anaesthetic.

  ‘Just cut the bullet out, boet,’ Dudley said. ‘I need to get back to Ashcombe.’

  Dudley didn’t make a murmur as the doctor sliced open his neck with a scalpel and removed the chunk of lead. It missed his spinal column by a fraction of an inch. Otherwise he would have been paralysed. Or dead.

  The next day, Dudley was out hunting again.

  Such stories were not that unusual in the Eastern Cape fifty years ago, but Dudley was a legend in his own right. An immensely powerful man, he would lift his Morris Minor truck with his hands to put it on blocks and change a tyre rather than bother with a jack. The small truck also had a long whippy aerial bolted onto the middle of the bonnet, but not because Dudley had a fancy radio in his clapped-out jalopy. It was to slice through spider webs in the bush as there was no roof on the vehicle.

  He also was ‘famous’ for falling off the top of a windmill and crashing to the ground without seriously injuring himself. When asked how he survived, he would look at the questioner askance and say, ‘Well, boet, I fell slowly.’

  As well as going on the Ashcombe safaris and hunting birds and small game with my Xhosa friends, sometimes I would go out into the bush to shoot a buck for biltong, usually with an extraordinary guide called Lastnight Masumpa, the brother of my goatherd Tolly. As far as I know, Lastnight was his real name, not some moniker given to him by a non-Xhosa speaker.

  He was a maestro in the bush. He was employed at Leeuwenbosch as a gardener, but he had the true heart of a hunter. Hunting was what he lived for. He showed me how to track and stalk, and although I never hunt any more, those skills still come in handy when I’m in the veld doing conservation work around Africa.


  However, on what turned out to be my most memorable hunt, Lastnight was not with me. Which is probably why I made an amateur mistake that still haunts me to this day.

  I was in my mid-teens and shot and wounded an antelope. It was bleating like a child and I rushed up to it, planning to put it quickly out of its misery with my pocket knife.

  I started trying to cut the carotid artery behind the horns that pumps blood to the brain. I thought one stab would end it all.

  I was wrong. Horribly wrong. I stabbed and hacked away while the poor animal bleated louder and louder, each bawl sounding more pitiful. It cried like a human baby.

  I started calling for help, but was too far from the house for anyone to hear me. Eventually I carried the bleeding creature home and finally managed to kill it.

  It was one the most traumatic yet important lessons of my life, but sadly an animal had to die to teach it to me. I now knew without doubt that I wanted to conserve nature rather than destroy it. It was the first tentative step I took to becoming a conservation activist.

  I never hunted again.

  CHAPTER THREE: Wild Lesson, Wild Men, Wild Coast

  I was not much of an academic at school, and that’s putting it politely.

  My heart was outdoors. Stuffy classrooms, books and lessons did not agree with me.

  The exception was Xhosa. It was a subject at which I excelled. Perhaps this was not surprising as I was already fluent in the language, and as most of my time on the farm was either running goats with Tolly Masumpa or running wild with Xhosa youths, I was completely at home with black South Africans.

  However, my college Xhosa teacher was white and one of the biggest influences of my young life. His name was Alistair ‘Ali’ Weakley and, for me, he was a carbon copy of the inspirational teacher played by Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society.

  In those days there were few black teachers in white schools and so it was not unusual to have a white guy teaching the home tongue of Nelson Mandela. But Ali was not your average white guy. Not only did he speak the language beautifully, but he was enthralled by Xhosa culture and traditions.

  This was rare in the 1970s, as like most rural areas the Alexandria farming district was conservative, even by South African standards. There were few liberals in the countryside, and Ali was a notable exception. He was so far removed from most other whites of his generation that they could have come from different planets.

  But Ali could pull it off like nobody else. He defied every stereotype of a liberal. For a start, he was an excellent rugby player, hard as granite, and could always be found bloodied and bruised at the bottom of a scrum. He was captain of the Border first team, and although Border may not have won a cabinet full of trophies, they were feared throughout the land as the meanest, toughest players on any field.

  Ali did not exactly have film-star looks, but he was a babe magnet and seldom seen without a gorgeous girl on his arm. So to us he was as glamorous as a movie star, with wild long hair, flashing a gap-toothed smile and speeding around the town in a purple Volvo.

  All the boys worshipped him as he was so unconventional – arriving late for formal school assemblies with uncombed hair and his academic gown hanging untidily off his brawny shoulders. No doubt other teachers hated his nonconformity as much as we loved it.

  I got a First Class pass in Xhosa, which for me was an academic miracle as I barely scraped through in other subjects. But I think every boy in Ali’s class got an A; his lessons were that good.

  He also was one of the few whites who supported Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), which was banned at the time. But such formalities did not bother Ali. He was a total rebel, and a completely fearless one.

  The highlight of my school career was when Ali took us on a ten-day field trip along the Wild Coast, a savagely beautiful stretch of rocky seashore curving down the Transkei, which is what the Xhosa homeland was called in the apartheid era.

  We camped on the beaches, hiking into the dunes to visit Xhosa kraals, or homesteads, where Ali showed us first-hand the rich heritage of this proud, impressive people.

  I subconsciously knew a lot about Xhosa customs as I mixed so much with them on the farm, but I never really thought about it. Ali brought it all to life, explaining the traditions to us with vivid words and images as we sat around a campsite fire on the beach. Ali loved lots of things in life – rugby, women, fishing, partying – but also teaching. On that trip, he shared his abiding passion for Xhosa culture unstintingly with us.

  I remember being severely reprimanded when I entered a kraal uninvited to look at the cattle of the induna (headman). I did so because as a farmer I genuinely was interested in cows. We had a large herd at Leeuwenbosch and I was curious to see the condition of the stock.

  Ali called me over and gave me one of the biggest tongue-lashings of my life.

  ‘You never ever go into a kraal without asking the induna’s permission,’ he fumed. ‘Only if he invites you in are you allowed to inspect his cows and praise them. It’s the same as walking up to a stranger and asking if you can see his bank balance.’

  It’s a lesson I never forgot.

  We also learned about the circumcision ceremonies of boys becoming men, what the ochre they smeared on themselves meant, the symbolism of the different colours that the women wore, how they mash corn – there was no facet of Xhosa life that didn’t fascinate Ali. He was so enthused that he carried us along with him by sheer force of character.

  I only realised many years later what a masterclass of Africa I was getting from a man who truly was in tune with the soul of the continent. Ali’s eccentricity and exuberance opened an exciting new door for me. My knowledge of African languages and culture has been one of the greatest gifts bequeathed to me. It has stood me in good stead throughout the continent. It was a rare privilege, bestowed on me by people such as Ali, which I will always treasure.

  I wish this had a happy ending. It doesn’t. In 1993, Ali was murdered by the people he loved.

  It happened after Chris Hani, the charismatic leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), was assassinated. Hani was outside his house in Boksburg near Johannesburg when a Polish anti-communist immigrant named Janusz Waluś shot him as he stepped out of his car.

  The country held its breath, waiting for a mass uprising and waves of bloody revenge attacks, if not outright civil war. Nelson Mandela went on TV appealing for calm, showing what a great statesman he was. Mandela pointed out that it was a white woman who called the police, resulting in the prompt arrest of Hani’s killer.

  The fury in the townships and on the streets was palpable, but most people heeded Mandela’s call. Sadly, not all.

  Three days later, Ali and his brother Glen were returning from a fishing trip at the Umngazi river mouth. On the road to Port St Johns, four youths armed with automatic rifles opened fire on the vehicle, killing the Weakley brothers.

  The pathos was almost too much to bear – a man who had spent his life helping blacks hamstrung by the iniquitous apartheid system being killed by an ANC cadre. The liberation struggle in this case had tragically devoured its own.

  Several years later at the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) amnesty hearings, one of the killers, Mlulamisi Maxhayi, gave his reason for the murder: ‘We decided to kill the white people because they were a symbol of apartheid.’

  Ali was anything but a symbol of apartheid. He was a symbol of hope. I still shudder when I think of such a monumentally tragic waste, and the terrible loss to our country.

  But yet… consider this. Fundisile Guleni, another of the killers, told the TRC: ‘We are so sorry for the families and would like to apologise to all of those affected by our actions.’

  That, I believe, is what Ali would have wanted to hear.

  I left school to do mandatory military service, but was lucky enough to be accepted into the Air Force rather than becoming a foot slogger. I was promoted to lieutenant and fell in love with flying, crewing in Mirage and Impala jets as well as Alouette helicopters. As luck would have it, I was based in Hoedspruit, which is in the heart of wildlife country and a gateway town to the Kruger National Park, South Africa’s most famous reserve. Even better, my living quarters were in an actual game reserve and I used to jog past herds of buck and zebra every morning.