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Authors: Lawrence Anthony,Graham Spence

The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild (15 page)

BOOK: The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild
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Even though the Ovambos were long gone, poaching continued sporadically and while we tried our best to stamp it out, losing the odd impala on a game reserve whilst galling, was tantamount to shoplifting from a department store. But suddenly the situation changed. The Buchanana police station commander called me in and said he had information that rhino and ivory poachers were in the area. As any game ranger knows, these thugs were in a different league altogether: highly organized, heavily armed professionals who wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way. They knew what they were doing, as we soon found out.
We didn’t even hear the shot. It was fired from a .458 calibre rifle on the far side of the reserve, quiet and lethal. We only discovered the victim days later when out on patrol I noticed scores of white-backed vultures circling down in an aerial funnel.
Something had died. Something big and we needed to get there fast to find out what it was. However, the corpse was in dense thornveld, far off any track, and by the time we had hiked there we were scratched, tired and greasy with sweat.
Hyenas had already made gaping red inroads into the carcass, opening up the armour-plated skin for the vultures which swarmed over the rank grey cadaver. There must
have been a hundred of them squawking, flapping and fighting to tear at the carrion.
Those that had fought themselves into prime positions were stretching their elongated necks deep into the festering intestines, gorging themselves. Moving about on the edge of the melee were two black-backed jackals darting in and out between the huge birds and snatching at the meat. Judging by the state of decomposition the mound of putrefying flesh seemed about three days old.
It was a southern white rhino female, her gore-congealed snout grotesquely crumpled as both horns had been cleanly severed – probably with a chainsaw. Even though she had only been with us for less than a year, I knew her well, always stopping at a safe distance and ‘chatting’ to her whenever I saw her. She was the one we had distracted Mnumzane from with the horse feed, the day rhinos were first introduced on Thula Thula. My distress was compounded by the evidence that she was pregnant, the remains of the foetus scattered amongst the disgorged entrails.
This was the work of expert poachers. They must have been hiding inside the reserve for days watching the rhino’s movements and ours and meticulously planning the murder of this magnificent animal. Nature had lost a prime breeding female and we would feel the loss keenly. We only had four rhinos so it was not only a financial setback, it was even more of a blow to our pride. We had been out-manoeuvred and that really hurt.
But we knew the poachers were still out there somewhere and would come back. Everyone was itching to have a go at them. We wanted justice – not just for the poor rhino, whose horns would be smuggled to the Orient to satisfy the nonsensical belief that it harboured aphrodisiacal qualities, but for all the animals they had slaughtered.
It was early evening a week later when we heard a muted rifle crack and saw spotlights periodically blinking far out
in the reserve. This was the mistake we had been waiting for. Within minutes we were armed and ready for hot pursuit. We now only tracked on foot as the headlights and diesel-growl of a Land Rover were a dead giveaway, providing poachers with plenty of time to melt into the bush. It’s a hard slog; done almost at a jog following the brief flashes of torches that the poachers flicked on and off to get their bearings.
Conversely, this meant we couldn’t risk giving away our position using flashlights ourselves. However, our trump card was that we knew the shortcuts and could find our way through the bush far better than them. It was pitch-black and the biggest danger, of course, was stumbling blindly into the elephants, or another rhino. I didn’t even want to think about that.
A shootout with poachers is called a ‘contact’, copying military jargon, and it can be as hairy as a war zone. Everybody is armed, it’s dark and both sides are overdosing on adrenalin. Our guards usually work in teams of two: one toting a .303 rifle and the other a pump-action shotgun loaded with heavy SG ball-bearing shot. I prefer a shotgun, as it’s more accurate at close quarters. At night it’s always close quarters.
However, this time I had my son Dylan and four men – including Bheki and Ngwenya – with me and silently we approached, eyes straining to pick up the glimmer of a torch. We were almost at the boundary and closing in fast when I felt something brush against my leg. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Somehow suppressing a yell I looked down and there in the dark was Max, his tail wagging madly. He had somehow got out and followed our trail; it was another adventure he was determined to participate in.
I obviously didn’t want him with us but it was too late, so I ordered him to heel and he dutifully fell in behind me.
He was small enough not to be a target, I justified to myself, and may even be able to help.
Then we heard a suppressed cough, and a torch flickered briefly up and down the fence, searching for the hole they had earlier cut. We had them. They were coming along the fence in our direction.
I nodded at Bheki who touched two of the others, whispering to one to circle around to the fence behind the poachers and the other to go up to the fence in front of them to cut off their escape routes. Bheki, Dylan and I moved over and took cover behind some termite mounds. The trap was set.
Then I heard the soft scratch of Bheki’s safety catch being clicked off. We all did the same and waited. Tension was building, and the adrenalin-driven anticipation that every soldier in every war has felt in the seconds before battle, pervaded my senses.
The poachers moved silently alongside the fence, flashing their torches on and off as they looked for their exit until they were only thirty yards or so away.
Bheki reached over, touched my arm and nodded. We both leapt up, switching on our spotlights and shouting at them to lay down their weapons.
The megawatt beam illuminated at least eight men all carrying rifles. These were the professionals all right.
Then all hell broke loose as the startled poachers opened fire, most shooting wildly from the hip in their haste.
Bheki and I flicked off our lights as we dived for cover. I landed in some thorny scrub at the base of the termite mound, trigger finger twitching but I dared not shoot as they would see the muzzle-flash and target me. Impossibly I felt a wet lick on my face. Max, concerned as to why I was on the ground was checking on me. I grabbed him and held him down.
Ngwenya and the other ranger on the fence line had also
opened fire and the gunmen knew they were well and truly cut off.
It was now a stand-off, both sides waiting for the other to fire first to give away their positions. They were trapped at the electric fence and although they outnumbered us almost two to one, they couldn’t know that yet as they had been blinded by the brief burst of flashlight.
I sensed Bheki a few yards to my right, an excellent man to have with you in a firefight: tough, loyal and ruthless. We had been in this situation before and I knew he was waiting for the exact moment as I was. The waiting would soon get to them and they would decide to run for it, firing wildly to deter pursuit. Then we could target them.
The black silence was stiflingly claustrophobic. Unbearable – but I knew it would be even more so for them.
Suddenly a fusillade of lead cracked and twanged above our heads and we instantly fired back. There were so many muzzle-flashes that you couldn’t tell who was who.
Then silence again.
I was sure we had got at least a couple of them. Shotguns at that close range are extremely effective, but there were no groans of the injured or the rasping breath of someone trying to choke intense pain.
Then one of the poachers called out: ‘Hey,
amafowethu
, why are you shooting your guns at your Zulu brothers? Why are you doing the white man’s work?’
Silence.
‘
Amafowethu
– my brothers. We do not want to kill you. Let us go and no one will get hurt.’
Silence.
‘We have a big buck here. There is plenty of
inyama
for all. We will share it with you. Real bush meat – not the stuff women eat.’
Silence.
‘Come and join us!’ another called. ‘We will feast like kings tonight.’
Bheki inched slightly towards me, whispering so low I could scarcely hear him.
‘They’re trying to distract us while they climb the fence. I hear the wire moving.’
Then suddenly he roared the ancient Zulu war cry, ‘
Uzodla iklwa lethu
’ – you will eat our spears – and as he opened fire someone screamed and pandemonium erupted, guns barking like a cacophony of wild dogs.
I worked my pump-action shotgun furiously, spraying a maelstrom of SG in the direction I presumed the men would be scattering. Dylan did the same.
As suddenly as it started, the firing stopped and we reloaded. We waited for five minutes, an eternity in that deathly silence, but nothing stirred.
Then I heard a low groan – at least one man had been hit. Shotgun at the ready, I moved to the edge of the mound, stuck out my arm and flicked the spotlight switch.
In fact we had wounded three of them; one sprawled at the foot of the fence, shot through the legs by a .303 and two others badly punctured with shotgun pellets. The rest had got away, but judging by the gouts of blood dripping from where they had scrambled through the fence, there had been some serious casualties.
Thankfully, the six of us were unscathed.
Bheki shouted at the injured men, brightly illuminated in the spotlight beams, telling them that if they so much as looked at their guns he would kill them. We adjusted the beams to their eyes to blind them while he walked over and snapped on handcuffs.
Then Ngwenya came across and looked into their faces. ‘These men are not from the village. They are not even Zulus,’ he spat on the ground. ‘They’re Shangaans, bush-meat
traders and ivory poachers from far away. Tonight they will have learned not to come back again.’
One of the rangers radioed for a vehicle while the rest of us patched the wounded thugs up as best we could. Max sniffed around for a bit, and then just sat and watched as if this was all in a day’s work. The injured men watched him fearfully – Max can look pretty ferocious.
Soon afterwards a Land Rover arrived and we drove the injured to the Buchanana police station where an ambulance was called. I handed in the poachers’ weapons to the police, a .375 and a .458 – both calibres capable of killing an elephant. There were no bullets. They had shot at us with everything they had, emptied their magazines before trying to make a run for it. Our men still had fifty rounds left. That was the difference – they had run out of ammo and we hadn’t.
I was hoping also to track down the dead rhino’s horns, but the police said they believed these had been shipped out of the country on a Taiwanese trawler moored in Richards Bay harbour on the same night that the animal was killed.
Fighting poachers is all about bush rumours and reputation. The poachers will always go where pickings are easiest and the syndicates, many of them employed by the same buyers, all speak to each other. The news of our victory tonight would spread like wildfire and we would be left alone for a while.
We were coming of age. We had taken on a team of hardened professionals and won.
After a peaceful few weeks in which I was able to spend wonderful sessions with the herd we got the terrible news that Phineas, the gate guard and our prime testifier against the Ovambo guards, had died. Flu and bronchitis had swept through the village and Phineas’s Aids-wracked immune system simply couldn’t fight the virus. As sad as this was, I
also had to reflect on the fact that we had lost our key witness.
A few days later I got more bad news. The Ovambos, who had been tracked down to Durban, had abandoned their jobs in the city and for all intents and purposes disappeared from the face of the earth.
I reported all this to the prosecutor who looked over the file and said matter-of-factly, ‘I’m sorry Mr Anthony but we no longer have a case.’ He closed the file and shrugged.
As always with running a game reserve, one problem disappears and another crops up. Our next challenge came with an unexpected visit from our accountant. He had bad news: our money was running out fast. We had not opened the reserve to guests as we were still settling the elephant herd, and so we had been operating on capital with no income coming in.
‘You need to increase your bottom line,’ he said. ‘Unless you do something to start making money and quickly, there’s going to be a problem.’
It wasn’t just cash flow. Thanks to a series of interest rate hikes, our budgets had been thrown into disarray. I scrutinized the numbers from all angles, trying to crunch them this way and that but to no avail. It seemed as though we had to throw in the towel. The thought of putting Thula Thula on the market made me feel ill.
Then Françoise spoke. ‘Let’s build the little luxury lodge we’ve always wanted. We need to attract more guests if we want to generate income – and we can’t do that without building some accommodation for tourists.’
BOOK: The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild
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