There has started a highly unusual debate in which a public with inadequate information will have to decide who between former president Ian Khama and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks is right.
The debate is over a communications protocol on the disclosure of poaching statistics and started when Khama accused the government of failing in its responsibility to protect wildlife.
“In 18 months about 120 rhinos with and without horns have been slaughtered,” Khama said in a post to his Facebook page, “Seretse Khama Ian Khama.” The response, from the Director of the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, Dr. Kabelo Senyatso, was swift and delivered in muscular vocabulary.
“The DWNP is disappointed at the tone of the post, which is regrettable coming from a former very high ranking Government official who should otherwise be aware of the security sensitivities of the subject matter, and its potential negative implication on tourism, which is the second highest foreign revenue earner for the country…
In terms of the cited numbers, DWNP has a long standing policy of not discussing operational and security-sensitive anti-poaching information in the media, as that only serves to increase the safety risks that our on-the-ground operatives face.”
Noting how DWNP rangers and their collaborating partners do extremely dangerous work under the most trying conditions, Senyatso said there was no need to worsen this situation by exposing them to “further danger by discussing the number and locations of the cases that the rangers are dealing with.”
Sunday Standard’s particular interest was on the “long-standing policy of not discussing operational and security-sensitive anti-poaching information in the media”, which the former president and the director understand differently.
At least according to Senyatso, this policy is encapsulated in the National Anti-Poaching Strategy of 2013. “I cannot share that Strategy with you as it is classified document in that it outlines how DWNP and its collaborators will together work towards combatting anti-poaching,” was his response to a request by Sunday Standard for a copy of the policy in question.
For his part, Khama denies the existence of such policy as regards dead rhinos. He elaborates that point by stating that the only policy in place is one in terms of which the numbers and locations of live rhinos should not be revealed.
“Disclosing information on dead rhino is irrelevant because the fact that they have been poached clearly means that the poachers had found their whereabouts anyway,” the former president said in a written response to our questions in which he wrote “live” and “dead” in upper case letters to drive the point home.
We had sought to review this policy for ourselves to independently establish what it says on poaching statistics but its status as indicated in Senyatso’s response made that impossible.
His assertions notwithstanding, there is precedence that contradicts what Senyatso stated. In October 2019, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks released a press statement in which it revealed that nine rhinos had been killed between April 1, 2019 and October 4 2019. On the basis of the latter, we posed the following question to Senyatso: What explained the release of this statement against the aforementioned long-standing, non-disclosure policy?
“The release of the figures was dictated by the exceptional circumstances of that time, as it was a crisis specifically on rhinos and it was deemed appropriate to release them,” he responded.
