Botswana’s conservation credentials are looking troublesome.
During Botswana’s finest hour those credentials have been used as a pitch every time government or NGOs sought to attract funding for research from wealthy financiers abroad.
Those credentials are the reason why Botswana has the world’s largest elephant herd.
Poaching has been on the ascendance.
There is not a week that passes without reports of a sighting of a decapitated rhino carcass in the Okavango.
It is disgusting.
But more disgusting is our apparent helplessness.
At the very best it looks like government is doing much to gloss over the scale of the problem.
And at worst to hide it – literally. Rhino poaching is at the pinnacle of all the poaching, chiefly because of the price a rhino horn fetches.
When it comes to rhino poaching, as in many other things, Botswana government has blamed former president Ian Khama.
He says it is scandalous to attach his name to poaching.
His conservation credentials are well known.
Of course Khama’s name as in many other things is deployed as an excuse – a pretext for incompetence.
Botswana government is nursing a grand grudge against former Ian Khama.
It has become pervasive. And it is clouding their judgement and stultifying progress.
It would seem like Masisi government needs an enemy like Khama for them to justify every single one of their actions including their fairytales.
Khama’s threat to government, apparently reaches way beyond his conservation and tourism interest. The threat extends even to innocuous and symbolic gestures like the centenary celebrations of his father.
It is not clear for example how Khama is responsible for things that most affect people – like rising prices of fuel, electricity and water.
In fact a failure to come to terms with poaching and stop it might be a signal that the Masisi government is not entirely in control of events going on inside the country, including intelligence gathering and security operations.
They might be guilty of exaggerating their power or their influence.
And their obsession with Khama, who they use to deflect attention might be a begrudged acceptance of that sad reality.
For example, if Khama is behind the poachers, and the poachers are winning, then that is a dramatic failure on the part of the state.
There are serious gaps in the ongoing anti-poaching efforts.
Firstly, the soldiers on the ground are flying blind – so to speak. They know the terrain pretty well and the area to be covered is pretty small. But they are not backed by up-to-date intelligence.
We live in an age where data is king.
Intelligence should provide insights around the complexities of rhino poaching in Botswana.
Getting data should not be so hard given the technology. If anything, difficulties could arise in interpreting such information.
Poachers are known to use cellphones.
In fact poachers that have been arrested were found to have cellphones and they communicated regularly with their masters abroad.
Cellphone data alone is a treasure trove of intelligence.
The trouble is that where such intelligence exists its interpretation is deeply flawed.
Calls for government to insert electronic chips on a majority of animals were all but rejected.
Those with power viewed it as a costly and misguided adventure.
With hindsight that is exactly what was needed.
Instead the monitoring of rhinos was outsourced to a private company – yet another tragic mistake.
The interests of private rhino keepers who relocated their rhinos from South Africa to Botswana have never really been fully aligned to those of government.
We must never underestimate the resolve of Botswana private keepers as well.
To many conservationists believe their motives have always been suspect.
The thinking is that rhinos were relocated to Botswana only after a ban of horn trading in that country.
Thus Botswana has offered them a new opening from where they could continue their illicit trade, because according to them – and, tragically, they were right – the oversight was badly slack.
A real possibility is that these farmers are the big guys behind rhino poaching.
They have played Botswana government like a fiddle. And for them everything has gone according to script.
The weekly stock counting of rhinos in private ranches has long stopped, or if it continues there is little official monitoring.
Khama’s presidency was far from perfect.
He perfected nepotism. He had a soft spot for corruption and was selective in his application of his disciplinary rules.
He was too legalistic – a slant that we see increasingly being adopted by his chosen successor turned nemesis.
Poaching, especially on the iconic rhino is one of the biggest failing by this government.
Yet it never chooses to be self critical.
They choose exoneration as an easy way out. This self-exculpation cannot go on forever while poaching continues unabated.
Ian Khama for all his weakness bequeathed this government with a world class anti-poaching infrastructure that was the envy of the world.
Poaching had happened when Khama was president. But nothing close to what we are seeing.
What we are seeing today is nothing short of a wild-fire.
Of course one cannot rule out a simple fact that our security agencies have been infiltrated.
There is a lot of money involved.
Shortly after Masisi ascended to office, the anti-poaching units of the department of wildlife were bizarrely disarmed using the most frivolous of excuses.
Like much of the security services they too were sucked into a frenzy of madness following allegations that they either planned to topple government or do harm to the president.
The result was that the units folded their arms and recoiled into their barracks.
Poachers arrived and went straight for rhinos.
Official figures, obviously understated, to hide the embarrassment of incompetence are shocking enough still.
The situation has been worsening since. Those who have travelled to the Okavango Delta which has been the epicenter of the slaughter say it’s like travelling through a war zone. The scale of bloodbath is breathtaking.
Out of desperation government attempted dehorning of the rhinos.
As had been predicted by skeptical conservationists, this has proved futile.
Poachers continue to kill even those rhinos that have had their horns removed.
This is because the stumps left during dehorning still fetch a lot of money.
If the media, the opposition, the academia and the ruling party back-benches were looking for a serious issue after the vaccine roll-out with which to hound government rhino poaching is one such issue.
For conservationists, the nostalgia of the order when Ian Khama was president and had power to get things done is understandably palpable.
They worry that rhinos will go extinct in a few years.
It is not unrealistic fear. It is a reasonable anxiety.
It is given all the impetus by a deterioration of operational conditions among the security services.
Many personnel are now looking at their on-the-field efforts and ask themselves “what’s in it for me?”
This is not an exaggeration. This question is in fact a popular refrain among the security personnel.
There is need for an honest introspection.
Anti-poaching environment should be subjected to a thorough analysis with particular focus on the human element. This will necessarily include antipoaching structures, decisions, leadership, capacity, morale and renumeration.
Or we might as well brace ourselves for a day in the not so distant future when the magnificent rhino will be extinct in Botswana.
