A View on Hunting by a Traditional Leader in Namibia

By Dr Margaret Jacobsohn

Chief T J Mayuni, traditional leader of the Mafwe people in the Mashi district of Namibia and patron of Mayuni Conservancy, is an ardent conservationist and an animal lover. He can describe and recall the name of every dog he has owned since childhood. He is also fiercely pro-trophy hunting.

“If the hunting ends and the income it brings to conservancies in Namibia stops, the conservation will stop,“ he told me.

Speaking at his tribal khuta (court) at Choi in north-eastern Namibia, the chief expressed outrage that people who live in the west think they have the right to dictate to Africans how they should manage their wildlife. He was responding to news of the new British laws against the import of hunting trophies.

“These people are pretending to do conservation in nice air-conditioned offices, sitting at computers. They don’t understand the realities of living here with wild animals. These animals share our land where we farm and live. Our national parks are too small to contain our wildlife – they have to leave the parks and move across our lands.”

Chief Mayuni had a question for those contemplating laws that could cause the decline of hunting in Africa: “You once had wildlife in your countries. Where is it today? Where are your bears and wolves? You killed them all because you could not live with wild animals – as we do. Now you have the audacity to tell us what to do, we who still have wildlife and who have helped it to increase in the past decades.”

The chief raised a laugh among his indunas (headmen) with a typical Mafwe metaphor: “You don’t have a wife, yet you presume to advise us who are married how to behave.”

Chief Mayuni is well qualified to lecture the West about confusing individual animal rights with conservation which works, as it must to be effective, at the population, species and ecosystem levels. He was the first traditional leader in Zambezi Region in the early 1990s to support community-based conservation in an area that was hostile to nature conservation because of the protectionist approach being taken by the colonial authorities.

He personally pioneered various initiatives aimed at stopping rampant poaching which, by Namibian independence in 1990, had reduced most species to remnant numbers. Giraffe and rhino in what was then called Caprivi, now Zambezi province, had already been poached to extinction.

Today, with abundant wildlife in Zambezi, many people have forgotten how close Namibia came to losing its wild animals in this area which, sandwiched between Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, is the key to essential connectivity for wildlife. 

Without the Zambezi Region, and its community-conservation successes, the world’s largest multi-country conservation area – the 520 000 square km Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier conservation area, KAZA, would be a non-starter. 

The Mafwe Khuta was the first in Zambezi to agree to appoint community game guards, answerable to the khuta, not to the then-Directorate of Nature Conservation, which was seen as unsympathetic to local people and their conflicts with wildlife in their fields and with predators killing livestock – and people. The protectionist approach pre-independence aimed at catching poachers whereas the community-based approach has a longer-term perspective aimed at stopping poaching.

In the early 1990s, Chief Mayuni led the way in not only fining poachers but also his indunas in the villages where poachers lived. As he said at the time, these headmen should have known that game meat was being brought into homesteads under their noses. In 1996/97, he also pioneered a compensation scheme for farmers who suffered economic losses to wild animals.

“What I did,” he recalled, “was invite tourism operators to donate to this pilot scheme, initially for livestock losses to lions. We paid N$500 per cow. Then IRDNC – Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation, (the NGO that pioneered community conservation in Namibia) – added N$300 so we could pay N$800 per cow.”

The Ministry of Environment and Tourism, now the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT), later took over these pilot schemes but applied them to all conservancies in Namibia, including those that do not have lions and other large predators. The amounts paid are limited and never enough to cover all farming losses so the issue remains a major ongoing problem for conservation.

Chief Mayuni reminded us how serious problem-animal incidents were often handled in the 1980s up until the time community-based conservation was embraced in the 1990s.

“People used to poison the remains of a cow taken by lions so that when the pride came back to feed, they died, as did hyena, jackal, and many vultures and birds that also fed on the poisoned carcass. Even crocodiles died this way.”

But he pointed out that in the very early days, his forefathers knew how to look after wild animals which was why wildlife was so abundant when the colonists arrived.

Senior Induna Bernhard Munembo: “If hunting should stop, it will touch the lives of all our people. Conservation and hunting are together and have brought jobs and income, plus meat.”

Senior Induna Christopher Mawaya: “This anti-hunting story will kill Namibia. We hope our government is talking hard to Britain.”

Induna Patrick Natamoya said that human-wildlife conflict was effectively tackled by the hunters who targeted problem animals.

Other indunas spoke in the same vein, also airing some of their concerns about the challenges currently facing conservancies.

The Ngambela talked about the immense gap between people in the West and the rural people of Zambezi.

The chief then took the floor and said he shared the concerns some of his indunas had expressed about the jobs and incomes lost because of the collapse of tourism during the pandemic lockdowns. This poverty meant poaching, which had become almost non-existent up until 2020, was on the rise. Attempts to stop trophy hunting income could therefore not be coming at a worse time when conservancies were struggling to keep their members supportive.

Conservancies were valuable as employers but not everyone in the community had a son or daughter who worked for a conservancy, he pointed out, referring to the ongoing challenges of getting sufficient benefits from wildlife into homesteads, especially now that tourism, which stopped completely for nearly two years during the lockdowns, was only slowly starting again.

Much had been achieved by conservancies, Chief Mayuni said, with solar and electrical infrastructure going into villages, boreholes, and piped water, conservancies having offices and vehicles, being able to provide jobs, bursaries for post-school tuition, funeral assistance, game meat distributions from trophy hunting, and much else. However, more was needed.

“But, let us not air our problems now. We need to focus on the people who are trying to stop trophy hunting.”

“How can we explain to them that if our people do not benefit from the wild animals that share their land, they will farm the core wildlife areas and chase wildlife away. More wildlife will be killed. The wildlife corridors in all conservancies will close without hunting income.

“Community conservation is in crisis because of the economic situation after the pandemic, and losing our hunting income would be the nail in the coffin,” was the chief’s final, sobering comment.

The Ministry of Environment and Tourism, now the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT), later took over these pilot schemes but applied them to all conservancies in Namibia, including those that do not have lions and other large predators. The amounts paid are limited and never enough to cover all farming losses so the issue remains a major ongoing problem for conservation.

Chief Mayuni reminded us how serious problem-animal incidents were often handled in the 1980s up until the time community-based conservation was embraced in the 1990s.

“People used to poison the remains of a cow taken by lions so that when the pride came back to feed, they died, as did hyena, jackal, and many vultures and birds that also fed on the poisoned carcass. Even crocodiles died this way.”

But he pointed out that in the very early days, his forefathers knew how to look after wild animals which was why wildlife was so abundant when the colonists arrived.

“In the old days, the chief used to send his own hunters to shoot a limited number of elephant for a celebration, for example. No one but the chief’s hunters were allowed to hunt. The old people knew how to harvest a few animals without damaging the population.

“People used to poison the remains of a cow taken by lions so that when the pride came back to feed, they died, as did hyena, jackal, and many vultures and birds that also fed on the poisoned carcass. Even crocodiles died this way.”

But he pointed out that in the very early days, his forefathers knew how to look after wild animals which was why wildlife was so abundant when the colonists arrived.

“In the old days, the chief used to send his own hunters to shoot a limited number of elephant for a celebration, for example. No one but the chief’s hunters were allowed to hunt. The old people knew how to harvest a few animals without damaging the population.

“Today, however, people have increased and wildlife has increased so we have more conflicts. This does not mean wildlife has to decline just because we stay together. Trophy hunting is a conservation method, carefully controlled with quotas set after annual game counts.”

Earlier in the morning, Mrs Beatrice Muyafwe, the Ngambela, (speaker of the house who is in charge of the khuta) had followed protocol by inviting indunas to speak before the chief. He is required to listen to his indunas, and then his Ngambela, and always be the last to speak. 

Senior Induna Bernhard Munembo: “If hunting should stop, it will touch the lives of all our people. Conservation and hunting are together and have brought jobs and income, plus meat.”

Senior Induna Christopher Mawaya: “This anti-hunting story will kill Namibia. We hope our government is talking hard to Britain.”

Induna Patrick Natamoya said that human-wildlife conflict was effectively tackled by the hunters who targeted problem animals.

Other indunas spoke in the same vein, also airing some of their concerns about the challenges currently facing conservancies.

The Ngambela talked about the immense gap between people in the West and the rural people of Zambezi. 

The chief then took the floor and said he shared the concerns some of his indunas had expressed about the jobs and incomes lost because of the collapse of tourism during the pandemic lockdowns. This poverty meant poaching, which had become almost non-existent up until 2020, was on the rise. Attempts to stop trophy hunting income could therefore not be coming at a worse time when conservancies were struggling to keep their members supportive.

Conservancies were valuable as employers but not everyone in the community had a son or daughter who worked for a conservancy, he pointed out, referring to the ongoing challenges of getting sufficient benefits from wildlife into homesteads, especially now that tourism, which stopped completely for nearly two years during the lockdowns, was only slowly starting again.

Much had been achieved by conservancies, Chief Mayuni said, with solar and electrical infrastructure going into villages, boreholes, and piped water, conservancies having offices and vehicles, being able to provide jobs, 

bursaries for post-school tuition, funeral assistance, game meat distributions from trophy hunting and much else. However, more was needed. 

“But, let us not air our problems now. We need to focus on the people who are trying to stop trophy hunting.”

“How can we explain to them that if our people do not benefit from the wild animals that share their land, they will farm the core wildlife areas and chase wildlife away. More wildlife will be killed. The wildlife corridors in all conservancies will close without hunting income. 

“Community conservation is in crisis because of the economic situation after the pandemic and losing our hunting income would be the nail in the coffin,” was the chief’s final, sobering comment.

Later, in his office, having left the indunas in the khuta to continue with their work, effectively governing the Mafwe people in the Mashi district, hearing and resolving issues and conflicts, the Chief and I discussed how to close the gap between people in the West and Africa.

Few conservation projects in Africa are better monitored, documented, reviewed, researched and criticized, both internally and externally, than Namibia’s community conservation program, with annual results published online and hardcopy in its State of Community Conservation booklet. Here the achievements and shortcomings of the 68 communal conservancies, 43 community forests and 10 communal fish reserves, plus two community associations within two national parks, managed like a conservancy, are annually reviewed. The various websites are open to all, and data from game counts across the country, income, benefit distribution, facts and figures, are unflinchingly laid out. So it is not for a lack of information that the gap between Africa and some Westerners remains so wide. 

Chief Mayuni observed that travelling to other areas, experiencing and seeing with his own eyes, had been a major driver in educating and informing him. In France and at CITES meetings, he had heard animal rights talk – where the rights of an individual animal, such as an elephant, was put before the lives and welfare of African people.

Many African countries have visited Namibia to learn about its community conservation which has resulted in a major increase in wildlife and benefits for people. 

“So, we should do the same: invite those animal rights people to come here where we can show them examples of how our people suffer because they live with wild animals. And how much they sacrifice for conserving those animals. Let them come here and see the hard efforts we put into conservation. Those ‘pretend conservationists’ need to see some real conservation.”