290a - The Slaughter of the Innocents: Staving off Starvation

Namibia

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            Thanks to an El Nino caused drought across southern Africa – the worst in at least a century – fully 30 million people in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi are trying to cope with UN World Program and other international assistance to save the lives of their impoverished and sorely affected populations. (See 269 - The Worst Drought in a Century: Feeding People When Rains Fail, June 13). Now Namibia, with another 1.4 million severely hungry inhabitants, almost half of its total population, has joined its neighbors in trying to stave off starvation.

            The head of the local office of the World Wildlife Fund says that “There is no food for people and there is no food for animals.” The UN affirms that 84 percent of Namibia’s food reserves are exhausted.

            But unlike their Southern African fellow sufferers, Namibia has opted to kill masses of wild animals in order to provide at least some meat to its most affected rural dwellers. The Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism plans to cull 83 elephants, 30 hippopotamuses, 300 zebra, 100 blue wildebeest, 100 eland (a particularly tasty big antelope), 60 buffalo, and 50 impala, feeding the meat to nearby villagers. Giraffe and kudu are apparently not on the list. Nor are springbok. Already, 63 tons of meat have been distributed, the edible remains of 157 carcasses.

            Professional sharp shooters are doing the killing, but the Ministry of Environment also hopes to earn $500,000 or more by selling shooting rights to foreign trophy hunters. Nearly all of the culling, at least in the first round, will occur in the Namib Naukluft park in Namibia’s far and very dry south.  Animals in four other smaller parks will also soon be culled.  But as of now there are no plans to take animals in the massive Etosha National Park, Namibia’s largest and its biggest tourist draw.

            Massive criticism of the culling exercise has come in Namibia from animal protection organizations.  International NGOs have also questioned both the need for and the sense of what the Namibian government is doing.  But ministry officials argue that many animals would anyway die of thirst; the ministry is avoiding that outcome while simultaneously helping villagers live.  Furthermore, as large animals search far and wide for scarce water they will invade villages and cause havoc as well as deaths to local people who attempt to protect what is left of their crops.  In Zimbabwe last year, elephants (exclusively herbivores) nevertheless killed at least 50 villagers.

            Elephants, standing about 13 feet tall, are great consumers of forage, eating 300 pounds of vegetation a day.  Hippos leave the water at night to consume grass along the riverbanks, and to invade villages seeking more. Buffalo are also omnivorous grazers, and eland also need large shares of vegetation.  Given those considerations, Namibian officials claim that culling will help minimize stress on the animals spared from culling.  They point to the fact that Zimbabwe lost 160 elephants in January and that nearby Botswana lost 300 of the big ones last year – all to drought.  About 227,000 officially endangered elephants still remain in southern Africa but this year’s water scarcities will not keep such numbers stable.

            USAID is supplying $5 million to Namibia, but in addition to the culled meat, most relief supplies will come from the World Food Program and other large-scale global agencies. They need to supply the subsistence staples on which most Namibians rely for their daily meals. Maize is foremost, but cassava (manioc), sorghum, and millet are also consumed daily.  Ordinarily, meat, whether from cattle or wild sources, is a luxury, so relieving stark food insecurity must come from the urgent importing of grain. The World Food Program largely obtains its maize supplies from the U.S. and Canada. But it has to be shipped and distributed laboriously.

            Namibia is roughly the size of two Californias. The only part of the country that regularly receives acceptable levels of rainfall is in the far north, when the Ovambo –the country’s largest ethnic group –inhabit landscape far different, and usually much wetter, then the rest of Namibia, which is largely desert.  But the rains have not fallen this year in the Ovambo lands and will not much before November. Thus the Ovambo and the rest of the inhabitants of Namibia are and will be enduring unusually trying dry times this year.  And maybe next year, too, if El  Nino continues to wreak havoc.

            Critics of the culling exercise in Namibia say that the project is badly conceived and that it is motivated by this year’s national election. The long ruling South West Africa People’s Organization –SWAPO – faces disgruntled voters. SWAPO fears a substantial loss at the polls in late November, following slides in its popularity in recent national and local elections and in opinion polls. President Hage Geingob died in his second term; Nangolo Mbumba succeeded him in February and has yet to demonstrate his leadership talents.  Furthermore, there have been major corruption scandals. The drought compounded the difficulties SWAPO has been having with potential voters.  Meat for the masses may be one result.  But whether is works either politically or in reducing starvation are still questions.