To be quite honest, I do not wish to behave holier-than-thou from this protracted poaching of our sacred African wildlife that is driving it to near extinction. Your Honour, indirectly I equally stand charged and accused from complicit of this illegal vice from my past association with poachers.
Did I hear myself calling my kinsmen poachers! Ooh sorry my clan, I meant to say and call you brave warriors. To you my dearest clan, please forgive me for indecently addressing you as poachers. You are such a wonderful people worth receiving my undivided loyalty and respect. As you are aware, I was properly brought up and am a well cultured person. I will always be that raw African child you have always known growing up without shoes on my feet. During our boyhood initiation graduation ceremony to manhood, you our village elders tutored us that, in order to prove our manhood to our clan, one had to kill a Lion with his own bear hands and behead it! I am sorry to inform you that I failed you in this aspect of bringing you a head of a Lion as was instructed. This was simply beyond my capabilities and had nothing to do with fear or disobedience. Despite my failure, I can proudly say to you that I still consider myself a truly African man. In my adulthood, I have all the attributes of an African man who successfully went through an African traditional initiation ceremony. My western education I received in later years failed to change this even though I am able to read, write and speak the Queen’s language fluently. My Lord, in my closing mitigation statement, I hereto plead my innocence from my alleged complicity to poaching. I therefore pray for my immediate acquittal as l have no case to answer.
As a young African boy, I grew up in a remote village in rural Zambia very close to a Game Park. We the Tonga people are predominantly cattle keepers like the Masai of East Africa. Except we do not drink fresh cow blood but enjoy eating loads of properly cooked meat. As is our custom and tradition as Plateau Tongas, we drive our cattle for greener pastures every year to the Kafue Flats Game Management Area (GMA), which used to be home to plenty wildlife many years ago. During my time, it was such an exciting time in the village calendar to drive cattle to the Kafue Flats Game Management Area (GMA) in what we call Kuwila in Tonga. We spent the whole night celebrating, dancing to traditional songs accompanied by beating African drums prior to traveling to Kafue GMA the following day. Then, came the actual day of traveling, cattle entered in some form of frenzy hypotenuses. Lead by two men, hoisting high a white flag whilst another one beats a drum, the cattle kicked their hind legs in the air in excitement as they surged forward. The trip from our permanent village to the Kafue Flats GMA took us the whole day of gruesome trotting.
On arrival at the Kafue Flats GMA, we set up camp on dry ground and erected temporal dwelling enclosures from river reeds, a spot we called Kulu Tanga in Tonga. This became our living quarters for the next six months or so during our stay. We erected a makeshift kraal for our cattle to sleep in at night. During the day, we would release the cattle in the vast Kafue flat to graze fresh green grass. All around us we were surrounded by a sea of wild animals i.e waterbuck, hartebeest, zebra, buffalo, plenty Kafue Lechwes to mention but a few spreading beyond what our eyes could see. We happily co-existed with wild animals and gave each other adequate space to live in. But in the middle of the cold night, our camp elders would sneak into the darkness on several occasions with a horde of dogs on a mission we the young ones were never told about. Early in the morning before dawn, they would sneak back into camp incognito.
When it was meal time, one of our elders would walk a short distance from our camp and disappear into a thick shrub nearby. Minutes later, he would emerge with a parcel of dry meat claiming that our ancestors had blessed us with a special meat delicacy. On close examination, we discovered it was bush meat. Yes bush meat for the pot! We were simply told to eat the meat delicacy in silence without any further questions of its true source. Any further inquisitive questions from any of us would lead us being feed on sour milk porridge only. Your guess on what this mission in the middle of the cold night was all about is as good as mine. Could it have been hunting or poaching mission? Or was it a special visit to our African ancestors to receive mana from heaven?
Fast forward 40 years later, here I am as a travel and tour operator business owner in the same Kafue Flats GMA where l was brought up. I takes me hours on end to spot any wild animals in the Kafue Flats GMA for my dear clients to view. They are all gone. Gone! Gone! Yes I said all Gone! as a result of Bush Meat for the Pot…….Dire consequences of Poaching…. driving our African wildlife to near extinction! My only consolation is that there are still plenty birds in the same Kafue Flats GMA for me to show my clients. But will birds suffer the same fate as did wild animals in the next five years? Are my kinsmen poachers, hunters or brave men? I really do not have a straight forward answer to this question.
Game Viewing