The evening of Friday 27th July 2012 saw the end of an era. A pioneer and legend in conservation, Rita Miljo was the first person in the world who managed to rehabilitate Chacma baboons and reintroduce them, as troops, into the wild - a feat which was regarded as impossible. She died in a horrific blaze which destroyed her flat above the clinic, a house and much of the sanctuary she had built in the bush in the Limpopo province.
Born in Germany in 1931, Rita fell in love with Africa where she and her husband settled in the 1950's. Tragically, her husband and only child, a daughter, were both killed in a light airplane crash.
It was a chance encounter with a baby baboon not long afterwards that changed her life, setting her on a course which was to shake the foundations of conservation in South Africa. Travelling in South West Africa during the bush wars, she came upon a baby baboon, mascot to a troop of soldiers, who had been left for dead in a dustbin. Rita established that the little baboon was, in fact, only suffering from a massive alcohol overdose. A qualified pilot with her own aircraft, she managed to smuggle him over the border and back to her farm outside Phalaborwa. And so the Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education (CARE) had its beginnings in 1981 with Rita claiming ever afterwards that Bobby( as she had named the little baboon) was actually the founder of the facility.
Initially dedicated to the care, rehabilitation and protection of injured and orphaned indigenous wild animals, CARE soon specialized in the care of Chacma baboons, actively pursuing their rescue, rehabilitation and release. It was the only facility in Southern Africa that accepted orphaned or abandoned baboons and offered them long-term care.
They kept coming in – orphaned babies whose mothers had been shot by farmers, traumatized laboratory baboons whose release had been negotiated - the unwanted, the maimed.
Where they could be rehabilitated and released in troops, this was done. Others were to live out the rest of their lives without fear in large outside enclosures.
From the start Rita was engaged in virtually a war situation with the singularly hostile Nature Conservation officials who were determined to shut her down, baboons being classified as 'vermin' and therefore to be shot on sight. Who can forget the occasion when the feisty lady stood with a loaded shotgun between her baboons and the officials who had come to confiscate them? The officials thought better of it and hastily retreated.
But it was only the start, with Rita being hounded at every turn. On one notable occasion she rushed to Mpumalanga to save the life of an orphaned baby baboon and bring him back to CARE. She was hauled before the Court where the prosecutor asked her: "Why do you waste your time on problem animals like baboons?" Rita's reply: ¨Who are you to tell God he should not have created baboons?" had the magistrate struggling to hide a smile. She was acquitted from the charges of moving the baby baboon without the necessary permits as she 'had acted out of necessity."
In time the officials learned to respect (even admire) her, but the next obstacle that was thrown into CARE's path was the "destruction of original genes" dogma – it was alright to kill baboons in any way possible but if one wanted to put a Free State Baboon in touch with a Transvaal baboon, one committed the ultimate Armageddon – the destruction of their gene pool, their being considered different sub-species. "How convenient that God knew there would be four or nine provinces in South Africa," retorted Rita.
A task team of young American students was assembled by Pretoria University to go into this gene research. Rita invited some of their members to C.A.R.E. She asked the students: "Where do you obtain your blood samples to be absolutely sure that you have the right blood source for your studies?" She was informed that they just asked the guys from Nature Conversation and got sent a bag full of baboon ears. Rita was met by a flood of emotions and tears when she offered them a knife and told them to go and cut off as many ears as they needed from her baby orphans. "I have no idea where this particular study ended," Rita wryly informed me.
But she did afterwards travel to Pretoria to have a word with Professor Peter Henzi, the then leading primatologist in South Africa. Not long after, the taxonomy of the Chacma baboon was changed and all baboon "separate" species, from the Chacma in the South through to the North African Hamadryas baboon now became sub-species.
There were lows, such as when she was called to the hastily abandoned secret French Laboratory in the bush at Hazyview. A dying baboon quietly handed over her baby while looking straight into Rita's eyes as if imploring her: "Please look after my baby." This affected Rita so much that she had to seek medical assistance. But the remaining baboons were later relocated to CARE and a proud moment was when Madiba himself attended their eventual release back into the bush.
From 2010, when the telephone lines would permit, I had several long distance exchanges with Rita, in connection with a book I wanted to write. During our last conversation she described how she had partitioned off half of her lounge for her beloved Bobby. Now both old, they would share many Woolworths ready-meals, which Bobby loved. Was it prescience or Rita's famed black humour when she concluded: "And so we sit, two oldies staring at each other as if wondering which one of us will be the first to go."
And then the shocking news that she and Bobby had succumbed together in the horrific blaze, the cause of which is still under investigation.
I am reminded of Rita's words to me: "How many millions of creatures, animals and humans, never have much else in their lives – just an existence. The human species have created illusions for themselves, they call it HOPE. And if there is nothing to hope for in this world – there will be happiness in the next. Mr. Dawkins calls this the God Delusion. I wonder whether animals also have their own delusions called Hope or does their happiness consist of the presence of the moment only?"
Hamba Kahle, dear friend.
First published in Bolander by Beatrice Wiltshire
