RITA MILJO - AN INDOMITABLE SPIRIT

                      The evening of Friday 27^th 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, and reverberate around the world. 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.

Ow convenient,How

"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. 

 

 

Beatrice Wiltshire

NIKKI BOTHA - A ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

                                

The Faroe Islands, a self governing region of Denmark situated N­­­­orthwest of Scotland and halfway be­tween Iceland and Nor­­way, has been described by the National Geographic as 'unspoilt, a delight to the traveller.' The islands earned high marks for  preservation of nature, historic architecture and local pride.

            But this deceptively peaceful destination has an ugly side.  For a thousand years there would be the annual 'grind' during which a flotilla of small boats drives whales or dolphins into a shallow bay where they can be easily killed with knives. This archaic tradition was also practiced by other cultures in the Arctic and Europe, but these have either stopped or changed their techniques considerably.

            Recently, South Africa woke up to the news that six animal activists had been arrested at the Faroe islands on charges of hindering the hunt of the pilot whales and not following police orders when being asked to leave the water.

            Two of those arrested were South Africans and Bolander interviewed one of them, Nikki Botha.

            So who is this dedicated animal activist and what made her follow this journey?

            According to Nikki she had a pretty unstable childhood, being placed in boarding school from an early age, first in Touwsrivier and then at the Bloemhof Girls' High in Stellenbosch.  

She became aware of the cruel fate of animals from her activist mother and after leaving school and relocating to Cape Town, she became a vegetarian, moving on to veganism after 18 years.

            But what really started her off on her 'animal' journey was when in 2006 a friend introduced her to Captain Alex Cornelissen of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) whose boat, the Farley Mowatt, was being detained at Cape Town harbour  "under the guise of red tape, but it was really at the behest of the Japanese government," she says.

The crew had no way out of the harbour and no food.  In return for the latter, the captain would give her a tour of the boat.  The crew were vegans and Nikki immediately went out and bought two trolley fulls of vegan food.

The tour of the boat included Cornelissen telling them about sealing and whaling and all the other atrocities perpetrated against the oceans.  Nikki's Damascus moment was the point when he described how he stood ankle deep in seal blood on the ice floes of Canada.  She had finally found her purpose.

She realized there was no way she could go home and pretend what she had learnt was not real. "I needed to do something.  I had never been involved in activism and knew nothing about it.  So I went home and internetted the hell out of the topic and at the end of the day I knew I had found my calling."

She sent an email to Francois Hugo of the local organization Seal alert (Bolander The Seal Whisperers 3 August 2011) then joined up with Francois and was his spokesperson for 3 years.

One thing led to another. Nikki decided to become politically active for animals. In order to understand how laws were made and passed, one needed to understand the politics and the decision makers behind it. So she joined up with the DA and was constituency secretary for the Cape Town CBD ward.

The incident where a DA Councillor violated the Animal Protection act and received a "slap on the wrist for bringing the party's name into disrepute" upset Nikki.     "It became clear that animal welfare wasn't high on the agenda and I often sat in meetings and had to bite my tongue when activists were denigrated and ridiculed. When the DA decided to implement an archaic, racist law which would pass as an animal welfare by-law, I put my foot down. I was in a ward meeting and was told straight out by the chairperson that the DA would rather lose the vote of animal lovers than lose a Councillor.  I wasn't towing the party line and I wasn't willing to sacrifice my ethics, morals and principles."  So she resigned – very publicly.  

            Meanwhile, Nikki had got involved with the local chapter of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society of which she currently shares the running, together with two other ladies.

            She has joined the SSCS in several campaigns, in Taiji as a Cove Guardian (a subsequent film The Cove won several international awards.  Nikki considers this to be her most rewarding mission.)

She was also part of Operation Desert Seal in Namibia where they covertly filmed the cruel seal slaughter, escaping at night with their equipment in a dramatic chase through the desert, pursued by the Namibian authorities who listed them as "a threat to national security" and banned them from entering Namibia ever again.

And then there was their operation Sunu Gaal, which is their anti-poaching patrol on the West Coast of Africa. It is operated from a vessel called the Jairo Mora Sandoval, named in honour of a young South American turtle activist who was murdered by poachers. 

            Their latest campaign was as part of Operation Grindstop 2014 in the Faroe Islands where she and her five team mates were arrested for interfering with the inhumane grind. They were fined kr1000 each (which they refuse to pay) and banned from the Faroe Islands for one year.

I asked Nikki about their stay in jail and the subsequent court case, which must have been harrowing.  She shrugged her shoulders and replied that for her a visit to the dentist was worse. 

            But it is clear that despite their fighting with everything they had to save those whales, the harrowing experience of watching entire pods, babies included, being butchered left emotional scars with which they are still battling to come to terms. "We might have been on trial for allegedly breaking the law, but the Faroe Islands are on trial and the world needs to find them guilty. No decent person could ever condone the complete and utterly abhorrent way those animals were treated and butchered."

            Nikki's main focus now is lobbying for change within a constitutional framework. As such she no longer considers herself to be an animal rights activist, she says, but rather a civil society activist: "Because no civil society treats animals the way we do."

            In this she is supported by her husband "my dream man who loves me unconditionally and supports me in everything that I do."

 

 

Beatrice Wiltshire