Sometimes, though the country’s animal wealth strikes with red-toothed and massive strength that can only serve to remind humans  of their vulnerability.

In the past week there have been at least two fatalities attributed to the Big Five – once the goal of big game hunters now reduced to the aspiration of game viewers.

And the King of Beasts has reminded South Africans why Lions dominate that quintet.

The incidents all centered on the Kruger National Park, a 19,485 square kilometer  game reserve the size of Israel stretching up South Africa’s north east along its borders with Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

It began with a 33-month-old toddler being mauled to death by a leopard at a workers compound in the south of the park.

Courtney Ntimane followed his father who went into his hut, leaving his son outside playing with his mother’s telephone.

The leopard climbed a tree and dropped into the compound where it grabbed Courtney and tried to jump back over the fence.

The horrified screams of the family caused it to drop the boy and flee.

Courtney’s father Isiah rushed him to hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Rangers tracked and shot two leopards near the camp. They were an adult female with an empty gut and sub-adult female that had recently eaten an impala.

This raises the likelihood that the opportunistic attacker is still at large.

Leopards are rarely known to  attack adult humans but they will take their chances with children.

Last weekend a pride of 14 lions escaped from Kruger and took up at the Foskor Mine in Phalaborwa which is halfway up  the reserve on his western border.

The South African Parks Board at first denied that the lions had come from Kruger.

However, environmental specialists said there was no doubt about the origin of the big cats.

Local residents were not comforted by assurances that they were in no danger if they stayed inside until the lions returned to their normal habitat.

Eric Kgatla, a 45-year-old nightwatchman at the  Foskor Mine, was not able to find security behind a bolted door.

With the lions on the premises, he and his colleagues redoubled their vigilance.

On high alert, they were patrolling the area in the dark when he stumbled across a bull elephant that had come through the fence from Kruger.

Kgatla was trampled to death by the pachyderm.

Elephants have  been in the news in South Africa’s north-western neighbour of  Botswana where President Mokgweetsi Masisi has reinstated the right to hunt tuskers.

This has  incensed Mokgweetsi Masisi’s conservationist predecessor Ian Khama who banned the hunting and culling of elephants five years ago.

He maintains trophy hunters stimulate the  market for ivory that drives crime syndicates to poach more than 30,000 elephants a year for their tusks

Mokgweetsi argues that the national herd has grown above 130 000, which is a third of the elephants left on the African continent.

He says elephants have done millions of euros of crop damage and more importantly have killed at least 50 Botswana these past years.

There is weekly social media footage of ill-tempered elephants damaging the vehicles of game viewers in several national parks that have come too close, particularly to young bulls or males in must.

The elephant ranks fifth on the list of deadly African creatures.

That  roll is easily dominated by the anopheles mosquito that carries  death by malaria  to more than  more than 400 000 Africans a year.

The puff adder is second, killing 32 000 humans.

The giant hippopotamus kills the third-highest  number of  people in Africa followed by the lion, crocodile and buffalo.

Leopards  barely make the top ten.

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President Uhuru Kenyatta says this shows his country has a come a long way.

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The Kenyan decision is an attempt to prevent the glorification of political leaders.

Previous coins bore the likenesses of ex-rulers Joma Kenyatta, Daniel Arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki.

All three also had their images printed on banknotes during their rule.

Many Kenyans felt this was an attempt by the leaders to promote themselves and the cult of the personality

New coins have at their heads lions, elephants, giraffes and rhinos.

Hailing what he calls this big change is President Uhuru Kenyatta who has promised never to have his picture on Kenya’s currency. 

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Molewa fell ill while accompanying Ramaphosa to China earlier this month. She died at a Pretoria Hospital, aged 61.

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The ruling African National Congress endorsed President Cyril Ramaphosa remarks that Edna Molewa’s death was a devastating loss. She was Water and Environmental Affairs Minister for eight years.

Opposition parties paid tribute to Molewa’s work protecting the environment and particularly in fighting the poaching of rhino and elephant.

The World Wildlife Fund paid tribute to her significant contribution to safeguarding the environment and noted that on her watch there had been a decline in rhino deaths these past three years.

Five years ago the WWF gave Molewa its highest honour, the Gift To The Earth Award.

Figures released in Friday showed 508 rhinos had been poached nationally between the beginning of the year and end of August, compared with 691 deaths  last year.

Elephants, however, are falling prey to poachers in greater numbers. 58 of the giant beast have been killed for their tusks in the Kruger National Park – South Africa largest game reserve – this year.

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The UN body has strengthened actions to combat illicit wildlife trafficking and increase protection to entire groups of species.

Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of flora and fauna John Scanlon calls the conference of the parties in Sandton the most critical meeting that CITES has delivered for the world’s wildlife in its 43 years of existence.

He tells the closing ceremony , which came a day earlier than scheduled, that the conference  is a game changer for the planet’s most vulnerable wild animals and plants.

The more than 3 500 delegates took decisions on 62 species including retaining the ban on the sale of ivory and rhino horn.

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The pro-sale Africans, who face massive opposition from with their own continent ,accuse Western wildlife charities of dictating how they should protect their elephants.

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Elephants – being poached for their tusks at an even faster rate than conservations fear – dominate deliberations at the conference of the parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Spiecies of flora and fauna that got underway in Sandton yesterday.

Zambia’s tourism minister Stephen Mwansa told journalists animal charities should not dictate to Africans and should leave them alone.

At least 30 African countries, however, are pushing for an immediate and permanent ban on the ivory trade and the destruction of stockpiles of tusks.

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