Would-be hunters have paid  deposits 0f R275 000 to bid for seven licenses allowing the hunting of ten elephants apiece.

Conservationists say elephants have become a political football for President Mokgweetsi Masisi who is determined to kick over the traces of his wildlife-loving predecessor Ian Khama.

They say there  has not been an increase in Botswana’s elephant population of 170 000 and hunting will increase the demand for ivory and the risk of poaching the animals heading for extinction

The government insists that if there are too many  elephants, it  poses a threat to humans and their crops

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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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Neighbouring Namibia’s President Heine Geingob, in his capacity as SADC chairman, has tried to intervene in the feud between Khama and in incumbent Mokgweetsi Masisi.

As Botswana’s carefully nurtured image of political stability unravels, President Mokgweetsi Masisi has become the ruling party’s first leader to be challenged at its elective conference, which is due in May.

His response is to act against supporters of his predecessor Ian Khama, who accuses him of  taking the diamond-rich country backwards.

BPC secretary general Mpho Balopi confirms that 32 members of the party who attended a speech by Ian Khama, that was sanctioned by the party, have been summoned to explain themselves and face disciplinary action. 

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The latest manifestation is an official apology to Washington from Gaborone for Khama calling US President Donald Trump arrogant and racist.

Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi admits the transition from the rule of notoriously plain-spoken Ian Khama has not gone smoothly.

Now his foreign affairs department’s repudiated Khama for saying Donald Trump is unbelievably immature and the worst president the US has ever had.

Khama counters that the Botswana government is entitled to abandon its principles, but he will continue to speak out against the violation of democratic principles and human rights violations.

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This comes days after reports, denied by Gaborone authorities,  that 90 elephants have been poached for their tusks in the  largest African sanctuary for the endangered giants.

Prime Minister Mokgweetsi Masisi has the launched the debate on the desirability of maintaining the ban on elephant hunting introduced by his conservationist predecessor Ian Khama.

With a national herd of 135 000 elephants – that’s more than  third of these fast depleting  animals on the African continent – its argued that their impact on the environment is unmanageably hard, putting them on a collision course with humans.

Masisi will meet with researchers on the coming weeks and will then address a kgotla on the issue

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Ramaphosa’s the current chair of the regional Southern African Development Community.

Angola currently heads SADC’s Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. So Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Joao Lourenco have a heavy schedule of regional priorities to cover  in Luanda tomorrow.

The South African President has first hand experience as regional mediator in Lesotho’s protracted political miasma.

Ramaphosa moves on to Windhoek for discussions with Namibian President Heine Giengob.

On Saturday, Ramaphosa will be in Gaborone, the site of the secretariat for the 15-nation grouping,  for talks with Botswana President Ian Khama.

He’ll be accompanied by his new Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe

Sisulu and Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa Nqakula

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At least 27 million people – about nine percent of the SADC population – are food insecure this year as a result of the poor 2015/16 farming season.

ends intro

The current El Niño-induced drought in SADC is the worst in 35 years.

The  regional El-Niño response team has so far prepared a regional drought appeal for assistance.

SADC chairperson, President Ian Khama of Botswana launched the regional appeal amounting to US$2.7 billion.

Yesterday the SADC Organ on Peace and Security, now under Tanzania’s  chairmanship, discussed the security explosion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Lesotho as well as requests by Burundi and the Comores to join SADC.

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The Gaborone government says it accepts the court’s decision and will implement it.

Having been re-elected president last month, Ian Khama wanted MPs to elect his deputy by show of hands.

This was to obviate dissident lawmakers voting against Khama’s choice.

Botswana’s Appeal court’s upheld a High Court judgment ordering a secret ballot constitutional.
Khama’s facing a backlash from within his own Botswana Democratic Party over the prospect of
Tshekedi Khama being vice president.

Some parliamentarians accuse the president of trying to create a dynasty in one of Africa’s most democratic
nations.

They say he’s undermining the role of parliament by trying to decide on his deputy by a show of hands.

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Two years ago De Beers moved its diamond sorting
business to the capital Gaborone.
The country’s seen rising unemployment since 2009 when the global economic crisis sent diamond
prices falling.

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The poll’s got the thumbs up from the country’s neighbours.

Ian Khama’s won a second term as president and will be sworn in tomorrow.

The Botswana Democratic Party takes credit for moving the diamond-rich country from a poor cattle-herding protectorate to one of the richest per-capita African nations.

Ian Khama, son of the indepedendence leader Seretse Kahma, had to fight off a challenge from a new political alliance and a breakaway party.

The BDP won a comfortable parliamentary majority in the 61-member parliament albeit with eight seats fewer than they captured in 2009.

The new opposition capitalised on unemployment caused by diamond prices falling in the global economic crisis that year.

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