Addo Elephant National Park

Yesterday, boxer teams across the country observed a moment of remembrance before the start of their shifts in honour of the three employees.

Sandparks has confirmed a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape.

The National Parks Agency says surveillance detected lameness among kudu.

Initial tests were negative, but a second round came back positive.

Well, that's, I tell you, South Africa is a world in one country, people.

But, you know, having lived in South Africa and, you know, run a guest house for over 18 years in the heart of Cape Town, what I do know is that people come here and they see whales and then they see the big five and they see penguins and, you know, the wonderful flowers towards the Eastern Cape, taking that route and Addo Park with all those elephants.

I mean, basically, it's a world in one country because they snow as well.

And, you know, people go skiing and yeah, well, modest skiing is not the Alps, but yeah, you can still do it.

So the, the key example is the, the, the first chapter and the final chapter of the book.

The first is on the founding of the Addo Elephant National Park and how these elephants are sort of driven into this, um, this reserve, and attempts were made to tame them and to feed them, uh, pumpkins and oranges and so on to sort of make them or habituate them to that space.

And then the final chapter of the book on Kalahari San peoples in the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, where the same colonial officials basically say the same thing needs to be done, and the, the San are, are ultimately preserved in a similar kind of space, are provided state rations in order to tame them.

This is the same language they use for the humans and for the animals, and they're managed not by a native commissioner, which is the typical official that was used to, you know, who administered, uh, African populations in Southern Africa, but by a game ranger, so someone who's, who's tasked with managing animals.

Yeah, sure.

Of course.

Yeah, I mean, obviously for those who, who've not read the book, the, the first chapter of the book is a analysis and, and history of the founding of the Addo Elephant National Park, which is a, a now famous national park in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, which is known for its herds of elephants that have these short or diminished or entirely absent tusks, which is interestingly a, a, a result of, of, of natural selection for smaller tusks because of how much hunting there was in the region.

And the, the herd that-- of elephants that became this park, I was surprised to learn were a very despised troop of, uh, elephants deemed to be rogue animals in the region.