There’s a not-so-secret country hidden in plain sight within SA. It spreads over 4-million hectares, provides water and electricity to its people, has its own traffic services, medical corps, police force, K9 unit, army and air wing. It even has an elite covert ops division.
This is the “Republic” of SANParks, and 53-year-old Fundisile Mketeni is its “prime minister”. Which is to say, the buck stops with him. “You could say my mandate is loaded,” grins the SANParks CEO.
Mketeni’s plate is overflowing. In the past week there’s been major fallout after a tourist hiking in Table Mountain National Park was stabbed to death. Unions are in a tussle with management over wages and have threatened to go on strike. Then there’s the ongoing poaching crisis. Rhino poaching is on the decline, but Kruger Park continues to account for more than half of all rhino-poaching incidents, according to Save the Rhino, and the people on the frontline of this war, the rangers, are taking strain.
It was World Ranger Day on Wednesday and Mketeni, who started his career as a ranger three decades ago, has a soft spot for rangers. When he began, a ranger’s job was about conservation and tourism. Now, the 900 SANParks rangers have to catch poachers.
“Rangers didn’t join conservation to be soldiers. They wanted to collect data, observe wildlife and walk in the bush,” says Mketeni, who recently spent a day with rangers talking to them about their concerns. They told him they worry about their safety — not from wildlife, but from humans. They are on high alert, armed and expected to stand up to poachers almost daily.
Born in Kalana village, near King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, Mketeni grew up herding cattle, milking cows before school and attending to them when he returned. He never imagined he would ever get to wear a suit and tie, let alone lead a multibillion-rand organisation with thousands of staff.
It’s not wholly understood; it’s mysterious, but it’s a system that underpins life
“As a herdboy I learnt how to look after livestock and this started my love for wildlife. I knew all about different birds and I saw myself dedicating my life to looking after the environment,” he says.
After matriculating he went to study forestry at Fort Cox College of Agriculture and Forestry. Though trees would become a crucial part of his survival strategy, they were not a branch of nature studies that interested him. He dropped out, but returned when the college introduced nature conservation. He graduated in 1988 and went to work as a ranger and junior manager in the Double Drift game reserve near Alice. He’d learnt the theory — ecology, population dynamics and ecological processes — but the bush was his actual university.
“That’s where you really learn from the dedicated and disciplined rangers and trackers,” he says. His most important lesson was: find the best tree to climb when a predator is on your tail. The rangers also taught him how to handle difficult tourists.He shakes his head.
“Tourists can be stupid,” he says. Rangers have to give tourists a wildlife experience but they also have to protect them, mostly from themselves. There was always someone who wanted a selfie with a lion or who thought they knew better than Mketeni about the wildlife. According to Mketeni, rangers need to have endurance and patience. A good sense of humour helps — as does a long-suffering spouse (“We worked difficult hours, and never had weekends or Christmases”), and, of course, the ability to climb a tall tree at a moment’s notice.
It’s not only animals that are dangerous. Mketeni’s first brush with death happened when he went up in a microlight aircraft to drive a herd of impalas from community land back into the park. He was behind the pilot when the aircraft crashed — fortunately for the pair, into a sandy embankment. Mketeni says teaching and transferring skills are his passions. When children from the community visited the park, their first question was always: “B-b-b-b-but are there snakes here?”
“I would ask them if they had ever heard of anyone being killed by a snake. They would shake their heads. I’d explain that snakes slither away and are more scared of the children than the children are of them. I walked with the kids in the bush and saw how the magic of nature opened their eyes.”
He told the children that the environment is a dynamic system. “It’s not wholly understood; it’s mysterious, but it’s a system that underpins life. What we breathe, drink and eat all come from the environment. I explained that if we look after nature it renews itself and won’t disappear, but if we overexploit it, well, then it’s a disaster.” Mketeni loved being a ranger.
“Best of all,” he grins, “I got to wear my shorts.”Over the years he added more strings to his bow: studying at Saasveld Forestry College and completing a master’s degree in environmental management at the University of the Free State. In 1996, he was head-hunted and appointed the first black manager of Addo Elephant National Park. His task was to amalgamate Addo and the Zuurberg Park into one. It was a tough ask but he was game.
“We pursued this concept of ‘Greater Addo’, linking Addo to the ocean. We worked with the farming community, who accused us of being like Zimbabwe. The farmers were compensated, it was a willing buyer, willing seller approach, but we had hard negotiations. In the end we took the land for a good cause. We did research and discovered that most of the farmers in the area were struggling, so expanding the park for eco-tourism was the best option for that area.”
That expansion brought tourism investment into the valley. “We built roads and lodges and Addo went from being a loss-maker to breaking even and is now one of SANParks’ cash cows — and a reminder that it’s important to invest in tourism to conserve the environment.” He loved his time at the elephant park because, although he tries not to show favouritism, elephants are his chosen animals. “Every animal in its habitat is beautiful because they look happy. Lions are strong and know how to survive, but I love elephants. I really admire them. They are bright.”
In 2001, he moved to Pretoria as chief operating officer for SANParks. Three years later he was poached (but in a good way) by the environmental department to be the deputy director-general responsible for biodiversity and conservation. He learnt about bureaucracy, policy development, and working with politicians — unfortunately there were no trees high enough to climb to escape them. “I prefer wildlife to politicians,” he laughs. “You can predict wildlife. Their behaviour makes sense and they never disappoint you. Politicians are unpredictable.”
He stayed in government for 10 years, and returned to SANParks in 2014 as its CEO. There are 19 national parks spread across SA. Mketeni’s job involves aligning SANParks to the government’s priorities, growing revenue, ensuring tourists and staff are happy, working with communities living adjacent to the parks, keeping the parks’ ecosystems intact (removing invasive plants, dealing with pollution, putting out wildfires) and maintaining a balance between development and conservation.
“My philosophy is to touch the earth lightly. We are investing in renewable energy and the plan is for our parks to operate off the grid, using wind and solar. We must set the example,” says Mketeni, who represents SA on a number of international conservation bodies. Perhaps the job that gives him the biggest headache is dealing with the rhino-sized elephant in the room — poachers.
“Poaching is rife,” he concedes. A massive jump in rhino poaching occurred in 2008 when criminal syndicates started slaughtering rhinos to feed the huge demand for the horn in Asia, where it is thought to have healing powers. “I can’t believe people can be so stupid,” fumes Mketeni. “It makes me very angry.” Poaching increased every year from then and peaked in 2014 when 1,215 rhinos were killed. The introduction of technology has seen a steady decline in poaching, but from January 1 to July 21 this year, 204 rhinos were killed — that’s still a rhino a day.
I prefer wildlife to politicians. You can predict wildlife. Their behaviour makes sense
The Kruger National Park is the hardest hit. “The rhino population in our six other rhino parks is stable because we can be visible and rangers can patrol the fence easily, but Kruger is too big — it’s bigger than some countries — and we can’t cover every square metre,” says Mketeni.
Last year he was in a helicopter visiting ranger posts in Kruger when rangers heard a gunshot. The anti-poaching unit went in pursuit and Mketeni’s chopper was asked to divert its course to help. They spotted the poachers and gave chase. “These young guys had bushcraft,” says Mketeni. “They didn’t stop running, but we finally caught them.” The poachers were found with a heavy-calibre hunting rifle, ammunition and a fresh pair of rhino horns. It upset Mketeni to see the carcass of a rhino killed because of “these stupid beliefs” but he also felt sorry for the poachers. “They looked so helpless.”
When SANParks’ technology detects movement the organisation mobilises its resources — dogs, air wing and rangers on the ground — to track the poachers. It’s an expensive operation because they need two aircraft — one to monitor the poachers’ movements, one to close in on them — and that means having pilots on standby and a fleet maintained at all times. “We are supposed to use these aircraft for game census and to fight fires, but they’re being used to catch poachers,” says Mketeni.
“We are involved in a war, which is not what we want.” He says he believes the “hard enforcement” approach on poachers is not enough. As soon as a poacher is caught the syndicate recruits another unemployed young man to step into his shoes. “The shooters are replaceable and the big fish never get caught.”
A better solution than “enforcement, enforcement, enforcement” is to have a focused anti-poaching programme, interacting with the community where the poachers come from. “In some families poachers are heroes because they provide an income. We want rangers to go to schools and speak to children and teach them about the importance of the environment. We need to explain to the young men that if they join criminal syndicates they will either end up in jail or dead, and either way they will have no future.”
He also wants to rehabilitate convicted poachers and wants to send them to feed rhino orphans. “Let them hear the orphan rhinos cry,” he says. Baby rhinos make heart-breaking squeaks and screeches when they’re distressed.In addition to the “hard and soft” measures, he says, there must be an emphasis on job creation and small business opportunities for communities near the parks, where syndicates recruit their foot soldiers.
Mketeni wants to turn poachers into anti-poachers, but sometimes anti-poachers become poachers. When he met with rangers to discuss their concerns they told him they were troubled by “snakes”. Not the slithery serpents that children who come to the park are afraid of, but the snakes among the rangers — their colleagues in the pockets of the syndicates. Since 2016, about 30 Kruger Park employees have been arrested or fired for poaching-related activities. It’s not only rhinos and elephants that are being poached.
“Lizards, snakes, pangolins, birds, cycads and lots of other goggatjies are being stolen all the time,” says Mketeni. “People are greedy,” he sighs. “If only humans were more like wildlife … if we were, there would be no crime because animals are not greedy.”When he gets bogged down by his overloaded mandate and can’t escape his endless to-do list by climbing the nearest tree, all he wants to do is take a deep breath, slip into a pair of shorts and head into one of the parks, places of healing and tranquillity, where he can de-stress and let the world’s worries melt away.
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