Nine buffalo have been shot dead by a farmer near Humansdorp after they escaped from Thaba Manzi, the game farm owned by prominent United Arab Emirates Sheik Khalaf Al Otaiba.
The shooting was done under a permit issued by the Eastern Cape department of economic development, environmental affairs and tourism after Al Otaiba failed to respond to a directive from the department to recapture the animals.
The incident echoes one in April 2017 when the authorities were forced to issue a permit to kill an elephant that had escaped from the sheik’s Blaauwbosch Private Game Reserve near Wolwefontein and was damaging farmland and causing danger.
Regarding the escaped buffalo, the department’s regional environment manager, Jeff Govender, confirmed on Wednesday that the incident had taken place.
“We were forced to act and permission was given to put down nine buffalo,” he said.
Govender said the department had initially received a complaint in early December from a landowner whose property borders on Thaba Manzi, indicating that the buffalo were on his property and posing a danger.
“We contacted the legal representative of the owner of Thaba Manzi, alerted him to the situation and emphasised that he had to take steps to recapture the animals otherwise the department would be forced to take action which could include having to put them down.”
No move from Thaba Manzi had been forthcoming and at one point the animals had returned to the reserve, he said.
However, they had then escaped again and the departbroken ment had received another distress call from the neighbour.
After consultation with the provincial department of rural development, permission was given to have them put down.
Govender said the neighbour could not at this stage be publicly identified.
The Thaba Manzi buffalo incident also follows on a human drama which emerged in mid-2017 in which the then manager of the game farm, Jaco Bester, was dismissed after tackling his bosses on the need for more money to maintain fencing and care for the game.
Bester was initially awarded R155,000 by the CCMA but the ruling was challenged by Al Otaiba’s management team.
Related to the 2017 elephant incident at Blaauwbosch, the department issued a compliance notice to Al Otaiba calling for urgent improvements in management and maintenance at the reserve.
With no positive response forthcoming, the department announced in June 2017 that criminal charges were being considered against the sheik.
Asked about the buffalo incident in relation to the situation at Blaauwbosch, Govender said both matters had been handed over to the department’s law enforcement unit.
Al Otaiba’s representative in Port Elizabeth, attorney Kuban Chetty, said on Wednesday he had forwarded the department’s alert about the buffalo to the general manager who was then acting for the sheik.
“Fencing was rectified. I was not aware that the animals had out again or that they had been shot,” he said.
Brian Bailey, the former conservation director of Lion Roars, who co-authored a damning report on Blaauwbosch which supported the department’s intervention there, said the shooting of the buffalo was a blow.
“The Eastern Cape is proud of its disease-free buffalo and besides the danger factor they cannot be allowed to roam freely. This is a loss for Eastern Cape conservation.”
In 2016, auction prices for buffalo had risen to more than R150m each. By 2018 they had dropped to R4.5m each.