Trump getting Thumped

by Hannes Wessels

Below is an article I wrote four years ago when the press initially hammered the Trumps after an African hunting safari. This has now erupted again as the media use every available opportunity to defame and demean this man and his family so I thought it was relevant and of interest in light of the fact this will now play out as a factor in determining who will be the nest president of the United States.

Not that anyone with half a brain cell needs to be reminded, the furore over the Trump Boys recent African hunting safari is just another sickening example of the diabolical double-standards visited upon us by the twisted luminaries of the left. Never to be caught napping when an opportunity arises to ride an emotional bandwagon they quickly grabbed the chance to throw their weight behind the predictable outrage that will inevitably follow when a rich white boy with a famous father is pictured brandishing the severed tail of a slain elephant. It fits the ‘we-love-to-hate-script’ for the PC ‘proles’ perfectly and they came out screaming for Trump’s tail.

All this in face of the fact that this hunt was (as far as can be ascertained from the relevant Zimbabwean authorities) entirely legal and part of a quota (a managed off-take of animals) that generates the revenue the safari companies require to maintain a protective presence in these sensitive areas. The safari operators, who are the de facto custodians can only survive with the support of the Trumps and their like. This is dysfunctional Africa where the central governments offer little protection as official guardians of their natural resources. In fact in many cases the authorities are so corrupt they join with those who seek to plunder. This is what has happened throughout post-colonial Africa and continues to this day. It is the real reason why Kenya stopped commercial hunting of this nature; the ‘white-hunters’ were a thorn in the side of the political ‘fat-cats’ who wanted the ivory. Safari-hunting was summarily stopped, the anti-hunting do-gooders cheered and the game was gunned down.

What also needs to be understood is this safari, like most, offers direct benefits to the impoverished local tribes-people in the form of meat and money. This is the trade-off with them to restrain their tendencies towards wanton killing. The sum of it is if the hunting companies don’t survive the masses move in, there is uncontrolled slaughter, and everything is killed.

What the mainstream media will also not be telling their followers is how much devastation of wildlife and the habitat has been wrought by those they have so vehemently championed as African ‘Liberators’ and ‘Freedom Fighters’ through the last decades.

Julius Nyerere, the late president of Tanzania and Guardian ‘poster-boy’ arranged the death of over a 100,000 elephant in the Selous Reserve as part of a quid pro quo for continuing Chinese support. Samora Machel (late president of Mozambique) permitted the slaughter (from helicopter gunships) of roughly 120,000 buffalo in the Zambezi Delta. This meat was processed to feed the Soviet troops then in Afghanistan. When Robert Mugabe took power in the new Zimbabwe a healthy, flourishing Black Rhino population of several thousand animals (the biggest in Africa) was part of his bequest. A few years later he had supervised their total liquidation. These are but a few examples of the unreported conservation tragedies that have unfolded over recent years; sadly there are many more and they continue.

Helping hammer the nails into the conservation coffin are the misguided philanthropists who continue to pour money into boosting African population growth. Few are more committed and generous in this questionable cause than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet but Bono adds a raucous voice and a veritable scrum of celebrities follow behind all jockeying for the liberal limelight. Thanks in no small way to them it seems certain continental population growth will continue to outstrip the ability of the people to sustain themselves. This will lead to an ever-increasing demand for food-aid and a miserable spiral of ‘slash and burn’ agriculture leading to desertification. The protein deficit will be cut in part by poaching of wildlife on a grand scale. Barring some sort of divine intervention this scenario now seems certain and Africa’s wildlife and natural splendour is doomed.

Sadly, it need not be this way. Family planning, progressive agriculture and animal husbandry, urbanisation and managed exploitation of wildlife can reverse this process but this is highly unlikely. The politicians, media-moguls and the celebrities lack the moral fibre to take the correct, courageous approach. Far easier to offer the audience the cheap thrills they lust for and dodge the danger of doing what is right. The ‘Trump’ saga is just another example of how selective, vindictive and reckless the media and their acolytes are. The fact is Africa needs more Trumps and fewer Gates, Buffetts and Bonos!