The Killing Fields of South Africa: Eco-Wars, Species Apartheid, and Total Liberation

Abstract

In South Africa, the elephant has emerged at the center of heated political debates and culture wars, as the government and national park system maneuvers to return to the practice of “culling”—a hideous euphemism for mass murder of elephants.[2] Culling advocates—including government officials, park service bureaucrats, ecologists, “conservationists,” large environmental organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, farmers, and villagers—argue that elephants have had deleterious effects on habitat and biodiversity and their herds need to be “managed” and reduced. Farmers and villagers complain that elephants are breaking reserve fences, destroying their crops, competing with their livestock for food, endangering physical safety and sometimes attacking and killing humans. The consensus among these parties is that biodiversity, ecological balance, and human interests trump the lives and interests of elephants, and that the most efficient solution to the “elephant problem” is the final solution of culling thousands of lives.Opponents of culling include animal activists in South Africa and the world at large, ecologists, and thousands of Western tourists fond of elephants and the desire to see them in their natural habitat. In addition to the moral argument that elephants have intrinsic value and the right to exist—quite independent of their utility for humans—critics dismiss the claim that elephants threaten habitats and biodiversity. They emphasize that numerous alternatives to controlling elephant populations other than gunning them down exist, such as contraceptives and creating corridors between parks to allow more even population distribution. Against hunters and villagers alike, many culling opponents argue that elephants are worth much more alive than dead, and that elephants and humans alike win by developing the potential of ecotourism. The ethically and scientifically correct policies are not being adopted, critics argue, because government and “conservationists” are allied with the gaming, hunting, and ivory industries, and all favor a “quick fix” over a real solution. Animal advocates worry that the resumption of culling will reopen the global trade of ivory and argue that the ivory industry is driving this policy change.This essay supports the rights of elephants to live and thrive in suitable natural environments and opposes all justifications for culling elephants and exploiting African wildlife in general.[3] My purview is much broader than elephants, hunting, and the ivory trade, however, as I see the human-elephant “conflict” as a microcosm of the global social and ecological crisis that involves phenomena such as transnational corporate power, state totalitarianism, militarism, chronic conflict and warfare, terrorism, global warming, species extinction, air and water pollution, and resource scarcity. The approach of the South African government and people toward the “elephant problem” has global significance and is an indicator of whether or not humankind as a whole can steer itself away from immanent disaster and learn to harmonize its existence with the natural world.I first analyze the influence of the hunting, gaming, and ivory industries, and expose the profit motive driving their illicit production and trade. I then compare the regimes of social apartheid (white exploitation and domination of blacks) to the much larger system of species apartheid (human exploitation and domination of animals) to highlight the similarities between the regimes of racism and speciesism, and to stress the superficiality of the changes that culminated in the abolition of institutionalized racism while leaving intact species apartheid and that challenged white supremacy but not human supremacy.[4] I then show how euphemisms such as “culling” and “sustainable use” are transparent covers for violence and exploitation and stem from neo-Malthusian and eco-fascist mindsets. Put bluntly, I argue that South African “conservation” policies are akin to (certainly not identical with in all respects) Nazism in the vilification of the animal Other, the scapegoating of elephants as causes rather than effects of environmental problems, the bureaucratic language and technical administration of mass killing, and the pursuit of a final solution to the alleged problem of elephant overpopulation.More generally, I argue that human beings worldwide urgently need a paradigm shift in the way they frame their relationships with animals, a conceptual revolution that abandons the dominator psychologies, hierarchical worldviews, and exploitative practices (forged some ten thousand years ago with the emergence of agricultural society) in favor of a new ethics promoting nonviolence, respect for all sentient life, and the harmonization of the social world with the natural world. My approach is rooted in a critical social theory and radical politics that explores the connections between social and environmental problems, relates them to the emergence of hierarchical mentalities and social forms, and argues that the solutions to crises in both realms requires revolution social change that seeks to dismantle the inherently exploitative and unsustainable system of global capitalism while rebuilding societies along decentralized and democratic lines. In contrast to other critical approaches, however, my orientation jettisons the speciesist baggage of humanist, Leftist, and so-called “revolutionary” or “progressive” outlooks in order to link radical social theory to animal rights and thereby significantly expand the critique of hierarchy and broaden the composition of contemporary resistance movements. Given that the goals of the human, animal, and earth liberation movements are inseparably intertwined, we need a global alliance politics of unprecedented scope and range, one that pursues the goal of total liberation.