"Keeping the enemy at bay": The extermination of wild carnivora in the Cape Colony, 1889-1910

Environmental History, Jul 1998 by van Sittert, Lance

The rural underclass responded well to the new informal subsistence opportunity, liberally topped-up by WAPCs and farmers out of their own pockets. The MLA for Albert reported that a man in his constituency "lived by destroying jackals. He was a poor man, and nearly ever week he used to take tails to the Magistrate for the sake of the reward, and in a short time he destroyed 56 jackals with fox terriers." An observer in Jansenville claimed that "the destruction of jackals was one of the minor industries of some of its people." These were "a lot of poor people whose only support is going about hunting the jackals and making something in that way. The poor people are just as good to us as dogs in other parts." In the Northern Cape, as well, a "living is undoubtedly made by many Natives and Bastards out of the rewards obtained for tails of vermin and some farmers are stated to allow native squatters on their farms for the sole purpose of destroying verminthe reward being shared."36

Ironically, farmers complained that "owing to the large amounts paid for tails, natives. . . had become too independent to work." Farmers outside the Midlands were often inclined to blame the bounty for encouraging idleness and theft. "I fear if our natives find they can earn better wages by hunting jackals and baboons than the farmer can possibly afford to pay," said the MLA for Carnarvon, "labourers will be scarcer than ever." According to another concerned observer, "there are a great many loafers, who, instead of going to work, go and try and get jackals' tails; they may catch a jackal, but they steal from your neighbour. I am of the opinion that farmers' incur many losses from these people, as well as from jackals." Bounty advocates, however, dismissed such criticisms by pointing to the escalating vermin body count.37 The War on Carnivora The official vermin body count did not reflect the true scale of the slaughter (see Table i). Progressive farmers declined to claim the bounty as a matter of principle. The widespread use of poison also ensured that countless carcasses were never recovered, or that they were too badly decomposed when found to yield a proof. According to one farmer, "where poison is used the number killed is probably double, if not treble, of the number found." The prevailing attitude was summed up by another farmer: "in most cases I do not find the dead jackal . . . but the jackal ceases to trouble, and that is the important thing." Similarly, the disappearance of animals like leopards, wild dogs, and hyenas from the official figures after 19oo reflects a revision in the bounty list, not a moratorium on their extermination.38

The bounty list revealed the perceived threat posed by leopards and wild dogs in the 189os, and the enduring threat of caracals, jackals, and baboons throughout the period (see Table 2). The constant revision of bounty rates after 1894 points to another hidden factor impacting on the body count-fraud. To receive payment, claimants were required to furnish proof of extermination. Heads or talons were accepted for raptors, but the choice of proof for mammalian carnivora was initially dictated by considerations of method and climate. A poisoned carcass lying undiscovered for days in the sun decomposed rapidly, with the exception of the tail, which was deemed sufficient proof for payment until it was noticed that large sums were being paid out by magistrates in the Northwestern and Border districts. Closer inspection revealed widespread abuse. As one wit remarked, many of the "caudal appendages" pouring into magistrates' offices had been dead for years: "Some that I have seen have evidently been detached from karosses, being split open and nicely brayed, others have as evidently formed household ornaments, the nails with which they have been fastened to the wall being left in them, whilst one had a piece of wood inserted in place of the bone, and was probably used as a duster."39