WILDLIFE CONSERVATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM IN ZIMBABWE

Australian-American comedian and late night talk show host Jim Jefferies recently did a segment on anti-poaching efforts in Zimbabwe. He has previously covered trophy hunting in Zimbabwe and in the more recent episode, he focuses on the work of Damien Mander, a former special operations sniper in the Australian Defence Forces who established the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF). The IAPF’s work in Zimbabwe has garnered international attention for its exclusive recruitment of female rangers. I invite everyone to view this segment as it offers a succinct portrayal of what Teju Cole has called the white savior industrial complex.

The segment begins with a celebration of Africa’s natural landscape, open plains and majestic animals. Not for the first time, Africa is lauded for retaining a premodern aesthetic. Unlike the 'savage' and 'barbaric' jungle which needed taming through colonialism, the continent is now presented as a pristine wonderland to be protected from environmental malcontents. As the piece shifts from the African landscape to images of injured animals and captured perpetrators, it is abundantly clear that it is no longer the African landscape which is problematized, but its inhabitants. The vaunted champion of conversation is then introduced, shown holding a fire arm and gazing into the wilderness almost like Rambo as the contra-distinction to the criminal element decimating the wildlife population. He is, without a doubt, the great white hope. It is remarkable that reenactments of colonial narratives still make it to television without any moral outrage. This is evidence of Professor Maano Ramutsindela’s claim that the environment is used as a tool for neocolonial interventionism. Conversationism becomes the moral imperative used to mask continued infantilizing of African people to justify interventions by self-styled saviors claiming to protect an increasingly globalized African landscape.

Damien Mander responding to a question from Jim Jefferies 

In spite of the obviously laudable effort at empowerment of women, the segment includes an odious discussion between Mr Jefferies and Mr Mander which highlights the unmistakable condescension and racial undertones at play. When asked about the social disruption and push-back caused by recruitment of female rangers, Mr Mander's response is that he simply does not care. Like the European colonizers who delineated African custom as underserving of their attention, he could not be bothered. Mr Jefferies seems to agree or at least accept the response. Two western elites laughing over ignorance of social and cultural implications of western interventions in Africa provides veritable evidence of western indifference to, and even revulsion of, African custom. It is not to be acknowledged, engaged or respected, but ignored in lieu of the singular focus on African wildlife (as opposed to African lives). 

Most black Zimbabweans have long been dismayed by this fetishizing of African wildlife without concern for its human population (the global outrage over the killing of Cecil the lion being a case in point). This is related to David McDermott Hughes' seminal book on Whiteness in Zimbabwe. In that text, Hughes narrates how the white population in post-colonial Zimbabwe retreated to game reserves, national parks and other pristine pockets of African landscape, thereby avoiding social contact with black peoples whilst simultaneously laying claim to the African landscape. Just as the white farmers continuously claim superior competence in tilling African land, white foreigners like Mr Mander perpetuate what Ramutsindela calls environmental racism by claiming superiority in managing Africa's natural resources. Consequently, environmental concerns are used to keep local populations out of the most picturesque portions of their land unless recruited as cheap forms of labour. 

Jim Jefferies interviews two female rangers

The female rangers are celebrated in the piece as brave survivors of various forms of abuse. Whilst this is a truly celebratory part of the piece, it is also tied to colonial depictions of African masculinity as rabid, out of control and violent to the extreme. This is not meant to downplay the real problem of intimate partner violence which deserves both attention and action. However, Mr Mander commends his female recruits because he finds African women to be far less corrupt and prone to debauchery. In other words, his gendered choice is a reification of the colonial/post-colonial belief that corruption is indelibly embedded within the African male. This is not the only stereotype which Mr Mander reinforces in the segment. He claims he gets good intelligence from the female rangers because in his words “…let’s be honest, women love to talk, they love to gossip.” This is a truly disgusting remark, and even though the female rangers agree with this outrageous claim, that should probably be understood in the context of the power dynamics immanent in a white foreigner using a colonial language to ask black Africans to make public pronouncements about the veracity of claims by their white employer. 

Consider for a moment the economic and legal constraints to black Africans emigrating to Australia due to a singular concern over, say, coral destruction in the Great Barrier Reef. The very idea of messianic expeditions to save the environment is grounded in an exercise of wealth and white privilege. Wealth is produced by a global system which keeps Africa impoverished and underdeveloped whilst allowing its beneficiaries to pose as its latter-day saviors. This is why the segment by Mr Jefferies falls squarely within Teju Cole’s white savior industrial complex. Key parts of this complex the following:

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.

This world exists simply to satisfy the needs--including, importantly, the sentimental needs--of white people and Oprah.

The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.

One can view Mr Mander’s Ted Talk in which he argues that our generation will be judged by our moral choices, which he frames as animal conservation without as much as a word about the invasion and decimation of Iraq in which he took part. His conservationist claims valorize his efforts whilst ignoring how they globalize African spaces, undermine resource sovereignty and justify neocolonial interventionism. When Mr Mander is rightly asked about the socio-economic conditions which drive local populations into poaching, his response is telling: governments must be willing to prosecute perpetrators. He is decidedly oblique to the structural inequalities, and indeed global system of extraction which locks the global south in a cycle of poverty. This is why Binyavanga Wainaina  wrote that when reporting on Africa, the people are presented as yokels, the animals as affable and "anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa’s rich heritage.When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees."

To this extent, Mr Mander reinforces the colonial and American conflation of African masculinity with criminality. This is precisely what African countries do not need; externally sourced piecemeal responses which cater to the emotional proclivities of the global north without addressing the socio-economic underpinnings which perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment. It is even worse when those interventions do not establish equal partnerships with local populations, dismiss local custom and perpetuate negative stereotypes of females and the African male. It portrays Africa as a pre-modern paradise in need of protection from its incompetent and unskilled population by deployment of white knights from the global north. This is not the new face of humanitarianism or conservation. It is the latest installment of the age old divide and rule/define and rule stratagem perfected by colonizing agents. It must be confronted and rejected, its seemingly benign intentions notwithstanding.