How a botched elephant translocation in Malawi unleashed a landscape of fear and loathing

Wanjole Phiri, a small-scale Zambian farmer, and his wife, Bupe, abandoned their home in April in the face of an inconceivable threat.

“We ran away from this house out of fear,” said Phiri (60), pointing to the squat brick structure.

The house — built by the Phiris’ own hands in 2010 — is set amid fields they cultivate. Those fields have become a conflict zone, displacing the Phiris and wreaking havoc in the lives of thousands of Zambians and Malawians.

Zambian farmers Wanjole Phiri, 60, and his wife Bupe Phiri, 59. They built this house in the Lumezi District of Zambia with their own hands in 2010, but abandoned it in April this year in fear of elephant attack. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

This is the consequence of plans laid out thousands of kilometres away, enabled by donor and government funding from the West.

In July 2022, 263 elephants were moved from Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi to Kasungu National Park — which covers more than 2,100km² — swelling the pachyderm population from the more than 100 that were already there.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Loaded for Bear: A new movement is needed to address human-wildlife conflict that puts poor people first

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) helped to fund the project. African Parks, a South African NGO, was also involved in the project, which was undertaken with the cooperation of the Malawi government.

The Zambian side of Kasungu National Park in the Lundazi District of Zambia. There is cultivation right up to the edge of the park which is marked by a tree line. Pointedly, there is no fence, allowing elephants and hyenas to come and go and terrorise villagers. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

The Malawi-Zambia border and the park’s boundary lie 300m from the Phiris’ empty homestead, and their fields abut that invisible frontier which is marked by a tree line — the topography defining the Zambian side.

Pointedly, this boundary has no fence. What could go wrong?

Deaths and damage

Well, plenty, it seems. Warm Heart, a volunteer organisation spawned in response to the ensuing crisis, has documented the deaths of nine people, three on the Zambian side, killed by elephants. One man has been killed by a hippo that Warm Heart says was displaced by elephants.

It estimates that $3-million in damage — an amount rising almost daily — has been inflicted on small-scale farmers by elephants devouring and trampling their crops. Homes have also been damaged. The number of victims is estimated to be at least 10,400, including more than 50 children who have lost a parent.

A total of 263 elephants were relocated to the park with no proper precautions in place.

“Conservation imperialism” is how Mike Labuschagne, Warm Heart’s founder, describes Ifaw’s approach.

Labuschagne estimates that as many as 80 elephants have been killed in retaliatory attacks.

A former South African Special Forces officer, Labuschagne (66) is a barrel of a man who subsequently carved out a career leading anti-poaching operations in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.

A former Ifaw consultant, he warned the NGO that the elephant relocation was a bad idea without a fence along the Zambian border and with an unfinished one in Malawi on the eastern side.

Although the law was not broken in relocating the elephants, Ifaw, the Malawi government and African Parks could face civil legal action — a UK law firm has reportedly been in the area gathering evidence for a class action.

South African human rights lawyer Richard Spoor said there appeared to be grounds for such an action. “It looks like a slam dunk,” he said.

Landscape of fear and loathing

I visited the Phiris after their fields had been raided by elephants two days before. Their sweet potato crop was destroyed — causing damage of about 20,000 kwachas (R15,000) — and the ground was covered with fresh elephant tracks and dung.

My observations on the ground in Zambia dovetail with Labuschagne’s allegations and other media reports. I interviewed scores of victims from the three districts in Zambia bordering the park and several Malawian victims who crossed the border.

I saw first-hand the evidence of elephant carnage in several fields — maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and other crops damaged or destroyed by invasions that clearly happened days before. These people, some of the poorest on Earth, have also had to endure a scorching drought triggered by the El Niño weather pattern.

“We are getting skinny but the elephants are getting fat from our crops,” said Fartness Phiri, a Zambian farmer.

Adam Hart, a conservation scientist at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK and an expert on human-wildlife conflict, said none of this was surprising, with elephants on one side of an unfenced boundary and crops on the other.

“It feels inevitable. Elephants are not stupid and crops are a great, easy source of food,” he said.

The landscape has been transformed into one of fear and loathing.

None of the people in this region had seen an elephant before the relocation.

“We never saw elephants physically before 2022. We just used to see elephants in magazines, in books, sometimes on television,” said Sheila Phiri (37).

“Since the elephants have started coming to destroy our crops, we have come to hate elephants.”

Phiri stood in the gaping hole in her mother’s humble brick house where there was once a door and wall. Elephants smashed the structure to get to the maize in the storeroom.

People are afraid to walk in the dark as they once did and have been reduced to the indignity of urinating in buckets at night inside their houses, which lack indoor plumbing.

Grace Phiri, a Zambian farmer, separates ground nuts from their vines. She would typically do this in the field, but through fear of elephant attack has transported the harvest by ox cart to her yard, a much more costly process. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

Grace Phiri spoke to me as she sorted groundnuts from vines in her yard. Typically a field chore, she has incurred the extra costs of transporting the plants, with the unshelled nuts attached, by ox-cart.

“I brought my groundnuts here to sort because I am afraid of the elephants,” she said.

Crushed to death

The social fabric of these communities has been torn asunder.

Andrew Phiri, a Zambian farmer, was crushed to death by an elephant in February last year. His widow, Grace, is in hospital suffering from depression. Her sister, Christine, told me that the family is now homeless because of a land dispute after Andrew’s death.

Lazarus Phiri, 52, a Zambian farmer near Kasungu National Park was attacked by an elephant while he was returning from his fields. The elephant stepped on his right arm and abdomen. He can no longer straighten the arm as a result of his injuries. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

Lazarus Phiri (52) can no longer work his fields because his right arm was shattered last year when he tried to flee from elephants and fell. One of the pachyderms stepped on it. He showed me the spot in the bush where the incident took place, just 50m from his uncle’s house.

These people have been cast below what I have termed elsewhere the “faunal poverty line” — a terrifying realm where poverty renders you vulnerable to the prehistoric threat of big animal attack.

“They are taking advantage of the poorest of the poor because they are voiceless. This is happening because Zambia and Malawi are poor. They would not do this in Europe,” said Ignatius Nyasulu (46), a Zambian farmer.

That is a fair point. No community in Europe or North America would tolerate the presence of such menacing megafauna. But poor rural Africans, often viewed from afar as extras on the set of a Tarzan movie, are seen as natural cohabitants with such wildlife.

The degrading racism implicit in such a view throws an unflattering light on animal welfare activists.

“There’s no human-animal conflict, but animal-human conflict ... [the elephants] are trespassing, moving out of the park,” said Nyasulu.

Another way to view the issue is through the prism of agency. Conflict implies protagonists on both sides acting with agency. But through no agency of their own, elephants and people have been thrust into this conflict.

We camped one night on the edge of Nyasulu’s farm and the park. He is on the frontline, with his house 100m from the unfenced boundary. Adding to the air of menace, two gunshots rang out in the distance, either from poachers or locals firing shots to kill or scare elephants.

Tales of horror also emerged from the Malawian side.

Elphina Joseph, 21, with her infant son Success. Her husband, Josephi Kampamula, was killed by an elephant last year on the Malawian side of the Kasungu National Park while she was pregnant with Success. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

Elphina Joseph (21) was pregnant when her husband was killed by an elephant in July 2022. When I spoke to her, her 17-month-old son, Success, was strapped to her back, a child who will never meet his father. “[My husband] heard that there were elephants so he went to see them. The elephants charged and trampled him,” she said.

Despite the plight of Success, Ifaw, which had revenues last year of more than $121-million and has offered no compensation, maintains the project has been a success.

“Contrary to the articles published, the Malawi government reports that human-wildlife conflict events close to Kasungu National Park have significantly decreased due to interventions supported by Ifaw,” the NGO said on 4 June in response to critical media coverage.

Brighton Kumchedwa, the director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, said this was the case — in areas where there is a fence.

“On the Malawi side, the fence has been fantastic in reducing these conflicts. Note that it was already higher on the Malawi side compared to the Zambian side,” Kumchedwa said on WhatsApp.

But certainly, where there is no fence, the perceptions on both sides of the border are that human-wildlife — or wildlife-human — conflict has exploded. On the Zambian side, it hardly existed before 2022 and is now a frightening feature of daily life.

“Ifaw, after extensive consultation with local communities, has completed the construction of 91km of fencing along Kasungu’s eastern boundary in Malawi, with an additional 40km to be completed in 2024,” the NGO said in an emailed response to my queries.

When I told Malawian victims this, they treated it like a steaming pile of elephant dung — none had been consulted. And there was no “extensive consultation” in Zambia.

“I can only remember one meeting we had with the district commissioners; they were informing us. I did not know what they meant. I thought the animals would be confined to Kasungu,” said Mwase Lundazi, a senior Zambian chief.

Ifaw also told me by email: “There was no agreement with the local community that a fence would be completed before the elephants were moved.”

Which raises an obvious question: why not?

“In the meantime, we won’t be able to comment further beyond our statement published on 4 June,” Ifaw said.

In an emailed response to my follow-up queries, Ifaw repeated it had nothing to add while saying that “... the government of Malawi has overall jurisdiction and responsibility for all national parks in Malawi”.

Ifaw is not known for being media-shy. One cannot help but wonder if its lawyers have told it to clam up while shifting responsibility for the debacle to the Malawian government.

African Parks had not responded to queries by the time of publication.

Pursuing the predators

One night we camped near a village in the Lundazi district, which lay 300m from the park. We were sitting with village headwoman Tisaine Nyrienda and other locals around a campfire.

At about 7.30 pm, a commotion erupted. Nearby, a pair of hyenas had snatched a goat and ran towards the park with their prey.

Four young men gave chase clutching big sticks plucked from the fire and waving them like torches. One wielded an axe.

Zambian farmers hold up a goat that was snatched by a hyena. Men from the village pursued the hyena into Kasungu National Park with sticks and retrieved it. (Photo: Ed Stoddard)

Astonishingly, the young men returned victorious, bearing the disembowelled carcass of the goat. They had pursued the hyenas and confronted them, forcing the predators to relinquish their prize.

Witnessing human-wildlife conflict, red in tooth and claw, was an unsettling experience.

That man could trail spotted hyenas, armed only with sticks and an axe, at night, for the mangled remains of a goat spoke of their sheer desperation. With their crops decimated by elephants, livestock was the only asset left.

A proper fence would also resolve the hyena issue. Locals said the carnivores only became a problem after the elephants arrived.

With the pachyderms causing mayhem among crops, the hyenas — clever and opportunistic — may have seized the moment for easy prey amid the chaos.

And the drama that night did not end there.

Shortly after, the hyenas returned, provoking another frenzied dash by men shouting and waving sticks.

Near the park boundary, they lit a fire to ward off the animals. The cloudless night sky was ablaze with stars, and beneath that shimmering canopy, the flames cast a sinister aura, evoking an ancient struggle still raging in the 21st century.

It is only a matter of time before one of the many children in the village has their skull crushed by a hyena. DM 

The people killed so far

Malawi

• Collings Chinsi (51), was killed by elephants on 12 July 2022.


• Jackson Banda (31), was killed by elephants on 27 August 2023.


• John Kayedzeka (31), was killed by elephants on 17 September 2022.


• Josephi Kapalamula (27), was killed by elephants on 12 July 2022.


• Masiye Banda (31), was killed by elephants on 28 July 2023.


• Bornface Nkhoma (53), was killed by elephants on 5 September 2023.

Zambia

• Andrew Phiri (65), killed by elephants on 23 February 2023.


• Elias Ng’uni (53), killed by elephants on 9 September 2023.


• Augustine Kumanga (78), died of trauma on 4 November 2023 after being injured twice in elephant attacks.


• Michael Zulu (35), killed on 24 September 2022 by a hippo displaced by elephants. DM

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

 



This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.