“Emaciated lions, open wounds, pens covered in faeces, no shelter in blazing sun, cubs on rubbish dumps, lacerated paws  – the images displayed on the screen were shocking. But Douglas Wolhuter of the NSPCA was on a mission to make parliamentarians understand the cruelty involved in captive breeding. It was both an impassioned plea to shut down lion breeding facilities and harsh criticism of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment for failing to implement its own recommendations.” – News report 4 June 2025

Here’s something I wrote in 2021.

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You might have heard that the government plans to outlaw the hunting of captive-bred lions. There are up to 12 000 of the murderous brutes in hundreds of facilities around the country. We have more lions than we know what to do with. Actually, we do know what to do with them. Let your kids pet them when they’re small, charge hunters to shoot them when they’re big, sell their bones and claws to the Chinese and Vietnamese – versatile animal, the lion.

Then, the other day, environment minister Barbara Creecy said that captive lion breeding has no place in SA and should be banned. She was responding to a report about the conservation of four of South Africa’s big five. I don’t know why only four. The fifth probably doesn’t deserve conserving. I bet it’s the leopard. Refuses to change his spots. Worse than Ace Magashule. It’s probably the buffalo, though. Ill-tempered swine, happy to kick you to death when you least expect it.

Barbs said the report will “provide a platform for a new wildlife policy”. Oh, I see. A platform, is it? And a new policy? Phew, that’s a bit much to take in all at once. What’s it now, the 21^st century? By the time this magnificent new policy is implemented, elephants will have evolved into kangaroos and rhinos will be walking upright.

This lion affair has dragged on for ages, ever since 2009 when Jacob Zuma was elected president and Schabir Shaik was released from prison to play in the Malingerers Invitational at the Durban Country Club.

It was also the year Judge Ian van der Merwe* (see below) said bio-diversity must be protected and that the breeding of lions in captivity with the sole purpose of canned hunting does not aid their protection.

He said it was “abhorrent and repulsive” and ruled that these semi-tame animals may be hunted only 24 months after being set free from their breeding cages. Lion breeders asked that the 24 months be changed to “a few days”. Of course they did. Give a lion a two-year head start and he’s going to end up on the French Riviera with a coke habit and a penchant for Pomeranians.

Now, the government has finally concluded that letting hunters shoot lions in captivity has a “negative impact” on the country’s reputation. Letting an immigrant family from Uttar Pradesh take over our government wasn’t a particularly good look either, but let’s stick with lions for now.

Conservationists said that many of the lions are kept in inhumane conditions and suffer from inbreeding, much like many of our people. There are now fresh concerns for the well-being of all those lions out there being petted and pampered and fattened up for the hunt.

If the government bans canned lion hunting, they must also ban battery chicken farming. The only difference between the two is that there is less of a demand for trophy hunting in the chicken industry because most taxidermists are unable to work with such small heads.

* Letter to Carel van Heerden – Chairman of the South African Predator Breeders’ Association

Dear Carel,

When I heard that the Free State High Court had rejected your efforts to prevent this liberal touchy-feely rabbit-fondling government from interfering in canned lion hunting, I was devastated. I know what you meant when you said the ruling by Judge Ian van der Merwe left you feeling as if someone had kicked you in the stomach. I had the same feeling.

I was so angry when I read about the court’s decision that I inadvertently over-medicated and woke up to find Brenda actually kicking me in the stomach and demanding that I throw away all the empty bottles. Is that what happened to you? Maybe we should introduce canned wife hunting.

What gets me is that the ruling was made by one of our own. I never thought I would come across a Van der Merwe who is against hunting. In Bloemfontein, nogal. What is this country coming to? I noticed that the judge’s first name is Ian. He must have an English mother. That’s where the trouble starts, every time. As soon as these halflings grow up, they cross over to the dark side.

Look at Marthinus van Schalkwyk. He started this nonsense with his new rules about hunting predators. Before he crossed over to the darkie’s side, he would shoot anything that moved. Or was that Magnus Malan? Anyway, the point is that you were absolutely right to go to court to stop him. It’s just a pity that you got a judge who has never felt the pleasure of sitting on a deck chair drinking nicely chilled brandy and coke and picking off lions whenever they came up to the fence.

In his blatantly pro-predator judgement, Van der Merwe said it was “abhorrent and repulsive” to hunt lions bred and raised in captivity. Is he not aware of the damage these animals can do? I have heard of hunters driving into enclosures in brand new 4x4s and having lions come up and claw the bodywork. It doesn’t matter that they only wanted to be scratched behind the ears. Purple metallic paint is not cheap these days.

As you know, foreign hunters will pay more than R170 000 to bag a big male who would otherwise spend his time lolling about under a tree licking his balls and generally being the mane ou. Pride comes before a fall. Or, in this case, a bullet to the head.

I was pleased to see that lionesses go for only R10 000. At least you guys don’t discriminate when it comes to devaluing the worth of females, regardless of their species.

Using unpatriotic words like “biodiversity”, the judge said that breeders were only interested in making money. What absolute nonsense. These people love lions with a passion. Why else would they have lion skins on their floors, lion heads on their walls, lion paw backscratchers, lion tail whips and lion teeth jewellery? These are the same people who drank Lion lager before the government banned that too.

Until recently, we could proudly call ourselves one of the world’s canned lion hunting capitals. More than a thousand of these devil-cats were gunned down every year. We could have doubled this number if we had packed them a bit tighter in the cages. But because we are not cruel, we left them with enough room to turn around and even lie down if they kept their legs folded in.

If the government bans canned lion hunting, then they must also ban battery chicken farming. The only difference between the two is that there is less of a demand for trophy hunting in the chicken industry because most taxidermists are unable to work with such small heads.

Now that the bloodless coup is over, what is going to happen to the country’s 120 lion breeders? These people have big meat-eating families to feed. Have you thought about canned dog hunting? There is no law that says you can’t breed Great Danes or Irish Wolfhounds or any other dog with leonine qualities. These hounds would be a joy to hunt because you would only have to wait for one to come up and sniff your crotch before shooting it in the head. You needn’t even leave the braai.

You said that about four thousand captive lions had now lost their economic value and might have to be put down. Don’t go soft on us, Carel. You are a hunter. Get the men together, take the cats down to the Union Buildings and release them in the parking lot at 5pm. We may as well have the last laugh.

Yours, knee-deep in blood and gore.

Ben Trovato

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And, in 2018, to the disastrous Edna Molewa:

Dear Comrade Edna Molewa, Minister of Environmental Affairs, Apex Predator of the Civil Service, Trader of Bones and Nemesis of Big Cats Everywhere.

Well done on your decision to allow fifteen hundred lion skeletons to be shipped out of the country over the next twelve months. That’ll teach them. They became insufferable after finding out that we call them the king of the jungle and their attitude has only worsened over the years.

You can’t go to the Kruger Park these days without coming across flocks of lions copulating openly on the roads. This is a terrible thing for our children to see. And if they’re not shagging they’re trying to bite a tourist’s head off. This is not the kind of behaviour we expect from our lions. During apartheid, yes. But not now.

Fifteen hundred skeletons. That means on average the bones of 4.2 lions will leave the country every day for a year. Since the lions are being broken up into pieces, it is technically possible to get .2 of a lion. You probably wouldn’t need much more than a shoebox for that bit. I suppose not everyone wants a whole skeleton. Smaller families might be happy with just a couple of scapula and a bag of vertebrae. If they’re lucky they might even find some tiger in among their lion.

It was a smart move not letting anyone know that you were doubling the quota and then making it retroactive to avoid upsetting our limp-wristed lion lovers while also preempting protests at the CITES meeting in Geneva where trophy hunting management with special focus on leopards and lions is being discussed.

I don’t know what there is to discuss. Breed ’em, shoot ’em, skin ’em, sell ’em. If that’s not already your ministry’s motto, it should be. Take it, it’s yours. My gift to you.
South Africa has 3 500 lions in the wild and killing 1 500 a year will barely make a dent. Okay, maybe a small dent. But lions recover quickly. Maybe not from death, but certainly from sex.

I once stumbled upon some kind of lion orgy where they were all going at it at once, boys on boys, girls on girls, it was terribly exciting to be honest. When we returned to our rondavel I pounced on my wife and attempted to take her roughly from behind, the preferred position of the Panthera leo, but it ended badly and medical assistance was required.

I assume at some point we will run out of wild lions. It’s a good thing, then, that we have so many kind-hearted people devoting their lives to raising lions in captivity. There are currently around seven thousand domesticated cats living in facilities which I am told are little more than luxurious feline brothels where they fornicate to their heart’s content. Not a bad life at all. I wouldn’t mind it for myself, even if it did mean waking up one morning and getting shot in the face, beheaded and deboned.

There is something I’m a little curious about. When I wake up in the morning (or sometimes afternoon) I often say to myself, “I could really do with scrambled eggs and a Bloody Mary right now.” But are there people somewhere in the world who say, “What a lovely day for a picnic. Have we got any lion bones left over?” Or however you’d say it in Mandarin.

As your Southeast Asian market knows, lion bones (licked, chewed or crushed and snorted) give you the strength, hairstyle and sexual prowess of a lion and you should be commended for encouraging this enlightened way of thinking. Just don’t let South African men get wind of this! They’d give up beer and switch to lion bone wine and there wouldn’t be enough lions in the world to satisfy that market.

Anyway, I’d be surprised if the United Nations didn’t want to award you some sort of medal for promoting the magical properties of big cat bones. Did you know that you can also get oil from snakes? We should totally be selling that, too.

I like the way you think, comrade. You said if the supply of lion skeletons from breeding facilities was restricted, dealers and addicts would simply get their fix through poaching or robbing the stockpile. And that would mean depriving a lot of people of the traditional kickbacks and bribes, the backbone of our economy.

Supply and demand feed off one another with all the enthusiasm of Hanoi villagers enjoying a rhino horn and lion bone blowout during the Tet festival. This is why it’s important that people like you keep dem bones coming. The government makes money, you make interesting new friends in the animal trade and our captive-bred lions are spared the indignity of growing old.

Speaking of dem bones, do you remember that song? The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the Xaysavang Network, the Xaysavang Network’s connected to the Vannaseng Trading Company, the Vannaseng Trading Company’s connected to DKC Trading, DKC Trading’s connected to the Department of Environmental Affairs and so on.

While we’re getting nostalgic, I remember a time you could take the kids to the circus and they’d all want to be lion tamers when they grew up. Now they’re all going to want to be lion farmers. Or even taxidermists, like the adorable mom-and-son outfit Sandra Linde Taksidermie in the Free State province which has been shipping the bones of big cats to mainly Vietnam since at least 2009.

Have you heard that China has begun issuing permits for trade in leopard bones? Of course you have. You’re a woman who knows her business and it’s unlikely that you’d miss a chance to turn our wildlife into hard currency. So captive-bred leopards soon? Excellent. They’ve had it coming for a long time.

Leopards are narcissistic and belligerent and they make almost no effort to be spotted by tourists who have paid a lot of money to tick them off the Big Five list. Get their bones out.

Once they’re all gone, we can offer visitors the Big Four. Or maybe promote hippos into the premier league. Sure, they are overweight and not very bright, but in South Africa this is often all that’s required to be given a position of power.

Needless to say, a lot of people from vegetarian countries won’t want to come here once they realise our government is encouraging international trade in wild animal body parts while playing footsie with smugglers and syndicates, but that’s their problem. We don’t need their filthy euros.

Have you been to the Golden Triangle, by the way? I believe the pangolin pies, tiger skull soup and bear bile shooters are on special at this time of year. You can get anything you want in Laos. A lot of it will have been harvested from our very own animals, of course, but that’s no reason not to support the local traders.

With your commitment to conservation, comrade, you must have been awarded plenty of trophies. I bet your favourite is the buffalo.