African Wildlife & Environment Issue 79

GENERAL

wonderful platform from which I could meet and get to know the big names in conservation. Clive Walker, founder of the EWT and Lapalala Wilderness Trust, Dale Parker, the owner of Lapalala, and I worked closely together. Dale and I had been in the army together and he was already a good friend.The three of us held earnest talks about integrating the efforts of our respective organisations. It came to naught because others in the Wildlife Society viewed the idea with suspicion, but I joined the Lapalala Trust immediately after I resigned from theWildlife Society. Sadly, Dale died not long afterwards but Clive and I have remained close friends. John Ledger, who took over from Clive at the EWT was another person who became a good friend. He combines a profound scientific knowledge with

world. When I came into the Society, fifteen years later, one of the first things I did was mount a drive for corporate members. My encounters with Stroebel were therefore focussed on whether the SANF’s 1968 undertaking not to recruit private members automatically implied that the Sociey could not recruit corporate members. One of his trump cards was that the SANF funded some of the Society’s projects, so my fight for the right to corporate membership had to be approached with circumspection. I admired Stroebel, but his legal skills tested me severely and I learned a lot about negotiation brinkmanship. In the end we remained respectful adversaries rather than friends.The society carried on building its corporate membership and SANF didn’t stop funding our projects. On a lighter note, I

a great sense of humour. Other great personalities whom I met and worked with were John Skinner, Director of the Mammal Research Institute, Willie Labuschagne, Director of the National Zoo, Ian Player, Ken Newman, the author TV Bulpin, Paul Ehrlich of Population Prediction fame, Tol

remember one incident when Dian Fossey was to give a Wildlife Society public lecture at a large hall. I introduced her and sat down to enjoy her leaping about the stage whilst imitating gorillas. She was explaining the importance of grooming behaviour when she

The job of Executive Director was exhilarating but very stressful. I decided that, once we had met all of the objectives we had set in 1983

and the Society was back on its financial and managerial feet, I would move on. Vincent Carruthers

Pienaar, head of National Parks, Roy Siegfried, Brian Huntley and many others. It was a wonderful learning experience and their wisdom and knowledge helped me to formulate a less naïve understanding and approach to environmental issues. The SANF was managed by Frans Stroebel, a smart Stellenbosch lawyer who was appointed by Anton Rupert. The relationship between the SANF and the Wildlife Society was an interesting one. In 1964 Prince Bernard, President of the WWF, had expressed concern that South Africa’s homeland policy in South West Africa threatened wildlife in Etosha. Hendrik Verwoerd was infuriated by the Prince’s interference and prohibited the establishment of the WWF in South Africa, stating that the Wildlife Society was an adequate conservation entity. After Verwoerd’s death, Anton Rupert started the SANF in 1968 with a strict undertaking that it would not compete with the Wildlife Society for public membership; instead it raised prodigious sums of money from sponsorship based on Rupert’s high standing in the corporate

suddenly pounced on me and started nit-picking my head, purporting to find a range of micro-fauna tasty to a gorilla. I prefer to remember her for that incident rather than for her tragic death a year later. Spike Milligan was another one who took the mickey out of me in a television publicity interview when I met with him at the Wildlife offices at Delta Park. Early in the interview I pointed out that Delta was a rehabilitated sewage works at which he burst into uncontrollable giggles and refused to let the topic go. I tried, subtly at first and then more desperately, to get him to tell the would-be audience about the importance of wildlife conservation and the need for environmental education, but he just collapsed into gales of laughter. In the end, we scrapped the interview and just sat sharing lavatorial humour for the rest of the morning. I had applied for the position of Executive Director at the end of 1982 and joined the following year.The post had been newly created by the Society to centralise the management of the organisation, and put it on a business-like footing. The chance

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