DANDELION MAGAZINE

August 2003

The Pride of Enkosini

A South African predator welfare project crossed paths with the parks board charged with governing their case and eight lions wait at the junction. The middle of that intersection is no safe place to stand.

A lion is a splendid creature. Were you to know a lion, were it to let you scratch its mane, kiss its mouth, be a part of its pride, and were it to be in peril, you might stop at nothing to keep it from harm’s way. High-speed car chases, dodgy characters’ e-mailed death threats, betrayal by those in your circle, defamation, and extreme costs of fighting criminal and civil charges in federal courts would cause no pause. For the welfare of the animals, you would tunnel through such mire until you hit bedrock. And then the real digging would begin.

“Come, come, come! Come, kitties, come!”

Under South Africa’s searing sky, dry grass parts and closes behind Kelcey Grimm’s three lionesses. Slowly they approach the chain-link fence of their enclosure at Johannesburg’s Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve. Her five other lions have stayed back, presumably under their only shade - a single tree. When the animals discover that the call comes from a stranger, rather than from Grimm, they turn away and walk the few paces toward another side of the fence. They linger, mostly looking out over the geographically gentle but aggressively vast veld beyond the pen, yet one eye remains trained on their visitor.

Kiara, sibs Mufasa and Sasha, and the five others - Baby, Scar, Madoda, Mpandi, and Nkosi - belong neither at nor to this reserve.

Legally, Grimm, who is an American, and her partner, a South African national of English descent named Greg Mitchell, have owned the lions since handing a check for 175,000 rand (about $25,000) in September 2001 to Marius and Maryn Prinsloo, the owners of the lion farm where they worked. And they had raised the animals, so, by rules of the heart, the lions have belonged to them for those two years, the span of their short lives, as well.

But the lions have spent only nine months at Grimm and Mitchell’s home - an enormous reserve named Enkosini, Zulu for “Place of Kings,” some four hours away. They are present at this place, where tourists, for about $7.50, can motor through habitats of big cats, kudu, zebra, and the like, at the requirement of the government agency charged with tending to their welfare - the Mpumalanga Parks Board - as evidence in a federal court dispute.

Grimm and Mitchell’s application to the parks board for a permit to run Enkosini and care for the lions was met with silence. Frustrated, they sued and brought their lions to Enkosini without a permit, a criminal act. The parks board in January replied by using a court order to land on Enkosini’s closed airstrip, darted the lions using guns, loaded their sedated bodies into a plane, and flew them to the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve.

Today they still have no permit, and now find themselves bound by hearings and meetings with attorneys rather than able to work to draw lion-curious eco-tourists to Enkosini. And, of course, they are without their lions.

Though desperate to get the animals back to Enkosini, the pair knows that more is at stake than the fate of eight animals. Whatever outcome is decided by South Africa’s federal courts, which became involved when Enkosini filed a civil suit against the parks board, will set a precedent for future animal welfare projects. And Enkosini itself hangs in the balance: No one will come visit a lion sanctuary that has no lions.

Grimm visited the lions only twice since their confiscation in January. “They had lost their spirit. They were scared.” She pauses. “And I blew my lid.” She won’t return to the lion park if she can help it. The lions shouldn’t connect her and Mitchell with this time; and if they can return to Enkosini, she hopes their turbulent adolescence will be forgotten.

Mitchell couldn’t bring himself to go. When Grimm plays 15 minutes of video showing the lions as cubs on their TV at home, he retreats to their kitchen to clean up after dinner. Scratch my belly, they plead. Scratch my ears. Let me nibble on your neck. They wiggle and drape floppy bodies over the pair as puppies would. Even later, as 180 kg adolescents, the animals would gnaw just as delicately. “I try to forget about it because dwelling doesn’t help,” Mitchell offers, as he emerges quietly with a dishtowel. “It just builds stress all the time.”

Kings of Beasts

Grimm is quintessentially American. Over her years in South Africa, she has come to yearn for Hostess cupcakes, Chef Boyardee ravioli, and Milk Duds. She is devoted to the study of U.S. constitutional law and, especially, the first amendment. She won’t cook or clean; loves steak and potatoes and Elie Tahari suits. A 20-hour flight separates her from her younger sister.

Grimm and big cats go way back. In the eighties the slogan "The Sign of the Cat" and a snarling cougar perched atop a Ford Lincoln Mercury sign paraded across America’s TV screens. Rascal, the testy mountain lion starring in those Ford commercials, belonged to Grimm’s family; her father owned Ford dealerships around their Seattle-area home.

And the welfare of Africa’s wildest residents is Mitchell’s first passion as well - “ever since I was a school kid,” he says. After being released from the three years’ military service during which he led bellicose troops against insurgents in Angola, he sought a gentler path guiding wildlife tours. One of the destinations through which he herded guests was the Prinsloos’ rather dilapidated lion-breeding park called Camorhi.

Mitchell saw potential in the farm: Visitors could become acquainted with lions and learn about predator conservation and animal welfare. He approached the project earnestly and worked hard to transform the rundown place into a worthwhile tourist destination. At the time the Prinsloos had very few lions; they had told Mitchell that the farm was focused primarily on breeding white lions for zoos.

In March 2000 Mitchell signed a five-year contract, naming him Camorhi’s operator. He would spruce up the place, care for the lions, and guide visitors through the grounds. In that agreement the Prinsloos’ ownership of the property and the lions would continue.

Nine months later Grimm arrived at Camorhi, a stop on an around-the-world backpacking trip during a sabbatical from her venture capital job in California’s Silicon Valley. Taken both with the lions and with Mitchell, her plans changed. She canceled the rest of her trip - India could wait - and traveled back to the states for a month, planning to return to work with the lions for two months.

In less than a year, it became clear to the pair that the situation with the Camorhi lions was not as it initially appeared. In August grand Mufasa Senior disappeared without satisfactory explanation from the Prinsloos. Later, Texan hunters appeared at the Camorhi bar, boasting about their hunt of the male lion. September saw Mufasa’s brother Simba vanish as well, presumably also in a hunt. The lions had been raised by the Prinsloos - had slept in their bed. The two missing animals had fathered the cubs that would become the Enkosini pride.

“At the very beginning, I was so intrigued by the lions that I wasn’t thinking about what was happening with the animals,” Grimm says. “Within a week I knew that things were going on with the lions.” Grimm decided to stay and plans to rescue as many cubs as they could started immediately.

Though difficult for an animal lover to abide, hunting of captive-bred lions in enclosed areas - referred to as canned hunting - is not illegal in South Africa. Foreigners, usually not Africans, will pay anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 to be driven on a hunt to shoot a lion in a fenced area, Grimm estimates.

The lions are never hard to track; beyond their obvious whereabouts in an enclosure, the animals have probably been handled by humans since they were bottle-feeding age, and they lack the characteristic shyness that would make a wild lion flee. And humans tend to come bearing food, hardly a scenario from which any lion worth its mane would slink away. Bullets to a shoulder will disable the animal, then shots to its body will kill it. Never is there a merciful shot to the head. The trophy must be preserved.

“It’s so sick,” Grimm says. “They’re such sentient, social animals. And the relationships you can form with them are amazing. You can’t compare this to [slaughtering] cattle or sheep or goats.”

These served-up lions - usually more than 1,000 a year in South Africa alone - come from breeding farms like Camorhi. “For them the lions are just commercial commodities,” Grimm says. “They’re just a way to make a buck. At the end of the day, they don’t care who the buyers are so long as there is money.” In South Africa breeders can take their lions to auctions, where mostly hunting operators and other breeders will bid for them. Grimm adds, “I promise you, there are no big philanthropists going to these auctions.”

Lion farms take cubs from their mother to put her back in heat. Tourists are captivated - and will pay - to play with the babies. “I figured 25 cubs a year were being bred [at Camorhi],” Grimm recalls, “and I asked the Prinsloos, ‘What are you doing with all those lions? They can’t all go to good facilities.’”

The day came for Grimm and Mitchell to hand over a check and drive the eight small lions to the Johannesburg Zoo, where they would be held until the Enkosini permits came through. In the throes of an elephantine case of seller’s remorse, the Camorhi crew treated them to a send-off by high-speed car chase.

At one point Grimm and an Enkosini intern who had come along to film the lions’ big trip had been forced to a halt at the side of the road. Maryn Prinsloo grabbed Grimm’s keys and threw them off into the bush. Grimm pulled a spare set out of her purse and sped off again, Prinsloo hanging from her truck’s open window “like something out of an action movie.” Grimm’s tone is dark, not Hollywood thrilling. She adds, “Maryn’s lucky no one got hurt.”

The memory of the video footage turning to the truck floor - the intern had ducked his head between his knees, and the only sound is his yelling, “These people are crazy!”-makes Grimm and Mitchell laugh today; but more important than the gallows humor of the video tape is how it probably was the key to their being able to leave with the lions in the end. Grimm says she believes it put everyone’s behavior at least somewhat in check.

They would be stopped again in the chase, this time boxed in too tightly to leave. Local authorities appeared, one of them almost predictably a Prinsloo relative, to sort out the matter. After calls to the bank to verify that the check was good - one of the Prinsloos concerns - Grimm’s party and the lions were finally on their way.

No Hakuna Matata

A few hours away and up a 17-kilometer winding road through meter-high grass, Enkosini was almost ready for the lions. Grimm had actually discovered the 10,820-acre parcel online, and, says Mitchell, “As soon as I set foot on the property, I knew this was the place.” A tall electric fence surrounds 40 hilly acres of shade trees, cactus, and a stream. From many places inside, a lion couldn’t see the fence line. Though they would like to let the lions roam the entirety of their bucolic middle-veld plains, both are aware that authorities would take issue with their rehabitating captive-bred lions à la Born Free. So they plan to build an even bigger lion habitat, this one 250 acres, soon after the lions return.

The property’s straight gum trees and flat, red sandstone have become guest chalets for eco-tourists and an intern dorm, as well as an educational center and a clean room for vets to care for the animals. Before any building started, the Enkosini property was placed in trust to ensure that it would remain always a conservation area; and the trustees registered Enkosini as a non-profit 501(c)3 through The Lion Foundation, an umbrella organization that supports predator conservation projects in southern Africa. They say Enkosini could be supported with about $4,000 a month because the land and the lions are paid for in full. They rehabilitate many wild animals that need care - already they have nursed a thumb-sized primate to maturity and reintroduced genet cats and jackals on the property - and eventually will provide an open-range home to other rescued animals. Locals have told Mitchell leopards already live in the cool of their blue gum forest.

As far as the court case goes, the best Enkosini can expect from its judge is that he will pull rank over the parks board and hand Grimm and Mitchell a permit; but in their most pragmatic moments, they say they’ll settle for the court’s agreement to baby-sit the Mpumalanga officials’ consideration of Enkosini.

The odds are with Enkosini. There are other projects like it in South Africa. The lions are safe at Enkosini, and they have contraceptive implants so they won’t breed. Neighbors of the farm have written letters in support of the project - most like that tourists and their dollars, marks, and pounds will come to the area for the first time.

So why the fuss? How is Enkosini different from other animal welfare projects in the region? Therein lies the answer: Enkosini is different only because the players are different. The situation has become personal.

So personal that, in April, Grimm shared the news of an unsettling message from the man whom the parks board accepted the donation of a plane ride for their confiscation of the lions: “He said the work I was doing was just ‘adding another nail in [my] coffin.’” She has collected a dozen similar e-mails from this Ken Heuer that Enkosini will use in a defamation suit against him. “He’s such a thug. He can’t control himself.”

And Mitchell can barely finish telling the story of an Enkosini employee who crossed them. They discovered he had been reporting goings on at the sanctuary back to the parks board. He uses the word “spying,” and it doesn’t sound paranoid.

Canned

“What they are saying is totally false and incorrect,” Jan Muller says through his mobile phone, across an ocean. “It is always a couple of lies or a dramatized story.” Muller is the man largely in charge of overseeing that the Enkosini permit application is - or isn’t, depending on whom you ask - attended to. He has never set foot on the Enkosini property.

“It’s two different stories,” Muller repeats a week later, in the cool, dark Mpumalanga Parks Board office conference room - the power is out. He is blonde and heavy-set, and sits with Communications Manager David Nkambule and a young woman who is taking minutes, recording our meeting onto mini cassettes, and will snap my photograph. They say this is standard. Interview questions were faxed a week in advance, also standard. It seems no less standard that one question is enough to get Muller talking for 20 minutes.

“There was no plan, nothing on the table for us to evaluate,” says Muller. Many times he will come back to Enkosini’s refusal to submit ample information, while he acknowledges that Enkosini applied in writing twice. “When the suit was filed, we were in the process of consulting with Enkosini. We told them we need a lot more information. We offered our full cooperation. We assist a lot of private-owned conservation. This has gone so far. We didn’t approach the court [they did].”

Muller says he wishes things had gone a different way; he says that Enkosini’s litigiousness represented more of a barrier than any action on the part of the parks board. “We never turned the second application down,” he says.

Muller explains how the board’s concerns center on the lions’ welfare. “Wild animals are expensive to keep. They need fencing, vets, food, a clinic. Where is the money going to come from? What if in two years’ time the bottom fell out. I think it’s our right to ask these questions. We can’t just take this decision lightly.”

Approval or disapproval aside, why confiscate the lions from Enkosini? Why incur the cost if they were safe there? Why accept a free plane ride and fuel from a man who regularly refers to one of the applicants as “American Bitch”?

“Ken Heuer offered the airplane free of charge. I’ve seen him only twice now,” Muller says. That first time Grimm visited the lions at the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve, it was Heuer who greeted her from inside the lions’ yard. Heuer owns an adjacent property: Millbank Lion Sanctuary.

Muller’s line toward Enkosini alternates between avuncular and unyielding. “And what if two lions escape and kill a neighbor’s kid. What are the implications? We must use the lions as part of the evidence in court. They removed the evidence. We will keep them in our custody until the court makes a decision. We tried to assist them in moving the lions out of the province.”

Beyond the Veld

In South Africa worrying about eight lions may be too much of a luxury. Five million people are infected with HIV, there is massive unemployment, especially among blacks, and carjacking is again on the rise.

The clerk at a Johannesburg hotel says she does not know about the Enkosini lions. Numerous stories have run in the Johannesburg metro newspaper, but stories about Winnie Mandela’s recent sentencing to four years in prison for fraud, and another baby dead at the hands of a man with AIDS who thought having sex with it would cure him of his disease might have something to do with her missing the item.

After all, there is no shortage of the great cat. Lions are facile reproducers. Anyone with a few dollars to spend can drive by prides in a park or buy playtime with petulant, flaxen cubs. In the country’s east, Kruger National Park prohibits lion hunting over its terrain the size of Wales. There a game seeker can drive around and try to spot the wildlife on her own or go to a private game reserve like Sabi Sand and enlist an exquisite private safari lodge to take care of the scouting, and the spa treatments, for her.

At one such guest lodge in Sabi, Lion Sands Private Game Reserve, expect to see the Big Five - lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and buffalo - sometimes in one afternoon, from the seat of an open-topped Land Rover. Lion Sands rangers work together to bring guests to a scene like that which opens before us: A lioness is sprawled on her back, legs akimbo. “She is pregnant,” a ranger named Enock says. Lazily, she rolls upright and looks into the jeep. This is not the half-lidded gaze of the leopard we visited just hours ago. This is a stare. The next day we will hear the crunch of lions tearing apart a kudu for breakfast.

For many rangers lions are the favorite beasts to spot. “I think seeing lions invokes a primal sort of fear in people. You feel lion country: If they’re there, you’re going to know they’re there,” says Courteney Blundene, another ranger at the reserve, who tracks up to six lions a day and also works with an area ecologist to collect data on the big cats’ behavior.

He likes the sound of Enkosini. “You get a lot of people who can’t maybe afford to go out to places like Lion Sands or to Kruger Park, some underprivileged people. For educational purposes that’s ideal,” he says. “If the lions are properly caged and the premises are inspected; if the lions have no diseases, and if they’re sterilized so they can’t breed [and] the cubs won’t be sold off for dodgy reasons. Also if the company could provide proof every year or every half a year to the parks board that the lions are still there - if they report any illness, any death. And if the lions don’t have a home anyway, and if someone’s willing to give them a home, that’s perfect.”

Blundene has a favorable impression of Mpumalanga Parks Board. “The parks board is generally very good, but I don’t know what their fault was [with Enkosini]. The only reason they would oppose it would be if it’s too close to human beings, if there’s a potential for lions to get out and go into a town. But what’s too close? We’ve got villages right outside here.”

There are, that he knows of, several educational facilities like Enkosini operating in South Africa. “Lions are a very, very adaptable animal. Before humans were here, they were everywhere in Africa. It’s probably the most adaptable cat - that’s why there are so many lions in the Kruger Park. They can adapt to any conditions.”

What transpired between the parks board and Enkosini, he says, must be beyond the realms of the permitting process. “They’re being personally persecuted.” He wrinkles his forehead. “In this country there’s going to be personal reasons. You know, it’s a small industry, and everyone knows everyone. I don’t know who these people are who are trying to be horrible to animals. They’re just trying to bully.”

Just before we leave, Blundene gives permission to use his name. “Oh, well,” he says. “We’ll see if they want me next. But for lions it’s worth it.”

Out of Africa

Grimm is caught in an uncharacteristically wistful moment. “When I worry, Mitch tells me to think about the day when I will look out over this veld and see zebra.” She stares across Enkosini’s hills and sees shade, safety, and an area for the lions twice the size of the entire Johannesburg Zoo - home to more than 5,000 animals rather than eight. An educational and eco-tourism center’s future hangs on the lions’ return. Between Grimm’s and her family’s investments, at least $500,000 does as well. At one point Enkosini was employing at least 40 local people. The educational center will soon be ready to welcome South African school kids.

“We should have been gone long ago,” Grimm muses. “The parks board thought they would rag on us a bit and we would go away. But the public is behind us. So is the animal welfare community. We must be believable in some way, you know?”

And if Enkosini’s credibility doesn’t extend into South Africa’s courtrooms?

“If we don’t get the lions back, we could try to find a facility out there that we trust that would take them. But right now there’s no one. I don’t know of a place that focuses on lions and could care for them the way that we do. No one has the kind of space we do. And we raised these lions. No one would have the same kind of emotional bond.

“Sometimes you have to sit back and say, ‘These are just lions,’” she shouts over the roar of a hammering waterfall at Enkosini to which we hike. It is just eight lions. And a lot of money. And some criminal charges. And death threats.

“But they’re like little refugees of the system. No one wants them except us.” She shields the sun from her eyes. “Well, people want them, but not for good reasons.”

By Alyson Wilson. Courtesy of Dandelion Magazine.