Botswana's minister of agriculture, Christian de Graaff, is under fire after he exported a large shipment of lions to a canned hunting outfit in South Africa last month.
De Graaff sent 22 lions to the Makhulu Game Farm near Boshof in the Free State. Employees at the facility, owned by Henk Vorster, openly discuss how the lions are hunted and their skeletons sold to Asian buyers. Some are bred for sale to international zoos.
At the game farm, a popular local tourist venue about 80km from Kimberley, 18 young lions were crammed together in a small quarantine enclosure of about 30m by 30m this week. With no shade and only a tiny corrugated iron-roofed hut to protect them, they were panting furiously in the blazing heat.
Other camps hold fewer lions – full-maned males and white lions. The excrement is cleaned only every two weeks, according to staff, and the stench from this and the carcasses of the donkeys fed to the lions is overwhelming. Many of the young lions are hand-reared and respond to calls from staff members, who said that until recently, there were 300 of the big cats on the farm. Now there are only about 200, including the 22 exported by De Graaff.