DA Khakis the Water at Environment Ministry

 GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, Unite for Change Leadership Council Member and GOOD Secretary-General

The DA’s request to replace Minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, Dion George, with the party’s national spokesperson, Willie Aucamp, would place custodianship of South Africa’s environment directly in the hands of the wildlife breeding, trading, and hunting lobby.

Aucamp has business interests in the wildlife breeding industry – as, incidentally, does his new boss, President Ramaphosa.

DA Leader John Steenhuisen has confirmed that the party has demoted George due to unexplained under-performance. The announcement came in the same week that parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment was briefed by George’s Department on the process it has initiated to develop norms and standards for the management of elephant, lion, leopard, and rhinoceros.

The nature and wording of the norms and standards will be of critical significance to the wildlife breeding, trading, and hunting lobby.

George’s most significant work in the Ministry has related to policy development and advocacy against canned lion hunting and the lion bone trade. While consistent with alleged DA policy, this work did not enamour him to the so-called sustainable use industry.

Daily Maverick recently reported that Aucamp’s attendance at the AGM of the Sustainable Use Coalition of Southern Africa was warmly welcomed by the South African Predators Association. The Predator’s Association is presently in court opposing George’s moves to shut down lion bone exports.

Steenhuisen has not bothered to explain this clear contradiction in interests between its deployed Minister and National Spokesperson. Far easier to just go ahead and replace the one with the other.

If George underperformed, Steenhuisen has a duty to explain how and why appointing Aucamp is in the country’s best interests.

The President alone has the power to appoint members to his Cabinet and must account for the rationality of his decisions. If Steenhuisen can explain how appointing Aucamp serves the country’s integrity, rather than simply shoring up his party’s integrity, he will be helping the President out of a bind.

In the absence of a rational explanation, appointing Aucamp would be equivalent to putting a coal miner in charge of the country’s transition to alternative energy, or the proverbial wolf in charge of the chicken house.

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