Raises money God’s creatures
AP Kerk’s
It emailed the organisers 21 questions, demanding to know the number of hunting teams that entered, whether prizes were based on weight or number of animals shot, why those particular animals had been chosen, where the hunts took place, what weapons were used, whether the welfare of the animals had been considered and whether the two lions were wild or captive-bred. It got no response.
So it wrote to the North West
Department of Economic
Development, Environment,
Conservation and Tourism
(Dedect), wanting to know whether jackals and caracals
were listed as problem animals, about the legality of the hunt, whether dogs were permitted in such hunts, what weapons were permitted and about welfare considerations for the young of the animals hunted. It still got no response.
The next salvo came from the NSPCA’s national senior inspector of wildlife protection, Douglas Wolhuter, who pointed out to Dedect that his organisation had a legal mandate under the Animals Protection Act to ask questions and act on them. It was doing so following numerous complaints about the hunt and was required to investigate.
At the time of writing, Dedect had not replied, while the AP Kerk sent an email that sidestepped the questions but gave an explanation: “Every team will hunt on their own discretion, legally on a hunting farm of their own choice, the hunt itself doesn’t have anything to do with the organisers. Each team will have to shoot one of each animal in 24 hours.
“It will be mainly male animals and the reason is that some are weight [sic] and some measured and only males will count because they will measure much more than females. The prices [sic] are all sponsored.
“Animals to be hunted as prices [sic] are all on hunting farms with the legal permits to do so. It is handled by them and not us.
“I’m just out of office for the next week.” The NSPCA said in a media statement: “In essence, the church is happy to take the money for the hunt, but because the hunt doesn’t take place on the church grounds, they believe they are not involved.”
Was such a hunt in line with AP Kerk policy? Daily Maverick wrote to its director of church administration, Rev JL Schütte, but received no reply.
His position could be guessed from a letter he wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of “making a mockery of prayer and God’s law” and of “plundering the country” for 25 years.
“Your government,” he wrote, “undermines the value and dignity of life and incites carnage by not punishing those who incite death and violence.”
The government, he insisted, was wrong to criminalise corporal punishment, allow abortion and outlaw the death penalty.
“The foundation of your government rests on the premise of the rights of people and not on the right of God. The much-vaunted Constitution carries within itself the germ of ruin,” he wrote.
Perhaps, in view of his approval of whipping and the death penalty, raising money for the church by killing wild animals for pleasure would not be seen as a moral problem.