Africa in the 1950s was very much like New Guinea at the time with ample numbers of brave adventurers and eccentric men prepared to take on the world single-handedly.
I met one such character while on a safari I made through South West Africa (now Namibia) with a Kenyan game catcher intent on studying wild animal populations in some of the world’s most deserted and desolate areas adjoining the harsh Skeleton Coast deserts of Africa’s Atlantic Ocean shoreline.
We journeyed by horseback through the trackless Kunene River region which acts as the border between what was Portuguese Angola to the north and the long-standing Bantu tribal home territory of Ovamboland in the south.
This trip took us to the 10-million-year-old Etosha Pan, a vast depression in the earth’s crust with a hard flat white and green salt and soda lake at the bottom. Etosha was originally — and last — filled by ancient melting ice sheet waters from our last Ice Age of about 16,000 years ago and which were dried out by subsequent increases in temperature.
Circumnavigating the eastern side of this 500,000 sq. kilometre dry lake, known as Africa’s equivalent to North America’s Dead Man’s Gulch where many people in former days died from thirst and killing temperatures under a blistering sun, we came across a lonely fence-less drought prone cattle property. This, we soon discovered, was owned by an elderly German-speaking couple by the aristocratic name of Voightskirch.
These hardy living remnants of what had been German West Africa until 1917, had not seen any visitors for many months before we arrived with four horses desperate for some good green feed. The Voightskirchs had first established their isolated 20,000-hectare cattle and Karakul sheep outpost as a young married couple before the First World War, desperate to escape from the suburbia of Europe to a place where very few people would ever dare to venture.
When we enquired where we could find some pastureland, Herr Voightskirch suggested we meet his young farm manager, Pieter Stark, the son of a German cavalry officer who, like his father, was a master horseman and expert bushman. We instantly took to Pieter, a self-confessed poacher whose onerous job was to keep his employer’s Onguma Farm cattle and sheep herds free from marauding lions.
When I asked Pieter how he went about such a risky exploit, he immediately invited us to accompany him in a search for the “big cats” which had killed two calves the night before. My safari companion astutely refused to be in on this suggestion, but I rashly agreed with a certain amount of forced bravado that I would join our new acquaintance on his lion hunting escapade.
After a great evening meal of game meat, I nervously equipped myself with my old hand torch, presuming I would be offered a rifle just in case things went wrong that night. But when Pieter appeared ready for our lion seeking task, he was only holding a tribal spear and was accompanied by a pack of six wily fox terriers. I immediately asked with bated breath about our need for guns, but Pieter simply replied with a curt “Oh, we don’t use them!”
My mind instantly affirmed my true inner reluctance to accompany Pieter on what sounded more than ever to be a foolhardy and dangerous expedition. In answering my look of frightened bewilderment, this very unusual young man quietly tried to convince me that using a spear and dogs was the safest way to hunt the king of the jungle.
In spite of this assurance, my heart thumped, and my sense of utter fear immediately gripped my body at the thought of possibly being confronted by an unhappy lion with only my torch and my dubious ability to flee on foot should it be necessary.
Completely undeterred by what were meant to be words of wisdom, Pieter quickly led me out into the totally enveloping darkness of the African night with the silence only punctuated by the howl of distant hyaenas and the eerie screeching calls of night owls and birds of prey.
Feeling most unhappy about the possible outcome of what could be the biggest and most fatal nightmare of my life, I made sure I walked well behind the unconcerned Pieter as we continued our sortie in search of the cattle-eating feline night intruders so intent on killing the old farmer’s only means of livelihood.
I followed Pieter’s every step with a great deal of nervous trepidation, concerned that I would show my distinct lack of manliness in front of this very self-assured hunter. That night, however, we very fortunately found little evidence of lions on the prowl. The only mishap was when one of the fox terriers managed to get a porcupine quill through its stomach and we had to later pull it out with a pair of electricians’ pliers with no serious effect to the obviously thankful animal.
As Pieter once again nonchalantly explained to me, his modus operandi was to track down a visiting lion and to send in his dogs to surround the beast before he walked up to it and made a mighty lunge with his spear into its chest. He added that this particular method of hunting was apparently more successful than trying to deliver a deadly blow by means of a rifle bullet which could miss its target and often failed to stop an enraged and captive lion.
The next night I was forcefully coerced into again following Pieter into the dangerous Etosha darkness with, on this occasion, the deep growling sound of prowling man eaters in the area.
Not too long later, a giant male lion with a brilliant ginger mane suddenly dashed into our torchlight view through the scrub. This fleeting figure immediately sent Pieter’s pack of hunting dogs in hot but silent pursuit, obviously using their knowledge of safety in numbers.
Pieter immediately dashed forward to follow them as they drove the bewildered animal into a nearby small rocky copse and surrounded him as he crouched and spat with gleaming white teeth in anger at the tormenting dogs.
I was very nervous as I was rooted to the ground a fairly long and safe distance from Pieter and the ensuing action; at the ready to hastily climb into a tree should our so-called night adventure come unstuck. But, within a split second, Pieter was poised right in front of the now snarling lion, tickling it’s whiskers with the end of his spear to, amazingly, encourage it to spring at him.
Within a flash of time, the crouching captive did just that. It reared up and, in the same motion, literally pounced on its hind quarters within two feet of Pieter who quickly impaled it on his spear while the plucky little dogs went for its throat. A boy scout’s hunting knife was then swiftly used to sadly finish the lion off with a deft stroke to its neck.
Although I have always hated seeing any animal being put to death, I must admit I marvelled at Pieter’s sheer courage and the athletic way he had put a quick end to a potential killer of the cattle in his charge. I also came to the conclusion that any spear carrying Masai warrior in far off Kenya would praise his lucky stars for Pieter’s lion killing abilities.
Somewhat relieved that I would not have to go through another nerve tingling lion hunting night, I arrived back at the farmhouse little realising that I had accompanied a man who was later to be hailed a national hero during the Communist backed Angolan War some years later.
On that occasion, once again devoid of any fear, Pieter had travelled for several hours on horseback from Onguma Farm, had crossed the notoriously dangerous Etosha Pan and had swum with his only means of transport across the crocodile infested Kunene River to rescue a group of Portuguese settlers reportedly under serious attack by Cuban-led forces.
When he arrived at the small Angolan outpost, Pieter unfortunately found only one male alive but seriously wounded. Once again as a man of action, Pieter carried this lone survivor under one arm while riding and swimming his horse over 140 kilometres back to the safety of Onguma Farm in what was then still in the wilderness of the United Nations trust territory of South West Africa.
Over the next few years after my first meeting Pieter, he continued to illegally poach various wild animals for the pot and kill any lions he could to keep the Onguma cattle from being mercilessly killed and eaten. This was his unfortunate habit until one day in 1955 when the South West African Government in far-off Windhoek declared the mighty Etosha Pan as a national park and our daring poacher and willing hunter was curiously invited to become the park’s first chief warden to ensure no park animals were ever wantonly killed by poachers.
Literally overnight, Pieter the poacher became Pieter the protector of all creatures big and small in Etosha Pan and to eventually win the accolade of being one of Africa’s greatest modern environmentalists who had learned through conscience, dire experience and necessity not to even kill a detested tsetse fly.
When I visited Pieter again a few years after his appointment, I had the privilege of watching him on horseback miraculously rounding up a group of eight grumpy rogue elephants attempting to damage water tanks at Etosha’s old German fort at Namutoni; something that no other person had ever done before. Here, I realised was a self-made elephant whisperer who could hold sway over any form of life in the vast African deserts and jungles.
In his capacity as the man in charge of one of the biggest national parks in the world, Pieter became a writer and leading amateur scientist on how to save the lives of lions against the ravages of poachers in all of Africa; an achievement which had him recommended for a United Nations environmental award. Not bad, I thought at the time, for a poacher turned policeman.
Maybe the South West African Government had realised they needed a “thief to catch a thief” to keep poachers at bay when they asked him to look after the wild cattle-eating lions of Etosha.