Verbatim: The words of a predator smuggler :: Mmegi Online

This is an exclusive interview with Blackie Afrikaner (not his real name), a predator smuggler of eight long years in Tsabong who says he has retired from the business of catching Botswana’s big cats – lions and cheetahs –for “Boers across the border in South Africa” because, although he was driven into it by poverty, he is terrified of going jail

Mmegi: Would you kindly tell us where you live and what you do for a living?

I am a small-scale farmer who spends most of his time at the cattle post when big cat buyers from South Africa do not keep me busy. One used to have a farm near McCarthy’s Rust but has since moved, but another one has a joint venture on his farm somewhere there not far from the border inside South Africa (names of the two farmers who also own farms at Khweyane just west of Tsabong in Botswana withheld).

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