Durban - Ian Player, the great buffalo of South African conservation, has fallen.
Best known internationally for his role in helping to rescue Africa’s white rhinos from extinction, he died on Sunday at his home, Phuzamoya, near Karkloof, in KwaZulu-Natal, at the age of 87.
Although he had been in poor health for several years and suffered a heart attack and stroke in recent weeks, he soldiered on almost to his last day, campaigning for nature conservation and a solution to the unprecedented rhino-horn poaching crisis that flared up again in 2008.
Tragically, just days before he died, South Africa recorded the worst poaching year on record, with more than 1 020 rhinos slaughtered for their horns nationwide.
Player, the elder brother of international golfing great Gary Player, was known as “Madolo” by Zulu game guards in the Imfolozi Game Reserve, a nickname derived from an old wartime knee injury.
They likened him to a wounded buffalo when he was in a bad mood: a dangerous, short-tempered and formidable beast when cornered.
Yet Player was also a remarkably sensitive and spiritual man, deeply influenced by the writings of the Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and by his friend Sir Laurens van der Post.
Although he was a skilled orator, diplomat and shrewd politician, there were times when Player would burst from the thickets in a cloud of dust, snorting with fury to drive off anyone who dared threaten the wild lands he guarded so assiduously.
When one of the world’s biggest mining companies set its sights on strip-mining the coastal sand dunes at Lake St Lucia in the late 1980s, Player threatened to lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop them.
But just to be safe, he lobbied widely, helping to persuade the recently released ANC leader and president-to-be, Nelson Mandela, to sign a petition against the mining. Player also went to London twice to meet leaders of the Rio Tinto mining group.
With a final decision looming in 1993, he urged political leaders to send the miners packing: “One of the greatest tragedies in South Africa is that we are yet to have a minister of the environment who has gone out to proactively defend it... One has to ask why we always had to justify the right of the parks to exist. They have always been on trial… I cannot remember a day of my career when there was not some crisis or another, and we lived under a cloud of fear that the reserves would be destroyed.”
Earlier this year, he implored youth leaders to take over the baton: “You have to ensure that ancient animals like the rhino continue to survive, so that your grandchildren will be able to see them too,” he said.
“We conservationists have done our duty to God and the animals. We now hand over the responsibility to you.”
Tributes poured in from across the country on Sunday night.
Wilderness Foundation chief executive Andrew Muir said: “Ian Player was a pioneer, a visionary and an activist who has profoundly influenced conservation… his legacy is without parallel, his example without equal.”
It was Player’s wish to have a private family funeral service, but details of his memorial service would be announced soon.
IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi said: “I am very saddened by his passing. He leaves a void that will take a very long time to fill.”
Former Ezemvelo ranger Paul Jennings said he would never forget Player’s despair, which at times made his voice tremble, when speaking of the atrocities befalling the rhino of Africa.
President Jacob Zuma, Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa and SA National Parks board chairman Kuseni Dlamini also paid tribute.
“We owe it to him to ensure that we do not allow the current onslaught on our rhino to succeed,” said Molewa.
Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife chief Bandile Mkhize said everyone, not just conservationists, should grasp that a “giant among human beings” had passed on.
“This giant will stand tall among us all forever. We at Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife are planning on commemorating Dr Player in a manner that, from up high, he will look down and understand our great admiration for him.”
Organisers of next year’s Dusi Canoe Marathon are also planning a special tribute.
The Mercury