THE ANIMAL RIGHTISTS are getting ever more numerous, ever more brazen and ever more politically influential, and one or two have opened international offices in South Africa. That can mean only one thing. They have set their sights on destroying the commercial wildlife culture of this country and because of their current extra interest in our wildlife management affairs, I am going to predict that they will very soon be making very serious inroads to our wildlife industry. If we are to survive this danger, I believe we will have to actively do something about it.
But all is not lost. I believe that animal rightist operations can be banned throughout Southern Africa and that it should be our primary objective when dealing with this nefarious scourge.
No society likes to operate in the shadow of organized crime – and organized crime is what the animal rights brigade has become. Nevertheless, the Americans have inadvertently provided us with both the weapon and the ammunition to fight them.
The Americans have exposed to us their RICO Act – the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organisations Act – which is specifically designed to destroy America’s Mafia and to eliminate all other organized crime in that country. The Americans have done all the ground work. As I see it, therefore, we just have to modify this American legislation in such a way that it can be made to function in South Africa.
Propaganda is the principle weapon used by animal rights NGOs everywhere. They use it to sensitize (to ‘persuade’) the public to make donations to their various war chests. And a common thread that runs through all their propaganda operations is that their strategies are based on cleverly constructed fabrications: that is, lies! For example: in order to motivate the public into making donations “to their save-the-elephant cause”, the animal rightists say that the African elephant is declining in number and that it is facing extinction.
Neither of these statements is anywhere near the truth. BUT, when they are uttered with enough passion and window-dressing, such statements create a deep and emotional response in the ranks of the gullible and totally uninformed First World public. They do, however, make the public psyche highly susceptible to pleas for donations: donations which, the animal rightists say, will be used “to make those lies go away”(lies that never were)!
When monies are solicited from members of the public, on the basis of a lie that they have been told, that activity is called “common fraud”. And common fraud is a crime in every country in the world. The RICO Act, however, has more to say on this subject. The RICO Act states that if that same “common fraud” is committed twice during a period of ten years, the original crime is reclassified as being a “racket”; and “racketeering”, in terms of the RICO Act, IS “organized crime”.
Ipso facto, animal rights activism IS “organized crime”. And its sole purpose is to raise money from the gullible public for the NGOs’ own bank accounts.
So, if we can construct a South African designed RICO Act, which criminalises the dissemination of propaganda lies for the purposes of raising illegal funds for illegal purposes, we might be able to snuff-out all animal rights activism in South Africa and maybe, even, across the length and breadth of the globe. This is a crusade that I believe all the countries of southern Africa should join!
It is reported that although the original and specific purpose of the RICO Act was to destroy the American Mafia, as well as other organized crime syndicates in that country, its later application has been more widespread. Beginning in 1972, it is reported that thirty-three independent American states (so far) have modified the Federal RICO laws to enable organized criminals to be prosecuted, at U.S. State level, which is now beginning to happen throughout American society.
I believe this strategy is worth investigating for application in South Africa. Written into our protocols in this regard, however, should be the added provision to outlaw any NGO that can be proved to have actively undermined, or that is actively working to undermine, any legally established South African law or protocol.
And it might be a good idea to see if this ideal can be stretched to include considerations about the organized-crime that occurs within CITES!
At this very moment there are many foreign government ‘agents’ – NGOs rooted in the First World – who are working in South Africa (or elsewhere in the world) to undermine South Africa’s wildlife laws and accepted cultural norms. If such laws and cultural norms are deemed, by South Africans, to be “not right” for our people, there are adequate domestic mechanisms to put things right in this country. We don’t need foreign NGOs to tell us how to run our country and/or our lives.
Ron Thomson CEO – TGA
