Lions, Rhinos, Elephants, and Soft Power in Africa

By David Corn  May 20, 2023

At the entrance to the Etosha National Park in northern Namibia, a sign proclaims that the “American People” paid for fencing and staff housing at the park through something called the Millennium Challenge Corporation. I was there last week to see animals: lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, and more. But I was intrigued that my—and your—tax dollars were helping to make this possible. Though my attention was focused on spotting wildlife, here, in a remote part of a nation that does not loom large in the American consciousness, was a reminder of US soft power—a term used in international relations to describe efforts to gain influence not through military might and alliances but by forging bonds via cultural, economic, and political connections.

Spanning an area of 8,600 square miles, Etosha is one of Africa’s largest game reserves. Its sprawling savanna is home to hundreds of species, including several that are endangered, such as the black rhinoceros, a target of Chinese and Vietnamese criminal gangs of poachers. Immediately after passing through the park’s southern gate at Ombika, we encountered mountain zebras—a much rarer sighting than that of plains zebras—at a watering hole. Then came giraffes munching on bushes. At another watering hole, those regular ol’ zebras mingled with oryxes, wildebeests, and springboks. Kudus strode across a plain.

The arid scrub-bush landscape stretched out to the horizon, with the park extending hundreds of miles beyond. A bull elephant grazed in a clump of trees not far from the road. Our guide informed us that bulls live solitary existences often roaming on their own far from herds and eating about 20 hours a day and, obviously, defecating almost constantly. He showed us a huge nest built by sociable weavers, the only bird that can tie a knot. It looked like a thatched teepee hanging from a branch and contained scores of compartments for perhaps up to a hundred pairings. The nest, the largest structure made by any bird, is designed to keep snakes from reaching the weavers, their eggs, and their young ones.

At a private game reserve adjacent to Etosha, we observed white and black rhinos, and witnessed a standoff at a watering hole between a young rhino with the reputation as a bully and an extremely pregnant older rhino. (The gal won.) On a tour through the grounds, we saw a pack of baboons traverse the side of a rocky hill, and we got close—15 feet?—from lions who didn’t seem to give a damn about us. Apparently, lions are quite lazy—especially in the days after a kill. They lie around, napping much of the day, not concerned the least about their safety. It’s good to be king—and to reside at the top of the food chain.

One evening, we sat in an observation hut at the edge of a watering hole and were spectators, as the local rhinos, once again, had a bit of a scuffle.

Another night, a herd of elephants that included a baby, displaced a pride of lions at the hole, drank up, and then disappeared into the darkness. During a sunny afternoon, I lounged at our hill-top lodge for two hours and used binoculars to track a pride of lions moving slowly in the woods below. A herd of black-faced impalas cautiously passed through, near the big cats, apparently catching the lions’ scent but not knowing where they were. I tensed up. Was a kill in the works? Nah—the lions, still satiated from their last job, didn’t pay attention to the impalas. No hunger, no interest.

The whole trip was grand. Communing with these beasts—as well as jackals, mongooses, hartebeests, elands, and steenboks—was an uplifting experience and a reminder of the importance of honoring our links with other species—and with other nations, which brings me back to the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

Curious about the MCC and its connection to the wonderland of Etosha, I did what any modern-day African explorer would: I Googled it. The MCC was established by Congress and the George W. Bush administration in 2004 to provide grants to countries that meet a set of standards on several fronts (human rights, political liberties, vaccination rates, transparency, gender equality, economic opportunity, and more). It is an independent agency separate from the State Department and US Agency for International Development. Namibia is one of several dozen nations that qualify and are allowed to submit proposals to the MCC for specific projects. The MCC notes that its “projects tackle some of the most pressing challenges people face in developing countries, like supplying electricity so businesses can operate and students can study after dark; providing clean drinking water so women don’t have to walk long distances—sometimes at great personal risk—to get water for their families; and building roads so farmers can get their goods to market and children can get to school.” It has handed out more than $14 billion.

I had no idea that the US government had such an entity. Did you?

In 2008, the MCC signed a five-year, $304.5 million compact with Namibia to reduce poverty and accelerate economic growth. As the MCC put it, “The compact sought to improve the quality of education and training for underserved populations, and attempted to capitalize on Namibia’s comparative advantages (e.g., large areas of semi-arid communal land suitable for livestock, and diverse wildlife and unique landscapes ideal for ecotourism) to increase the incomes of poor Namibians in the northern areas of the country.”

As part of this accord, the MCC funded improvements in tourism infrastructure. This included $39.3 million for various measures at Etosha. Though a 2020 review noted it was tough to tell if the project boosted visits to the reserve and generated more economic activity, the study did find that staff housing and facilities were improved and living conditions for the park workers were enhanced and staff morale boosted.

It was heartening to see that the US government had helped those Namibians who maintain Etosha and who make an experience like mine possible. With our great national wealth, we want to assist other nations, especially as they grapple with the tough issues of economic development, conservation, resource exploitation, and energy policy. Good deeds are good politics. And perhaps can lead to concrete benefits. Namibia is developing a lithium-mining industry, and the United States is going to need lots of lithium for batteries, as it tries to wean itself off fossil fuels. (This is undoubtedly one reason why China has boosted its presence in Namibia and other African nations.)

This American support of Etosha was on my mind a few days later, when I strolled through Windhoek, the nation’s capital, and came upon Fidel Castro Street, a main boulevard. There is no major street downtown named after an American president. Castro, an anti-democratic leader in his own country, is honored in Namibia, which used to be known as South-West Africa, because he supported the freedom fighters of the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), who, for three decades spanning the 1960s through the 1980s, battled against the racist South African regime that occupied the territory. During that era, the US government, particularly in the Reagan years, was supportive of South Africa and considered SWAPO (and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa) Soviet pawns in the Cold War. So Castro is remembered in Namibia as an ally in the quest for freedom. The United States, not so much—though the Reagan administration did participate in the negotiations between Angola, Cuba, and South Africa that led to Pretoria’s withdrawal and Namibia’s independence in 1990.  

It's tough to overcome history. The US support for Etosha and economic development in Namibia is one way to do so. And as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently pointed out, George W. Bush’s mammoth program to combat HIV and AIDS in Africa and elsewhere—the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR—has saved 25 million lives. He noted that “even after two decades and all those lives saved, many Americans have never heard of it.” I wonder how well the PEPFAR tale is known in Africa. Ditto for MCC’s work. From slavery to colonialism to the cruel exploitation of resources, the United States and Western nations have a terrible record in Africa. If we’re going to enjoy the continent’s beauty and its flora and fauna, we ought to be partners in protecting and preserving the land and its inhabitants and demonstrate we give a damn about its people. And when we manage to get it right, we ought to make that story widely known.

Premium Our Land subscribers, scroll down for more photographs from Namibia.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

More from Namibia

At the Naankuse wildlife reserve outside Windhoek, a bull elephant sent a clear message to us: Back your car up.

Here’s an eland at Naankuse—the largest species in the antelope clan. When they walk, they make a loud clicking sound, the cause of which is a subject of debate among eland experts.

The guides and workers at Naankuse won’t say how many rhinos are in the reserve. That’s true for staff at other reserves. They don’t want poachers to know what’s available. This is also one reason reserves generally don’t allow the use of drones. Naankuse has a 16-person anti-poaching unit.

Perhaps the most plentiful—and certainly the cutest—mammal at Etosha are the springboks, which can jump straight up about six feet or so.

Here is a majestic kudu, the second largest antelope.

Elephants partying it up at a watering hole.

A mess of zebras at Etosha.

An oryx, the national animal of Namibia, strides toward a watering hole, after a pack of zebras has cleared out. 

This is a yawn, not a roar.

After visiting Etosha, we stopped by the Cheetah Conservation Fund, a nonprofit started in 1990 that is dedicated to saving the cheetah. It rescues and rehabilitates cheetahs that are trapped by farmers. But only a small number can then be released into the wild. Most, including this beauty, spend the rest of their lives at the reserve the CCF maintains in central Namibia.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

Earlier this week, I received a note from the judges: Please don’t make us waste our time reviewing an array of nominations. This week, it’s obvious. So clear that they didn’t have to state the obvious. The winner is Elon Musk, boy-king of Twitter. On Monday, he tweeted, George Soros “reminds me of Magneto.” This was a reference to the comic book supervillain in Marvel’s X-Men series. Coincidentally or not, Magneto is a Holocaust survivor, as is Soros, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist and progressive political donor who has long been the target of right-wing and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Comparing Soros to Magneto did jiggle the needle on the antisemitism meter. But Musk’s tweet remained open to interpretation—until he followed up with another one in which he slammed Soros: “He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.” As others noted, Musk was echoing the all-too-familiar trope of powerful Jews seeking to destroy and control the world order. Through his Open Society Foundations, Soros has funded groups pressing for human rights, democracy, and accountability around the world—which is not the work of one who despises humanity. But he has been a major donor for liberals and Democrats in the United States, which angers the right. Sure, it’s fair game to criticize Soros’ policy actions—such as his support for progressive district attorneys pursuing new approaches to criminal justice—but Musk’s demonization of Soros in this fashion justifiably drew accusations of antisemitism.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, noted that Musk’s characterization of Soros “is not just distressing, it's dangerous: it will embolden extremists who already contrive anti-Jewish conspiracies and have tried to attack Soros and Jewish communities as a result.” (Soros was the target of a failed assassination attempt in 2018.)

Probably not unrelatedly, Soros recently dumped the 132,000 Tesla shares he had held.

It was bad enough that Musk lashed out at Soros in a manner that raised the red flag of antisemitism. But after receiving criticism for these tweets, he showed no willingness to reconsider his outbursts. During an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, when asked whether his tweets were too extreme and would cause advertisers to eschew Twitter, Musk stared at the reporter for a long 12 seconds before responding with a quote from The Princess Bride: “Offer me money, offer me power, I don’t care.” Not even bothering to resort to the sorry-if-anyone-was-offended defense, he added, “I’ll say what I want to say.” (By the way, Andrew Anglin, one of the nation’s top neo-Nazis, cheered Musk for his Soros tweets: “It is very powerful to have the richest man in the world – who people also say is a genius – coming in hot like this against the Jewish agenda.")

And to show the world that he had no regrets about tweets widely seen to be antisemitic, Musk made a joke of the whole thing. He tweeted, “I’d like to apologize for this post [comparing Soros and Magneto].” He then added, “It was really unfair to Magneto.”

For once again demonstrating his own villainy, this time by hitting a former investor with a bigoted blast, Musk this week is the crown prince of dumbassery and hate speech.

The Mailbag

It was rewarding to see that readers had a strong reaction to the account of my recent visit to Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Island in the waters off Cape Town. Judy Scarfpin wrote:

I am very moved—to tears, actually—reading your piece. The meaningless “work” imposed on Nelson Mandela, the length of time he was forced to spend in jail, and, most of all, his reconciliation rather than revenge leaves me breathless. What resilience of spirit!

Elizabeth Richards emailed:

You wondered in your last sentence "how Mandela emerged from that small space with such a large soul." I would say he emerged victorious and beloved because of his large soul, which he so ably put to use to serve humanity. When one of us is uplifted, we all are uplifted. 

Jim Simson shared this:

I'm glad you included your visit to Mandela's prison in your recent posting. I was heartened by your comments that prisoners were encouraged upon hearing that there were people around the world who knew about their incarceration, were concerned and were getting organized. This made me feel even better about my support of Amnesty International.

There were plenty of readers who wrote in to say they share my worries about the development of artificial intelligence proceeding unfettered of regulation and effective oversight.

Edward Hackett made this good point:

It constantly amazes me how we Americans think all the brains in the world are here in America. Assuming you can find a few people in Congress who are tech-savvy, and who will put aside their partisan feelings, you might get some common-sense proposals about regulating AI. The problem is that many players not in America are working on AI, and we can't control what they do.

An example that comes to mind is the effort by President Regan to stop stem cell research. He stopped federal investment in a technology that has saved lives because he was making a play for the religious right. Needless to say, research continued in other parts of the world, and it took America some time to catch up.

The Rosenbergs gave our nuclear secrets to Russia, which enabled them to make a bomb more quickly than they would have been able to do on their own. But make no mistake, after Einstein published his formulas, the cat was out of the bag, and the development of a bomb became an engineering problem and not a problem of basic discovery science. The same holds true for AI. Brilliant people are working on these programming problems in many other countries, and they will not pay attention to any restrictions we may impose on our own companies.

We could not stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the same will hold true for AI. The best thing we could do is to increase federal investment in AI research and development for our own programs to help us defend against the AI being developed in places like China.

Though there is a question as to whether the Rosenbergs provided significant help to the Russian nuclear program, Edward is correct that we cannot stop AI work overseas. All the more reason to join with other nations to create effective regulation and strong guardrails.

Cheryl Willin had a good idea:

Thank you for your piece on AI. The struggle for money and power between the players will generate a nightmare for regulatory bodies, especially with uninformed stewards. May I ask for one thing in this complex issue: Require the upfront identification of AI technology use in all domains, every time, for every purpose. I know there is much more to be done to regulate the industry. As an ordinary citizen, I want to know when AI-generated content is being presented to me. As well, I want to know who is presenting AI content to me, from the entrepreneur artist to a communication giant.

A warning label for AI? It’s a start.

Michael Eckel emailed:

In your comments regarding AI, while not the primary thrust, you touch on a large and inherent issue with our structure of US government. Your point was: “Again and again, the nation’s top legislators have demonstrated that many within Congress are techno-boobs who do not understand the industry they are supposed to watch and the dilemmas they must address.” In fact, it is virtually impossible for any legislator to be an expert in any single subject, let alone the hundreds of topics they may be faced with each year, and unfortunately, nor can or should we expect legislators to be experts. 

I spent over 30 years in the pharmaceutical industry, many of those years as a senior executive, yet I am still not an “expert” in all aspects of the pharmaceutical business. We would meet regularly with legislators to try to help educate them on “critical” functions in our industry, hoping that some of what we shared might stick. Yet, we might be one of ten (or more!) meetings they might have each day, on either the same topic (with competing perspectives), or on ten different topics that day alone. How can they possible become an expert in any one topic? 

For a legislator to even have a small amount of knowledge of any topic in which they do not have “inside” experience, they must rely on “experts” from the industry, and/or lobbyists, and/or other “trusted” sources of information to help them to develop their point of view on a topic. This, of course, gives rise to manipulation—the opportunity for some of these “experts” to provide slanted information (slanted to their individual point of view) or misinformation, and for the legislators to develop conclusions which, because they might be based upon incomplete and/or incorrect information, lead to erroneous questions, and worse, awful policy decisions

Yikes. At some point, the folks in charge need reliable information to make sound decisions—about AI, climate change, biotechnology, economic policy, and everything else. If that’s impossible, we truly will go to the dogs. No offense to dogs. Speaking of which….

MoxieCam™

“Moxie, how can you decide between the squirrel and the crab?”

“Depends on whether we are having red or white tonight.”

“Very funny.”

“And don’t forget to tip your waitress.”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

May 17, 2023: My visit to a famous prison cell; more photos from Robben Island; and more.

May 13, 2023: From the Our Land archives: Can you still watch your old favorite movies?

May 9, 2023: From the Our Land archives: Call it what it is—the GOP is pushing for political apartheid.

May 5, 2023: The big question about AI: who decides?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Jesse Watters); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

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April 29, 2023: Of guns, God, and a clinging GOP; a useful idiot is gone from Fox; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Ron Johnson); the Mailbag: MoxieCam™; and more.

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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.