{"id":54476,"date":"2025-06-16T08:57:53","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T08:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/white-rhinos-white-liars-the-supremacist-gaze-behind-wildlife-journalism\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T16:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T16:59:15","slug":"white-rhinos-white-liars-the-supremacist-gaze-behind-wildlife-journalism","status":"publish","type":"opinion","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/opinion\/white-rhinos-white-liars-the-supremacist-gaze-behind-wildlife-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"White rhinos, white liars: The supremacist gaze behind wildlife journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The article, authored by Ed Stoddard and headlined “Loaded for Bear: African Parks has disgracefully sent more SA rhinos to repressive Rwanda,” is not just a misguided critique of conservation practices\u2014it is a full-blown exercise in white-saviorist moral grandstanding masquerading as a defense of human rights. It stinks of racialized contempt.<\/p>\n

The piece doesn\u2019t merely cross the line into racist discourse. It paints that line with the blood-red brush of supremacist nostalgia. And if the editors at the Daily Maverick didn\u2019t notice, it\u2019s not because they\u2019re unaware\u2014it\u2019s because they\u2019re complicit.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start at the headline. \u201cLoaded for Bear\u201d? A hypermasculine, frontier-style metaphor from colonial hunting lore, brimming with implicit violence and arrogance.<\/p>\n

The irony is that the title makes no mention of white rhinos, though every part of the piece is screaming white anxiety.<\/p>\n

This is a story about white rhinos\u2014but given the racial tone that follows, it\u2019s hard to ignore the symbolic displacement. When white supremacy cloaks itself in environmentalism, words begin to carry disturbing dual meanings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of Africa\u2019s wildlife lies within the borders of states with questionable governance or human rights records. But some lines can be drawn in the sand. The Kigali regime stands out for the sheer scale of its repression and the regional instability it has unleashed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus begins Stoddard\u2019s article. One sentence in, and we\u2019re already neck-deep in colonial generalization. This isn\u2019t journalism; it\u2019s a Manifest Destiny for environmentalists, cloaked in a khaki vest and wielding a laptop instead of a rifle.<\/p>\n

From that moment onward, the article ceases to be about wildlife and reveals itself as a thinly veiled racial tirade. The idea that African nations, particularly Rwanda, must pass the moral tests of Western journalists before being allowed to receive animals for conservation is not new\u2014it is rooted in centuries-old racist paternalism.<\/p>\n

What follows is an unrelenting torrent of arrogance, bigotry, and pseudo-analysis. Rwanda is described as \u201ca sinister state,\u201d accused of \u201ckilling dissidents,\u201d and run by \u201cthe autocratic rule of Paul Kagame.\u201d<\/p>\n

No credible sources. No dissenting voices. Just Stoddard and his one-woman echo chamber, Michela Wrong\u2014whose own record reeks of neocolonial disdain for African agency.<\/p>\n

Indeed, this piece is not journalism. It is supremacist bravado embedded in a platform that should know better. Stoddard relies on no credible sources for his accusations.<\/p>\n

Instead, he invokes Michela Wrong, another aging figure in the tired genre of \u201cwhite journalists explaining Africa to itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her book Do Not Disturb is offered as though it were the definitive moral dissection of an entire nation, with its cover and hyperlink prominently featured as if it were scripture.<\/p>\n

It is not accidental that Stoddard invokes Wrong\u2019s propaganda machine, advertising her 2021 screed Do Not Disturb as a \u201cclinical dissection\u201d of Rwanda\u2019s \u201cpariah regime.\u201d A book so thoroughly discredited by scholars and diplomats alike that quoting it borders on malpractice.<\/p>\n

{{The Civilized Face of Modern Barbarism}}<\/p>\n

But let us pause and consider the very tactics used in this piece. Daily Maverick editorially hyperlinked a prior article titled \u201cRwanda\u2019s rhinos are safer than its dissidents\u201d\u2014a smug, repulsive smear that downplays a country\u2019s post-genocide recovery while implying that conservation in Rwanda is more sinister than poaching in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Satire? No. Just supremacist sensationalism that reduces both people and animals into pawns in a game of moral one-upmanship.<\/p>\n

In this absurd theatre of moral superiority, the idea that white rhinos are safer than human beings, is outlandish. But it isn\u2019t even original. It harks back to a centuries-old white supremacist logic\u2014the idea that Black bodies are more expendable than white animals.<\/p>\n

Stoddard writes: \u201cThat observation still holds and, if anything, Rwanda under the autocratic rule of Paul Kagame has become even more of a pariah state with its documented support for the M23 rebels in neighbouring DRC.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDocumented support\u201d by whom? Stoddard never names independent, verifiable sources. Instead, he just refers back to his earlier opinion piece\u2014as if self-reference and repetition substitute evidence.<\/p>\n

He then inserts this: \u201cAfrican Parks sees no issue with shaking hands with the devil if it advances its conservation agenda \u2013 which is disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In case readers missed the allusion, Daily Maverick reinforces the hate message with a photo of President Kagame \u2018at a press conference after his meeting with his Latvian counterpart\u2019\u2014alongside this \u201cdevil\u201d metaphor.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s unpack this. For Stoddard, the \u201cdevil,\u201d is Paul Kagame\u2014Rwanda\u2019s president. The metaphor \u201cshaking hands with the devil\u201d is a calculated insult. But even more insidious is its origin: the title of Rom\u00e9o Dallaire\u2019s book Shake Hands with the Devil (2003), describing his experience negotiating with genocidaires in 1994.<\/p>\n

To equate Kagame\u2019s government\u2014responsible for stopping the Genocide Against the Tutsi\u2014with that of the genocidaires who orchestrated it, is not merely irresponsible. It is perverse.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s the purpose of that metaphor in a story about rhinos? To prime the reader for revulsion. It\u2019s a psy-op masquerading as prose.<\/p>\n

It is crucial here to expose what is truly at play: the Western supremacist desire to manage human conscience, as if they alone possess the moral compass for global governance.<\/p>\n

This journalistic positioning, under the pretense of defending \u201chuman rights,\u201d is actually about policing African self-determination.<\/p>\n

His article is an appeal not to protect rhinos, but to protect the white supremacist narrative: that only certain Africans deserve legitimacy, and only under conditions approved by the former empire\u2019s descendants.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to examine the weaponization of conservation\u2014a form of \u201cconservation colonialism.\u201d Western commentators, institutions, and NGOs often use wildlife issues as moral leverage to shame African states.<\/p>\n

This is part of a broader phenomenon wherein national parks in Africa are regarded as international moral property, and African governments as temporary custodians whose legitimacy must be reviewed by the Western press.<\/p>\n

This is particularly evident when Stoddard writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cRwanda, by the way, is not a former white rhino range state.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is technically correct but logically hollow. South Africa was not a former liberation state either when it received exiled revolutionaries, nor was it a sanctuary of press freedom under apartheid. Yet Stoddard sees no problem there.<\/p>\n

In one of the most revealing acts of visual propaganda, the article features a photo allegedly showing M23 soldiers \u201con patrol in Bukavu, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, on 22 February 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

This image\u2014completely unrelated to rhinos\u2014was not an editorial oversight. It was a propaganda insertion, designed to provoke a sinister linkage between Rwanda, war in the DR Congo, and wildlife.<\/p>\n

It plays into geopolitics, particularly considering that M23\u2014a relatively disciplined force, has repeatedly embarrassed FARDC and its allies, including South African forces in North Kivu.<\/p>\n

What we witness here is not mere bias\u2014it is psychological projection. For Ed Stoddard and editors of Daily Maverick, African states can never \u201cwin\u201d unless that win is approved, narrated, and moralized by their worldview.<\/p>\n

When Stoddard claims: \u201cMountain gorillas, for example, are only found in Rwanda and neighbouring Uganda and the DRC, and so conservation efforts for this species need to be focused in those countries, regardless of the governments in power.\u201d<\/p>\n

He reveals a quiet admission that Rwanda, like its neighbors, is essential. Yet that admission is couched in a backhanded compliment meant to make sure Rwandan legitimacy is always provisional\u2014subject to external review.<\/p>\n

The entire piece reeks of what we call the Enlightened against the one who is not dichotomy. For Stoddard, South Africa can birth rhinos and govern their transfer. Rwanda can only host them if it behaves well.<\/p>\n

But history has its own truths. The rhinos born in South Africa\u2014though not white in color\u2014are part of a lineage whose ancestors survived a regime that armed the genocidaires in Rwanda before 1994.<\/p>\n

What moral high ground does a journalist who may have worked for apartheid South Africa have when attacking Rwanda\u2014a nation that emerged from one of the worst genocides in human history and, without handouts, has built itself up?<\/p>\n

Stoddard complains: \u201cAnd let\u2019s face it, the ruling Frelimo party [in Mozambique] has followed other African liberation movements down the well-trodden path of corruption and misrule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Says who? A journalist who never fought for anything but deadlines and bylines? Since when did he become a philosopher of African governance? Does he speak for the people of Mozambique? Does he understand liberation struggles?<\/p>\n

This pattern reveals the supremacist double standard at work. When animals are translocated to countries with European ties or white settler minorities, there’s no editorial angst. When they\u2019re sent to black-led nations that have asserted sovereignty, suddenly the story changes\u2014from conservation to condemnation.<\/p>\n

Stoddard goes on to write: \u201cThe Kigali government stands out for the sheer scale of its repression and the regional instability it has unleashed. And Kagame has an instinctive understanding of what is important to the West. The rhino project comes with the prestige he craves, adding another layer of legitimacy to his regime \u2013 which does keep the streets of Kigali clean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just imagine a legitimacy brought to Rwanda by 70 rhinos from South Africa. What an insult to a country!<\/p>\n

This paragraph is an exercise in arrogance. It implies that the only reason Rwanda has succeeded in cleanliness, conservation, infrastructure, or global respect is because Kagame seeks to impress Westerners.<\/p>\n

What an insult to Rwandans, who wake up each last Saturday of the month for Umuganda\u2014not because of the West, but because of their shared purpose and history.<\/p>\n

Even here\u2014where he begrudgingly acknowledges cleanliness\u2014it is not a virtue, but a sinister tactic. This is the colonial paranoia about \u201cnative mimicry\u201d: the fear that the African might adopt the appearance of modernity, order, civilization\u2014without Western permission.<\/p>\n

The truth is simpler. Rwanda\u2019s development is not for the West. It is for Rwandans. It is the product of national will, good governance, and hard-earned transformation. Clean streets are not vanity; they are a necessity for our health and dignity.<\/p>\n

Here, again, we see the enduring 1810 worldview: cleanliness, order, discipline\u2014these are not African traits unless supervised by the white conscience. Left alone, according to this worldview, Africans would descend into \u201cidleness, revenge, nastiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stoddard’s lens is not unique. He is simply a symptom. The editors who approved his article are the problem too. <\/p>\n

Daily Maverick, sometimes styles itself as a progressive outlet, but in publishing such vitriol, it has failed to perform even the most basic editorial scrutiny. Its platform has become a vehicle for racialized geopolitics masquerading as human rights commentary.<\/p>\n

To fully understand the intellectual scaffolding behind Ed Stoddard\u2019s diatribe, one must reckon with the intellectual debris of Europe\u2019s racialized history \u2014 the fossilized but still functioning stereotypes that have crossed centuries and taken on new forms.<\/p>\n

As Achille Mbembe reminds us in On the Postcolony, Africa in the Western imagination is not just a geographic place, but a \u201cphantasmagoria\u201d \u2014 an abstract theatre of dysfunction and need, awaiting Western redemption.<\/p>\n

This is the role Stoddard implicitly assigns himself: the redeemer, the moral steward, the white conscience-bearing chronicler of Africa\u2019s supposed political decay.<\/p>\n

And as Edward Said wrote in Orientalism, the colonizer\u2019s gaze does not only describe \u2014 it defines. Stoddard\u2019s journalism is not an act of description; it is a claim to dominion, one that decides who is savage and who is civilized, who deserves rhinos and who does not.<\/p>\n

Frantz Fanon, in Black Skin, White Masks, observed the phenomenon of the white man acting not only as colonizer but as \u201cjudge, jury, doctor, and therapist of the Black soul.\u201d This is precisely Stoddard\u2019s posture. In his eyes, Rwanda is not a nation of sovereign actors but a political patient to be diagnosed and dismissed.<\/p>\n

And here, Chinua Achebe\u2019s critique of Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness resonates loudly. In his seminal essay \u2018An Image of Africa,\u2019 Achebe exposes how Conrad\u2019s Africa is not a place, but a foil\u2014a metaphorical \u201cother world\u201d that exists to illuminate the supposed moral journey of the European.<\/p>\n

As Achebe notes, the Africans in Heart of Darkness are denied language, agency, and humanity, reduced to \u201climbs and rolling eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the narrative tradition Ed Stoddard draws upon: Africa not as a continent of thinking, planning, evolving societies, but as a moral jungle where the Western journalist navigates to save the animals\u2014and, allegedly, the people.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to the 1810 Encyclopaedia Britannica and its appalling entry on \u201cThe Negro\u201d \u2014 a descriptor Stoddard would never openly cite but appears to have internalized by cultural inheritance.<\/p>\n

It reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cVices the most unhappy race \u2026 idleness, treachery, revenge, cruelty, impudence, stealing, lying, profanity, debauchery, nastiness and intemperance, are said to have extinguished the principles of natural law, and to have silenced the reproofs of conscience. They are strangers to every sentiment of compassion and are an awful example of the corruption of man left to himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

This shocking description, quoted by Charles Husband\u2019s In Black and White: The Roots of Racism in Race in Britain (1982), was not merely pseudoscience academic. It was deployed to justify the brutal systems of slavery, colonial conquest, and racial subjugation.<\/p>\n

As repulsive as it may seem today, one must not underestimate how deeply such thinking endures in the subconscious of Western commentators like Stoddard and his ilk.<\/p>\n

Their tone, sense of entitlement to dictate what constitutes good governance in Africa, and their dogged opposition to African agency in managing both wildlife and their nations are not incidental\u2014they are ideological descendants of that very stereotype.<\/p>\n

Up till now, remnants of its sentiment persist in journalism\u2014 that positions African governance as an inherent defect and African success as an anomaly that requires foreign explanation or suspicion.<\/p>\n

It is this mentality\u2014dressed now in the \u201crational\u201d language of conservation and human rights\u2014that Stoddard embodies.<\/p>\n

{{The Last Safari of Supremacism}}<\/p>\n

What we witnessed in Ed Stoddard\u2019s article is not journalism\u2014it\u2019s the ghost of colonial arrogance on safari, clutching a notepad instead of a rifle, lamenting that the natives are no longer grateful.<\/p>\n

He wishes he could decide where the rhinos go, where Africans govern, and how history should be remembered. And when he can\u2019t, he rants. When Africa shows agency, he responds with alarm. When Africans succeed, he demands to know which Western donor to thank.<\/p>\n

This is not a concern for human rights. This is aesthetic panic: how dare Africans be clean, orderly, successful\u2014without permission? The white rhinos are just a prop.<\/p>\n

The real beast being hunted is African dignity. And Stoddard, standing atop his ivory journalistic perch, wishes to shoot it down with words soaked in inherited supremacy.<\/p>\n

The Daily Maverick has allowed itself to become a platform for neocolonial projection. It has enabled a writer who uses wildlife as a Trojan Horse to reintroduce 19th-century racism through 21st-century journalism.<\/p>\n

Because Stoddard\u2019s concern is not human rights. It is ideological compliance. Governments that defy Western paternalism are labeled \u201cpariahs.\u201d Those that bow are forgiven their sins.<\/p>\n

Stoddard\u2019s article is not a critique of conservation policy. It is a manifesto of white supremacist sentiment disguised as environmental concern. It is a declaration that Africans can be tolerated only when they are chaotic, corrupt, or pitiable\u2014but never when they are efficient, independent, or successful.<\/p>\n

For the record: Rwanda is not perfect. No nation is. But its people have chosen transformation over trauma, dignity over dependency. That a nation which survived a genocide now hosts rhinos, gorillas, and clean urban streets and in rural areas, is not a threat. It is a triumph.<\/p>\n

And that\u2014more than any NGO or president\u2014is what truly enrages Stoddard and his ilk. The sight of an African country refusing to conform to their low expectations is the greatest threat of all.<\/p>\n

But no matter how loudly he bellows, Rwanda will not crawl. Africans will not beg. And rhinos will not seek colonial passports. The days of managing Africa\u2019s conscience from far away desks are over.<\/p>\n

This is no longer Out of Africa \u2014 it\u2019s out of touch. And the mask of moral superiority? It has finally cracked.<\/p>\n

They want Africa wounded. Rwanda insists on healing.<\/p>\n

They want Africans to beg. Rwanda insists on building.<\/p>\n

They want Africans in the jungle. Rwanda offers gardens.<\/p>\n

And so, they howl. Let them.<\/p>\n

The white rhinos are
\nat home in Akagera National Park. And the real beasts have revealed themselves\u2014in the pages of Daily Maverick.<\/p>\n

And so, to Ed Stoddard and his kind, here\u2019s the hard truth: We do not need your permission to build our future. Rwanda is not your exhibit. Kigali is not your zoo.<\/p>\n

Our governance is not subject to your conscience. Your metaphors are exhausted. Your racism is noted. And your failure to evolve is your own burden to carry.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 11, 2025, the Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper published an article that may have been about white rhinos\u2014but what it actually revealed was something far more toxic: the persistence of colonial stereotypes in 21st-century journalism. It was a deeply offensive, condescending, and blatantly white-supremacist piece of propaganda disguised as journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":2000089118,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[75],"byline":[271],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-54476","opinion","type-opinion","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-homenews","byline-tom-ndahiro"],"bylines":[{"id":271,"name":"Tom Ndahiro","slug":"tom-ndahiro","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":271,"name":"Tom Ndahiro","slug":"tom-ndahiro","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000089118,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/ni.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/ni.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/ni.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/ni.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/ni.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/ni.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/54476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/opinion"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/54476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000089118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54476"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=54476"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=54476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}