Delayed captive lion exit plan leaves jobs and livelihoods in limbo

The Portfolio Committee on Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment recently met to discuss commercial captive lion breeding and the proposed phase-out of the industry in line with a policy decision. Jobs and transition arrangements were central to that discussion, and members were right to put workers at the heart of it.

Juliet Khumalo (ANC) asked what detailed and funded plan exists to reskill the workers affected. The chairperson, Nqabisa Gantsho (ANC), cautioned against a rushed transition and its toll on jobs and small businesses. Andrew de Blocq (DA) insisted that any transition must follow proper process and be genuinely just. The department, too, acknowledged that the socioeconomic and employment implications of the phase-out require careful consideration.

These are precisely the questions that should be asked. Many of the answers are addressed in detail in the ministerial task team’s report. The issue before the committee may therefore lie less in the absence of a plan than in the delays in implementing the plan already developed.  

Key elements of the plan

The ministerial task team conducted the most extensive audit of the captive lion industry, based on provincial and national data sets that were extensively verified. This included the number of registered facilities, their distribution across South Africa, numbers of permitted lions in captivity, lion derivative stock legally held by facilities, and available statistics on labour. 

Because provincial authorities do not keep employment records for these facilities, we built our estimate from the 116 facilities for which figures were available, and extrapolated nationally. On that basis, the industry directly employs somewhere between 1,568 and 2,069 people, roughly two workers for every 10 lions. Every one of those jobs matters, and the report treats them accordingly, as livelihoods to be protected. 

One detail usually left out of the argument is what makes that protection achievable: these workers are rarely dedicated to lions alone. Many are already employed in other agricultural activities for the same owners, which means redeployment is a realistic prospect rather than a hollow ambition.

On that foundation, the report sets out a plan whose guiding principle, built in as a design rule, not an aspiration, is to minimise labour loss. Voluntary exit options are deliberately shaped to generate employment, so that the existing workforce is absorbed as far as possible. 

Initial indications project an increase in the number of jobs and the quality as well as the safety of workers for the first round of voluntary exit candidates. For workers, that means specific, named pathways: reemployment in the repurposed facility; training and reemployment in the owner’s new business; or retraining and absorption into similar operations. The programme is voluntary and owner-driven, and it gives explicit preference to the options that keep people in work.

Legal safeguards

Nor does the plan shy away from the hard cases; it anchors them in existing legal safeguards. Where retrenchment becomes unavoidable, and only after every alternative is exhausted, it is governed by legislation, not discretion. 

Section 189 of the Labour Relations Act requires genuine consultation, fair and objective selection, and a real attempt to reach consensus on avoiding or minimising dismissals. The Basic Conditions of Employment Act mandates severance pay of at least one week’s remuneration for each year of service, alongside notice pay and any outstanding leave, with the Department of Labour on hand to help implement best practice. This is precisely the “appropriate process” the committee called for.

So perhaps the question we should be asking is not “Where is the plan?” but “Why has it not been put into effect?”

More than two years after Cabinet approved the ministerial task team report, the voluntary exit process has made substantial progress in the first phase of its implementation. 

The seventh administration has not renewed the term of the ministerial task team to oversee the next phase of the implementation. I welcome, then, the committee's resolution to prioritise a briefing from the ministerial task team. We are ready to present our plan for a transition that ensures animal wellbeing while keeping workers’ interests at its core and is socioeconomically sustainable.

Workers in this industry are entitled to greater certainty, appropriate occupational health and safety protections, and a transition process that gives fair and serious consideration to their livelihoods. The necessary research has been undertaken and the resulting recommendations have received Cabinet approval. The principal challenge, therefore, appears to lie less in the absence of policy detail but in securing the institutional commitment required to implement Cabinet’s resolutions in a timely and coordinated manner. DM