JOHN Hume is quiet as he gazes from his bakkie at the large herd of rhinos descending to a feeding area on his 8,000ha property in the North West. After he chides a few stragglers, the man who bred close to 1,000 rhinos says that he is more worried than proud. The former resort owner protects the species that has horns worth more than their weight in gold. He regards rhinos as nature’s underdogs, with a better chance of going extinct than proliferating. He bought a white rhino along with other animals when he retired to his game farm in 1993. After getting to know his rhino, he decided to support them. "I have a very fatal flaw in my personality: I always back the underdog. So, I never back [Novak] Djokovic and I often back Murray [in tennis]. Rhinos are likely to be losers, but that did not stop me from giving them more and more," Hume says. But the cost of running the operation is millions of rand a year, which Hume says he can’t afford much longer. A proposal from Swaziland to th...
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