Klein Constantia And The Two Exhumed Baboons

A primate murder mystery puts one of South Africa’s best-known wine estates on the spot

- Adam Welz

KKLEIN CONSTANTIA ON THE Slopes of the Constantiaberg in Cape Town, is one of South Africa’s most famously “green” wine estates. A WWF Conservation Champion, it touts its environmentalism widely. A 2015 book titled The Wine Kingdom – Celebrating Conservation in the Cape Winelands claims that it has “extensive soil erosion plans” and aims to build a cellar “that will be powered by solar energy”. It mentions that Klein Constantia “has also experienced serious damage to their crops caused by baboons, but today most of this problem is taken care of by using baboon monitors during harvest”.

Baboons can be prodigious crop raiders, and three troops inhabit the slopes above the wine estates in the Constantia area. The fruit-laden vineyards are a huge temptation because they back on to the baboons’ natural territories in Table Mountain National Park.

While it may have been true in 2015 that Klein Constantia dealt with “most” of its baboon problem by using monitors – people using nonlethal paintball guns and the like to keep the primates out of crops and houses – recent goings-on suggest that the estate is no longer as wildlife-friendly nor as open and honest as it might like us to believe; in July 2018 it was revealed that Klein Constantia had been killing baboons, and in November a source came to me with unusual evidence suggesting that the estate and/or its contractors may also have been lying and breaking the law with respect to those killings.

The evidence was two dead and somewhat-rotten baboons, which the source said they had dug up the previous night from a shallow grave next to a pond inside the Klein Constantia estate. (One way to get journalists’ attention is to bring them actual bodies. Beats smoking guns every time.)