Diplomacy’s Big Win: How India and Namibia Partnered to Bring Cheetahs to a New Home

To begin with, I decided to invite the leaders of the two Houses of Namibia’s Parliament, the Speaker of the National Assembly (Lower House), Dr Peter Katjavivi, whom I had already given an introduc­tory briefing online, and the Chairperson of the National Council (Upper House), Lukas Sinimbo Muha, along with their team, for a detailed briefing on the project over lunch at India House.

The residence of the Indian ambassador (or high commissioner) in a foreign country is typically called India House, a small piece of India in a distant land. Exuding the warmth of an Indian welcome to visitors of other countries, it introduces them to India and its rich culture through its arts, aesthetics and cuisine. For Indian visitors, weary from travelling in remote corners of the world, it is a home away from home where they seek solace and recharge themselves with home-cooked Indian food, from roti to rasam.

Both leaders were earnest, sincere and interested in conservation issues and challenges. They listened carefully to our briefing. We also discussed how the project could help both sides with mutual learning. With their vast experience in public life, they were quick to realize its potential and conveyed their support. This was crucial. If the matter went up to the Namibian Parliament for approval one day, it would be important to have the parliamentary leaders understand and appreciate the project. We were making progress.

About the same time, I had decided to make a request for a call on the President of Namibia. While we had other matters to discuss with him, for me, making a request for the cheetahs was high on the agenda. In most systems, if there is an in-principle approval or expression of interest from the top leadership levels for any proposal, the rest of the system is supposed to take note of their directive, and it does. If we got the President’s go-ahead and blessings for the project, then getting a number of approvals down the line would become faster and easier. On the other hand, it was a risky gamble I was undertaking, because if the President didn’t like the idea, the project would be dead on arrival. However, I decided to take my chances.

In requesting the call, I went and met the jovial and helpful chief of protocol in the foreign office, Ambassador Leonard Iipumbu.

Ambassador Iipumbu was among those generations of Namibian leaders who were deeply mindful and appreciative of India’s support to Namibia for its independence. India was the first country to accord diplomatic recognition to the SWAPO Party of Namibia in 1985, and it was Sam Nujoma, the founding father himself, who had opened the nation’s first embassy in New Delhi in 1986. India’s support was a key milestone that had started the chain reaction of widespread international support, culminating in Namibian independence in 1990.

Ambassador Iipumbu welcomed me warmly. After the pleasantries, when I broached the issue and mentioned that we wanted to take a few of their cheetahs to India, Ambassador Iipumbu was visibly amused. In Namibia, for some people, especially farmers, cheetahs were just a pest, since they would sometimes kill livestock on the farms. Our enthusiasm for getting some of the cats could therefore not be understood immediately on some occasions. Ambassador Iipumbu told us an interesting story of his time serving as Namibia’s ambassador in France, when they faced demonstrations by animal rights activists, led by none other than Brigitte Bardot, the famous actor turned animal rights activist, against the culling of seals. On one such occasion, when she was protesting outside their embassy, Iipumbu invited her in and made her an offer: Namibia would be happy to send a shipload full of seals to France, if France could then take care of the seals. He said he did not hear from her after this. I was quiet and kept a straight face. I was startled when he next mentioned casually that a few cheetahs had been sent by Namibia to the US long back, and since he was serving in the US at that time, he had actually received them upon arrival. Laurie later told us that she had accompanied these cheetahs, and it was an extremely noisy military transport aircraft in which they had travelled to the US. Iipumbu was invited to name the first cheetah cub born there, and he had named him Otji, after Otjiwarongo, the city in the central part of Namibia where cheetahs roamed. After narrating this interes­ting story, he promised to facilitate not just my call on the President but also our project.

Prashant Agrawal was India's High Commissioner to Namibia during the crucial phase of Project Cheetah implementation