We’ve heard ‘Swahili’ used in different ways in this conference. This presentation

spans two senses: Swahili as a byword for sharp practice, and secondly as

reference to ‘traditional’, and in some respects non- or marginally Islamic

practice.

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This is the latest installment in our long-term collaboration researching the

Zanzibar leopard, a distinctive population endemic to Unguja island.

In our past work we’ve described how the Zanzibar leopard is widely perceived as

an instrument of witches (wachawi, wabaya), and how as a consequence they’ve

been persecuted to the extent that many zoologists believe that they are extinct.

Many rural Zanzibaris will tell you something different. When the island opened

up to zoologists and conservationists, a number of them fell for the local

narratives of leopard-keeping. From the mid-1990s in particular, when NGOs

introduced contemporary ideas of conservation, many outsiders were offered the

possibility of viewing kept leopards in return for cash.

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These leopard chases always came to nothing. Nonetheless, the Zanzibar

government and its Forestry Department also fell under the spell of the same

narratives.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we began to hear that leopards themselves were for

sale. Here’s an email (see the slide) we and others were sent in July 2011. After

this, rumours of cubs for sale continued to circulate, and staff in the Forestry

Department were contacted with offers on a number of occasions. Nothing came

of these until September 2012, when conservation officials arranged a meeting

with the would-be leopard sellers. After two officers on a Vespa were led from one

suburb to another by the sellers (there were seven of them, including one

mainlander), two of the latter eventually agreed to bring their ‘cubs’ to the

Forestry offices at Maruhubi.

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And there they are (on the slide) in a box. One of the officers had the presence of

mind to take photos of them. The other, who has seen the Zanzibar leopard in life

– or at least death – was smart enough to know that these were not leopard cubs

(compare the image at bottom left). The sellers were sent away, animals and all.

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A Greek hunter from the mainland suggested that they were wildcats, animals

that aren’t otherwise found in Zanzibar. From the photos it’s difficult to tell: they

could equally be the kittens of domestic cats.

Nothing more was heard of them. This July, however, an experienced zoologist

told me (MW) that in 2011 he had been shown two real leopard cubs in a village

in central Zanzibar. Their owner happily confessed that they had been brought

over – illegally – from the mainland.

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Were these the cubs that were first offered for sale to us and others? Are they still

being kept on the island – or have they been released. We don’t know, but this

takes leopard fraud to a new level. Can we link more recent reports of livestock

predation to these introduced leopards? Or perhaps to other introduced

carnivores?

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More than one unregulated zoo has sprung up with imported predators for view

(a cheetah and a white lion in the zoo shown on the slide, a hyena in another

one).

Verifying alleged Zanzibar leopard appearances and instances of predation

without DNA evidence has just become much harder than it already was (and at

present we don’t have a DNA profile for the Zanzibar leopard.)

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One obvious way of interpreting the growth of Zanzibar leopard hoaxes is in

terms of the impacts of globalisation.

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But it also makes us wonder what role deception has played in sustaining

Zanzibar leopard narratives and related practices in the past.

We know, for example, that waganga, the traditional doctors and diviners who

often propagate accusations of leopard-keeping, are not averse to fakery of their

own in some circumstances.

And what role has self-deception played? These are tricky questions for

anthropologists, who might shrink from describing their subjects as gullible or

otherwise deluded, at least in so few words.

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There are, of course, cases elsewhere in Africa – West Africa in particular –

where organised deception is known or assumed to have been an integral part of

‘traditional’ practice – thus the so-called ‘leopard-men’ and the cults or secret

societies. There is no evidence, though, for anything like this in Zanzibar.

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Scary predators are a good fit for this kind of thing, as are the mystery animals of

contemporary cryptozoology. The Zanzibar leopard is both a predator and a

cryptid.

Cryptozoological hoaxes involving live animals are relatively rare. The ultimate

case of such a fake is the wholly imaginary ‘Brazilian invisible fish’, sometimes

deployed as an advertising stunt. This conjures up one of the definitions of

Baudrillard’s simulacra: copies with no original. The Zanzibar leopard is a

simulacrum that quite possibly no longer has an original.

We’ve only just begun to consider the ways in which we could analyse the

Zanzibar leopard case – sociologically, semiologically, or otherwise. But while

preparing this presentation we’ve started seeing scams and fakery everywhere –

and more than one instance has been mentioned in today’s conference. It’s a

vast topic that arguably deserves much more attention than is usually given to it.

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