The Archeology of Extermination: A Lament for the 121

This piece is an elegiac reflection on the fate of Cape Town's baboons-specifically 121 individuals - threatened by elimination policies masked as conservation. The writer mourns the cold, bureaucratic logic that rationalises the destruction of these animals and their social bonds, likening it to the historical brutality and erasure of colonialism. Through vivid imagery - Table Mountain, the Waterfall troop, and ancestral baboons - the work explores the deep ecological knowledge and lived experience carried by these primates.

It critiques how contemporary conservation efforts often perpetuate colonial attitudes: management jargon and policy decisions sanitise and legitimise violence, reducing living beings to statistics and 'problems'. The text suggests that language like 'sustainable management' becomes a euphemism for erasure and loss, even within supposedly protected environments.

The narrative weaves together themes of memory, heritage, and loss, emphasising the subtle, ongoing violence enacted under the guise of order. The baboons' lives and relationships are contrasted with the administrative impulse to control and eliminate. The piece argues that true protection demands we relearn how to read the 'deeper maps of home', recognising the value of non-human lives as intrinsic to a shared heritage.

Ultimately, "The Archaeology of Extermination" is an appeal for awareness and compassion. It urges readers to reject the language and logic of elimination, and instead choose guardianship, remembrance, and love for the living world - before it is silenced by the relentless march of bureaucratic 'order'. The jackboots of the colonialists and apartheid thinkers.