Sacking Dion George: Vested interests triumph

The sacking of Environment Minister Dion George has been framed in these pages as a story of alleged staff abuse and underperformance, although the counter-view was well-articulated by Ghaleb Cachalia, along with Brandon Reynolds’s cartoon. Little detail or verification has been offered to support the anonymous attempts at character assassination. A closer analysis is, therefore, essential.

The bigger story is that South Africa has just removed its most internationally credible minister whilst he was representing the country at COP30 in Brazil. George has been performing excellently in the midst of a global ecological crisis, but his crucial portfolio has just been handed to someone apparently connected to the very industries George was reining in.

The timing of his sacking is not a side issue; it is the issue. George himself stated on Friday last week that: “The smear campaign that precipitated my dismissal – while I was representing South Africa at COP30 – was orchestrated to discredit strong environmental governance and to weaken resistance to organised crime. … The questions being explored by the Madlanga Commission are not merely institutional – they go to the heart of whether the state has allowed criminal ecosystems to intertwine with political and intelligence structures.” This is very telling.

George is hardly a backbencher who went rogue. He co-chaired the mitigation track at COP29 and was appointed to co-chair the adaptation stream at COP30 in Belém, Brazil – a rare vote of confidence from the UN system and partner countries. This process has now been badly disrupted. George also led the G20 Environment, Climate Sustainability Working Group that secured two unanimous “Cape Town Declarations” on air quality and environmental crime – one of the few G20 workstreams under South Africa’s presidency to land consensus outcomes.

In an unprecedented move, the Democratic Alliance (DA) leader, John Steenhuisen, asked the President to fire the very minister who was delivering at the G20 and the UN at the exact moment his credibility is most valuable to South Africa.

Shortly after Hajra Omarjee’s piece in Business Day, Rebecca Davis at Daily Maverick focused on Steenhuisen’s alleged personal financial difficulties. DA insiders told Daily Maverick that Steenhuisen’s alleged financial disarray had been an open secret in the party for years: “It was necessary to remove Mr Steenhuisen’s party credit card [apparently due to expenditure not reconciling with documentation]. As federal finance chair, I took that action,” said George. This raises the question of a personal vendetta by Steenhuisen.

Davis asks whether the party’s deployment decisions are genuinely performance-based or primarily about internal politics. That line of questioning matters, because the limited official explanation for George’s removal – underperformance and lack of collegiality – is contradicted by his international track record.

Political journalism must, of course, examine the issues raised by Omarjee, though these are now being vehemently denied. Moreover, her article acknowledged that its most explosive assertions rely heavily on anonymous insiders. It also gave too little weight to the two questions that are most crucial in this context: Why now, and who benefits?

According to a senior DA insider, the backlash against George has less to do with anything behavioural (an expedient and unsubstantiated set of claims) and more to do with whose interests were being disrupted. They point out that George was driving reforms that directly threatened influential actors, from wildlife breeders (who the new Minister openly admits to being) and hunting interests. Moreover, powerful members of the South African Predators Association (SAPA) are litigiously opposed to George’s efforts to end captive lion breeding.

Then there are those who are implicated in internal corruption investigations within the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment (DFFE), as well as officials unsettled by tightened financial governance. George had also begun withdrawing departmental policies that had historically benefited cadres, including problematic waste-tyre arrangements linked to double-dipping. In this insider’s view, it is these reforms rather than staff dissatisfaction that triggered the most determined resistance.

This is especially striking: as Rebecca Davis reported, no formal grievances were ever lodged against George through departmental HR channels. Even Helen Zille, the DA’s Federal Council chair, has publicly stated she was unaware of any such complaints. The complete absence of formal complaints discredits the sudden emergence of vivid, unverified accounts of “staff trauma”. If legitimate, why were they never formally raised? If not, why are they surfacing now?

On timing, consider the domestic stakes. As environment minister, George began to implement long-stalled recommendations from the High-Level Panel and resultant Policy Position Paper on wildlife policy into actual implementation – especially the commitment to phase out South Africa’s controversial captive lion breeding and bone-export industry. South Africa earns little from canned hunting and lion-bone exports but stands to lose far more by persisting with them, especially reputationally.

George’s willingness to close that chapter, alongside moves on African penguin protection, ship-to-ship bunkering regulation, waste-tyre management and fisheries reform, made him a problem for powerful interests who see wildlife primarily as “stock” to be monetarily exploited under the guise of “sustainable use”. His recent unambiguous statement that “The conditions are not currently favourable to enable consideration of the international commercial ivory trade” likely further incensed the powerful DA sustainable use lobby.

The conflict of interest now seems obvious: George’s replacement is close to the wildlife ranching lobby and openly says he is a game farmer – the fox is mandated to guard the henhouse. The risk to South Africa, therefore, is continued captive predator breeding, associated welfare abuses, and potential gain reversal against illegal wildlife trade. This would bring international opprobrium at the very moment we need the recognition George was attaining.

That brings us back to the core issue. If George was truly an underperformer, one would expect public, evidence-rich performance reviews, clear metrics not met, and an internal process that preceded his removal. Thus far, none of that has been apparent. What we have instead are leaks about his temperament and “fit”, and a barely plausible narrative from Steenhuisen and parts of the media. Part of the reason this is so hard to understand is that the DA itself resolved in 2023 to shut down the captive predator breeding industry, in line with a 2018 National Assembly resolution.

This is where Steenhuisen’s “underperformance” claim does not reconcile with publicly observable facts. George secured two G20 ministerial declarations, co-chaired major COP negotiation streams, advanced long-stalled wildlife reforms, stabilised audit outcomes, and initiated governance clean-ups in fisheries, waste management and biodiversity permitting. These are measurable achievements, not underperformance.

Logically, this undermines the “bullying” narrative. Allegations of abusive conduct should always be treated seriously, but they must also be treated procedurally. In this case, the complete absence of formal complaints, the existence of multiple disciplinary processes against senior staff, and the timing of internal corruption probes create the appearance that those facing accountability are recasting it as victimhood to discredit George.

George himself has insisted that he was simply doing his job without fear, favour or prejudice, including toward interests that have enjoyed a long and largely unexamined run in South African wildlife policy. As he said to me recently, “My responsibility was to uphold the law and protect South Africa’s wildlife. When long-standing interests felt threatened by greater transparency and stronger enforcement, the pressure intensified. I would not compromise my duty.”

Another DA insider put it to me like this: “Dion George was sacked just as he seemed to be making real progress on wildlife crime and unethical industry practices. It’s difficult to pinpoint where he might have misstepped or underperformed. The timing of his recall while he was abroad is very suspicious, and between the obvious smear campaign and the contradictory reasons being provided by the party and the Presidency, it’s not a good look. Many of us in the DA are hopeful that the new Minister will carry on where George left off in implementing party policy on these issues, but that remains to be seen.”

When a minister with George’s international portfolio and reform record is removed while weaker performers in other portfolios remain untouched, “underperformance” starts to look less like a diagnosis and more like a pretext. George has achieved a commendable level of institutional effectiveness despite a department deeply infiltrated by the “sustainable use” agenda.

The DA appears to have lost sight of who its constituents really are in bowing to the narrow interest of a small portion of voters based on unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims of the value of consumptive sustainable use.

Minister Aucamp himself claimed in an ENCA interview that the wildlife economy was worth R44bn to the SA Economy, whereas the National Biodiversity Economy Strategy puts the figure at R4.3bn (of which only R1,8bn comes from international trophy hunters), a mere 10th of Aucamp’s figure. Even this figure is extrapolated from dubious research.

The DA has done both its supporters and SA a great disservice in firing George and, in so doing, jeopardised the meticulous public legislative process to end captive lion breeding and protect the well-being of wild animals. While a lack of collegiality should not be overlooked, it is hard not to conclude that this was an expedient fabrication given all else that is in play.

This article first appeared in Business Day.