Cape Peninsula baboons: A Public Protector complaint and accountability in a World Heritage Site

In 2025, I submitted a formal complaint to the Public Protector (reference CMS 52724/2025) alleging possible maladministration in the management of Cape Peninsula’s chacma baboons. I declare upfront that I am the complainant. But this is not about me. It is about whether the institutions tasked with managing a species inside a Unesco World Heritage Site of Outstanding Universal Value are being held to account.

The Cape Peninsula is home to 463 managed chacma baboons, an endemic species. In the last 18 months, 101 have died – the highest rate since records began in 2013. A large percentage of those deaths were human-related: vehicle collisions, shootings, poisoning, dog attacks. The population is declining. And the decisions being made about how to respond are raising serious questions about transparency, cost and whether proven alternatives have been genuinely considered.

The Public Protector referred this matter to the National Council of SPCAs, who responded by making something important clear in its correspondence: its mandate covers cruelty under the Animals Protection Act. It does not cover governance, administrative justice or constitutional compliance. Those questions sit squarely with the Public Protector. The NSPCA’s response did not close the matter. It opened it wider.

The matter is now back with the Public Protector. I have had no response from them. There has been no public statement.

So, what are the governance questions?

The Cape Baboon Strategic Management Plan – adopted in September 2023 – committed to a range of non-lethal interventions: waste management, fencing, community education. As of this writing, there is no publicly available evidence that any of these have been properly implemented. Yet, in November 2025, two baboons were lethally removed. A R27-million enclosure is planned for 2026, targeting what amounts to 13% of the remaining managed population. And the capture of the Seaforth troop – including the vasectomy of Martello, the alpha male – is scheduled for the end of this month (February).

These are irreversible actions. Once a troop is captured and an alpha is sterilised, you cannot undo it. The question is not whether baboon management is difficult – it is. The question is whether the decision-making process that led to these actions was transparent, evidence-based and compliant with the law.

There is evidence it may not have been. Multiple requests by various community members under the Promotion of Access to Information Act for decision records have been refused or answered incompletely – in some cases, officials have stated that collating the information would take too much time. National Environmental Management Act assessments, which are legally required before certain environmental actions, do not appear to have been publicly disclosed. And the obligations that come with Unesco World Heritage status – including the protection of Outstanding Universal Value – do not appear to have been formally addressed in public documentation.

What makes this particularly difficult to accept is that alternatives exist – and have been working. At Rooiels, a coexistence model based on natural foraging and infrastructure management has operated successfully for more than 15 years. In Seaforth, Green Group Simonstown ran a non-aversive monitoring pilot for 17 months, demonstrating that human-baboon conflict can be managed without lethal removal or confinement. The Cape Baboon Strategic Management Plan itself called for the systematic evaluation of such models. There is no public record that this evaluation took place before the current course of action was chosen.

The Public Protector’s office is now investigating. Neither advocate Kholeka Gcaleka nor Ms J Steyn, a senior investigator, have issued a public statement on the complaint. Given that irreversible actions are imminent – within days, not weeks – the public has a legitimate interest in knowing where the investigation stands and whether a moratorium on capture and removal is being considered pending its findings.

This is not an argument against all baboon management. It is an argument for accountability. For transparency in how public money is spent. For evidence-based decision-making in a World Heritage Site. And for the Public Protector to do what the Public Protector exists to do: hold institutions to account, openly, before the decisions become permanent. DM

Carol Knox is an independent conservation researcher based in Cape Town.