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KNYSNA NEWS & VIDEO - In a piece of secluded, almost inaccessible yellowwood forest a few kilometres outside of Knysna, on the way to Plettenberg Bay, two residents of the area have come across an amazing find.

Nicolaas Phillips, one of the intrepid explorers, said he came across the find years ago, when he was in Grade 9 or 10 after moving to Knysna from Jonkersberg near George.

“I grew up in nature and loved exploring. When we first moved here I came into this forest and found what you see here,” he told the Knysna-Plett Herald. At the time Phillips found the "treasure" almost 20 years ago, he was not sure who to tell about it and didn’t know if he would be in trouble if he was caught there or attract unwanted attention to the area, so he waited for the "right person" to tell the story.

Forgotten find reappears
Years later, while exploring the same area with his friend Lee Olivier, the two men again stumbled upon Phillips’ forgotten find. “And when I met you (this journalist) at Judah Square after they were raided, and saw how you wanted to tell their story, I knew we had to come to you,” said Olivier.

Click here for a photo gallery.

By now the reader must have gathered from the photos that the mysterious discovery involves bones – but what bones?

Both Phillips and Olivier believe the bones they found scattered around a sparsely vegetated 10sq m area belong to an elephant. Inside this open patch in the forest there is a large bone, among others, which they believe to be part of an elephant’s leg, and just outside the area is an even bigger bone they believe to be a hip bone.

Was this an elephant trap?
What’s more, the men think they found an age-old elephant trap, as some of the bones seem as though they have been cut or sawn with some or other instrument.

“It looks like people came here and purposefully cut down the trees to make this clearing. You can see cut marks on some of the trees, and it looks like they created a space for the elephants to walk into,” said Phillips.

The men have tried to leave the area as undisturbed as possible, and say they always watch out for strangers entering the area.

So are these elephant bones, and if so, are they remnants of Knysna’s illusive elephants? Was this in fact a trap or just the last resting place of one of the last elephants to roam the area? Or are they a decades-old reminder of the area’s dark past?

Reminder of a 'black month'?
Local elephant man Gareth Patterson, a wildlife expert and author known for his research on the endangered Knysna elephants, said after hearing about the bones that he knew exactly which elephant they belonged to.

“Those must be Aftand’s bones. It was a black month for Knysna when authorities basically killed the king of the Knysna elephants and caused quite a scandal in the '70s. I don’t think you should even identify the area as I am afraid that people might go in there and take the bones,” he said.

Aftand (which means "missing or broken tooth"), also known as Adam, was a bull elephant with a broken left tusk and has quite a sad story. Seen as a problem elephant, Aftand was shot and killed in secret by employees of the forestry department on 4 April 1971.

If the remains don't belong to Aftand though, which elephant then?

SANParks comment
According to Garden Route National Park (GRNP) spokesperson Nandi Mgwadlamba, the organisation has no knowledge of the bones found by Phillips and Olivier.

“We have researchers in SANParks who will be interested to view the remains found. None of our researchers has seen the remains found by the community and thus cannot conclude if the remains are of an elephant and if so, if they are of Aftand,” she said.

GRNP manager Paddy Gordon said that “researchers and managers will be interested in the finds as we have studied the historic and existing range of the Knysna elephant”.

For now though, the bones will remain a mystery. Phillips and Olivier both believe the bones and the surrounding area should be protected, and by involving the more people, it could become an attraction to the area.

As soon as Knysna-Plett Herald can find out more about these bones, who or what they belong to and how they got there, we will inform readers. 

Watch a video of the trek to find the remains and interviews with the men who came across them:

Aftand, the bull elephant shot by officials
Aftand, also known as Adam, was a bull elephant with a broken left tusk and quite a sad story. Seen as a problem elephant, Aftand was shot and killed in secret by employees of the forestry department on 4 April 1971.

Described as a male aged over 45, Aftand was an “even-tempered animal with remarkable traffic sense and completely blasé of human sounds and activity”. 

According to www.sahistory.org.za he was a loner and never seen with other elephants. He roamed the areas of Brackenhill, Garden of Eden and Die Poort (next to the N2 between Knysna and Plettenberg Bay), and sometimes crossed and recrossed the national road, but mostly at night, and invisibly.

On 4 April 1971, says the website, Aftand was shot and killed in secret by employees of the forestry department. Aftand was a wild roaming animal and legally not the department’s responsibility if it ventured outside state forest land. The elephants moved in and out of the state forest, occasionally raiding smallholdings with fruit trees and vegetable gardens. 

However, the owners of the smallholdings, where the damage was done, held the department responsible as they were regarded as forest animals, which they were not, but over time were driven into the forest by the people who populated the area around the forests.

On the one hand there was the public who pestered the department to get rid of the pest and then there was the conservationists with the wildlife society at the forefront, wanting the department to take responsibility for the conservation of the elephants.

To cut a long story short, the district forest officer for indigenous forests gave his permission to an official to shoot the elephant. 

The official who shot Aftand was an adventurous young forestry professional who found the opportunity irresistible. After he shot Aftand, the carcass was covered with branches to conceal it. They cut off the trunk, one ear, one foot and both tusks. 

About a day or two later, the carcass was discovered by a forest worker form a forest village nearby who reported it to his superiors. After a long investigation, court case and the tusks being found buried elsewhere, both the officer and the official instructed to shoot Aftand were found not guilty.

Although additional information regarding Aftand was sourced from www.sahistory.org.za, the article on said website was authored by Ryno Joubert. 

Click here to read the full piece on the history of the Knysna elephants.

* Information: www.sahistory.org.za

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