White Lions

The White Lions are South Africa's pride and joy, our living national treasure. Or so they should be. All over the African continent, from Egypt in the North to Bushmanland in the South, legends of the White Lions existence grace ancient oral traditions and cave paintings. From the distant Nile culture in the North to Zululand's Valley of a Thousand Hills in the South, storytellers spoke of the arrival of these legendary animals.

In Senegal in the West, and Somalia in the East, legends proclaim the White Lions magical powers. Yet there is one place only on earth where these mythical creatures have come to life - and that is Timbavati, a wildlife region bordering on South Africa's Kruger National Park.

The name Timbavati in the ancient Shangaan language means "the place where something sacred came down to earth - like a bird or angel from the heavens!" So the site of their origin echoes the White Lions' mythical status - a place which saw the birth of a unique breed of snow- white lions with blazing solar manes, and laser eyes!

My great Shangaan teacher, the indigenous healer known as the Lion Queen of Timbavati, Maria Khosa, first introduced me to the mystery of the White Lions.

This amazing woman proved her own lion-hearted courage by rescuing me, on foot and at night, from a resident pride of angry lions in the Timbavati bushveld. Maria's ancient knowledge, and her lion-hearted actions, changed my life. Maria believed that the White Lions are "Lions of God - who came from the stars." Like that other sacred site, Great Zimbabwe, the clue is embedded in the word Timba-vati: Tsimba - means 'lion'. Accordingly, this is the site where angelic winged lions were believed to have come down to earth.

That other great African teacher, pre-eminent Bushman and Zulu shaman, Credo Mutwa, describes the White Lions as 'Children of the Sun God' - a title which I used for my book which pays homage to these legendary animals. Old African knowledge teaches us that the White Lions are 'enlightenment-bearers' - not white as in skin colour, but white as in pure sunlight. The White Lions emanate sunlight which, afterall, is all the rainbow colours of the spectrum. As such, the White Lions are the living icon for our rainbow nation – beyond colour, creed or race.

Living legends
What science has established is that these unique animals are not albinos, but genetic rarities which manifested by natural occurrence. The White Lions should be venerated as a rare sub-species, yet they are not even listed for CITES protection.

At the World Summit of Sustainable Utilisation, where I was a guest speaker, I had occasion to sit next to a distinguished envirolawyer from Senegal, who informed me in reverential tones that the White Lions were spoken about by elders in his West African community, as ancestral beings of the highest order. He told me that they are believed to be angelic creatures - Mondoro - who only take on physical form on earth, at a time of ecological crisis. This squares with the beliefs held by the South Africa's indigenous priesthood.

Whether or not one upholds ancient African legend, the fact is that the White Lions have taken on physical form - and the world is in unprecedented ecological crisis. The conclusions of many at the World Summit in 2002, was that if we continue to degrade our planet at the present rate of consumption, there will not be another World Summit in 2012. The opinion expressed to me by geologist, Dr John Anderson, is that we humans are in the process of bringing about the Sixth Extinction on earth which, unlike previous extinctions such as that of the dinosaurs, will see biodiversity loss from which there will be no recovery for our species.

Hand-in-hand with the degradation of the earth's last resources, goes the extermination of the earth's indigenous people and their invaluable earth knowledge and cultural beliefs - beliefs that venerated the White Lions as guardian spirits over the land and its protection.