Stephen Fritz

Fritz was opening speaker at the "Taking Elephants Out of the Room" Indaba held in Hermanus, South Africa in 2019. This was an international convention of elephant experts addressing the issue of captive elephants. He is the founding member of the Pro Elephant Network, an international organisation of elephant specialists, and he is a member of the Wildlife Animal Protection Forum South Africa. Fritz is presently assisting various conservation organisations and stakeholders with regard to negotiations with the City of Cape Town and Cape Nature.

He has engaged with stakeholders at the opening of the National House of Traditional Leaders in 2018]

Fritz represented the South Peninsula Khoi Council in the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town in August 2018. During a two day colloquium on the captive lion breeding for hunting and lion bone trade, he addressed the Portfolio Committee on Environment, Forestry and Fisheries. Chief Fritz’s presentation included the subject matter of the importance of the wild white lion in his culture as well as issues relative to the South African lion bone trade and the trophy hunting of lion. More specifically, he spoke about a controversial killing of a much loved South African lion called Skye who was killed on 7 July 2018 in Umbabat Nature Reserve, a private reserve sharing an unfenced border with the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

Fritz has engaged with members of the National Assembly and of the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town since 2012.  He has advocated on behalf of the movement to recognise the Khoisan culture and their heritage. Fritz has argued for the recognition of the Khoisan land restitution and reform.

On 9 February 2012, President of South Africa Jacob Zuma said that "It is important to remember that the Khoisan peoples were the most brutalised by the colonialists who tried to make them extinct and undermine their language and identity. As a free and democratic South Africa today we cannot ignore to correct the past."

On 8 May 1996 President Thabo Mbeki announced at the "I am an African" speech, made to the Constitutional Assembly on the adoption of the South African Constitution: "I owe my being to the Khoi and the San who […] fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and independence and they who perished in the result".

Stephen Michael Fritz is a Khoi leader born in South Africa on 4 March 1970. He is a South African indigenous and traditional leader and Senior Chief of the South Peninsula Khoi Council, which is based in the Western Cape of South Africa. He is a well-known environmentalist and public speaker. He is an expert in the use of plants for medicinal purposes and he is a qualified indigenous guide and wildlife conservationist. He is also an activist for the rights of the indigenous people of South Africa. Chief Fritz is a founding member of the Pro Elephant Network and member of the Wildlife Animal Protection Forum South Africa.