Breaking down the fence, Danish Environmental Protection Agency

South African – Danish Environmental Co-operation

Breaking down the fence

South Africa’s national parks are battling to embrace neighbours who often regard the parks as wasteful playgrounds for the elite

Many of South Africa’s national parks occupy land whose original inhabitants were forcibly removed. While endangered animals and tourists were given vast areas to roam, the local population was squeezed out on to the other side of the fences.

After 1994, the parks were thus likely to become endangered themselves - if they didn’t change their image and if a way was not found to do something about those people who originally lived on the land. As former president Nelson Mandela told the BBC: "Whether we like it or not, we all know how the Kruger National Park came about."

The immediate answer from South African National Parks (SANP) was the creation of so-called Social Ecology Units at its headquarters in Pretoria and at most of the parks. The aim was to reach out to the neighbours. Danced got involved as one of several foreign advisers and donors.

Some of the social ecologists knew the problems all too well from a childhood on the wrong side of the fence:

"I grew up believing that the park belonged to people from overseas who drove into an area managed by our own whites," says Patrick Chauke, social ecologist in the Kruger National Park (KNP).

"We were the hunters. And our only contact with the parks was when wardens came to search our houses for poached game. People in my village were born on the land that became the park. They felt that the animals belonged to them - and they were very good at poaching."

"Us" and "them"

Chauke now wears a khaki uniform himself and occupies an office at the park’s headquarters in Skukuza, a name that means "the man who forced people out". It was given by the local population to the founder of the park, James Stevenson-Hamilton.

"When I arrived here, it was ‘us’ and ‘them’. We had to redress the situation so that it became ‘us’, the community and the parks working together," says Chauke.

He found himself working in one of South Africa’s most conservative institutions. The national parks were managed like a paramilitary organization - and run by conservationists who often saw both the parks’ black neighbours and the tourists as dangers to the survival of their beloved animals. The management of the KNP regarded itself as "gardeners of Eden" say opponents of the uncompromising attitude that still keeps major parts of the park closed to the public.

Doubtful of management’s commitment to change, Chauke was initially reluctant to bring his family to the staff village in the park.

"I wasn’t sure, we would be able to survive here," he says. But a number of visible improvements suggest that change is in the air

Benefits for the community

Visitors to the park will come across one of the improvements just inside the main entrance, at the Kruger Gate. A huge shop selling locally produced handicraft has been erected as part of a project financed by Danced and other donors - literally on the border between park and community.

Until recently, many of the souvenirs sold in the park were made in Zimbabwe. Meat and vegetables in the shops and restaurants was bought from large commercial farms, often far from the park.

"Locally produced handicraft was seen as being of poor quality, even without testing if it could be sold," says Chauke.

The new shop is run as a co-operative by 63 local crafts people.

"Most of them were artists before the shop was built and sold their things at the roadside. But some are people who got interested when they saw the opportunities here," says Maylima Mdluli, the manager of the shop.

The construction of the new building created opportunities for other neighbours of the park. Twelve local, small-scale contractors were responsible for the building work and sent on courses in administration and planning. They now tender for other construction and renovation projects in the park.

One of the contractors, Patrick Mkhabela, has employed a team of part-time worker to rebuild the retaining walls of a bridge washed away during the floods in 2000. Previously unemployed, Mkhabela now regards himself an ambassador for the park when he bumps into other neighbours at parties or in local shops.

"Many still think the park is only for rangers watching animals. I tell them there is construction work to be done," he says.

Shoot the elephants

Recognition of the human and cultural heritage hidden in the park was another important step in the attempt to embrace its neighbours. Again, Chauke had first hand experience: his mother’s great grandfather is buried close to a popular picnic spot.

The park allows free access for neighbours to visit graves of their ancestors. So far, 254 graves and other examples of human heritage have been registered. In the northern end of the park, you can visit the partially reconstructed ruins of Thulamela, once the capital of a kingdom that traded gold from West Africa to China.

Thulamela was opened to the public in 1996, after archaeologists had co-operated with the descendants of the kingdom to arrange a ritual funeral of their ancestors.

The social ecologists in the Kruger National Park are trying to make sure that visitors also encounter local culture. So far visitors are offered shows featuring traditional dance. Next step is to let locals handle the game drives and to take visitors through the park as well as introducing them to the cultural history of the neighbouring villages.

At the northern end of the park, the Makulele tribe has been responsible for the largest challenge so far to the once omnipotent management of the park. In 1996, the Makuleles claimed back their land in the park as part of post-apartheid land reform. Two years later, the parties signed an agreement aimed at benefitting everyone. The Makuleles became the legal owners of the land, but in return allowed the park to continue using it.

The Makuleles later made international headlines with a plan that would allow tourists to hunt elephants for a large fee. This posed a serious challenge not only to the KNP but to most of the country’s wild life reserves, since the parks are based on the assumption that poor people are willing to leave modern conservation rules untouched.

Conservation is not development

Jens Sondergaard, Danced chief technical adviser, has worked closely with a number of social ecology projects, from those at SANP’s Pretoria headquarters to the individual parks. He has been involved with nine parks, from Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the Kalahari Desert in the north to the Addo Elephant Park close to the Indian Ocean in the east.

The neighbours of the parks are as diverse as the San people of the Kalahari to affluent home owners on the lower slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town. Yet the people neighbouring the national parks nonetheless have almost identical expectations where ever they are: jobs and a share in the money generated by tourism.

But according to Sondergaard, it would be a mistake to see SANP as a development organisation. "The parks must be good neighbours. But it is philanthropic and unrealistic to think that SANP can be responsible for social improvement of the community. SANP can only make development where it happens in connection with the conservation efforts in the parks," he says.

This opinion is reflected in the recent re-organization of the SANP’s headquarters. Social ecology has ceased to be a department of its own and now falls under the department responsible for conservation. According to Sondergaard, this is the only way to create a meaningful future for social ecology, which would otherwise be in serious danger of operating in a cul-de-sac. Sceptics, on the other hand, fear that social ecology will be sidelined by the new arrangement. But in the KNP, Chauke is confident that no one ever again will be able to make decisions without considering the needs of communities like the one he grew up in.

"Social ecology is no longer a choice. It has become a necessity," he says.