Take one of the dirt roads that run off the main tar road to St Lucia into the dense undergrowth of the Dukuduku and visit one of the settlements that have been carved into the forest. It will be a salutary lesson in how the poorest of the poor in this country experience nature conservation.
KwaZulu-Natal’s northern region was richly endowed with coastal lowland forests — a mosaic of indigenous hardwoods, herbs, shrubs, ferns, vines and cycads — until sugar-cane farmers and commercial forests chopped them down in the early part of this century.
The 3 500-hectare Dukuduku Forest is the last remaining ecosystem of this type in the province. Conservationists want to preserve it at all costs and have, according to the people who live there, sometimes sided with police and officials from the Natal Provincial Administration in taking harsh action against the “squatters”.
The residents have a litany of allegations: their houses have been burnt down, fishermen caught in the lake have been assaulted, fridges have been confiscated, crops have been destroyed and, in one case, a man was buried alive by these groups of outsiders.
The result is that white men driving around in government vehicles have sometimes been shot at and the community has earned a reputation for being a group of wild men who cannot be easily visited or consulted by representatives of officialdom.
We drove in and found, instead, a group of old men waiting next to a spaza shop made of cheap planks to hold a meeting with their councillor — and very keen to explain their point of view to outsiders.
“You ask how we feel about being told to leave the forest. We look around and see people over the river in St Lucia have cut down trees to build their big homes. Farmers up the road have cut the forest to grow eucalyptus,” said one of the elders who did not want to be named.
“They have destroyed the forest. Now they say we are the ones who are destroying it. Yet we stay here because we like trees. We like to live among them because we can grow bananas here, we can grow two kinds of madumbes [sweet potatoes], pawpaws, cabbages and the wild trees give us all kinds of fruits. So why should we destroy it?”
Others said the local chief and his councillors had instructed people not to cut down trees unnecessarily and that members of this forest “government” were planning to institute punishments for people who did.
Another of the elders provided a list of indigenous fruit species that supplement peoples’ diets: umvuthwamini (a small brown berry); amahlala (monkey apples); amabunga (a large yellow fruit); amabhunzi (that divides into parts like an orange only it is much sweeter) and izinduni (berries that go black when they are ready to be eaten).
The official version is that the forest dwellers are “invaders” or “squatters” who have come into the area from the outside. At least three of the old men in the gathering at the forest spaza shop said they had been forcibly moved from the eastern shores of St Lucia in the 1950s.
Across the tar road, at Dukuduku Two, people have agreed to move from the forest in return for receiving formal housing sites. The Campaign to Save St Lucia has subsidised a local community project that is trying to organise electricity, water and other services in an effort to lure more of the “settlers” out of the forest.
“But to move people needed money in the first place. You need cash to build a house on the other side of the road. The people who stayed here are the poorest ones. Most have no jobs. We live by fishing [illegally], by selling madumbes and bananas or by fishing in the lake,” said an unofficial spokesman.
“People live here because they have been moved from their old homes. We live in limbo. That is why we build with planks. We have no money and we may have to move at any time. But at least here we are independent. We don’t have to rely on anybody to give us anything.”
What did they think about the argument that tourism is a fast-growing industry and that they stand to benefit if they leave the forest and allow it to attract a vibrant ecotourism industry to the region?
“The nature people are izigebengu [criminals]. They arrest us and they destroy our homes. They will never agree with us. It is better that they leave us alone and in peace.”