An indaba held by the parks board to discuss the problem of elephants in the Kruger Park ended up being dominated by the needs of neighbouring communities, writes Eddie Koch
THE sky on the night of President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration back in May 1994 was moonless and, after watching the song and dance at the Union Buildings on an old television set, I sat in a hut with Gilbert Nwaila talking by candlelight about life in his village about a kilometre from the fence of the Kruger National Park.
Nwaila, a cattle farmer from the village of Mabiligwe in a far corner of the Northern Province, told a story of how his neighbours had been moved at gunpoint from the northern parts of what is now the Kruger Park, and he described the manifold problems which continued to affect their lives on the day of their freedom.
This is how he described the paradox: “Today we have our freedom. Yet we cannot move. We feel locked in. The people of Mabiligwe had lived in a wild and beautiful part of the park for more than 100 years when government trucks and some policemen arrived in 1969 and told them to move. Some resisted by throwing stones but the community relented when the police threatened to shoot.”
As he spoke, a series of low bellows emanated from the cattle kraal next to his homestead. Nwaila’s sons ran into the darkness where they found a heifer that had been chased and mauled by hyenas. The boys slit its throat, and as its blood seeped into the earth, Nwaila explained that in a bad month he could lose six head of cattle to predators which break out of the fence that separates his people from the park where they once lived.
This week, more than two years after Mandela’s inauguration, the representatives of thousands of people like Gilbert Nwaila made it clear that they would no longer accept a situation in which ordinary rural people, many of them the victims of removal to make way for the park, are expected to bear the new burdens of living next to one of the world’s most famous game reserves.
The occasion was a conference called by the National Parks Board this week to discuss how best to manage the elephant herds of the Kruger Park without resorting to culling – one of the most heated environmental controversies in recent times. Billed as the elephant indaba, the event turned into one of the most important challenges to this country’s conservation authorities to ensure that game reserves play a meaningful role in rural development.
“We know very much that the Kruger Park is a national asset. But we shouldn’t forget that the wild animals in Kruger have a direct impact on the local people. The animals are destroying our products. The park must help to make development programmes to upgrade these neighbouring communities. We feel we must be assisted by the Kruger National Park,” said Mmbengeni Musalafu, a local government councillor for three villages adjoining the park’s northern boundary.
`What the communities want is some involvement in the management of the park because their voice is not being heard. The National Parks Board seems to be representing animals only because at the end of the day the people’s voice is not being heard,” added Joseph Ngwenya, member of the transitional local council for the Bushbuckridge area.
The councillors were part of a delegation representing villages along the entire western border of the Kruger Park which attended the conference to make the very basic point that, although the South African public had a right to discuss what went on inside the national park, the needs of people who used to live there and whose livelihoods were most affected had to be given priority.
And Elvis Madhlope, vice chair of the Bushbuckridge Environmental Forum, emphasised lions which preyed on people’s livestock or marauding elephants trampling people’s crops were only the most dramatic issue the delegation wanted to deal with.
Historically people lived there, he said. “But ever since the Kruger National Park was established we have never seen what that place can do for the community. No classrooms or businesses like people being able to sell their crafts in there. Take even this elephant issue. We hear about the selling of ivory in the past but we never knew what happened to it.”
A set of resolutions, adopted earlier this month at a workshop attended by more than 100 people from many of the villages bordering the park, insisted that mechanisms or an institution must be created to ensure effective community participation in and benefit from the management of the Kruger National Park.
A number of speakers at this week’s conference added that the new board of trustees, appointed last year by the Cabinet to oversee the work of the parks board, was not creating this opportunity. “We are not really challenging the legitimacy of this new board of trustees. But we are challenging the effectiveness of their job. Many issues need their attention but have not yet been addressed.”
Members of the rural delegation said they were disturbed to hear about the public conference to discuss how best to manage the population of Kruger’s elephants in the press – even though the park’s management had set up four forums in regions adjoining the park to liaise with neighbouring communities about conservation issues that affected them.
“The parks board made no plans to take the process to communities,” said Unjinee Poonan of the Group for Environmental Monitoring (Gem), the organisation that arranged the community workshop and delegation. “The National Parks Board didn’t even take the policy discussion document to its own community forums.”
A list of resolutions presented by the rural delegation stated that specific needs of the neighbouring communities that must be addressed through a change in the management policy of the Kruger National Park included:
* Compensation for damages suffered by problem animals.
* Access to natural and cultural resources in the park. The former includes firewood, water and thatching but also … the right to harvest wildlife through hunting. The latter includes the right of access to visit sites of cultural importance such as ancestral graves.
* Business partnerships based on tourism and related activities to do with the existence of the park. This would be one of the most effective ways to redistribute the benefits and revenues generated by Kruger’s existence.
* Environmental education to remedy past exclusion of black people from exposure to game reserves and the kind of conservation values that they generate.
* Contributions from revenues generated by the park to infrastructural development such as the provision of water, electricity, housing and clinics.
Julian Sturgeon, from the Africa Resources Trust (Art), pointed out that the communities demands were modest and responsible. They respected the park’s integrity and did not want to take over the reserve so that it could be used for farming or other economic activities.
Sturgeon added it was a priority for the parks board – along with other government agencies such as provincial governments, the Department of Land Affairs and the Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism – to ensure that effective programmes were created on the borders of Kruger.
Gilbert Nwaila may not have realised it when his heifer was killed by hyenas in Mabiligwe more than two years ago, but the event that took place earlier that day – the inauguration of a new government which has given effective power to ordinary people in far-flung parts of the country – has ensured that people and their needs can no longer be ignored by the country’s conservation authorities.
And this, rather than issues relating to the complex question of whether to cull or not to cull elephants, was the basic message from the parks board’s indaba this week.