Fiona Macleod
It’s not surprising a culture of helping oneself to unearned gains has taken root in Mpumalanga – nor that the parks board is the instrument of this culture.
Take a bird’s-eye view of the Sand River as it winds its way from the Northern Province through Mpumalanga, and you’ll see why: on one side of the river nature’s abundance has made a coterie of private game reserve owners very rich; on the other scraggly homesteads are crammed on top of each other and people scratch a living out of a semi-desert. To those on the wrong side of the river, the riches on the other side seem endless but forever out of their reach.
In between the two extremes, the Sand – once a mighty river – has been reduced to a polluted, muddy trickle. Some years it doesn’t even flow and water has to be trucked in for people to drink.
Seventy-four-year-old Kaster Pako remembers when it used to be “a very big river, with lots of crocodiles and we used to fish in it. There was only one crossing and people used to live on both sides, with lots of space between them.”
During the apartheid years, the communities were uprooted and crammed into the labour dumping-ground called KaNgwane homeland, situated on the “wrong” side of the river. Bad farming practices by foresters and commercial farmers surrounding the homeland increasingly sapped the lifeblood of the river.
Downstream, most of the wealthy whites who inherited game farms in the Sabie Sands reserve from their parents managed to turn a blind eye to the misery of their neighbours. So did most of the tourists visiting the Kruger National Park, where the Sand River meanders before heading off to Mozambique.
But in the early 1990s, with the winds of political change blowing, there was a cruel drought in the area and hippos started dying. Dave Varty, co-owner of Londolozi, one of the private reserves in the Sabie Sands, decided to take a helicopter ride and see if there was any way of saving the river.
So began a process that eventually led this week to the launch of the Save the Sand project. Under the umbrella of the national agriculture department’s Land Care programme, it will see six national government departments, the Mpumalanga and Northern Province provincial governments, communities and NGOs, foresters, conservationists and private landowners working together to get the river flowing all year round again.
The main thrusts of the Save the Sand project include:
l Reducing the state forests of thirsty pine and gum trees planted in the mountains where the river begins. The Sand has the largest proportion of forestry of any catchment area in the country.
Because these are state forests, solutions are relatively easy. The national forestry department promised this week that the forest plantations will be reduced by 50% and turned into conservation areas.
l Removing alien vegetation such as wattle, lantana and bugweed from the banks of the river and surrounding areas.
The national water affairs department’s Working for Water programme has been clearing aliens along the Sand since 1997, and residents say they have already noticed an improvement in the water flow.
l Treating soil erosion that is clogging the river with mud.
A dam built on the river in the early 1990s to provide water for commercial farmers broke its walls in 1992, causing massive erosion. The plan is to fill it in and level it off.
l Encouraging farming practices that are more in tune with semi-arid conditions.
“The old citrus, rice and tobacco schemes have a limited future here,” said Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Derek Hanekom at this week’s launch.
The project aims not only to increase access to water in the area, but to provide jobs to communities where unemployment is estimated to be between 30% and 60%. Industrialisation has never been an option because of the scarcity of water.
The various government departments and some of the private game reserve owners have already contributed some R15-million to the project, and more money is in the pipeline.
Those reserve owners who have had the foresight to get involved in the project say it’s not just about getting more water in the river that flows through their properties and into the Kruger National Park.
“We need good relations with our neighbours,” says Tom Robson, a Sabie Sands representative who attended the launch. “What benefits them will also benefit us.”
For old man Pako, who has lived there since 1925, things can only get better: “The river can never be the same as when I was young, but we must stop it from becoming a desert.”