The Bushbuckridge Nature Reserve is being plundered while politicians squabble over who it belongs to, and who will take responsibility for it, reports Fiona Macleod
Armed syndicates are pillaging truckloads of rare indigenous trees from a 7E000ha game reserve on the border between Mpumalanga and Northern Province while politicians and conservation authorities squabble about who should take responsibility for it.
A handful of rangers has been left to fend off the syndicates plundering the Bushbuckridge Nature Reserve. They don’t even have a leader in the reserve: their warden is based about 50km away.
”The syndicates come with their trucks and their chainsaws,” says Elmon Khumalo, one of the rangers.
”They cut the trees out in the open. They’re not scared, because they’re armed and they know there’s nothing we can do.”
The syndicates are after kiaats, which are under pressure because they take so long to grow and because they’re in huge demand among furniture-makers. Kiaat is a dark wood that fetches about R3E000 per cubic metre, and is popular because it’s easy to work with.
The standard procedure used by the syndicates is to find a large tree, chop out the middle and leave the rest for firewood-gatherers or to rot.
The reserve was once stocked with game, but the animals were poached and disappeared a long time ago. Because the fences have been pulled down, there is little chance game will be reintroduced.
But conservationists and local residents say it has potential as a community resource reserve, which would be used for medicinal and household needs by locals in a managed way. It’s the only reserve in the Lowveld that crosses a transitional zone, with both Lowveld and mountainous vegetation.
”The local people graze their cattle here, but they haven’t tried to move into the reserve or start agriculture. Mostly they respect its borders,” says Khumalo.
This restraint is remarkable considering the Bushbuckridge reserve is surrounded by some of the fastest-growing and most neglected communities in the country.
Most of the plunderers, Khumalo adds, come from outside the local communities, though some locals have also jumped on the bandwagon.
Like the communities living around it in the Bushbuckridge border badlands, the reserve exists in a state of paralysis while politicians squabble about who it belongs to and who should look after it.
Its chequered past includes being divided in two between the former Gazankulu and Lebowa homelands. It was once run as a forestry reserve, and has been managed by the bantustan department of development aid, the Transvaal provincial administration and more recently the Mpumalanga Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Environment.
Who’s supposed to be running it now depends on whom you talk to. A joint provincial committee was set up in 1998 to arrange its transfer from the Mpumalanga department to the Northern Province conservation authorities, but more than a year later the transfer has still not taken place.
”The committee reported to their respective MECs, but probably because the Mpumalanga department has not been very stable the transfer did not take place,” says Feltus Brand, director of the Northern Province Department of Agriculture and Environment.
”As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been waiting for Northern Province to act,” says the Mpumalanga department’s Hannes Botha.
”The paperwork is complete. We just need the MECs to rubber-stamp the agreement for the transfer to take place.
”It’s a case of one side waiting for the other while nothing happens.”