Fiona Macleod’s article entitled “Zulus take up spears for wildlife” (June 22 to 28) is a welcome look at some of the issues surrounding the growing involvement of rural people in wildlife conservation and tourism.
The article contains a basic flaw, along with omissions and inaccuracies that need to be noted.
It argues that the proposed Royal Zulu Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal is a superior conservation programme to the one being implemented by the Makuleke people in the far north of the Kruger National Park. The basic reason, says Macleod, is that the Makuleke people (who allow limited and controlled trophy hunting on their land in the Kruger Park) “will always be at one remove from the animals, without knowledge of living with them”.
It suggests that, because trophy hunting will not take place if and when the Royal Zulu Reserve gets off the ground, “Zulu” children have a better chance to “grow to love and protect the wild animals”.
This erroneous conclusion can only be sustained by omitting the following important details about the Makuleke project.
The article is accompanied by pictures of young Makuleke people holding snares that had been planted in the Pafuri section of the Kruger Park by poachers from Zimbabwe. What it fails to mention is that many of these snares were removed by Makuleke game guards trained by the Makuleke people after they regained ownership of their land in Kruger to protect the wildlife in their section of the park.
These young game guards are developing a database that will identify what species are present in their part of the Kruger Park, how these animals migrate and behave, the incidence of poaching, the state of water holes that sustain the animals and a range of other important facts.
Twenty-nine Makuleke students are doing advanced courses at tertiary level in conservation, tourism and business management. Many of these students specialise in studying particular species of animals and spend weeks at a time in the bush working with researchers to observe the behaviour of these species.
The Makuleke are constructing a cultural centre in their village and a satellite in the Kruger Park that will include a museum to inform tourists and youth of the village about the spiritual meaning wildlife had for the Makuleke people when they lived, before being forcibly removed, in the Pafuri section of the park.
The Makuleke people have just signed a contract with a privatesector company to develop a luxury game lodge on their land in the park. A number of youngsters from the village are being trained as field guides.
If it is true that the descendants of Dinizulu have an aversion to hunting and will end up respecting these animals more than people like the Makuleke who allow trophy hunting, Macleod needs to explain a picture in a Sunday newspaper this week.
It shows under the headline “Going for the kill” a picture of the Zulu king armed with a .305 hunting rifle and many of his chiefs about to go hunting. Which is not to condone the activity but to make the point that a narrow animal rights perspective and a set of ethnic stereotypes have impoverished your newspaper’s coverage of a strategic and important aspect of this country’s political ecology. Eddie Koch, Nelspruit
I used to think I knew a bit about South Africa’s different groups because we had a subject called Race Studies at primary school. But then apartheid stopped and it seemed that the racial stereotypes portrayed in my school textbook had been wrong, or were offensive, or were no longer PC, at the very least. Thanks to Fiona Macleod’s insightful article on the planned Royal Zulu conservation project and the Makuleke Contractual Park, I can now tell the difference between Zulus and Shangaans (and good and bad). I commend you for printing her opinions, week after week, as these certainly inform those of us who got it all wrong. David Grossman, Sandringham