A wealthy European businessman has invested millions in a unique conservation project
Fiona Macleod
Paul van Vlissengen is one of the richest men in the world, but when he comes out to South Africa where he spends half his time at the moment he lives in a tent. Even for a Hollander, the winter winds blowing off Thabazimbi’s Matlabas river can be bone-chilling.
Van Vlissingen’s mission in Thabazimbi is to turn the Marakele National Park into a conservation model that will be copied in other sub-Saharan countries. Besides an investment of $25-million, he is contributing his considerable management experience.
His theory is that national parks on the sub-continent have floundered in the post-colonial era not just due to a lack of finances and political will, but because they lack management know-how.
“Young, ambitious managers tend to go to banks and corporates, not to parks. What we’re doing is building up a management model that can be used in other joint private-state initiatives,” he says.
Van Vlissengen (60) was born into one of the oldest business families in the Netherlands. The family conglomerate of which he is chairperson, SHV Holdings, has global interests in recycling, retail including Makro stores worldwide oil and gas, and employs more than 50 000 people in 30 countries. He and his two brothers appear regularly on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s top billionaires.
A philosopher by inclination, when Van Vlissengen was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 38, he decided it was time to put something back into life.
“I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I realised you can’t claim to have lived successfully if you look back and can only say that you have made a lot of money,” he says. “You must do something meaningful.”
It was to nature, science and wildlife that he turned for solace. One of his projects was buying the largest game reserve in western Europe, the Letterewe Estate in Scotland, opening it to the public and resisting several attempts to develop it.
Now he has turned his global business acumen on Africa. At Marakele, about 250km north-west of Johannesburg, he has bought out 14 loss-making farms and is rapidly returning them to wilderness.
Driving around the area in a 4×4, he constantly curses the “fences, fences that must come down”. Hundreds of kilometres of fencing, power lines and telephone lines are being ripped out, while run-down farmhouses and hunting hovels are being bulldozed into the ground.
“Some people think I’m crazy, but those stone houses have no place in a wilderness area. I thought that if I don’t do this now, there will always be a reason not to do it.”
He shows how, in a country with such a desperate need for housing, he is developing a small village on the border of his reserve, and uplifting the local school and police station. “This is not just a rich white man’s hobby,” he says, “the local communities must become proud of this project.”
In the beginning of September, the fences between Van Vlissengen’s 20 000ha of reclaimed wilderness and the Marakele National Park will be dropped. The 51 000ha national park was proclaimed in February 1994 to protect the landscape and rare species found in the transitional zone between the dry western and moist eastern regions of the Waterberg mountains.
Bordering the east of the park is the Welgevonden private game reserve, jointly owned by 61 wealthy landowners. These landowners agreed last week to drop the fences between their 34 000ha reserve and Marakele meaning that within the next year the whole complex will total more than 120 000ha.
The model includes some interesting financial innovations. The private landowners at Welgevonden each have freehold title to 500ha of the reserve, rather than owning shares.
Van Vlissengen has given South African National Parks (SANParks) a one-sided call option to buy his land at any time over the next 30 years. His 20 000ha comprises mostly sweetveld and will be jointly managed by himself and SANParks.
If SANParks doesn’t take up the option in 30 years, he says, he will offer them another 30 years. “After that, I’m not sure what will happen you can’t organise everything in your lifetime.”
Five 20-bed tented camps will replace the buildings Van Vlissengen has bulldozed, and will be put out to tender for ecotourism operators. SANParks will receive between 4% and 8% of the tourism revenues.
In return, SANParks has undertaken to transfer more than 1 300 head of game to Marakele. The complex will be home not only to the “big five”, but to endangered species like wild dogs, roan antelope and a quagga-like zebra breeding project.
Though Van Vlissengen has been criticised recently by some British environmental groups for supporting the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance his partner is on the board of the alliance he says there will be no hunting at Marakele.
Welgevonden’s experience over the past eight years has shown that ecotourism is a viable alternative in an area where farming is marginal and the only other economic activity mining iron and platinum is moribund. Ten commercial lodges are now operating on Welgevonden, which has provided 500 jobs where farming previously provided only 15.
“Humans are such a successful species that we are pushing everything else out,” says Van Vlissengen. “There are lots of other species who have the same rights to be on this planet and it is our duty to help them survive.”
His aim at Marakele is to show the Western world how, “with relatively little money” and the right kind of focus, it can succeed in projects that will help the planet “not just through Kyoto-type anti-pollution protocols”.
@News in brief
l Nelson Mandela celebrated his 83rd birthday on Wednesday. It was also his and Graca Machel’s third wedding anniversary. A school neighbouring his Houghton office surprised the couple with an unexpected choral performance early in the morning. Mandela told the children that they had made his day.
l Professor Brenda Gourley, vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Natal, is to head Britain’s biggest and most innovative higher education institution, the Open University. She will be the first woman in this position and will be one of few women to lead a British university.
l Cape Town former attorney Hoosain Mohamed (60), struck off the roll for scamming indigent accident survivors, was granted R10 000 bail in the Wynberg Regional Court to prepare for his trial on more than 180 charges of fraud and theft related to Road Accident Fund claims. Last Friday the asset forfeiture unit froze his local and overseas assets.
l Mercedes Sayagues, the Mail & Guardian’s former Zimbabwe correspondent, is challenging her deportation earlier this year, in the Zimbabwe High Court. Zimbawean officials claimed she was an agent for Unita Sayagues says she was deported because she is journalist. Two other foreign journalists were also deported earlier this year.
l The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund has finally announced the names of the first 54 charities to benefit from the Lotto. The organisations shared almost R8-million, which was either handed over directly to the charities or by bank transfer. Another R40-million is still available for distribution.
l Ellis Park general manager George Stainton said that stopping the game between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs would have worsened the situation. He was testifying at the commission of inquiry into the deaths of 43 soccer fans this week. He said there was chaos outside the stadium long before the game started, and despite Fifa rules that a match cannot start until there is calm at a stadium, “this rule should be adapted to suit prevailing circumstances”. Stainton said the final responsibility for security at Ellis Park on April 11 lay with the police.
l Sixty penguins were rescued from an island off the Cape coast almost a year after an oil spill that threated their survival. They were covered with oil and emaciated, which suggests that they had to swim for several days before reaching land.
l Six children, aged between three and 12, were burned to death in an outhouse where they lived, near Pretoria, on Sunday night. The blaze is thought to have been caused by a candle.