On the eve of South Africa hosting the world’s biggest congress of protected area specialists, the CEO of South African National Parks (SANParks), Mavuso Msimang, has announced his resignation.
Msimang, who has been at the helm of SANParks for the past six years, is leaving to head up the State Information Technology Agency (Sita). The IT parastatal has been plagued by leadership problems for years.
Msimang will stay in his present position until after the World Parks Congress, being hosted in Durban from September 8 to 17, but says the announcement of his move needed to be made now in order to quell rumours that have been circulating for months.
”The process of recruiting me into Sita has been going on for some time. There had to be Cabinet approval and once these things start getting discussed in corridors, it’s just a matter of time before the rumours have to be confirmed or denied. The silence was becoming a problem for us,” he told the Mail & Guardian this week.
Msimang is the first post-apartheid appointment to head the national parks authority. His tenure has been credited with transforming the khaki conservatism that used to stigmatise the organisation.
Another major achievement has been the turnaround of SANParks’s finances in the past few years. From an organisation that was in the red and had serious cash-flow problems it has been transformed into one in the black and attracting both government andprivate investment.
Among the people shocked and saddened by Msimang’s imminent departure is Murphy Morobe, chairperson of the SANParks Board. ”He has been an enlightened leader — the right man for the job at the right time,” says Morobe.
”Msimang’s tenure has been marked by his significant dedication to the cause of conservation and by his understanding of its relevance in the transformation process.”
Msimang is a modest man and few outside his immediate circle know that he spent 30 years in exile, where he received military training, was part of the high command of Umkhonto weSizwe — including becoming Oliver Tambo’s first secretary in the early 1970s — and then moved on to head up various refugee and rural development programmes in other parts of Africa. He graduated with a science degree, majoring in entomology and biochemistry, at the University of Zambia.
After his return to South Africa in 1993, he coordinated NGO development projects before being appointed executive director of the South African Tourism Board and CEO of tourism in KwaZulu-Natal.
In his role as chief of SANParks since 1997, the struggle has been connecting people and nature. ”All South African people, regardless of culture, have very strong relations with nature,” he says. ”It’s even in the languages we speak. But plantations, human settlements, urbanisation as a whole, have intervened. Nature surrounds people even outside protected areas, in places like parks in town. We need to reconnect the two, to get people away from the bustle.”
The amount of land under conservation has increased significantly during his leadership: Addo Elephant National Park has gained almost 70 000ha and there have been significant expansions at Mountain Zebra National Park, Marakele and Tankwa Karoo National Park. Large parts of the Cape Peninsula have become a national park, Namaqualand has a new national park and Vhembe-Dongola park in the far north is fast taking shape.
Relations with the communities neighbouring the parks are slowly improving, particularly after the introduction of concession areas that benefit communities and poverty relief programmes linked to the parks.
”Rather than black economic empowerment, our bias has been towards community economic empowerment. This experiment in cooperating with people has to succeed if conservation is to succeed,” Msimang says.
SANParks recently introduced a poverty alleviation programme called ”Parks empowering people”. This week Razeena Wagiet, an old hand at community-based education and environment adviser to Minister of Education Kader Asmal for the past four years, was appointed to take the programme forward.
These are the kinds of issues that will be dealt with during the World Parks Congress, where the theme will be ”Benefits beyond Boundaries”.
Thousands of protected area specialists from around the world are expected to descend on Durban for the congress, which is hosted jointly by SANParks and IUCN-The World Conservation Union.
The congress will draw up a collective vision called the Durban Accord for the future of protected areas. Msimang says the financing of parks and governments’ role in supporting them will be on the agenda.
”I still believe that the government has a basic responsibility to finance conservation. When you have a 9/11 type of crisis, you don’t want your heritage to be left standing because funds were not available.”
Morobe says replacing Msimang will be a challenge for the SANParks board. ”I asked him what size shoes he wears and I must tell you they are pretty big shoes to fill.”
Sita will inherit a tall man with large feet; a man who during his time in exile and at SANParks demonstrated his ability to reach out to ordinary people; who has shown his grasp of business and linking statutory bodies to government. And perhaps not least of all for an IT agency, a man who studied Morse code communications at military school in Moscow.