/ 18 February 2004

Enter the ‘healing’ manager

David Mabunda, the new head of South African National Parks (SANParks), promises to get the public more involved in the management of their natural heritage.

In an interview shortly after taking over as SANParks’s CEO on November 1, Mabunda said he plans to set up a ‘people’s participation platform” for input from the public. This will meet twice a year on issues of ‘national importance”.

Mabunda succeeds Mavuso Msimang, a former exile who during his six years at the helm put SANParks on the political map. The new head says now it is time to expand public support for the organisation.

‘Msimang opened the political doors and made this organisation legitimate in the eyes of many South Africans. My job is to manage that legitimacy,” he says.

Mabunda takes over the reins at a time when SANParks is at its most commercially viable. In the past few years it has changed from an organisation that was in the red and had serious cash-flow problems to one that is in the black and is attracting both government and private investment.

Privatising concession areas, shops, restaurants and various services in the Kruger National Park – which accounts for some 80% of SANParks’s revenues, land mass and staff – has played a large part in the turnaround. As director of Kruger since 1997, Mabunda walked the talk.

Kruger has seven concessions, which last year contributed R6,5-million towards SANParks’s R50-million profit. Mabunda plans to extend private concessions to at least four of the other 19 national parks.

Raised in rural Lowveld, Mabunda (45) brings a personable touch to the chief’s office in Groenkloof, Pretoria. He has various degrees in education, development management and a PhD in ecotourism management is on the way.

He insists ‘people problems” will be his main focus. ‘Marrying science and management is one of my immediate objectives,” he explains.

‘Many of our problems in national parks are people- orientated. We have ample scientific research, and plan to continue with this. But we lack social research.

‘Until we understand interactions between social management and natural science, we will not be able to — [achieve] the state of the parks that we desire.”

One of the first issues to test this will be whether SANParks should cull elephants. Scientists say South Africa has too many elephants and they are destroying biodiversity, but various groups are questioning their statistics and motives.

Mabunda says his public participation platform will be up and running by the time the culling issue is ready to be debated, after the elections in the first half of 2004.

‘We need to bounce things off people. The elephant management issue is no longer a scientific issue, it’s a national issue of debate. I cannot tell people what to do.

‘We’ve listened to various sides, but I want to hear what the communities around Kruger and Addo Elephant National Park are saying about elephant management, I want to hear what politicians say, what business people say.

‘I listen to scientists all the time. We have an elephant management plan on the table, but apparently there are problems around that. So let’s get a representative forum of all stakeholders together and let them really say their say.”

Mabunda showed during his time at Kruger that he is a manager who likes to walk around. He plans to play a hands-on role in all the parks now under his care, so there will be some restructuring of staff at Groenkloof – including the appointment of a chief operating officer.

He is quick to point out this will be nothing like ‘operation prevail”, the unpopular restructuring exercise that transformed SANParks from khaki conservatism to a more representative organisation in the late 1990s.

‘Operation prevail was a cost-reduction exercise, it had nothing to do with management efficiencies. We were under pressure. We are no longer under pressure, we are in the black.”

Mabunda describes his ‘healing” management style as focusing on healthy relationships that improve efficiency. And when he goes walkabout, he likes to take a partner or two with him. ‘Partnerships are important,” he says. The kind of partners he wants include universities and research institutions, communities neighbouring national parks, investors, donors, philanthropists – and, of course, the broad South African public.

‘I work for the people,” he says, ‘they must tell me what they want. I can only provide information, put it on the table in a manner that is easy to understand and let them come up with a decision.”