African communities dispossessed under apartheid have claimed at least a quarter of the land in the Kruger National Park, including its headquarters at Skukuza and prime tourist attractions such as Letaba and Pretoriuskop.
If all the claims were validated under the Restitution Act, they “would probably cost the park its survival as a national park and an international icon”, South African National Parks (SANParks) communications head Wanda Mkutshulwa warned this week.
A total of 37 claims has been lodged against Kruger, potentially affecting 500 000ha, or a quarter of the park. Private land on the park’s boundary sells for about R40 000 a hectare. In this context, the claims would cost the authorities about R200-billion if the claimants were compensated in cash.
SANParks insists it cannot settle the claims by entering public-private eco-tourism partnerships, as it did with the Makuleke people in 1998. This would bankrupt the Kruger, it said this week.
“National parks cannot be turned into ‘The Lost City’ [at Sun City], which is what communities see when they think of making money through land claims,” said Mkutshulwa.
Claimants say they want their land claims to yield jobs and businesses, and many look to the deal with the Makuleke as a model. Others say they want to settle on their ancestors’ land. “I just want to plough the land of my mother,” says Lucas Samo, who, as one of 25 individual claimants, has laid claim to Skukuza and Pretoriuskop.
Frustration over the pace of land restitution in Kruger has soured relations between SANParks and the Land Claims Commission. There have been attempts to heal the rift over the past two weeks, with the development of a task team to deal with the claims.
Land Claims Commission spokesperson Hilgard Matthews said there was “room for improvement” in the two parties’ relationship. “They [SANParks] oppose restoration and their objections are unsubstantiated,” he said.
At the heart of the spat is a Cabinet memo, issued last year, which tells
the Land Claims Commission, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and its conservation agencies how to deal with claims and the resulting land usage in protected areas. This advocates partnerships in protected areas between the authorities and communities.
However, SANParks insists the Cabinet policy should not apply to national parks, which exist to protect biodiversity and are not a development agency. It wants new guidelines drawn up for settling claims in national parks.
Mkutshulwa says SANParks is aware of 37 claims, but the number could increase “as we have been told that the commission is still in a process of validating some outstanding land claims”.
The commission said it has 35 claims on its books, including 25 individual claims in the south of the park. Samo, the farmer who has laid claim to the Skukuza headquarters, is a descendant of one of the communities removed from the park by its founder, Colonel James Stevenson-Hamilton. Stevenson-Hamilton was nicknamed “Skukuza”, meaning “the one who sweeps away”.
The biggest claim, the 179Â 069ha ba-Phalaborwa claim, was launched by four chiefs living around the town of Phalaborwa in 1998. They also have a number of claims outside the park. They plan to develop tourism on restored land outside Kruger, while hammering out a profit-sharing deal with the park authorities for the use of their land inside the park.
To date, only one claim inside the park has been settled. The Makuleke won back their land in December 1998 and the area is now jointly managed by the claimants and SANParks. But SANParks’s Mkutshulwa insists it will not be an easy model to duplicate, because each community of claimants has unique needs and expectations.
The claim by the Makahane community, involving 89Â 773ha just south of the Makuleke region, is probably next in line for settlement.
However, spokesperson Wilson Makahane envisages a different partnership with the Kruger management, with the community sharing in the park’s profits. “Our biggest problem now is to iron out a good deal with the Kruger park authorities,” he said.
Mkutshulwa said adjacent communities had seen tourists coming in and out of national parks for years, and had developed the idea that money could be made from the land.
“This is further compounded by business-minded people who think they can make money out of these communities,” she added.