So intense is the emotion surrounding land claims against the Kruger National Park that after our recent front-page story on the issue, one community leader indicated he would be calling for the head of South African National Parks (SANParks) spokesperson Wanda Mkutshulwa. Mkutshulwa’s crime had been to warn that the validation of the 37 claims — affecting about a quarter of the park — could threaten Kruger’s survival, and that claimant communities were wrong to see it as a kind of money machine, like Sun City’s Lost City.
Kruger poses a very difficult and delicate conundrum for a government that has set itself a revised deadline of end-2007 for the settlement of all land restitution claims. It does not want to appear to be putting the interests of animals before those of people. Land remains a powerful symbolic issue in a country with a long history of violent expropriation, and where most real estate remains in the hands of whites.
The African National Congress is keenly aware of its vulnerability on land to sometimes opportunistic organisations such as the Pan Africanist Congress (remember Bredell?) and the Landless People’s Movement. The communities forced out of Kruger under apartheid have both right on their side and political clout.
Yet SANParks raises a real concern.
If land in the Kruger is transferred to all claimants, as has already happened with the Makuleke people in the north, the national parks authority will lose both control over large chunks of the reserve and revenues from them. Encouraged by private consultants with an eye to the main chance, some claimants appear to have developed extravagant expectations of what the park can give them.
The reality is that Kruger is not a cash cow — in some years it breaks even, in others it slips into the red. The government cannot expect it both to be financially self-sufficient and to surrender key sources of income. And what happens if successful claimants decide to farm their new land — which is presumably their right?
We believe it is wrong to view the park, and others like it, as colonial hangovers or simple instruments of development. Kruger may have been the creation of an Afrikaner nationalist politician, but it is now a truly national asset, under the control of a democratically elected government.
More than this, it is an irreplaceable repository of the pre-colonial environment, the nearest thing we have to South Africa before the arrival of the Dutch and British. As such, it is as deserving of preservation as Mapungubwe or the remains of Tswana Iron Age settlements. Conservation in South Africa is a nationalist issue.
Above all, Kruger must be seen as a precious custodian of biodiversity on a continent where indigenous wildlife is under acute threat, and in a world where species extinction is reaching breakneck speed. Like the Amazon rain forest, it is a heritage held in trust for all humanity.
Justice, and the Land Restitution Act, require that dispossessed communities are properly compensated — but this should not happen at the expense of Kruger’s viability. The park should be treated in the same way as urban land under claim where restitution is not possible, alternative compensation should be given in the form of other land, cash or preferential access to government housing and services.
We are all Zimbabweans
The political farce that took place in tiny Togo on the West African coast has turned into a tale with a happy ending. Faure Eyadema will now have to contest elections if he wants to be president.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo must take credit for showing effective leadership as head of the region’s economic and political powerhouse and a leading figure in the Economic Community of West African States.
It was only when leaders of the region declared “nous sommes tous des Togolais [we are all Togolese]”, and made it clear that they would not accept another undemocratic government on their doorsteps, that Eyadema bowed to the inevitable and stepped down.
Across the Sahara, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak this week announced to a sceptical nation and region that Egyptians will, for the first time, vote directly for a president of their choice. This after Condoleezza Rice cancelled her visit to Cairo, ostensibly in protest against the jailing of opposition leader Ayman Nur. Also this week, Burundians went to the polls to vote on a South African-brokered power-sharing formula.
With all states with permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council now being democracies — except China and, to some extent, Russia — African leaders are seeing the importance of bringing democratic credentials to the table.
It seems clear, therefore, that if President Thabo Mbeki intends portraying himself as worthy of a Security Council berth, he must start playing his role as a driver of democratic values and institutions in our immediate region. There is simply no disputing the fact that our immediate neighbours, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, are democratic dunces.
Egg-dancing around the hard issues does not work, and Obasanjo has ably demonstrated the alternative. It is time, Mr President, to announce that we are all Zimbabweans … and Swazis.