A row is raging in one of the country’s largest environmental NGOs over the company people keep at the Mail & Guardian’s annual Greening the Future Awards.
No sooner had the Botanical Society of South Africa won the prize for environmental best practice in not-for-profit organisations than disapproving e-mails were circulating among the society’s 16 branches, as well as from various other leaders in the environmental field.
An outraged KwaZulu-Natal member fumed that it was not desirable for the Botanical Society to get an award ”along with the likes of Sanral [the South African National Roads Agency Limited], who as you know from the Wild Coast toll-road proposal is not really concerned about how roads impact on biodiversity”.
He also criticised the society for placing an advertisement in the Greening the Future supplement ”in the company of corporate organisations with questionable environmental records like Sappi, Richards Bay Minerals and Hillside Aluminum”.
Wally Menne, a well-known environmental activist and member of the Botanical Society’s KwaZulu-Natal Coastal branch, said the association with Sanral ”could impact negatively on public perceptions of the society.”
The 92-year-old botanical society is the largest membership-based conservation organisation in the country. Among the reasons it won a Greening prize was its transformation in recent years from a niche ”garden society” to a more broadly representative organisation with progressive partnerships.
But Menne criticised it for having a Western Cape bias and for not consulting other branches when entering the Greening awards. ”Even the Brunsvigia [flower] pictured in the article, and the Aloe dichotoma shown in the advert, give the impression that plants from other parts of the country cannot make the grade!” he fumed.
In an equally widely distributed e-mail, chairperson of the Botanical Society Council Eugene Moll defended its achievement and the process involved in its winning entry. ”To date we have received over 150 communications of congratulations. We have received only one communication, from Mr Menne, that questions our success.”
Moll pointed out the danger in judging people by the company they keep: ”Menne is well aware that a number of Botanical Society constituencies run projects that are supported by at least one of the corporations he criticises.”