Indigenous evergreen forests comprise only 0,56% of South Africa’s land surface area. These forests form the smallest of our natural biomes, made up mostly of tiny slivers and corners, coppices scattered across the land. There are the greater forests of Knysna and places like Dukuduku in KwaZulu-Natal, but political, social and commercial forces are putting enormous strain on these. The real giants among our natural forests have long since been felled for timber, a well-known and saddening fact.
Now a new threat poses, in the form of commercial forests, principally of gum and pine. And the authorities appear to be badly out of touch with priorities. According to a statement issued by the highly respected NGO, Timberwatch Coalition, the department of water affairs and forestry (DWAF) still continues to encourage and promote the expansion of destructive large-scale industrial timber plantations. The multiple benefits of natural forests literally are swept out of the way by the intensely cultivated, chemically dependent alien timber plantations. Timberwatch sees a conflict of interests as being at the core of this essentially contradictory policy. Timber plantations are wrongly classified as ”forests” under DWAF, instead of being classified as an industrial crop and therefore under the control of the department of agriculture.
Greater and more urgent needs seem to have been overlooked by DWAF in its eagerness to support commercial timber. Despite flowery statements to the contrary, the real truth is that these vast commercial plantations will more likely visit even more deprivation on already impoverished regions. Land for the timber plantations is effectively being given rent-free to the commercial interests, while local communities are being deprived of their means of survival. The loss of land and bio-diversity, which is the inevitable consequence of vast monoculture endeavours, always carries harsh penalties for the people who have to be moved from their traditional lands. To all intents a purposes, industrial plantations are a tool for land appropriation.
The commercial timber plantations are established on veld and farmlands where there is deep soil and high rainfall. This is because these alien trees are extremely greedy. A plantation of gums daily soaks up literally millions of litres of an already scarce water supply. Lands adjacent are forced into a form of water bankruptcy.
The Timberwatch statement is accompanied by extracts from international organisations such as the World Rainforest Movement (WRM). Depredation of natural biomes by monocultures is a worldwide problem, largely ignored by governments, which tend to be led by the nose — and cheque-book — by those in the often avaricious commercial world. India has a long and sad history of natural environment destroyed by monoculture plantations that have also destroyed the livelihoods of people. In Chile, the military dictatorships enacted legislation which gave special tax breaks and subsidies to the timber plantation barons. Indonesia has a long history of vast oil-palm and pulpwood plantations that have resulted in wide-scale natural forest destruction. In Brazil, the negative effects of monoculture are all but ignored by its government.
In a WRM bulletin of September this year, many alarm bells sound. A well-constructed argument details the adverse effects on rural communities of the commercial forests, particularly with regard to women, whose roles in the communities have been crudely distorted by the advent of the timber plantations. The management by women of small-scale subsistence farming has been made far more difficult by the overbearing plantations. Water supplies to the local people are drying up. There are reports of increasing social violence.
South Africa does not lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to servicing the appetites of industry and big commerce. Basic human needs, let alone those of preserving natural environment, have always been secondary. Precious coastal dune forests in KwaZulu-Natal are plundered for the titanium metals that can be extracted. Geometric rows of alien Acacia karoo bushes are the so-called re-establishment of the exquisitely balanced natural forests, intricate biosystems that had evolved over the millennia. The industry’s spin-doctors confound the politicians, who could put a stop to this rapacity by international conglomerates.
To quote from the Timberwatch press release: ”DWAF has produced a five-year strategic plan that clearly described an interdepartmental ‘forestry and expansion’ initiative. This so-called initiative is being presented as a way to benefit people from previously disadvantaged and rural black communities, but it appears to be based on uninformed or exaggerated claims made by the timber industry — who will be the main beneficiaries of any expansion.” (The full Timberwatch and WRM statements can be accessed at www.timberwatch.org.za.)
We heard exactly the same spin-songs being sung as, a few years ago, Richards Bay Minerals moved in on the dune forests near St Lucia. Remember the resounding promises of how richly the local communities would benefit from having these international titans on their doorstep, ripping up the country with their huge machines. What the communities didn’t know was how efficiently BHP, Billiton and Rio Tinto were removing the communities’ minerals for sale on world markets. Not more than a smidgeon of these abundant titanium profits has ever come back to roost.
Isn’t it touching to see our politicians dancing to exactly the same tunes they danced to then.
PS: I shall be away on a short break for a few weeks