Table Of ContentParks and People in Postcolonial Societies
The GeoJournal Library
Volume 79
Managing Editor: Max Barlow, Concordia University,
Montreal, Canada
Founding Series Editor:
Wolf Tietze, Helmstedt, Germany
Editorial Board: Paul Claval, France
Yehuda Gradus, Israel
Risto Laulajainen, Sweden
Sam Ock Park, South Korea
Herman van der Wusten, The Netherlands
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Parks and People
in Postcolonial Societies
Experiences in Southern Africa
by
MAANO RAMUTSINDELA
University of Cape Town,
South Africa
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
CHAPTER 1 Society-Nature Dualism and Human Gradation 1
CHAPTER 2 The Imprint of Imparkation in Southern Africa 18
CHAPTER 3 The Consequences of National Parks 38
CHAPTER 4 New Nations and Old Parks 55
CHAPTER 5 (Dis)Continuities: Property Regimes in Nature
Conservation 76
CHAPTER 6 Searching for a People-Nature Matrix 91
CHAPTER 7 The Packaging of Community Benefits 106
CHAPTER 8 Transfrontier Parks: New Regimes and Old Practices 122
CHAPTER 9 Conclusion: Science and (Trans)National Parks 143
CHAPTER 10 Postscript: The Durban Accord and the Next Ten Years 153
REFERENCES 163
INDEX 174
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am extremely grateful to a number of people and institutions for the successful
completion of this book project. Myriam Poort encouraged me to develop the theme
of the book. Max Barlow’s comments on the initial proposal and his subsequent
suggestions were helpful and challenging. He made me search for commonalities
among non-western societies beyond my initial concern with people in southern
Africa. I gained some knowledge of people and parks in southern Africa from
individuals who generously shared their experiences with me. In Botswana, Deborah
Kahatano, Joseph Mbaiwa, Sedia Modise and Joyce Bakane granted me interviews
without hesitation. Staff at the library of the Department of Wildlife in Botswana
and the Kalahari Society allowed me access to useful documents. I would not have
had a glimpse of the dynamics of people and protected areas in Lesotho had it not
been for Refiloe Ntsohi and Bokang Theko, who were more than willing to assist me
with data collection in Lesotho. They also introduced me to their colleagues: the
Director of Parks, Mosenya, J.M.M.; the Park Manager and the ranger at
Sehlabathebe National Park, Nkuebe, A. and Lerotholi, T. respectively; Monyatsi
Mohau, and to Teboho Maliehe of CMBSL project. I am thankful to Gilberto
Vincente and Bartolomeu Soto for providing insights into the situation in
Mozambique. Lamson Maluleke sent me a valuable report on communities in
Mozambique for which I am grateful. In Namibia, Nyambe Nyambe and Dr Fanuel
Demas sensitised me to the teething problems of people and parks in that country.
Of course, my attempts to understand regional dynamics were shaped by own
knowledge of South Africa to which many people have made a contribution. My
former colleague, Phuthego Tsheola, assisted me in analysing the 2002 survey data.
I wish to thank the following individuals for agreeing to share their knowledge with
me through interviews: Maria Farmer, ‘Oom’ Paul de Wet, Fiona Archer, Phineas
Nobela, Immy Serakalala, Peet van der Walt, Howard Hendriks, Catherine Senatle,
Busi Gcabashe, Amos Mdluli and Werner Myburgh. In Swaziland, Zola Hlatswayo
played a crucial role as a research facilitator for which I am very thankful. Wisdom
Dlamini and Sinaye Mamba of the Swaziland National Trust Commission, Vilakati,
J.D. and staff at Shewula Conservancy granted me interviews. I am thankful to
Micah Katuruza for assistance during my visit to Zimbabwe. Thanks are due to
Mandy Innes and Sharon Adams for making all the travel arrangements for my
fieldwork, and to the University of Cape Town for supporting my research. I am
indebted to the National Research Foundation for its financial assistance.
vii
CHAPTER 1
SOCIETY-NATURE DUALISM AND HUMAN
GRADATION
INTRODUCTION
The use of the term ‘postcolonial societies’ in the title of this volume raises
questions about what the content and scope of the work being presented is and/or
should be. This is to be expected since there are different viewpoints on the notion
of ‘the postcolonial.’ Notwithstanding those viewpoints, postcolonialism, as a body
of knowledge, generally refers to those societies that were once dominated and/ or
oppressed by western powers.1 Over the years, a heated debate has ensued over the
extent to which postcolonial theory2 could aid our understanding of contemporary
issues in the former colonies, particularly in the South. It is not my intention to
reiterate the debate here. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that postcolonial
theory has been criticised because of its “aimless linguistic virtuosity” (Williams
1997: 380), Eurocentricism (Ahmad 1995) and for its dualistic and oversimplified
interpretations of history (Ranger 1996).3
There are many interpretations of postcolonialism and its usefulness or otherwise
in addressing contemporary problems. That interpretation hinges on the meanings
attached to the morpheme of the very concept of postcolonialism.4 This volume
aligns itself with, and confirms the view of postcolonialism as a process of
continuity. It views the trilogy of history – pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial –
implied in the word post-colonialism as an intermixture of events, processes and
actors that transcends any form of periodisation. In other words, it acknowledges the
continuing domination of postcolonial societies by former colonial masters in one
form or another. Critics of postcolonial theory would argue that such continuity
would be better described as neo-colonialism or, simply, as a continuation of
imperialism (see Abrahamsen 2003). There is merit in that critique, because the
former coloniser largely remains the ‘same person’, albeit with different faces and in
different guises.
However, such a critique does not solve the empirical problem of identifying and
defining victims of colonialism as a collective. Would neo-colonialism imply the
existence of a neo-colonial society, and what would the implications of that
designation be? A designation that captures that collective is imperative for both
conceptual and practical reasons. Conceptually, in the coloniser’s model of the
world, common attributes have been assigned to the colonised; these defined the
position of the colonised globally. Practically, institutions and organisations working
1
2 CHAPTER 1
towards some form of reparation (for the damages of colonialism) have to find a
working definition of who the victims were or are. In other words, the definition of
‘victims of colonialism’ demands that the colonised should be defined appropriately.
In this regard, Mazrui (1996: 123) observed that “the reparations movement
seems to have concluded that although the indigenous and Islamic forms of slavery
were much older than the transatlantic version, they were much smaller in scale and
allowed for greater upward social mobility – from slave to sultan, from peasant to
paramount chief.” In other words, reparation movements, though focusing on past
oppressive structures and groups, have to separate the principal oppressors from
other oppressive structures.
I have preferred to use the notion of ‘postcolonial societies’ in this volume as an
attempt to capture a collective group of people who had not only been subjected to
colonial rule, but who were also required to absorb western concepts of nature.5
They were forced to observe relations between society and nature in ways that were
(and in fact still are) alien to them. They had to do so in part because of the inferior
status, which was – and still is – assigned to them. Western concepts of nature and
the practices emanating therefrom were codified in the national park idea,6 and were
carried over into, and sustained in, countries that had been previously colonised. In
this sense, the concept of the postcolonial encapsulates the ramifications of the
national park idea.
I suggest that the use of postcolonial theory in analysing national parks is helpful
in dispelling the myth that colonial practices have ended, with regard to
contemporary protected areas, and national parks in particular. My argument herein
is that national parks, like previously colonised societies, cannot be fully understood
by analyses that seek to periodise nature conservation philosophies and practices.
The periodisation of national parks into either ‘colonial’ or ‘post-colonial’ distracts
us from understanding the continuity of some of the defining features of the national
park idea and its associated practices. The point here is that colonial practices
around national parks did not necessarily end with the end of formal colonialism.
Instead, they continued into the post-colonial period.
Against this backdrop, it is important to understand the nature of the impact of
the national park idea on societies that had previously been subjected to colonial
rule.7 My view is that national parks as a colonial creation in southern Africa and
elsewhere in the former colonies cannot be fully explained outside the context of the
colonial experience to which they belong. In other words, how can we explain
national parks (i.e. in the former colonies) outside the colonial experience, given that
those parks are a colonial creation? Certainly, colonised societies had their own
understanding of nature – and how it should be used and or protected – long before
the formalisation and institutionalisation of colonialism. Nevertheless, nature as
understood by pre-colonial societies had very little or nothing to do with the national
park idea. Instead, national parks emerged from western views of nature8 that
contrasted sharply with those held by non-western societies.
SOCIETY-NATURE DUALISM AND HUMAN GRADATION 3
VIEWS OF NATURE AND SCIENTIFIC FIELDS
Over the years, western thought on the distinction between society and nature has
conditioned the way we see and study nature.9 This is evident in education systems,
which have tended to normalise the division between natural and social sciences.10
The consequences of this have been that even those subjects, such as geography
which remains one of the few subjects dedicated to exploring the relations between
society and nature, have reinforced the society-nature separation by maintaining the
dichotomy between human and physical geography. Moreover, the gap between
human and physical geography is growing apace (Thrift 2002). As Gober (2001: 10)
pointed out,
the practice of synthesis in geography faces formidable huddles because we have
evolved into a discipline that is overly specialised, in which physical and human
geographers are strangers to one another, and whose current curriculum and educational
practices are at odds with synthesis.
For the purposes of our discussion, the division between physical and human
geography should be seen as echoing the western dualistic view of society and
nature.
The dualistic nature of geography is surprising for a subject whose core is said to
be an “abiding concern for the human and physical attributes of places and regions
and with the spatial interactions that alter them” (Abler, et al. 1992: 392). The
problem of schizoid disciplines is not confined to disciplines that have clear physical
and human components such as geography. Even those that focus on a supposedly
unified component have their fair share of problems. For instance, sociology has
society as its focus of study, but Rosa and Machlis (2002) are worried about the
artificial separation between environmental sociology and the sociology of natural
resources. They argue that,
the uncompleted task of achieving an authentic interdisciplinary science of the
environment and/or resources is due, in large part, to the recursive relationship between
narrow definitions of disciplines and trained incapacities, and to the subsequent
institutionalisation of counterproductive disciplinary distinctions (2002: 253).11
Could it be that the insertion of the notions of ‘environment’ or ‘natural resources’
into sociology carries with it the dividing tendency inherent in those notions?
Alternatively, is the schism that we observe, or seek to see, a trained habit of the
mind? Read from this angle, it is fruitless to encourage the development of practices
that foster the society-nature nexus, while our thought systems emphasise the
society-nature dichotomy.
It should be noted that the society-nature distinction has come under a sharper
scrutiny than before. A growing body of work has offered reinterpretations of nature
as both concrete and abstract. Radical interpretations have dismissed the society-
nature distinction on the basis that nature is inescapably social, and that the social
and the natural are inseparable in thought and practice (Castree 2001).12 Such
interpretations have emerged as a critique of the conventional understandings of, and
