PARKS: THEIR ORIGINS AND INFLUENCES
4.3. THE COLONIAL CONCEPTUALISATION OF THE PEOPLE AND PARK RELATIONSHIP RELATIONSHIP
4.3.1. The declining status of natural resources in the colonies
The declining status of natural resources in the colonies is the first factor that encouraged the preservationist approach towards the management of natural resources. Both fauna and flora resources were utilised during the process of colonisation in a manner that was destructive and exploitative. This section explores the decline of wild game in the colonies, as it was an important stimulus for the drafting of legislation to ultimately separate people from wildlife through the establishment of national parks. In addition this section discusses the decline of
7 Defined as “unequal territorial relationships among states based on subordination and domination, and typically associated with a distinct form of contemporary capitalism, such as the emergence of monopolies and transnational enterprises” (Johnston, 1981:75).
8 A form of rule, defined as “the establishment and maintenance of rule for an extended period of time, by a sovereign power over a subordinate and alien people that is separate from the ruling power” (Johnston, 1981:75). In the South African context the term refers to the system by which the British Empire was sovereign over its colonies in the Cape and Natal prior to 1910.
forest resources, particularly in the southern Cape, which was also a result of colonial expansion.
Wild game was essential to survival during the frontier era. Game provided materials such as whips, harnesses and saddles, and was a valuable trade item often used to sweeten relations with Africans whose land they passed through. Wild animals were also an important source of food for colonists and their slaves, they formed part of the wages for labour and they essentially financed expeditions through the sale of produce, such as skins and ivory (MacKenzie, 1988).
As the Dutch, who arrived at the Cape in 1652, spread inland they often named places based on the animals they encountered in the area. However, MacKenzie (1988) reflects that explorers in second half of the nineteenth century did not find the animals that the place name reflected (for example, Quaggas were no longer to be found at Quagga Fontein, nor Gemsbok at Gemsbok Laagte). It was primarily due to white exploitation of game that, within 150 years of the first Dutch occupation, “settlers, Boers and later British, aided by African hunters, had cleared the entire Colony of game” (MacKenzie, 1988:87). The annexation of the Dutch Colony by Britain reportedly increased the destruction of game in southern Africa because the British brought the Cape into greater contact with the international economy which, according to MacKenzie (1988) resulted in animals being studied and hunted for science and sport (most scientists were themselves also avid hunters).
Although the Dutch East India Company introduced the first game laws into the Cape in 1657, a key law was passed in 1694 that distinguished between protected animals and vermin. An important piece of colonial legislation was proclaimed in 1822 by Lord Charles Somerset, which introduced licences, closed seasons and divided animals into categories according to which they could be hunted. This was partly a response to the realisation that game was being progressively exterminated. Although numerous game laws were subsequently passed, for example in 1886, 1890, 1891, 1894, 1899, 1908 and 1909, they were passed ‘too little too late’
as few game survived and, prior to World War One, the game laws were near impossible to enforce in the Cape Colony (MacKenzie, 1988).
Towards the end of the 1800’s the decline of wildlife in the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic “stimulated the first pressure for conservation” (MacKenzie,
1988:86). The Tsetse and rinderpest outbreaks contributed to the overhunting that was taking place. This decline in wildlife mobilised pressure groups to promote legislation, the creation of reserves, and funding societies dedicated to the protection of game. Despite the British history of game legislation and methods of preservation (such as the establishment of private
‘preserves’) they were influenced by the German concept of a game reserve in the 1890’s. The concept of a game reserve was initially rejected owing to the inherent cost of policing that it necessitated being prohibitive. However after the 1900 Conference on African Wildlife, the notion of reserves, as well as other more stringent regulations, were incorporated into colonial legislation by the British and the German colonies (MacKenzie, 1988).
The game reserve, which is the first phase of the move towards conservation, was a form of preservation which:
“was shaped by the social and economic realities of Empire…access to animals was progressively restricted to the elite; animals were to be categorised according to sporting rather than utilitarian characteristics; some were to be specially protected for their rarity, others shot indiscriminately as vermin;
separation was to be attempted between areas of human settlement and those appropriate to animal occupation” (MacKenzie, 1988:201).
Thus, game was preserved for sport rather than true conservation. Despite this warped motivation for game reserves, the legislation did enable natural spaces to be set aside for the protection and management of game, even if controlled hunting was still allowed in these spaces. The first move towards preservation through reserves in Africa was in the Boer Republic of the Transvaal where President Paul Kruger suggested to the Volksraad in 1884 that a sanctuary be established for the protection of game to ensure that “children of his generation [could] see and hunt game” (MacKenzie, 1988:227). He called for the prohibition of hunting on some government land to ensure that game was not exterminated in the South African Republic. As a result two areas were proclaimed and legislated in 1890, followed by a third in 1894 and another two in 1895. Sabie game reserve (which later became Kruger National Park) was proclaimed in 1898. Four reserves were established in 1987 in Natal and, although small, helped to protect a few small herds of animals from the devastation of the rinderpest outbreak in 1896.
The second phase of the move towards conservation was the conversion of the reserves into national parks. A significant influential conference was the 1933 Convention Relative to the Preservation of Fauna and Flora in their Natural State in London, which was held on the back
of the International Conference for the Protection of Nature in 1931 in Paris. It was at the 1933 conference that the British delegation that attended the Paris conference presented a draft Convention for the Protection of African Fauna and Flora to the African colonial powers assembled (MacKenzie, 1988). The Convention reaffirmed the 1900 provisions but incorporated provisions concerning new technology. It also simplified the scheduling of animals by reducing the five classes to two classes, namely those requiring special protection and those requiring limited protection. However, the most significant proposal was to establish national parks (MacKenzie, 1988) and strict natural reserves (Steinhart, 2006). Despite being ratified by only a few of the attending parties, the provisions were incorporated into the legislation of the British colonial territories and therefore had an influence of the preservation of natural resources in South Africa.
Provision for the establishment of national parks was necessary because game reserves were quite ineffective in reducing the decline of wildlife resources. MacKenzie (1988) attributes this lack of efficacy to a variety of factors:
a. Game legislation was complex and difficult to administer
b. Exemptions were granted to visiting parties which set a poor example
c. Administrators and police broke the law that they were tasked with upholding outside the reserves
d. It was difficult to monitor hunting that took place in the reserves
e. The legislation for game reserves was applied to very different situations. It resulted in an overabundance of wildlife in East and Central Africa, and had little effect in South Africa as much of the game had already been exterminated.
This ineffectiveness was no secret. MacKenzie (1988) reflects that guidebooks of the time encouraged prospective visitors by suggesting that game laws were difficult to enforce.
National parks differ from reserves in the following way: whereas reserves are established for the protection and management of game, combined with limited controlled hunting, and human and animal living space was separated to encourage the proliferation of game. National parks, on the other hand, allowed humans into the animals living space but as “visitors, onlookers and photographers rather than as hunters” (MacKenzie, 1988:201). National parks were areas that were under public as opposed to government control, they had legislated boundaries, if they contained white and black settlements, they were to be regulated settlements, they should be sufficiently large to allow migration of animals, and they should be surrounded by game reserves or buffer zones. The concept of the national park model is discussed in greater detail
in Section 4.3.2, however attention is turned briefly to the decline in forest resources of the southern Cape and the need for regulation to protect the resources.
Flora was also in decline as a result of colonial expansion and therefore in need of regulation.
The 1933 conference was also significant because it was the first time that the awareness of the destruction to floral resources resulted in the preservation of flora being suggested for inclusion into legislation (MacKenzie, 1988). Tropp (2006:17) writes that as the “ ‘opening’ of the frontier enabled migrating sawyers and settlers from the Eastern Cape to exploit local forests, officials became increasingly concerned with regulating popular forest use, both African and non-African”. In the context of the southern Cape, the emergence of protectionist legislation in the late nineteenth century to regulate use and access to the Crown forests can be attributed to the reported severe decline in timber resources available to the colony (van der Merwe, 2002; Seydack and Vermeulen, 2004). The advance of British imperial conservationism of the Cape, as discussed above, is suggested by Tropp (2006:17) to be the reason for the acceleration of forestry administration in the 1880’s and it is contended that this conservationism is attributed to the growth of “colonial interests in ‘scientific forestry’, the moral ‘salvation’ of South African landscapes, and the sustainability of settler society all merg[ing] in the Cape”. According to Berger (1993, cited in Powell, 1998) measures such as the creation of game reserves, passing of gun laws and the proclamation of royal game, were discriminatory and served to protect colonial interests. The objective of this protective legislation was not the conservation of nature, but rather safeguarding wildlife to maintain the livelihoods of white settlers (MacKenzie, 1987; Powell, 1998; van der Merwe, 2002).
Therefore, what was happening in the southern Cape was part of the broader process of colonial park and natural resource management in Southern Africa.
The southern Cape forests were a valuable resource to both the Khoi and the Europeans. Prior to settlement by white people, the southern Cape forests were utilised by the Gonna or Obiqua Khoi of the southern Cape for obtaining the materials necessary for their spears (Curtisia dentata – assegaai), poison (Acokanthera oppositifolia – common poison bush), beverages (Cathera edulis – Bushman’s tea), knobkerries, furniture, dyes, and charcoal (McCracken, 2004). Sim (1907) believes that the Khoi were the least destructive users of forest and woodland. Upon their arrival, colonial settlers in Knysna, like other settlers in Africa, set about subduing nature, eradicating ‘species problematic to their livelihood’ and protecting species beneficial to their livelihood and recreation from the local ‘native’ communities (Owens-
Smith, 1988; Powell, 1998). Indigenous hard wood timber from the Afromontane forests of the southern Cape was favoured by the settlers for building carts and wagons. Wood was also used for gun carriages, shafts of assegais and spears, the handles of axes, the stocks of muskets and rifles, and for knobkerries. The value of wood for military purposes was so great that the British Royal Navy established a naval forest reserve in the Knysna region in 1807 (Brown, 1887, in McCracken, 2004).
Protective legislation introduced throughout the 1800’s up until the 1920’s was based on the need to ensure that the railway, mining and shipbuilding industries, which were critical for colonial advancement, would have sufficient timber in the future (van der Merwe, 2002;
McCracken, 2004). However accounts by van der Merwe (2002), McCracken (2004) and Seydack and Vermeulen (2004), reflect the difficulty in applying protective legislation. The exploitation of forest resources during the Millwood gold rush is an example of the demand placed on timber resources for development. McCracken (2004) writes that it was only in the early 1920’s that the idea of setting indigenous forests aside as forest reserves to preserve them as a national heritage emerged. The shift away from indigenous wood as an economic timber crop in favour of exotic plantation timber and imported timber, due to the stripping of indigenous forests and also the decline in wagon building, assisted in the shift towards a conservation-orientated paradigm (after Neumann, 1995b).