6.2 T RUSTS DURING THE T RANSITION
6.2.1 Development trumps property: implications of the Richtersveld Gemeenskaps Trust
the Richtersveld National Park [RNP] (Spies, 2018). As was the order of the day at the time, the local community had not been adequately consulted which led to opposition that culminated in the community obtaining an urgent interdict halting the process a day before the contract was to be signed (Community member 1, Interview, 20 July 2018). Following negotiations that lasted for 18 months, an amended contract was drafted and signed in July 1991 establishing the Park (Hendricks, 2004). Of interest in this study is the timing of its establishment during South Africa’s State of Emergency and the key question of why was it important for the apartheid government to establish a national park before 1994?
SANParks’ official narrative is that the idea to create the park started in the 1970s, but that the consolidation of these ideas was delayed by interdepartmental tension and bureaucracy and that it was only in the 1980s that the plans were further developed (Spies, 2018). McCusker et al. (2016) present a different view arguing outgoing governments in Africa tended to adopt pre-emptive measures meant to secure the future of protected areas. These pre-emptive measures, they argue, were not just about land, but were part of the wider politics of the African state. To avoid ambiguity, these wider politics can be summarised as the distrust shown by outgoing minority governments about the capability of incoming African-led governments and the fear of radical reforms that would threaten white interests (McCusker, 2016; Moon, 2017).
It is important to note that while the focus here is on the apartheid government’s actions, Ramutsindela (2007) has documented the role of powerful individuals within the conservation lobby in the establishment of the RNP. The conservation lobby largely represented white
interests and suspicions about the attitude an incoming African-led government would have towards conservation. On the one hand, there was the fear that protected areas would be threatened by radical land reform while on the other hand there was a feeling that the incoming government would be preoccupied with solving socio-economic issues rather than attending to the protection of nature (McCusker et al. 2016).
Rather than let things unfold the conservation lobby along with the apartheid government were able to take advantage of the set of factors during this period to develop a solution that would put to bed the issue of land reform. The first of these factors was the existence of mining in the area which the conservation lobby wanted to limit. Magome & Murombedzi (2003) remind us that in South Africa contractual parks were about extending protected areas to include land that could not be bought or where there were mining rights. South African mining legislation privileges mining over conservation (Centre for Environmental Rights, 2021) meaning that the conservation lobby needed to find alternative strategies to limit the expansion of mining.
Second, at the time of political negotiations, the community did not have ownership rights over the land (McCusker et al., 2016). The land was in fact state land held in trust for the community with the community possessing usufruct rights over the land as it was being used for communal grazing (Boonzaier, 1996). Thus, the prospect of having their claim to the land recognised through the contractual agreement would be an attractive proposition to the Richtersveld community. This is because according to the agreement, community representatives from each town and a representative for stock farmers would be elected to form part of the joint management board that manages the park as stipulated in the co-management aspect of the agreement (Boonzaier, 1996). Additionally, the community would receive income in the form of land rentals into Richtersveld Gemeenskaps Trust (RGT) which would be used for community development as a form of benefit-sharing (Boonzaier, 1996; Henricks, 2004).
The contractual park and the RGT viewed together ensured that SANParks’s initial plan of having the area demarcated for conservation remained unchanged while further legitimatising the RNP by involving the community symbolically. To give a short background, contractual agreements first emerged in Australia as part of attempts by the state to move away from exclusionary conservation practices that often marginalised indigenous people living on the land (Reid et al., 2004). The practice of establishing parks contractually in Australia followed the passage of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976, which granted title to aboriginal people in specific territories. It is tempting to view the RNP contractual
agreement as serving a similar function given that the Richtersveld people are also of aboriginal descent but there is an important distinction between the two. South Africa had not yet given legal recognition to the status of aboriginal title. In the initial definition of contractual parks, the apartheid government defined them as “any land that is either privately owned or state owned that is managed by an agreement reached between the owner (state or private) and the National Parks Board… and whose boundaries of which, its identification, ownership and status are established by contract” (Republic of South Africa, 1976). As such the Richtersveld contract legally fell under the category of state land. However, as Boonzaier (1996) notes the negotiations had the effect of changing the narrative because SANParks referred to the land as
“owned” by the community.
Additionally, the payment of rent into the RGT further strengthened this view of the community “owning” the land. In the everyday understanding of property being able to exert rental payment for the use of land is thought to indicate the presence of a strong property right.
This thinking is not wholly untrue as being able to lease one’s property is one of the most common examples of exercising the right of use (Sprankling, 2012). However, a closer look at how the community’s right to lease the land is exercised in practice places doubt on the strength of this right. Control over RGT, which receives and manages the rental income, is not with the community as all the RGT trustees are not from the community (Spies, 2018). Interestingly, the RNP management is at pains to emphasise this. In the 2018-2028 Park Management Plan, we are told that the trustees are “independent and respectable” people not from the community (Spies, 2018:14). The fact that the management of the rental income could not be placed in the hands of the community reveals two things. First, the RGT has residues of the colonial trusteeship model which is embedded in the assumption that local communities cannot manage their land and in this case the rental income from the use of their land. Second, there was little interest in fostering increased agency for the community; rather the negotiations and concessions by SANParks were about palliating the issue of property rights. This was done by symbolically recognising ownership without a change in legality and symbolically allowing the community to exercise the right to lease the land but without control over income from the leasing arrangement. Cousin (1997) argues that a right is not “real” if it is promised by law but denied in practice. Thus, the establishment of the RGT became a tool to underhandedly deprive the Richtersveld community of real rights while preserving the interests of the conservation lobby which the apartheid state supported.