PARKS: THEIR ORIGINS AND INFLUENCES
4.3. THE COLONIAL CONCEPTUALISATION OF THE PEOPLE AND PARK RELATIONSHIP RELATIONSHIP
4.3.3. The consequence of an industrialising England
In the context of the case study area of the southern Cape forests, the application of the preservationist ideology to the management of Crown forest in order to protect them resulted in the fencing off of forests, and the regulation of access to and use of land and natural resources through a system of permits and licenses. In her novel The Mulberry Forest Dalene Matthee writes about extreme regulation of Crown land (1990:4):
“Crown land. Crown forest. Crown everything. Every blessed forest warder’s first and last defence. Everything belonged to the Crown: blue buck, bush-buck, bush-pigs, elephants, footpaths, sled-paths, the wagon-road at Deep Walls [Diepwalle]. Every tree in the forest was the Crown’s tree and before you could fell it, the Crown’s licence had to be in your pocket. Before you could lift your gun to shoot a bigfoot, an elephant, Crown’s permission had to be in your pocket as well, for if they caught you without it, it was off to the village with you to pay up or to be thrown in the Crown’s jail”.
Under the first Forest Act in the Cape colony in 1888, the Crown forests were demarcated and became inalienable. Prior to this act being passed, however, Crown forests were already regarded as the property of the Cape Government. In 1886 government officials tried to order prospectors at Millwood to leave, as they were deemed to be trespassers (van der Merwe, 2002). Hunting laws were also introduced with a view to preserving game for white hunters.
Certain animals were classified as royal game, which meant that “they could be shot under a special license, and the horns, hides, and skins…were subjected to a 20 per cent export duty”
(MacKenzie, 1988:204). For example in 1908, the government at the Cape proclaimed the elephants in Knysna as royal game (van der Merwe, 2002). The preservation of wilderness through such measures ensured the imperial inheritance of wildlife, just as regulations concerning timber harvesting in the southern Cape forests were initially designed with the intention of preserving timber to ensure the sustainability of future supplies.
“South Africa in 1920 recapitulates, with differences, the landscape aesthetics and property relations of nineteenth-century Britain. Game reserves are in a sense to agrarian labour pools what the reformed picturesque estate was to the nineteenth-century English village”.
The transition of British society from a feudalist to a capitalist society influenced the way in which land was considered, because it transformed the economic role of land. Land changed from an entity having a use value to an economic commodity having an exchange value. This, according to Neumann (1995b), led to a reconceptualisation of land into one of two categories:
either as spaces of production (land that was for practical uses and practices) or as spaces of consumption (land that was for aesthetic observations and practices).
The capitalist transition in England resulted in the privatisation of land and its ownership by English gentry, but it also resulted in the enclosure of common grounds to facilitate productive land uses and establish private landscape parks (Neumann, 1995b). Representations of nature in the rural landscape paintings of prominent European painters shaped the way in which landowners arranged their spaces of consumption (aesthetic landscapes). These painters, according to Neumann (1995b:152), painted idealised representations where “all signs of human labour in rural landscapes were strikingly absent”. This romanticised representation of nature as devoid of human agency perpetuated the impression that picturesque natural landscapes should not include elements of society such as human habitation or agricultural production. Romanticism was furthermore a key contributor to the prevalence of the “artificial separation between society and nature”, which is an example of the binary thinking of positivism that has influenced protected areas management until the present (Ramutsindela, 2004:4).
Neumann (1995b) believes that the English way of seeing the landscape (either as spaces of production or of consumption) was imported into Africa via colonialism and resulted in two distinct ideologies. The first was a production ideology, which focussed on increasing agricultural production in the colonies to fulfil the commercial dream of colonisers. The second was a preservation ideology, which focussed on preserving nature and retaining the vision of Africa as Eden, a primeval wilderness (Ellis, 1994; Neumann, 1995b). For example, Bunn (1996) highlights the need to isolate “uncorrupted” natural areas in order to preserve them as landscapes of consumption. He writes:
“It is only by maintaining enclaved dominions like game reserves, in which older regimental hierarchies apparently persist, where guests are free to wander,
and Nature uncorrupted offers itself up for consumption by select tourists”
(Bunn 1996:43).
Similarly, Williams (1973:124) writes that these landscapes:
“are related parts of the same process – superficially opposed in taste but only because in the one case the land is being organised for production, where tenants and labourers work, while in the other case it is being organised for consumption – the view, the ordered proprietary repose, the prospect”.
Williams’s (1973) statement conveys the idea that imposing such a landscape ideology on Africa was part of the process of colonisation, which asserted the power of the colonists over the African people. These land use practices were founded upon the belief in the superiority of European culture over African culture, and a disdain for African land use practices.
Ramutsindela (2004:9) refers to these western notions of superiority as the “hierarchical ordering of humans by humans” and as “human gradation”. He believes that these notions, which are “couched in racial stereotypes, account for the dehumanisation of local people under colonial rule” (Ramutsindela, 2004:9). Establishing production and consumption landscapes in the colonies “justif[ied] the violent shift of control over land and resources from local lineages to the state” (Neumann, 1995b:163). In order to create such landscapes, African landscapes and society would need to be significantly reordered to create a sanctuary from the influence of hunting and from the influence of production processes. This meant altering African land rights and land use practices to ensure the separation of (African) society from nature (Ghimire, 1994; Neumann, 1995b). The North American national park model was proposed by the SPFE as the way to achieve this (Neumann, 1996).
In the context of the southern Cape, it is clear from the many colonial uses for indigenous wood felled from the southern Cape forests and the gold that was mined at Millwood that these forests were a landscape of production (after Neumann, 1995b). This was a significant step in the modernisation of the rural South African landscape and progress in development (Bunn, 1996). For example, the growth of the mining industry at Kimberley in 1870 and the proclamation of the Witwatersrand goldfield in 1885 created a demand for timber to construct railway sleepers, shaft props and telegraph poles and “the Knysna forests had to bear the brunt” (van der Merwe, 2002:168). However, it is also evident from the hunting that took place in the forest for recreation by colonists and the significant research that was conducted on the fauna and flora of the forests by naturalists such as Professor Anders Sparrman, Dr. Thunberg, Francis Masson and Francois le Vaillant (Forbes, 1975; Gunn and Codd, 1981; van der Merwe,
2002; Pinnock, 2005), that the forests were also a landscape of consumption. Thus unlike the establishment of national parks which created separate spaces of production and consumption, the southern Cape forests were a production and consumption space where contradictory activities were often found to be in competition at different times in the history of forest management in the region (van der Merwe, 2002; Durrheim, 2003; McCracken, 2004; Seydack and Vermeulen, 2004).
The impetus for the establishment of national parks in the Southern African colonies by the British went a lot deeper than simply carving up the landscape to create landscapes of production and consumption. The shifts in land ownership in England, from common grounds to private land and productive land, evoked fears among the British aristocracy of losing their
‘Edenic’ Africa (Neumann, 1995b). The preservation of consumptive landscapes for the aristocratic class was initially ensured through the privatisation of land. However, the demise of the wealth and power of the aristocratic way of life in the early part of the twentieth century due to industrialisation resulted in the consequent need for landowners to pay taxes. This meant that it was no longer financially feasible for aristocrats to own extensive private parks for consumptive purposes (Neumann, 1995b).
With the preservation of nature through private consumptive landscapes a thing of the past in England, certain aristocrats pressurised the state to intervene in the quest of the aristocracy for the preservation of England’s national heritage (Neumann, 1996). This reflects that the aristocrats petitioning the state for the preservation of the English countryside were the same petitioning for the preservation of African nature through the establishment of national parks in Southern Africa (Neumann, 1995b; 1996). The reasoning for this was that “Africa as Eden has long been part of the consciousness of European explorers and travellers” (Neumann, 1995b:154). The simile conjures up images of a primeval wilderness that is undisturbed, pristine and pure when devoid of human influence11. In a sense, an Edenic Africa is an extreme consumptive landscape and therefore a worthy cause to preserve. Neumann (1996:80) states that “for many aristocratic conservationists the disappearance of an idealised countryside was
11 Interestingly, the principle forest of the Knysna area that people visit is called the ‘Garden of Eden’. It has a long-standing and well-known name. It is from this that the district municipality, the ‘Eden District’ and the East-West route along the coastline, the ‘Garden Route’, is named. These names evoke similar images to which Neumann is referring.
often as important as the disappearance of an idealised wild Africa in shaping their policy intervention”.
The group of aristocrats, consisting of big game hunters, formed a society. They called themselves the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire (SPWFE) and later the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire (SPFE). By focussing attention on the plight of a vanishing Eden in Africa, the SPFE attempted to shift the scathing attack of the English public on the aristocratic way of life toward the native hunting practices in the colonies. A notable feature of the upper class was their penchant for hunting. Laws in England entrenched this lifestyle, dividing hunting privilege along class lines (Neumann, 1995b, 1996). The landowning upper class was termed ‘hunters’, whilst the remaining classes who encroached the private parks for wildlife were termed ‘poachers’. These notions of class were imported into the colonies with the national park model. However, the divide there fell along racial lines, with whites termed ‘sportsmen’ and ‘hunters’, and blacks ‘poachers’
(Neumann, 1995b, 1996; Alexander and McGregor, 2000). In the southern Cape, the hunter- poacher divide was not as clear-cut. Settlers who lived in and around the forests working as woodcutters, or engaged in mining-related activities at Millwood in the Knysna forest also killed wildlife, although for sustenance and survival, not for sport (van der Merwe, 2002). An indication of the danger associated with the Knynsa forests is provided in Gunn and Codd’s (1981) account of Thunberg’s journey eastwards towards the Gamtoos River. They write:
“Near Knysna they [Thunberg and two other companions] had an unpleasant experience of having two of their horses gored to death by an aggressive buffalo” (Gunn and Codd, 1981:348).
The SPFE defended the aristocratic hunting ethic and the preservation of nature in England and Africa. The Society, in justifying the morality of ‘the hunt’, compared this to the hunting practices of the African people and even against white rural settlers in order to raise the credibility of the activities of colonial huntsmen. This was achieved by drawing a distinction between the urban colonial elite who hunt for sport and whose methods were ‘proper’, entailing the exercise of discretion and moderation; and the African ‘poachers’ who hunted wildlife for sustenance and slaughtered indiscriminately (Neumann, 1996). Both native people and white settlers were blamed for the notable decrease in wildlife that many African countries experienced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Therefore control over access to land and natural resources by the Crown was justified to maintain the European vision of
Edenic Africa. This vision justified the violent alienation of land and resources from local people to the state by outlawing African rights of access to land and natural resources (Neumann, 1992) and legitimised continued hunting by colonialists. This approach has also been described as a ‘fences and fines’ style of management where management officials could be said to have a ‘fortress mentality’, because access to parks and reserves were restricted, often on racial grounds, and trespassers were apprehended (Barrett and Arcese, 1995; Hackle, 1999; Grundy, 2002; van der Merwe, 2002:141; Grundy and Michell, 2004; Willis, 2004).
The SPFE played a central role in the establishment of national parks and subsequent development of parks legislation in Africa (MacKenzie, 1988; Neumann, 1995a; 1995b; 1996;
Ramutsindela, 2004). The colonial game laws that were developed by the SPFE for the colonial governments were primarily aimed at regulating access to hunting in national parks rather than conserving and protecting endangered species. As Ramutsindela (2004:26) writes,
“South Africa’s Sabie Game Reserve (1898), Mozambique’s Coutadas (1900’s) and Zimbabwe’s Hwange Game Reserve (1938) [were] all developed as a result of the settlers’
quest to control hunting”. In other words, these reserves served to restrict African hunting and allow whites access to hunting, all in the name of protecting wildlife (Neumann, 1998).
Hunting legislation discriminated against African people, creating a new category of offender, namely the ‘poacher’, which included all forms of African hunters, thus subjugating African people through colonial imperatives (Ramutsindela, 2004).
The process of industrialisation in England therefore had a significant influence on the landscape ideologies that were introduced in southern African colonies through the process of colonisation. These ideologies are: the production ideology, which encouraged the creation of landscapes of production, and the preservation ideology, which endorsed the preservation of wilderness for the creation of landscapes of consumption. The changing land use and land ownership in England meant that the private landscapes of the English aristocracy were no longer available for consumptive purposes such as hunting and riding. The drive by the English aristocracy for the preservation of English national heritage extended to the preservation of
‘wild’ African natural heritage too and aided the institutionalisation of the national park idea.
Three factors discussed thus far provided the motivation during the colonial era for a preservationist ideology to be applied to resource management in the colonies. These were the declining status of wildlife resources in the colonies, the establishment of Yellowstone
National Park in the United States which became a model national parks elsewhere, and the consequence of an industrialising England. The following section presents a fourth factor that has resulted in the perpetuation of the preservationist ideology into the twentieth century, namely Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons essay which was published in 1968.
4.3.4. Tragedy of the Commons legitimises preservation ideology
The fourth key factor that influenced the application of a preservationist ideology in the post- colonial period was Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons essay published in 1968. Hardin presented a scientific argument concerning the over exploitation of common property resources. The essay was written in the post-colonial era, after many African countries had gained independence. It served to legitimise and perpetuate a colonial preservationist ideology that was already present in natural resource management, and to confirm that the decision- making power over natural resources should remain in the hands of scientists rather than including the knowledge of local people (Powell, 1998). The preservationist ideology was reinforced in the 1960’s by the emergent ecocentric environmentalism in the United States, and particularly the Deep Ecology movement (Adams, 2001). This movement presented a moral argument for the need to preserve nature based on its intrinsic worth (Adams, 2001).
Protectionist legislation for natural resources in the colonies was based on the belief that local inhabitants, and not the recreational and economic exploitation executed by white settlers, were to blame for the widespread destruction of natural resources (Berger, 1993 cited in Powell, 1998). For example, in the southern Cape context the woodcutters, who were of the first settlers in the southern Cape, were likened to Amazonian Indians and African Pygmies who
“treated trees and wildlife with the same abandon…A man [who] would think nothing of felling a tree simply to get at some honey” (van der Merwe, 2002:31). This perception was legitimised by Hardin’s (1968) essay. In this essay, Hardin provides an explanation as to why overexploitation of resources that are held in common takes place. According to Powell (1998:12):
“Hardin’s essay implies that the relationship that users of common property…have with natural resources is typically a ‘free for all’, with no limits on who has rights to use the resources and no regulations associated with individual or collective utilisation”.
Hardin (1968) argued that local inhabitants of common property would typically utilise natural resources in an open access manner. This means that there is:
“no defined group of users or owners and the benefit stream is available to anyone; individuals have both a privilege and no right with respect to use rates and maintenance of the asset” (Bromley, 1990:94).
There have been numerous critics of Hardin’s view (for example, Peters, 1987; Ostrom, 1990;
McKean, 1992; Selznick, 1992; Pinkerton and Weinstein, 1995, McCay and Jentoft, 1998).
This theory of common pool resources raised concern among politicians and environmentalists for the fate of common property natural resources. It also had a significant influence on the policymaking arena in many African countries, because it led to the drafting of a “new centralised approach to conserve biodiversity in the form of ‘preservationist’ protective legislation” (Powell, 1998:13). This theory has been used to legitimate the transfer of common property land and its associated resources (flora and fauna) to state ownership in post-colonial Africa. In most cases this transfer was accompanied by the banning of access to forests and forest products (Powell, 1998). According to Powell (1998:14) this “transfer of ownership generally did not result in the large-scale displacement of local people”, but it did result in
“local disempowerment in regard to control over resource utilisation and management”. The preservationist protection legislation was typically enacted and enforced in a top-down manner
“without any consultation with the affected communities, or arrangements to assign compensatory rights or revenues” (Powell, 1998:14; Alexander and McGregor, 2000).
The preservationist approach to conservation is problematic because of the state’s inability to control resource exploitation in protected areas. This is largely due to the policing of state land being difficult and costly (Powell, 1998). Local communities on the periphery of protected areas are often “forced because of resource scarcity to encroach upon the resource-rich protected areas” (Lindsay, 1987:155 cited in Powell, 1998). Additionally, the proclamation of protected areas, such as the Tsitsikamma National Park, or the Afromontane forests in the southern Cape, as state land, leads to a reduction in the amount of land available to local communities for the purpose of deriving a livelihood. These communities are consequently forced to intensify or modify their forms of subsistence in a reduced area, which tends to intensify unsustainable land use practices and therefore exacerbate their need to encroach on protected areas (Deihl, 1985, cited in Powell, 1998). Where traditional rules and regulations to control resource utilisation existed, they were overridden by the transfer to state ownership.
Hardin’s (1968) argument manifested itself as a self-fulfilling prophecy when natural resources