University of Aarhus ECOTOURISM AS A WAY TO PROTECT ...

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Ecotourism as a sustainable way to protect nature (a) (b) Figure 6: Map of Africa (a) and South Africa (b) (a)www.amergeorg.org/history.htm (b)www.park-sa.co.za/trames.aspmainurf=park/national_parks.html The Kruger National Park’ history started when it was declared a game reserve in the last part of 1890’s by a group of English gentlemen, who after killing a great number of animals and exporting a big quantity of ivory just for pleasure and luxury, decided to protect the area to preserve its wildlife. This was done by removing the native African population from its lands to marginal lands in the south of the reserve - and it would not be the last time they did that. On the 28 th of October 1902 a new game legislation was promulgated, its most important novelty was that “…like its nineteenth-century predecessors, generally remained based on class and race distinctions. However in terms of 58
Ecotourism as a sustainable way to protect nature hunting privileges, it treated all landowners equally, whether white or African” (Carruthers, 1995). The Transvaal Game Protection Association (a group of Englishmen who worked to protect wildlife in the name of a class sport as hunting) became an important pressure group. They tried to convince the authorities about the basic idea that wildlife was in danger because of the native Africans, in saying so, they could maintain the elitism of their sport. Since the very first moment, this has been shown not to be true and on the contrary “…the over protection of game in some parts….have resulted in the most disastrous consequences to the Natives who had in many cases lost their whole crops” (Carruthers, 1995). The situation in Kruger National Park (KNP) was as follows: a white colonialist minority who took the KNP under control to protect wildlife for game hunting was against a majority of black natives who had lost their land (and therefore the only opportunity to survive) simply to protect the white’s way of living. To create this National Park, thousands of Africans were evicted from their lands and “…not only were (they) forcibly moved to overcrowded and marginal agricultural lands on the periphery of these new reserves; colonial laws also denied them hunting and fishing licences and the right to use firearms or hunting dogs. They were also forbidden to kill wildlife that wandered outside the reserves and destroy their crops and domestic animals, and they were banned from collecting any wood or grasses within the reserves. Invariably, the colonial state chose to protect wildlife instead of the local Africans. In times of drought or when water was scarce, Africans were forced to move out” (Honey, 1999). But “Preventing Africans from hunting was not merely an economic strategy; it was embedded in white cultural perceptions. Whites generally regarded Africans 59
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