Talk of restoring the high-security fence that separated Kruger National Park from Mozambique during the Border War years has cast a deep shadow across one of the most exhilarating visions for southern Africa.
The failure to secure the park against rhino poachers by other means is symptomatic of a bigger malaise. It is that of a lack of leadership and a consequent failure to tackle the problem in more innovative ways.
Rhinos are getting killed by the hundreds in the park. Poachers, mainly from Mozambique, ever more regularly die in gun battles with security personnel.
SA National Parks (SANParks) chief David Mabunda laments: “They go back in body bags, but still they keep coming.”
Of course, the perpetrators are not all Mozambicans and the poaching is not limited to Kruger. But the scale of incursions from that country into the park is such that the government of a democratic SA is thinking of resorting to the same method the old rulers used to keep the reserve and their political system safe.
How sadly this contrasts with the spirit of hope and creativity that led to the vicious barricade being brought down bit by bit in the first place. It happened not long after the guns fell silent along the eastern seaboard and at a time when South Africa and Mozambique were still in the throes of settling their internal conflicts.
The idea was hatched by Afrikaner industrialist Anton Rupert and revolutionary Mozambican leader Joaquim Chissano to link Kruger to a vast expanse of land across the boundary which Maputo turned into the Limpopo National Park for the purpose. It grew to the extent that Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park soon became part of the scheme.
With boundary fences coming down, the enlarged roaming areas for wildlife would do wonders for biodiversity protection. The parks’ vastly expanded horizons would make southern Africa so much more attractive as a nature-tourism destination.
The transfrontier concept took on an even more significant dimension. As president, and as a patron of the Peace Parks Foundation, an organisation Rupert set up to promote the creation of such parks in southern Africa, Nelson Mandela declared: “I know of no political movement, no philosophy, and no ideology that does not agree with the peace parks concept as we see it going into fruition today. It is a concept that can be embraced by all.”
Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, took up the idea, even linking the prospect of a subcontinental network of parks spanning boundaries to his concept of an African commonwealth. With Valli Moosa as his minister of environmental affairs and tourism, the scheme expanded rapidly.
The Kgalagadi became southern Africa’s first transfrontier park in 2000 when the informal co-operation that had for many decades existed between SA and Botswana’s adjoining Kalahari parks got legally formalised. Similar projects involving SA and every one of its other neighbours were set in motion. But the initiative’s proudest moment came on December 9, 2002, when, in the Mozambican seaside village of Xai Xai, where the Limpopo River mouths into the Indian Ocean, Mbeki, Chissano and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe signed the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park into existence.
Immediately after, Moosa and his counterparts in the two other governments flew to Kruger, where they ceremoniously cut the high-security fence.
It was in a secluded part of the border and a section of only 20km was to be brought down, but even so, some security types present muttered darkly about smuggling.
The political mood, however, was buoyant, so much so that when Mbeki joined the presidents of the other two countries in opening the Giriyondo border post between Kruger and the Limpopo park in 2006, he spoke of the need to redouble efforts to ensure that “this unique and rich tapestry of life on our planet is turned into a jewel of the tourism market”.
He added: “This is an ancient confluence of civilisations… We are one people… This is just the beginning of a new era when we will bring down the colonial fences which divided our nations over several centuries.”
And now those same fences are likely to go back up again. Difficulties there have, of course, been aplenty in moving the transfrontier park programme forward, not least because of the brake presented by Zimbabwe and its troubles.
Even so, money has been generously donated by organisations in Europe, Scandinavia and the US in support of this remarkable scheme that had come to epitomise the new spirit of co-operation and development in the subcontinent.
The Peace Park Foundation, among others, has been working energetically to help it along.
In 2005 I joined a SANParks helicopter flight along the Kruger-Limpopo border.
The security fence was still up for most of the way, as the security establishment wanted. Nevertheless, in riverbeds where it got washed away during floods, it was left open. Animal paths converged on gullies where gaps under the fence allowed them to get through to the Limpopo park, where we saw herds of buffalo, wildebeest and some antelope and elephant once more roaming the plains that were left denuded of game by the war years.
The animals were leading the way. Tourists would follow, bringing new opportunities for the parks and their surrounding communities, and lending further impetus to the broader economy.
A joint management committee was administering the peace park, with subcommittees looking after matters such as security. Therein lies the rub. What happened to the joint administration that was supposed to see to it that the countries look after the parks separately and jointly?
Surely a project of such scale, and of such promise, deserves better. The joint management committee, the respective environmental and security ministers, and, yes, the presidents themselves should have come together long ago to sort out the poaching threat, as with the rest of the security mess along the borders. First the criminals kill the rhinos. Must they now also be allowed to start killing southern Africa’s most innovative idea?
Our country has been at the heart of southern Africa’s transfrontier park programme, being involved in at least six of the wondrous schemes.
But is the government still serious about this visionary project when, apart from wanting to resort to a divisive high-security border fence between parks, it allows a coal mine near Mapungubwe National Park, a World Heritage Site, the anchor of the Great Mapungubwe Transfrontier Park with Zimbabwe and Botswana, and a remarkable remainder of the confluence of ancient civilisations Mbeki spoke about?
Both in spirit and in its practical application, the peace park programme is the antithesis of parochialism, short-term thinking and self-defeating materialism.
It could become the hallmark of the region’s post-colonial reconstruction and our most creative legacy to subsequent generations.
It should not be allowed to drift into obscurity.