Extractive philanthropy: securing labour and land claim settlements in private nature reserves

Abstract

At the centre of the conservation enterprise are the interactions of various actors who display a great deal of environmental ethic. Private landowners have embraced this ethic to protect their property rights and increase land value while contributing to the conservation of nature and to rural development. In this paper I draw examples from the lowveld in South Africa to argue that there is a seamless connection between philanthropy, labour and land claims in private nature reserves, and that post-apartheid conditions have enabled such a connection to emerge. Philanthropy allows private owners to structure and control labour, while directly or indirectly affecting the trajectory of land claims in the area.

Keywords:

• philanthropy
• private nature reserves
• labour
• land claims
• lowveld

Notes

1. This move by the private sector has been the subject of much scholarly discussion. See Castree, “Neoliberalising Nature”; and Büscher et al., “Towards a Synthesized Critique.”

2. Brockington and Duffy, “Capitalism and Conservation”; and Porter and Kramer, “The Competitive Advantage.”

3. Snyder, “Editorial.”

4. Castree, “Neoliberalism and the Biophysical Environment”; and Büscher et al., “Towards a Synthesized Critique.”

5. Sodikoff, “The Low-wage Conservationists.”

6. Brandt and Spierenburg, “Game Fences in the Karoo.”

7. The clearest example of this was the dispossession of land under apartheid to force blacks to work in the mines.

8. I was intrigued by a ‘village’ inside Londolozi on my first visit to the reserve in 2008. Subsequently I researched environmental philanthropy and land reform in separate projects.

9. I summarise findings from research carried out in the lowveld to develop the argument of this paper. I guided some of the research referred to in the paper.

10. Ilchman et al, Philanthropy, x. See also Adam, “Introduction.”

11. Sodikoff, “Forced and Forest Labor”; and West, Conservation is our Government Now.

12. Holmes, “Biodiversity for Billionaires.”

13. Damon, The Moral Advantage.

14. Berman, The Ideology of Philanthropy; and Clotfelter and Ehrlich, “The World we must Build.”

15. Schramm, “Law outside the Market,” 359–360.

16. Sawaya, “Capitalism and Philanthropy,” 202.

17. Bishop, “What is Philanthrocapitalism?”

18. Ramutsindela et al., Sponsoring Nature. Holmes prefers the term conservation philanthropy. Holmes, “Biodiversity for Billionaires.”

19. Delfin and Tang, “Elitism, Pluralism”; and Butler et al., Wildlands Philanthropy.

20. Dowie, Conservation Refugees.

21. Hutton et al., “Back to the Barriers?”

22. Ramutsindela, Transfrontier Conservation.

23. Ibid.

24. Milgroom and Spierenburg, “Induced Volition.”

25. Bornstein, The Spirit of Development.

26. http://www.sabisabi.com/information/location, accessed March 9, 2015.

27. http://www.andbeyond.com/south-africa/places-to-go/kruger-national-park-surrounds.htm, accessed March 9, 2015.

28. The brothers John and Dave Varty are the third generation of the family that owned Sparta farm, from which Londolozi originated. Londolozi forms part of Sabi Sand Wildtuin (SSW), a nature reserve consisting of a consortium of exclusive game lodges on privately owned land abutting the KNP. The farm on which Londolozi is built, Sparta, has been in the hands of the Varty family since 1926. The farm was originally used for hunting and became a premier photographic safari lodge in the 1970s. Varty, Full Circle.

29. All these objectives were pursued at the height of liberation struggles in South Africa in the late 1980s and at the dawn of democracy in the country in the early 1990s.

30. Bantustans were areas designated for occupation and use by the African population during apartheid. Most former bantustans were highly degraded, not so much because people did not know how to look after the land but mainly because these political entities were established on marginal lands on which high populations of mostly impoverished people were to eke out a living. Ramphele and McDowell, Restoring the Land; Hoffman and Ashwell, Nature Divided; and Hebinck and Lent, Livelihoods and Landscapes.

31. Londolozi made the first major breakthrough in developing ecotourism from land previously used for agriculture and hunting.

32. Hendry, “Nature Conservation.”

33. In the early 1990s South Africa was gripped by fear of a potential civil war and there were also anxieties about how the political transition would play out. The white population feared that black people might take revenge by, for example, taking away white farms from which blacks had been forcibly removed during apartheid. Their concern was heightened by sporadic land invasions that took place during the political transition from apartheid rule.

34. Koelble claims that ‘Londolozi pioneered the concept of ecotourism and popularized the approach through its operations’. Koelble, “Ecology, Economy and Empowerment,” 7.

35. A degraded environment is not good for ecotourism.

36. Koch, “Ecotourism and Rural Reconstruction,” 227.

37. Koelble, “Ecology, Economy and Empowerment,” 9.

38. Wells, “The Social Role of Protected Areas,” 326.

39. Groch et al., “The Grassroots Londolozi Model.”

40. Brubaker, Property Rights.

41. This was the time the Londos strategy was devised.

42. http://www.tourismupdate.co.za/home/detail?articleid=24958&article=letter-to-the-editor-londolozis-response-on-land-claim-issue, accessed March 14, 2015. Levin and Weiner, No More Tears provide a detailed analysis of land claims in the area.

43. The date for lodging land claims was reopened in 2014 through the passage of the Land Restitution Amendment Act.

44. Hendry, “Nature Conservation,” 71.

45. The consultant J. B. Hartman investigated the merits of land claims on seven farms in the Sabi Sabi Wlidtuin and produced the report in 2003.

46. Hendry, “Nature Conservation.”

47. “Letter to the Editor: Londolozi’s Response on Land Claim Issue,” April 12, 2012. http://www.tourismupdate.co.za/home/detail?articleid=24958&article=letter-to-the-editor-londolozis-response-on-land-claim-issue.

48. As will be clear below, while the owners of Mala Mala agreed to sell their property to government at an exorbitant price, they structured the land deal in such a way that they could continue to operate their business on land that had been restored. Thus, they gave away the land but retained control of the business. The owners of Mala Mala, Michael and Norma Rattray, assured their friends and clients that the settlement of the land claim did not change their control over the business operation of the reserve. “Statement released by Mala Mala Game Reserve,” January 17, 2014. I consider this a subtle method of resisting land reform in South Africa. This method is not exclusive to private nature reserves but also permeates partnerships formed over other land restitution projects.

49. Land Claims Court of South Africa, “Case number LCC156/2009.”

50. According to Section 25 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, the government can appropriate land in the interest of the public.

51. There is an anonymous rumour that a property close to Mala Mala was sold at a higher than market value during negotiations between government and Mala Mala PTY in order to inflate the price that the government finally paid.

52. Shabangu, “The Neo-liberalization of Nature.”

53. Cousins and Walker, Land Divided Land Restored.

54. Cherryl Walker made remarks along these lines at the launch of the book, Land Divided Land Restored at the Book Club in Cape Town on February 25, 2015.

55. Conservation Corporation news, cited in Koch, “Ecotourism and Rural Reconstruction.” The strategy for ensuring the legitimacy of these private nature reserves included getting former President Nelson Mandela to visit Londolozi, where he is said to have praised it as a progressive game reserve in which ‘people of all races [live] in harmony amidst the beauty that mother nature offers’. Varty and Buchanan, I Speak of Africa.

56. Koch, “Ecotourism and Rural Reconstruction,” 227.

57. Burns and Barrie, “Race, Space and ‘Our Own Piece of Africa’.”

58. www.africafoundation.org.za/the-heart/who-we-are, accessed March 10, 2015. According to its website, Africa Foundation is currently registered as a South African Trust (registration number: IT2542/1993); a Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) (registration number: 930002115); and a not-for-profit organisation (registration number: 004-145).

59. Ibid.

60. See Burns and Barrie, “Race, Space and ‘Our Own Piece of Africa’.”

61. Koelble, “Ecology, Economy and Empowerment.”

62. Personal communication between Varty and James Hendry, May 10, 2008.

63. Koelble, “Ecology, Economy and Empowerment.”

64. Hendry, “Nature Conservation,” 44.

65. It is said that Londolozi adopted this approach in 2008 following the 2005 survey that was used to collect the views and developmental aspirations of its staff.

66. For example, ‘there were new classrooms strewn with litter and broken furniture, defunct vegetable gardens, disused boreholes, rooms full of unused computers at schools, boxes of unopened books, an unused library and various other projects in disrepair’. Hendry, “Nature Conservation,” 54.