The Wildland’s Conservation Trust is celebrating the completion of the initial stages of a project that will see the creation of a new community game reserve in Northern Kwazulu-Natal, and help alleviate poverty in Mdletshe and Mandalakazi, the two communities bordering it. The development of this reserve has also helped the two communities work together despite their historic differences.
The project falls under the banner of Wildland’s ‘Conservation Space’ initiative, which focuses on working with communities to use available community land for the creation of protected conservation areas. Often this land has been awarded to the community through successful land claim settlements, but in this case the 5500 hectares that will be making up the new Mduna community game reserve is already administered by the Ingonyama Trust Board (see boxed insert). It had previously been used for Nguni cattle research but after a brutal attack and the theft of two thousand head of cattle the land was left vacant for several years. Kathy Drummond, Project Manager for the Zululand Conservation Corridor (which Mduna will form part of) explains how Wildlands got involved in the project: “The Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) approached us to see if we had any ideas for the land. At the same time the German Development Trust (GTZ) had funding for their poverty relief projects and were looking for a site in KZN to use. And so we all ended up working together.”
Wildlands has been instrumental in not only the concept of converting the land for use as a community conservation area, but also in virtually every aspect of the implementation of the plan: “We’ve put up fences, removed alien plant species, done some basic infrastructure maintenance on the site and we’ve trained twenty community members in conservation guardianship,” Drummond explains. Two hundred and ninety local community members were also employed during this process and Drummond worked hard to ensure that all knew the value of their work: “They had an induction programme to explain why they were doing this job and so they knew even before they started that they were working on something that would benefit the whole community. We tried to make sure that they knew how each individual role was important, so they would feel part of the bigger picture.”
That bigger picture involves creating a permanent water source on the land, followed by the introduction of animals into the park. The Mduna Community Game Reserve will then be leased by neighbouring Thanda Private Game Reserve for the exclusive traversing of their visitors, with the lease money going directly to benefit the two communities. Overseeing the use of this lease money will be the Mdletshe-Mandalakzi Community Trust, consisting of seven members from each community, and again set up by Wildlands to ensure that the communities’ interests are properly represented: “The Community Trust is there to make sure that at least 75% of that revenue per year is spent on projects identified by the community as being important.” And Drummond foresees great benefits for the community in the long run, especially if they concentrate on funding human upliftment projects (recommended by Wildlands) as opposed to structural ones: “Things such as setting up a university fund to send a person from each community to university in an agricultural conservation field or sponsoring an extra teacher for a year to ensure that the classes aren’t so big or so they can take more children in. The government is responsible for building schools and clinics and so we are encouraging the trust to focus more on building livelihoods.” As well as the revenue from the lease of the land (which will start at R500 000,00 for the first year, but will increase to R2 million by the fourth year), additional employment opportunities are expected to be available with the completion of Thanda Royal, an exclusively up market development of 44 luxury residences in Thanda Game reserve.
On Monday this week, Mdletshe-Mandalakzi Community Trustees and the two co-founders (the Amakhosi) signed the Trust Deeds, thereby officially placing the future overseeing of the project in the hands of the two communities themselves. It also signals the completion of three years of planning and ground work on the part of Wildlands and the other organizations involved: “It’s been very hard to get to this stage, but now that we’re here it just makes it all worthwhile,” says Drummond. Nkosi Mdletshe from the Mdletshe community also praised the project for supporting conservation and poverty alleviation, but also for bringing the two communities together: “The two tribes Mandalakazi and Mdletshe have been fighting since a long time ago but the introduction of the project is a sort of reconciliation between these two tribes. It forms a common goal for both communities and we will work on it together to help our people.”
By Nicky Furniss
