The World Bank/WBI’s CBNRM Initiative

Case Received: February 6, 1998

Authors: D.T. (Hector) Magome and Roger F.H. Collinson

Fax: +27 12 343 2832

Email: hectorm@parks-sa.co.za

Pilanesberg National Park (Pilanesberg) is situated some 150 km northwest of Johannesburg in what is now known as the North West Province of the "new" South Africa (SA). At the time of its planning and development it fell under the government of the erstwhile homeland of Bophuthatswana (Bop).

The land which is proclaimed and managed as Pilanesberg is a large (diameter of 30 km and circumference of 100 km) extinct volcano that last erupted some 1200 years ago. What remains today of this eruption is a nearly perfect set of circular alkaline mountains which are in concentric ring formations. Geologists claim that the Pilanesberg is the second largest and most symmetrical alkaline ring complex in the world - the largest being the kola Peninsular in Russia (Lurrie 1973). The people living around Pilanesberg are peri-urban, i.e., not strictly rural or highly urbanised. Their economy is largely cash driven due to high mining and tourism activities in the region. The tourism activity is driven by Sun City and Lost City, a huge combined multi million dollar casino complex.

This unique geological phenomena with the resulting unusual and appealing landscape coupled with a genuine desire to uplift the underdeveloped local community were the major factors that stimulated the idea of proclaiming the Pilanesberg as a national park. Accordingly, Tinley and Van Riet (1978) were contracted to draft a master plan for the development of Pilanesberg based on the principle of "utilisation and participation by the community". It needs stressing here that this principle was at the time totally revolutionary in a context where colonial and apartheid (racial separation) ideologies were strongly prevalent amongst the protected area (PA) authorities in SA.

Prior to SA achieving true democracy in 1994, the common approach to proclaiming PAs was to remove (often forcefully) resident rural people and relocate them on neighbouring land. These and other neighbouring communities were then normally denied any access to PAs, even for traditional land use or cultural practices. Moreover, they were more often than not denied any participation or say in the management of the PA and any share of benefits accruing therefrom. Thus, in SA there have historically been high opportunity costs in land dispossession and denial of rights of access to PAs. Furthermore under the Apartheid regime, the disadvantaged and usually impoverished rural communities had no effective recourse through either the judiciary or the democratic process. The result was that, while SA lead the way in Africa with respect to biodiversity conservation, the cost of the approach was much human suffering and hostility against the established PAs.

The master plan for Pilanesberg was completed in 1978. On the basis of this plan, negotiations and participative decisions commenced between the neighbouring Bakgatla (hereafter referred to as "the community") and the Bop government. This process was successfully concluded by early 1979 and the park, comprising some 55 000 hectares, was finally proclaimed and opened in December 1979.

Emanating from the above negotiations and participative process was what appeared at the time to be an amicable and good faith agreement between the community and the Bop government. On the one hand, the community agreed to two things: Firstly, to give up grazing rights they had within the proposed park, and; secondly to relocate portion of their community living within the proposed park to nearby land outside the proposed park boundaries.

In compensation for this the Bop government agreed on the other hand to grant the community a "package" of rights, privileges and benefits which included inter alia the following:

• the allocation of two nearby state farms for community grazing;
• an unspecified percentage of the park entry ticket sales;
• reimbursement for costs incurred while dismantling existing homes;
• the right to have access to family graves in the park;
• the right to enter the park to collect medicinal plants, thatching grass and firewood;
• the appointment of Chief Pilane (the Bakgatla chief after which the park is named) to the Park’s Board of Trustees.

Based on these agreements, Pilanesberg was rapidly developed by setting up management structures, park infrastructure, re-introducing wild animals, and rehabilitating large acres of land that had suffered centuries of abuse from inappropriate land use practices. All this resulted in the Pilanesberg project achieving international recognition as one of the biggest and most successful wildlife re-introduction and land rehabilitation exercises ever undertaken (Molope 1988).

However, while such achievements by most standards qualify as a "text book" or almost "fairytale" beginning to a people parks project, it was as a direct consequence of these achievements that "things started to go wrong". By becoming so engrossed in developing and managing the park, and to some extent "basking in the glory" of their achievements, park staff and government officials had by default (rather than intention) left the local communities out of their strategic and work plans. The good faith and communication that had existed before the park was established eventually dwindled to nothing.

Park management and government even failed to honour essential aspects of the agreement with the community. This included land compensation, reimbursement of resettlement expenses, access to the park and a percentage of entry ticket sales. The crowning point of this reneging on agreements was the exclusion of the local chief (Chief Pilane) from any park decision making forums when the Bop government abandoned the Pilanesberg board of trustees in favour of setting up a "National Parks Board" for Bop (in 1984). The result of this was the cutting off of all forms of communication with the community and effectively marginalising them from Pilanesberg.

Despite all this, Pilanesberg management continue to implement the basic principles of sustainable utilisation. Some 6 years after the establishment of the park, 250 jobs were provided, about 20 tons of relatively cheap meat was sold to the community, 10 000 school children visited the park per annum for environmental education courses and substantial foreign exchange was generated through trophy hunting and tourism (Molope 1988). This was, however, meaningless in terms of fostering good community relationship with Pilanesberg as a park management failed to keep their neighbours informed on a continuous basis of all these positive developments. Perceptions began to develop that Pilanesberg management did not care about their neighbouring communities. Over time these perceptions were transformed to resentment of the park and anger against a government that did not honour its promises.

The community’s negative perceptions of Pilanesberg increased to a level where management could no longer afford to ignore them. This was a classical example of how public relations usually works in practice. As stated by Fazio and Gilbert (1986), public relations can be likened to dental health where too often people do not go to a doctor until pain makes it necessary. By 1983 "the pain had become so acute" that management appointed a sociologist to conduct a survey of the perceptions, aspirations and attitudes of the local communities in relation to the park (Keenan 1984).

The findings of the sociologist were analogous to "opening a can of worms". In essence the findings were as follows:

• the community resented park management and government;
• the community perceived government as dictatorial and deceitful;
• they wanted their land back and were already proceeding with a court action;
• there were strong allegations that the farms promised as compensation were later given to government ministers;
• the trust between park management and the community had totally broken down.

Instead of presenting these finding to park management and advising them on how to repair the damage (in accordance with his brief), the sociologist made them public through the media. As a consequence, "all hell broke loose". According to Munnik (1991) the Pilanesberg "volcano was still rumbling" and threatened to destroy the park. The government was angry with park management for employing a sociologist who expressed strong anti government sentiments in the press. Government was equally angry with the community for pouring out their anti government feelings to the sociologist and for proceeding with court action. Park management was angry with the sociologist for "going behind their backs" and reporting his findings directly to the media. Most important, the anger of the communities against park management and government was stirred up even further by the reports in the media.

In reaction to this the government refused to address the communities grievances and have any direct dialogue with them until they withdrew their court action against government. The communities response was that they would not withdraw the court action unless government opened up dialogue to address their grievances. To compound the problem the local chief (who also was leader of the opposition against the Bop government) was rumoured to be resentful of the fact that he had not been made the president of the Bop homeland. The resulted in a quagmire situation. The park management were left in the unenviable position of ‘mediator’ between the community and the government, essentially facing a strategic dilemma and challenge of how to win favour of both government and the community. Although not directly stated it was implicit in the government’s attitude that any dialogue initiated by park management with the community would be not be viewed in a favourable light.

Eventually park management "threw caution to the wind" and took on the responsibility of trying to turn the lose-lose situation into a win-win one. They initiated dialogue with the community and managed to persuade the government to mandate them to act as an informal arbitrator between the government and the community. This resulted in the park management becoming involved in a prolonged process of shuttle diplomacy between the community village and the homeland capital. To begin with government simply wanted to flex their muscles and refused to acknowledge any of the communities grievances and claims. Similarly, the community took the extreme stand of accepting no less than their land back which would necessitate deproclaiming a large portion of Pilanesberg. The stalemate was finally broken with the community agreeing to suspend court action pending the outcome of a negotiated settlement. A major breakthrough in this respect was the community adopting a very positive and in fact grateful attitude towards the parks role as arbitrator between community and government.

Of longer term importance, the crisis that park management had had to face up to and resolve lead to a complete change in organisation strategy and culture. This was achieved through a strategic planning process lead by the chief executive and which involved a through review and reformulation of the organisation’s mission, objectives and strategies.

An important outcome of the strategic planning process was the overhauling and re-engineering of the sustainable utilisation and community participation approaches that was propounded in the initial park master plan compiled by Tinley and Van Riet (1978). Essentially these approaches became more appropriately a means to an end in the new mission. The mission (purpose) statement for the park read as follows:

"To contribute towards improving the quality of life of people by conserving wild animals, plants and landscapes for the satisfaction of people's many diverse and changing needs".

The word "needs" in the above statement refers to all types of needs including material, economic, cultural, educational, spiritual and prestige (Collinson 1992). Furthermore, as stressed by Collinson (1992), reference in the statement to "changing needs" is important since a need which is important today may change in the future. Consequently it was concluded in the strategic planning exercise that park management must adopt a culture that is sensitive to the aspirations and needs of the neighbouring communities and constantly strive towards ensuring that the park is satisfying these needs to its full potential. The organisation would also have to be flexible, dynamic and farsighted enough to keep the options open for the future. It was also recognised that the key to this is ongoing transparent and sincere communication.

To reinforce the above six key strategies were formulated in support of the new mission. The first and most important of these was to "gain the support, appreciation and commitment of the people to the organisation mission" (Collinson, 1992). It is also important to note here that the word "people" is not meant to refer only to local communities but rather to all stakeholders ranging from the community to the local government and to the central government, to the public at large, and even the international neighbouring community. This was in recognition of the fact that neighbouring communities do not live in isolation to a larger world of political interest and control and also that the park is ultimately for the benefit and enjoyment of a much wider constituency. To obtain the support of both the local communities and the much wider spectrum of stakeholders a strong environmental and public relations/communications ethic was established in the organisation.

Another key strategy that needs mentioning here was "to develop the human resources of the organisation through aggressive training and career development." The argument here was that if community development and the other aspects of the mission were to be achieved it would be critical to have a compliment of competent and skilled staff. Furthermore for such staff to be fully acceptable to the community, an effort was made to recruit and train staff that came directly from the community or at lest from backgrounds and cultures that were compatible with those of the community. Since staff were mainly drawn from previously disadvantaged communities it was necessary to firstly have a professional selection process to ensure that staff with the right profiles, aptitudes and other potentials were recruited. Secondly, it was important to place them in an accelerated development programme with structured career advancement paths and a combination of on the job monitoring and formal training in learning institutions.

By adhering to the above mission and following the supporting key strategies, park management made steady and meaningful progress with rebuilding relations with the community. To start with, the government gave in to the community’s demand for previously promised (but unspecified percentage) share in the park entry ticket sales. The eventually amount agreed to by the government after lengthy negotiations with park management on behalf of the community, was 10% of annual gate entry ticket sales.

However the most meaningful progress made was the establishment by the community of a legally constituted body, the Community Development Organisation (CDO). Park management played an important role in facilitating the formation of the CDO which is essentially a registered non-profit organisation composed of elected members of the community. Its main function is to serve as the custodian or steward of benefits (mainly money) emanating from the park (e.g., entry fees) or other conservation projects initiated by the community. In particular the members of the CDO are entrusted with ensuring that such benefits are used and/or invested for the short and long term benefit of the community. The CDO also serves as an important forum for communicating with park management issues such as airing grievances and identifying needs. On the basis of the motto "if the dividend is good it pays to look after the investment", it is now in management’s interest to continue to foster the continued functioning of the CDO and to ensure that meaningful benefits from the park continue to flow to the community through this body.

Was there a positive impact on the lives of the people? Did the relationship between the park and the community improve as a result of these changes? Since quality of life is hardly a quantifiable factor (High 1995), it is difficult to reply the first question. But the relationship between the park and the community improved drastically. Two major findings confirm this. As study by Davies (1993) revealed that the communities around Pilanesberg, particularly the Bakgatla, supported the existence of the park and were in fact proud of it. Ngqobe (1993) concurred with Davies (1993) by stating: "the Bakgatla living around Pilanesberg now have their own game farm, watched over by an elected Community Development Organisation (CDO). Their story shows the change in relations between the community and Bophuthatswana Parks Board".

Nevertheless, one of the community’s grievances remain unresolved at this point in time. Although various attempts were made by the erstwhile Bop government to solve the land dispute, the problem was overtaken by political events and no solution was found before the Bop government’s demise. With the advent of the "new" SA (after April 1994), the Bop homeland was incorporated into the "new" SA and consequently ceased to exist. The community has lodged their claim with the land restitution court which was set up by the government of the "new" SA to redress land claims emanating from the past regime. Although still pending a resolution, it is important to note that the community is no longer adamant that the solution to their claim lies in deproclaiming part of the Pilanesberg. All indications are that the community is quite prepared to settle for monetary compensation or the allocation of alternative land outside the park. It can be concluded from this that their attitudes and demands no longer pose any threat to the Pilanesberg existence.

At a workshop held by management in 1991 to formulate a policy for Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), an attempt was made to identify and formalise the lessons learnt from the Pilanesberg experience. The proceedings of this workshop documented five key principles for effective community-based development in relation to resource conservation. These are:

• Two way is essential for effective community development. Here the focus is on planning with the communities from project initiation to project development.

• Projects must be financially and ecologically sustainable. This principle ensures that the participation of communities on development projects does not lead to ‘donor dependency’ and most importantly, does not erode the resource base.

• A socio-economic (and even political) survey is important for project success. This is self-explanatory. A baseline data of the needs and social dynamics (including power relations) of the community is important before projects are initiated.

• A community institutional framework is necessary for effective delivery of projects. This is the legal framework through which the community works to ensure accountability.

• Community development expertise is necessary to understand the dynamics of community development. Too often, ‘rugged’ rangers (and ecologists) do community development. Most of these officers have joined PA management in order to be away from people (the opposite of what they are asked to do). It is thus better to couple rangers and ecologists with the services of professional social scientists on the sensitive issues of community development.

Seven years have now passed since these five principles were documented and much further interaction between Pilanesberg and the community has taken place. Despite this passing of time and the gaining of a great deal more experience, these principles to a large extent still hold and can be applied in other community-based development situations. The Pilanesberg experience has perhaps reinforced some of these principles and given them higher priority over some of the others. Perhaps of even greater importance it has given the authors of this paper the confidence to focus on the more important principles. Accordingly we believe that in the final analysis, PA managers will not go for wrong if they adhere to the following simple principles.

• A sense of proud belonging and ownership of projects or programme is often more important to a community and easier for park management to supply than material upliftment.

• Building relationships of transparent trust and participation are far more important for gaining the support of neighbouring communities than the flow of material benefits.

• Avoid false expectations and promises that the PA can not in the long run deliver on.

• Working with communities is far more complex than what first meets the idea as they are not isolated homogeneous units. Rather they are but small cogs in the greater communities at both regional and national levels and are greatly reflected by the politics at these various levels. That within the community itself, there are political forces (and personal agendas), to even the most sincerest efforts of community development, that need to be recognised.