Southpansberg

The Southpansberg, a small mountain range in Limpopo province not far south of the Zimbabwe border, was my destination this week for a technical workshop on bioregional planning (and, specifically, a funding proposal to the World Bank / Global Environment Facility). My role - a small but crucial one! - was to take notes, keeping pace with discussions among government, community and business stakeholders. The venue was a small (2,000ha) private game reserve (no hunting!), and on an early morning walk and evening drive I got to see my first giraffe and white rhino (not actually white - the name comes from the the Afrikaans word for wide, or broad, which describes the rhino’s lips and differentiates this species from the rare, narrower-lipped black rhino).

We stayed in very comfortable cement replicas of indigenous Venda mud huts, which are scattered in small clusters throughout the reserve, and the little statues you’ll see if you go to the Yahoo photos link added some cool character to these little “villages.”

I got a ride there and back (about 4 hours from Pretoria) with a consultant named James, who has been in the business of bioregional planning and park management for 25 years - he was respnsible for, or involved in the management plans for all of South Africa’s national parks save Kruger. So I had some very informative chats with him, as well as getting some good exposure to the topic at the workshop itself. What makes conservation, and land use management generally, so interesting in South Africa (as elsewhere in the developing world I’m sure) is the intensity and immediacy of both development and conservation imperetives. Already some real texture and meaning has been added to my understanding of “sustainable development,” largely I think because the development part of SD is such a constant in the social and political reality here, and because without the sustainability part Africa’s future seems to me even more frightening and desperate than its present.

More photos here: http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/philipkakins/album?.dir=29a6