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'Connections and transformations in Africa' |  |
| A workshop at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, Tuesday 21 November, 2006 |
return to: Index page 'Connections and transformations in Africa'
At the World Parks Conference in Durban in 2003, John Hanks estimated that in order to safeguard bio-diversity in the world, the enormous amount of $9.5 billion was needed to ‘maintain existing national parks and conserved areas, and another 23 billion dollars per year in the next decade to expand these areas. (…) These figures were calculated in a joint project involving managers of protected areas, Conservation International, Birdlife International, the University of Cambridge and the Centre for Applied Biodiversity Sciences’ (Hanks 2003). In this financial context, ambitions to create of Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa, the so-called Peace Parks, encounter formidable challenges. Conservation organisations around the world increasingly turn to business philanthropists to fund their activities, and promote the concept of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) (Chapin 2004; Hutton et al 2005). The Peace Parks Foundation in Stellenbosch, South Africa for instance, one of the main facilitators and sponsors of the establishment of TFCAs in southern Africa, mainly funds its activities through channels of business philanthropy, organised partly through their ‘Club of 21’-initiative, ‘with membership fees set at $1 million’ (Domisse 2005: 385). Members so far are primarily multinationals (for instance Philips, DaimlerChrysler, Cartier), financial institutions (like the Deutsche Bank) and wealthy (former) captains of industry or royalty (for instance the late Anton Rupert, Paul Fentener van Vlissingen and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands). The connections between the private sector and nature conservation – in the form of PPPs and philanthropy – has not yet attracted much academic attention thus far. The aim of the proposed research is to explore the flows and relations between (Western and Southern African) business philanthropy and environmental organisations in southern Africa since the mid-1990s, in the context of the development of TFCAs in the region, and to study the impact of those connections on the livelihoods of the ‘local communities’ living in or in proximity to TFCAs.
The proposed research has a strong link with the third domain of
the ‘Connections and Transformations’ programme, which
focuses on religion and ideology. Business philanthropists
involved in conservation often express their motives in
(quasi-)religious terms, stressing their responsibility to
protect that what is vulnerable and threatened. In the case of
Afrikaner business philanthropists, like the late Anton Rupert,
the link with religion can be made even more explicitly. In the
process of Afrikaner social identity construction and Afrikaner
nationalism in South Africa, mythology about the relationship of
the Afrikaner with God and nature - and nature conservation -
plays and important role (see e.g. Carruthers 1995). One of the
major myths in this respect is the story of the Voortrekkers, who
are depicted as rugged individuals who lived close to and of the
land (Sparks 1991). The Great Trek in 1836 and especially the
ox-wagon symbolises this intimate relationship, as it also
symbolises the covenant of the Afrikaners with the Christian God.
In 1938 the same symbol of the ox-wagon was taken by Verwoerd to
announce the Second Great Trek which was aimed to Afrikanise the
cities, and take a legitimate place in commerce and industry’
(Verwoerd in Bloomberg 1989: 121). ‘The Trek … from the
platteland to the cities’ as Conradie, the Cape
Administrator at the time, formulated it (ibid: 122). The ‘Afrikaans
Handelsinstituut (Afrikaans Chamber of Commerce) was set up o
encourage and direct the development of Afrikaner business
undertakings’(ibid: 128). An economic and political
powerhouse of Afrikaner Nationalism, also labelled Christian
Nationalism, was the result from 1948 onward when the Nasionale
Partij came to power. Despite this ‘Trek to the cities’,
the mythological relationship between Afrikaner social identity
and nature remained a powerful impetus for even the most sturdy
Afrikaner capitalist businessmen, and many became involved in
nature conservation and / or wildlife utilisation, stressing
their religious responsibility to preserve and conserve God’s
creation on the African continent. Such discourses on nature
conservation, however, obscure other ideological influences
resulting from the involvement of business philanthropists such
as the promotion of PPPs, which is closely associated with a
neo-liberal discourse (see Hutton et al 2005).
Proponents of PPPs argue that the private sector is much more efficient in exploring and developing possibilities to combine nature conservation with economic development that will also benefit local communities living in and adjacent to conservation areas. Especially TFCAs are hailed as motors of regional economic development, notably in the South (see Wolmer 2002), and PPPs are considered the main organisational and management tool for this development (see Ramutsindela 2004a). Some authors, however, warn that the connections with the private sector may result in the privatization of conservation areas and – further – dispossession of local communities (see Dzingirai 2003; Spierenburg et al. 2006). In the promotion of PPPs – which is becoming increasingly prominent in development policy in general – the differences in power within the partnership are easily glossed over. The proposed research aims at bringing the power relations in PPPs to the fore, without ignoring the agency of local communities in negotiating their participation in the PPPs and the management of TFCAs. In doing so, the proposed research also contributes to the fourth domain of the Connections and Transformations programme – development as sociology.[1]
[1] A link with the first domain, that of mobility, can also be made. Most of the economic development in relation to TFCAs focuses on tourism. While TFCAs involve the opening of borders for tourists and investors, TFCA development increasingly seems to restrict the movement of local communities across borders.
return to: Index page 'Connections and transformations in Africa'
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