The elephants feeding off the nearby shrub looked remarkably placid as we strolled along the boardwalk that was high enough from the ground for them to pass underneath. But shortly after they kicked up a shindig, trumpeting and rumbling, whether from love and joy or from anger, I could not say.
Sitting, feet up, afterwards on the veranda of my Pafuri Camp tented chalet, I watched a hippo wallow lazily in a still pool of the Luvuvhu River down below. Staring back blankly with heavy-browed eyes, it—every now and then—snorted contentedly. Behind it on a sandbank lay a crocodile, mouth agape, as if dead.
<div id="attachment_1099" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1099" class="size-large wp-image-1099" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Enos-Mngomezulu-Wilderness-Safaris-head-guide-at-its-Pafuri-Camp-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Enos Mngomezulu, Wilderness Safaris&#8217; head guide at its Pafuri Camp</div>
Waterbuck moved about the reeds and a couple of baboons approached the river for a drink. Then, the peace was shattered briefly by a fish eagle and a purple heron getting into an almighty scrap on the opposite bank.
This is daily life at Pafuri Camp to the north of South Africa. The 24,000-hectare spread of land, within which the Wilderness Safaris tourist facility falls, is a national treasure, which could have been lost had the Makuleke community not decided to keep it as a protected area. That decision has proved as wonderful as the Pafuri.
It was a prescient choice, benefiting Kruger National Park in particular and nature in general by extending the roaming area of the park’s animals and by keeping under formal protection a landscape of extraordinary scenic beauty and biodiversity.
Wedged between the Luvuvhu and Limpopo Rivers at the Kruger’s northern extreme, Pafuri is made up of a rich mixture of wetlands, floodplains, savannah, Mopane veld, riverine and fever-tree forests, rugged hills and dramatic gorges.
Its climate, location and geology combine to make it the southern-most extreme of several tree species, causing it in turn to be a favored destination for botanists; not least baobab lovers who come to admire the exquisite species spread around the veld and by the roadside. Among its exceptionally rich birdlife, there are several species that are found nowhere else in South Africa, making it a favored destination for bird lovers as well.
The Makuleke decision to keep it as a reserve, served a further purpose. It introduced the concept of community-held contract parks that has been applied since in various parts of South Africa; ensuring the formal protection of valuable parts of the natural environment that might have been lost otherwise, as well as giving back dispossessed people a living.
The arrangement did not come easily. It was steeped in the hurt and bitterness of the apartheid era, which, for the Makuleke people, went back to a day in 1969 when government trucks arrived at their village, set among the brooding forests and woodlands of the Pafuri. Livingston Maluleke, a leading member of the community, told me of that painful day. Staring across the Luvuvhu from where we were sitting on the veranda of the Wilderness Safaris lodge, he recalled how villagers were bundled onto the trucks with only what they could carry and transported to a strange new place about 25 km outside Kruger National Park’s Punda Maria gate.
“It was terrible. Our old people, to this day, shiver when they talk about that experience,” he says.
The government’s thinking behind the forced removal was to add land to the Kruger as well as to allow security forces to better counter the anti-apartheid insurgents who were making use of the lush vegetation for moving back and forth between South Africa, Mozambique and then Rhodesia. The borders meet at the confluence of the Limpopo and Luvuvhu rivers. The spot is known as Crooks’ Corner for the way outlaws used it in olden times to skip from one country to another to evade arrest.
The landmark decision to keep the area as a reserve was negotiated with South African National Parks (SANParks), after the community had won back the land in 1998, under newly democratic South Africa’s land-restitution process. It was not an easy choice, Maluleke told me. Some of the old people wanted to move back there. But eventually the deal was negotiated whereby SANParks would continue to run the conservation aspect and the community would benefit in the form of jobs and an income from the concession given a decade ago to Wilderness Safaris. There is another lodge named The Outpost and a guide-training school that operates under similar concessions.
<div id="attachment_1098" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1098" class="size-large wp-image-1098" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Masingita-Hatlane-deputy-chairperson-of-the-Maluleke-Communal-Property-Association-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />Masingita Hatlane, deputy chairperson of the Maluleke Communal Property Association</div>
The concession holders have been contributing to conservation projects as well.
Wilderness Safaris, for instance, has helped with the reintroduction of game to the area, most notably the translocation of white rhino, giraffe and wildebeest from the heavily populated southern region of the Kruger Park. It says its anti-poaching operations have involved 20 game scouts from the community.
The money from the concessions has been going into a trust run by the Makuleke Communal Property Association (CPA). The estimated R3 million ($369,000) that has been generated so far has been going into projects like street lighting for two of the Makuleke’s three adjoining villages; crèches for two others; a community hall for another and improvements to schools. Each of the villages decides how it wants its portion of the income to be used.
In 2007, notable conservation recognition came with the declaration of Pafuri’s string of wetlands situated mainly along its Limpopo River boundary as a Ramsar site of international importance. In 2010, followed the United Nations Development Program’s Equator Prize that recognizes the efforts of local communities to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Last year followed SANParks’ Kudu Award for community contribution to conservation.
Now there are changes in store that could affect the way the contract park is run. Under the arrangement concluded back in the late 1990s, SANParks ran the conservation aspect in terms of much the same rules as applied to the rest of Kruger. Administrative decisions have been taken by a joint management board (JMB) that includes representatives of SANParks, the Makuleke CPA and officials from government’s environmental, tourism and security departments. A few years ago, the concession holders were also allowed to sit in on meetings as a way of streamlining JMB decisions.
According to Masingita Hatlane, deputy chairperson of the CPA, the system has been under substantial review by an independent company. The central idea to have emerged—from what is called the Conservation Development Framework it produced—is that the JMB should be restructured and that the administration of Pafuri should pass to a park manager. How exactly it will work, is not clear though.
“We felt we should co-ordinate the conservation and the commercial side and be better able to implement JMB decisions. But there are many aspects that still need to be sorted out,” smiled Hatlane, a school teacher who is known as Mavis; as we sat at the Makuleke village’s community center, where guests are sometimes treated to traditional dancing, drumming and such cultural events.
A key question is whether the park manager should come from the ranks of the Makuleke, from SANParks or the concession holders, or whether it should be an independent person from outside. Another question is where the manager’s office should be—inside Pafuri, where a lack of communication facilities would be a problem, or in Makuleke village, which is almost a two-hour drive from the park. The most likely site therefore is Kruger’s Punda Maria Gate, which best addresses the various problems.
But then still remains the big question: Who foots the park manager’s salary and his staff and office bill?
Though not spelled out in so many words, the implication of the proposal is that, rather than being run as an appendix to Kruger, the Pafuri should be treated as a park in its own right, with the Makuleke through their CPA taking a more direct hand in its administration. Part of the reasoning is that whereas the community lacked the experience to do so from the outset, it is now in a better position to take charge.
The importance of the Pafuri’s retention as a reserve is underpinned by another factor. Situated where it is, it is the kingpin of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park between Kruger National Park, Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park and Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park that make up the scheme.
There was even talk of constructing a bridge inside the park over the Limpopo River to provide a direct tourist connection between the two southern reserves with the Zimbabwean park. Apparently, the wetlands inside the park dictate that the bridge should be outside the park boundary. But as the imaginative transfrontier scheme is firmed up, so Pafuri’s part in it and the Makulekes’ decision to keep it as a reserve should keep standing out more prominently for the landmark development it represents in the conservation history of South Africa and increasingly also of the broader region.

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