28/01/2020
CONFERENCE PAPER ON
LANDSCAPE NARRATIVES AND LAND MANAGEMENT CHANGES IN A SOUTHERN AFRICAN CROSS-BORDER REGION – ORANJEMUND 22-25 JANUARY 2020
BY LAZARUS KAIRABEB
Abstract: This paper seeks to highlight some real-time experiences that we would like to add to the scientific charter for further interrogation. The focus is partly on the newness, and complexity of the ongoing transformation of land-use practices and the information asymmetry, lack of knowledge, governance systems, land tenure rights, and associated tensions. Here we have some intricate interdependencies that are at the heart of the challenges traditional authorities and communal communities are grappling with. I shall therefore modestly attempt to cascade down the TFCA process in sequence and attempt to highlight areas of concern. I am reluctant to make recommendations because I think the matter still requires a good amount of clarification on way too many issues.
Introduction
The introduction of the Trans-frontier conservation area (TFCA) in the ǁKaras region was preceded by simultaneous global biodiversity initiatives, seeking to integrate sustainable socio-economic development of rural communities, regional peace, and above all, promote customary sustainable use practices. These processes unfolded in the country at the time when Namibians were taking stock of the outcome of the democratization agenda for the old and newly established structures, in general; and the land reform results in particular. While the transition process was engage in a discourse on a number of levels – more of a philosophical one – concerning the aims or goals of democracy. A concomitant, yet separate discussion was ongoing of environmental changes seeking to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss and to ensure that all people could benefit from nature’s services. (CBD - Nagoya 18-29 Oct 2010)
Both the NGO fraternity and other community-based stakeholders were collecting, studying and reporting on land reform outcomes. Some of their reports included the results obtained from the community-based natural resource management Programme (CBNRM), which was an initiative designed to promote conservation approaches that meet the aspirations of local communities in the regions where tourism and the utilization of game were made accessible to rural communities. The CBNRM Programme itself, though it recorded relative successes for resource management in the northwestern regions of the country cannot be replicated fully in the ǁKaras region because of historical dispossession, demarcation of land in fragments of landlocked pieces, and resource variability as well as different aspects of tenure rights in the southern regions. Also the communities currently participating in the program are not fully immersed in a dispensation with clear-cut institutional authority over land and resource control because of the communal nature of the settings where the contestation over land and resources often involves struggles not only over land but also over the legitimate authority to define and settle land issues: similar to situations identified by (Lund & Boone 2013). This is particularly true in areas where communities endorse Traditional Authorities (TAs); people conveniently adhere to customary systems, which at times are perceived to negate rules of conservancy management regimes. This behavior oftentimes resides in and is deeply rooted in the frustration relating to tenure reforms in the context of land reform for the dispossessed communities and their leaders.
The trans-frontier landscape concept as it was introduced to the ǁKaras region had two separate geographic considerations. One had to consider the Lower Orange River (LOR), opportunities for unlocking it, while the other was to provide for the |Ai-|Ais Richtersveld Trans-frontier Park Area (ARTP) continuum. One of the key elements of the process is the integration and promotion of neighboring community participation. The Treaty establishing the TFCA arrangement was signed by the Heads of State of Namibia and South Africa in August 2003, upon which the |Ai-|Ais Richtersveld Trans-frontier Park Joint Management Board (JMB) was established and mandated to jointly manage this cross-border conservation area straddling the Gariep River, better known as the Orange River, embracing the |Ai-|Ais Hot Springs Game Park in Namibia and the Richtersveld National Park in South Africa. The Treaty provided for the later development of an expanded Trans-frontier Conservation Area (TFCA), buffering the initial core park areas. The Joint Management Board (JMB) of the ARTP in fulfillment of its mandate then commissioned the preparation of an Integrated Conservation and Development Plan (ICDP) for both the Namibian and South African components for the TFCA along the lower parts of the Orange River (LOR TFCA). From the records of the Integrated Conservation and Development Plan Report of Namibia, (ICDP Report 2009), |Ai-|Ais Richtersveld Trans-frontier Park measures 6 045km2 and spans some of the most spectacular arid mountain scenery in southern Africa. It also features the world’s second-largest canyon – the Fish River Canyon, the 350 million-year-old Orange River Gorge, and the Richtersveld, a mountainous desert, rich in diversity and one of the last regions where the Nama people’s traditional lifestyle based on nomadic pastoralism have been preserved (SAN Parks, 2006).
Notably, the consultants that were tasked to compile the Namibian ICDP consisted of a team of, town and regional planners, a geographer, GIS specialist, and an environmental planner and ecologist. With the key considerations for the Namibian LOR TFCA as outlined in their report:
International, regional and institutional cooperation
Identification of conservation priorities
Creating opportunities for unlocking its economic potential
Incorporation of local Nama communities in management decisions
The scope of the work was to further identify opportunities for:
Improved biodiversity conservation
Socio-economic development and land use potential
Protection of conservation priority areas
Creation of tourism development areas
Stakeholder participation and institutional arrangements.
The project in ensuring full integration at various levels and with all sectors had to take the following into consideration:
Community considerations: To preserve the cultural heritage
Conservation intentions: To preserve the natural heritage
Utilization objectives: To unlock the economic potential of the cultural and natural heritage
1. Land Tenure relations
Although the report made mention of “full integration at all levels and with all sectors” it only narrowly touches on the preservation of cultural heritage with the aim to unlock the economic potential thereof; and nothing about the pressure associated with power balance in tenure-based inequalities, information asymmetry, and livelihood uncertainties? It is not clear why such important element of integration did not have regard to the tenure reform measures underpinning the adaptability and responsiveness of the prevailing customary systems in terms of land rights management and livelihood strategies which are not fully appreciated in the report. This further obscures the current construct on land rights in Namibia, for commonage, and other user rights such as the leasehold rights that are not in sync with the economic development regimes in the country. This situation severely constrains the ability for development and/or negotiation for the customary land rights holders and other leaseholders proportionally. Therefore the changes proposed under the TFCA considerations came to pass while rural communities were grappling to comprehend the scope of their tenure in order to determine their bargaining bases. The community of Bondelswartz located to the south of the ǁKaras region and the !Aman community located in the west of ǁKaras region are both people that were historically displaced from their habitats and put on fragmented bits and pieces of lands blocked by freehold lands so that they are spatially detached from the river and parks opportunities. This situation is inherently different from the situation in the northwestern regions where the CBNRM programs function within well-defined enclosures and in relative success. Had it not been for this displacement, and political will that seems not yielded in their favor the Bondelswartz community has no benefit from the Orange River and |Ai-|Ais Park opportunities, and the same applies to !Aman people that could benefit from Tsau-ǁKhaeb Park (old Sperrgebiet) and from sections of Namib Naukluft Park. The other section of Naukluft Park could benefit the |Hai-|Khaua community, moving into Dorob Park for the Topnaar community. But to date, no direct benefit is accruing to these communities or the right to royalties, even though major changes have taken place in the vicinity of |Ai-|Ais Park and the Orange River. A small section of Klein Karas community was integrated into the Greater Fish River Canyon Landscape under the Namplace arrangement which was a project established with considerable assistance from the Global Environmental Facility and the Namibia Government. But even this community finds themselves located on an isolated piece of land with no significant participation in the activities of the extended park arrangement for two reasons: one is the fact that they are a cooperative community located on leasehold land and require approvals from government for whatever changes they may consider, and secondly because of information asymmetry and related power balance.
2. Customary or Communal Rights
The promulgation of this Act merely affirmed and legalized the historically unequal land tenure regimes by reinforcing the boundaries between the state, communal, and private land. The concepts of property and rights in relation to land are founded on the difference in the manner in which rights are associated with the property and the privileges granted in terms of the rights. For example; private landholders can use their exclusive rights over land not only to determine conditions under which their land could be made available for conservation projects but also how they participate in those projects. According to (Innocent Sinthumule August 2016) Common-property resource variously refers to property owned by a government; property owned by no one, and property owned and defended by a community of resource users; and any common-pool resource used by multiple individuals, regardless of the type of property rights involved (cited from Schlager and Ostrom 1992).
Communal land being state land with multiple rights holders, such as Conservancies, Communal Land Boards, Water-point management committees, traditional authorities, and traditional communities themselves, let alone, national and regional institutions, each with a say on what happens in the territory. Negotiations under such conditions become rather confusing, more-so, when the leading government officials cannot provide guidance in structuring the process and the debate in a manner that would counter the asymmetry caused by the power balance between rights holders. The concern traditional leaders have with this nature of development planning is that nowhere in the process are the effects of the asymmetry captured analyzed and recorded, for use in future planning, possibly because the presence of government officials is perceived to even out the imbalance, which is an assumption that can only work if the officials are well-vest in traditional matters, which so often is not the case. As can be read in the text of the ICDP report and corresponding policy documents, which are rooted in Constitutional guarantees and amplified in the objectives set out in Vision 2030 seeking the advancement of Namibians who have been socially, economically and educationally disadvantaged by past discriminatory laws or practices, which is the same position that led to the current bilateral agreement. But the nuance in the report is immersed in environmental matters so that the liberation rhetoric about fighting for lost land got displaced pretty much similar to the ways the real land losses have occurred, this time through pen and paper.
(Martin Adams, Sipho Sibanda, and Stephen Turner) wrote – in all countries of southern Africa which have experienced enforced land alienation at the hands of Europeans, the repossession of alienated land by African citizens remains a central national and agrarian objective. Land acquisition for redistribution and restitution has been given priority. Tenure reform of communal land has had to take second place to redistribution of white farms. So dominant is the imperative to repossess land, that insufficient attention has been devoted to post-settlement planning and support. Thus the livelihoods and land rights of incoming settlers have too often remained insecure. By the way; they further argue that – measures to tackle insecurity of tenure in the communal areas should not be seen as a substitute for land redistribution, but a complementary measure by which tenure reform can be linked to the acquisition and settlement of (newcomers) own emphasis. It is true that the reform agenda did not provide for agricultural productivity – so much so that no consideration seems to have been given to the size and effects on the newly demarcated pieces of farmland and its productivity.
3. Agrarian reform
The question of tenure reform highlights the question of political will, whether or not tenure reforms are favored? And how effective the administration of land tenure at national, regional, and local levels pursues this objective? It is public knowledge in Namibia that the reasons for the 2nd Land Conference that took place in October 2018 were in direct response to the widespread outcry against inequities introduced in the guise of land reform for the land dispossessed Namibians, on the one hand; and the absence of productive agricultural development, on the other hand. The complexity of land tenure systems combined with the plurality of institutions that are involved in communal land management and the limiting effect thereof to customary practices and loss of livelihoods together with development stagnation has led to the outcry for the review of the land reform regimes in Namibia. The tension caused by inequities suffered by historical land dispossessed Namibians emerged as the result of deliberate disregard to ancestral land restitution, and in turn, the use of Constitutional provision of Article 16, which posits: “All persons shall have the right in any part of Namibia to acquire, own and dispose of all forms of immovable and moveable property individually or in association with others and to bequeath their properties to their heirs or legatees.” To resettle people from the northern areas of the country who did not suffer any colonial land losses. More to this, such resettled northerners, by virtue of their customary systems, do not relinquish his/her traditional heritor rights to common land, privileges that are not applicable to the southern communal dwellers. These are some of the drivers that have attributed to dissatisfaction and persistently fuel and sustained the debate leading to the recent 2nd Land Conference.
The conclusion to demand radical agrarian reform is a clear political motivation that is endured in frustration mistrust and in despair by the dispossessed communities south of the red-line, in what is perceived to be happening. In post-independent Namibia, the legacy of the colonial land dispossession and elite land grab by the ruling party elite ensured that no tangible remedial action was implemented. And this fact has triggered the demand by the land dispossessed communities for land distribution primarily, and agrarian reform in its totality. “For many communities, the history of land dispossession and concomitant genocide led to the vicious cycle of landlessness in rural and urban settings, and created poverty traps and concentration of cheap labor working-class reservoirs in rural areas.’ Even today, without adequate land and support, peasants, working-class, unskilled, and semi-skilled but otherwise productive in low labor-intensive work continue to sell their labor cheaply, oftentimes exploited on farms, mines and in urban peripheries.’ ..even the so-called resettled farmers are unable to cope due to lack of post-settlement support (PSS) in terms of extension services, marketing strategies, and state subsidies.”
4. Park and community arrangement
Park, community relationship on the Namibian side is not as clearly delineated as in the case of the Richtersveld community arrangement. The communities of the other side have benefit sharing agreements with SANParks as the managing partner and other benefits such as Alexkor mining, resulting from a court ruling in the case that was lodged by the Richtersveld community. SANParks pay an annual “rent” to the Trust (R0,50c/ha going up to R 7.00/ha). Livestock farmers are allowed to graze within the park (6600 small stock units). SANParks employ only people from the community - exceptions are not so clear if any. On the Namibian side, there are absolutely no direct relations, even with the community within close proximity such as Klein Karas, the same is applicable for indigenous people and river opportunities. Promises were made as far back as in 2003 but no results. The broader view of the brief was as follows:
The governments of Namibia and South Africa signed an agreement (treaty) to collaborate around the |Ai-|Ais / Richtersveld Transfrontier Park / Conservation Area (TFP/CA). This agreement extends beyond collaboration between just the protected areas. It includes broad-based approaches to both (a) conservation and sustainable natural resource management and (b) socio-economic development. It also extends beyond park and conservation agencies to include landowners, managers, custodians, business people and other stakeholders in the area. Within this context, the Karas Region of Namibia and the Northern Cape Province of South Africa recently entered into a twinning agreement, one aspect of which is to prepare for the World Cup Soccer event of 2010 and the potential growth in tourism. Specific focus is placed on pre- and post-World Cup tourism product packaging and alternative tourism product development because of anticipated
tourism route changes – N7 TFCA destinations. These anticipated changes in the sector have encouraged between-country, in-country and local development of collaboration and partnership between different stakeholders. In Namibia, this process was initiated, with the assistance of the International Co-ordinator of the |Ai-|Ais / Richtersveld TFP/CA program, at a meeting within the Ministry of Environment & Tourism’s head office towards the end of 2005, when it was agreed that a first stakeholders meeting be held in the Namibian part of the TFP/CA to start the process. The main reasons for initiating stakeholder participation in the TFP/CA process are that:
• Transboundary initiatives are usually only as good as the on-the-ground capacity in each country, and thus strong in-country collaboration, partnership, and support mechanisms are needed.
• TFP/CA initiatives need to embrace landscape and biodiversity approaches across a diversity of land uses, and thus partnerships with different landowners, managers, and custodians are required.
• One of the main objectives of the |Ai-|Ais / Richtersveld TFP/CA is to enhance economic development, improve livelihoods and combat rural poverty in sustainable ways. This requires integrated, diversified and holistic approaches, and by its nature is inclusive and partnership-based.
• The capacity and scope of any one agency are not sufficient to achieve the objectives or the potential of transfrontier collaboration, and it thus requires, of necessity, a broad stakeholder approach. The effects of climate change are predicted to be most severe in southern Namibia, impacting particularly hard on conventional forms of land use such as farming, and threatening the status of a large proportion of the biodiversity of the area. Best forms of adaptation involve opening up systems, working collaboratively, and diversifying from high dependence on farming systems into indigenous biodiversity production systems such as wildlife and tourism, which achieve the best results when managed through collaborative mechanisms.
• The Ministry of Environment & Tourism, within its Vision and Strategic Plan is moving towards co-management approaches to ecosystems, priority areas and actions/programs. A similar move it taking place within the Commissions of shared river basins, thereby bringing the Orange River Commission (ORASECOM) and the |Ai-|Ais / Richtersveld TFP/CA initiative into alignment.
The first meeting of potential stakeholders was held on 23rd May 2006 between different landowners, managers, and custodians in the vicinity of the |Ai-|Ais National Park, under the auspices of the |Ai-|Ais / Richtersveld TFP/CA. In addition to MET staff, representing the |Ai-|Ais National Park and Naute Recreation Resort, five other landowners were present, jointly representing over 350,000 ha, and the mandate to speak on their behalf was obtained from a further two landholders who could not be present.
MET staff presented the principles underpinning the MET’s evolving park-neighbor and concession policies. Stakeholders then presented their land uses and ideas for the future. A number of topics of mutual interest were discussed, ranging from law enforcement, tourism planning, joint monitoring, fence removal between properties, wildlife introductions, marketing, research, and information dissemination. The meeting also developed a common vision for the area, which was named (for want of an appropriate title) the “Greater Fish River Canyon Complex” (GFRCC).
A number of “next steps” were agreed, as follows:
• Develop a draft “co-management and development plan” for the area, which captures the Vision, Objectives and a set of Principles for the respective areas of potential collaboration that were identified. It goes on to list a few indicative activities that the group could undertake to start joint implementation.
• Prepare a draft document on “institutional arrangements” – how the stakeholders involved should work together. It was agreed that a fairly informal constitutional arrangement should be explored, preferably an Association (rather than a section 21 Company or Trust).
• Prepare a wildlife re-introduction plan, based on historical distribution of wildlife in the area and taking into account present conditions.
In the preparation of the above documents, MET’s policy principles, as well as issues identified as relevant for the |Ai-|Ais National Park management plan have been incorporated. MET’s policies and plans are thus used as the agenda to set the framework for the GFRCC. (Briefing paper: CJ Brown / NNF (27/04/2007)
5. Orange River Opportunities
Since time immemorial Orange River banks on both sides were inhabited by communities. A large number of such river dwellers at one time were enticed by the Roman Catholic missionaries to join the church and develop mission stations on land where these communities used to live. Roman Catholic Church leaders never denied the fact that the land upon which they developed these stations were initially given to them as crown land. Some of the many families who lived on the Namibian side of the River were stationed not far from the place where the Church established a mission station – called Homesdrift - same is true about Pella and Riemsvasmaak along the Orange River. Remnants of those communities on the Namibian side are still found on the northern bank in small bands and they also do not have the security of tenure as the nearby freehold farmers claim to own the land. The only reason why they are not removed is partly because of the border dispute between South Africa and Namibia and the uncertainty on the hands of ownership claimants. A large section of the river course is claimed by freehold owners. It is said that known areas that were unoccupied before independence on the side of the river are today claimed by freehold owners. It is actually suspected that large tracts of what was known as state land have diminished and that it is difficult to disprove the ownership claims unless the correct boundaries are identified and the border dispute between Namibia and South Africa resolved. Until such time that substantive engagement on the above issues is achieved it is difficult to engage on a geopolitical level. The arguments held in the community discourse are along with the following school of thoughts:
• If one objective of conservancies is to improve the socio-economic lives of the conservationists, the latter cannot and should not operate conservation business on, as it were, leased or borrowed land. Land and land rights must be restituted to those who have been dispossessed of these through the German and Apartheid Colonialism.
• Conservation or conservancy meetings, conferences and workshops should de-Westernize and not always eulogize Western or Euro-centric values and “legal” land “rights” for ill-gotten lands confiscated through colonial genocide and/or colonial “Ordinances” and policies of Apartheid “Bantustanization”?
• How do you legalize a crime of broad day-light confiscation of somebody’s land, without compensation through Euro-centric title deeds gimmicks called ‘rights’, and in an area where the original owner might have used it for his/her own conservancy?
• In this regard, a close look into the so-called Sperrgebiet now Tsau-ǁKhaeb should be had. If a mining concession has been granted to mine or to prospect for mining, say for uranium or diamonds, does it mean the fauna and flora also belong to the mining concessionaires – thinks like the ostriches and gemsbok of Oranjemund and the !Nara of the Kuiseb River area and not to the people living there from time immemorial? The animals and the vegetation have nothing to do with mining diamonds, uranium, and the likes. Why was the whole of Sperrgebiet out of bounds for the natives of these areas? Or else, why should these hitherto natural resources of theirs not be legislated to be restituted to them? Are these areas and resources still part and parcel of the Euro-centric-cum-colonial fraud, characterized by colonial land deals or “Agreements” entered into by, on the one hand, German colonialists and the De Beers, et al., and, on the other, the likes of the Gaogu Christian of the Bondelswartz and Cornelius Frederick – of the !Aman clan, as the saying goes.
6. South African Border issue
An equally pressing matter worth looking into is the attitude of the South African government regarding international border disputes on the Orange River. Understanding that borders are political or legal domains, but, viewing it from a conservationist perspective, it may not be out of context to want to know how conservation activities, mining, and tourism would be undertaken? South Africa last made a statement that it will abide by the former “Organization of African Unity” (“OAU”) resolution on “Colonial Borders” – meaning, as they were drawn up by the Berlin Conference of 1884/5.
South Africa, under the Boer Apartheid Colonization, extended the border up to the northern dry bank of the river. Ours is, therefore, the northern dry bank which they called “Noordoewer” (Northern Bank), the border village where we stamp our Passports. In that case, do the people of ǁKaras or the natives have any claim to the water, fish, and diamonds of the “Gariep River” or to conduct conservation and conservancy activities with the natural resources of the Orange River, because South Africa does not recognize the international Law “middle-of-the-river and common lakes principle” – the Thalweg rule, but is conveniently hiding behind or making capital out of the OAU Resolution. One would, therefore, want to raise the question of whether now the African Union (AU) or, for that matter, modern South Africa would continue with the unilateral Noordoewer Border imposed on us by the sheer might and the “Devil-may-care” arrogance of the Boers, and especially after it has given back to Namibia Walvis Bay and the offshore islands? Also, what is the meaning of the “Trans-frontier” concept of biodiversity when in law the water, fish, and diamonds of the Orange don’t belong to Namibians? These are some of the questions simmering in the minds of various would-be participants on the Namibian divide of the Orange River.
Lazarus Kairabeb
Community Development Activist
Indigenous Peoples Representative (IIFB)
